[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Language Talent and Omnilingual

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Anders

The Ewoks? I don't think anyone knew they existed before the Empire decided to make their moon the center of their plan to destroy the rebellion.

Within Star War Expanded universe (both versions), they explicitly had contact with the galaxy before ROTJ.
The 2 ewoks telefilm (no longer canon) do raise a language contradiction : Wicket the Ewok learned basic in those, but couldn't understand Leia in ROTJ...
That said, I think C-3PO did not know Ewokese but knew another Endor-originating language "close enough".

While 6 millions form of communication isn't that impressive in an universe of SW size (especially since that number includes IT communications protocols), it does give a solid foundation for translating unknown language and dialects.

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Regarding Language Talent and Omnilingual, my current house-rules for language halve the costs for those.
I also halved the cost of languages (round up per language - which does give a price break if you learn both spoken and written form together), but added needing one perk per script (free for the native one).
The "non-halved" cost give you a full language group as per Pyramid 54, but only for broken/accented, you need to buy native level separately, or use language talent.
It is clunky, with quite a few places were the costing breaks due to round-up, but it work.

20cp for "I know every non-secret languages we will encounter in the campaign at accented (25 cp with language Talent)" is tempting for the average adventurer while at 40/50, it would be a defining trait.
With my pricing, it is equal to 5 language group - but I thrown the scripts in for free.

I am likely too generous with language cost, but I like having multiples languages in my campaign, but dislike the game effects of players unable to communicate.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

In any case it is still unbelievable that that the languages of the Ewoks would be in a standard linguistic database that didn't include all of the languages everywhere and would therefore be represented as Omnilingual. 3P0 knows all of the languages. He's Omnilingual. Six million languages would cost quite a bit bought individually with points. That's what Omnilingual exists for.

<shrug> You have storage space available to store millions of translator programs. Why not stuff it with every piece of freeware possible?

The main reason I wouldn't use Omnilingual in a SW setting is that droids shouldn't be built as entieis with expensive Powers. They're gear and cheaply
priced gear at that. Gear in SW (including small starships) is cheap in SW.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

I wrote up a fairly extensive languages-as-skills article for Pyramid #3/44, but even I would advise caution: "we don't understand the locals" is one plot element that you use once, not something that's fun every adventure. I'd use my more complex language system not for that but for a game in which it really matters just how effective your French poetry (or Italian propaganda) is even though you didn't grow up speaking the language.

This might be true for spoken languages, but for written languages it can appear on a regular basis, leading to plot complications where characters have to find the sage who can read the Old High Ferbish court hand or have to go on a quest to find a place where people can still read The Words of the Ancient Ones.

Against that, expanded use of the Linguistics skill is helpful when making guesses as to just what the heck language you're hearing/seeing and for doing slow and potentially erroneous translations of languages you don't read using dictionaries and grammars.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I do increasingly think Omnilingual is way too expensive. I suspect the problem is the same as the original pricing of Unaging - it seems fair relative to other stuff for the real world, but ends up overcharging for a game because the conditions where it would matter rarely turn up, since having them come up all the time would make the game unfun or unplayable.

Agreed, even Language Talent can be overpriced in some campaigns.

In campaigns where there are less than 5 languages in common use, there's no real benefit to having Language Talent. In campaigns where there are fewer than 20 or 40 languages in common use, there's no benefit to Omnilingual.

In such cases, it's a courtesy for the GM to tell players that such advantages aren't worth buying or else to allow players to buy the advantages as perks.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Agreed, even Language Talent can be overpriced in some campaigns.

In campaigns where there are less than 5 languages in common use, there's no real benefit to having Language Talent. In campaigns where there are fewer than 20 or 40 languages in common use, there's no benefit to Omnilingual.

Why 20 languages? Omnilingual (the base version) costs 40 points. It gets you Accented use of languages. Accented use of a language costs 4 points. Dividing 40 by 4 gets you 10, which seems to say that it pays off if there are more than 10 languages in common use.

I agree that that's expensive. But the issue seems to be more that languages in GURPS (and in many games) are priced quite high in proportion to their narrative utility. If a language cost 1 point, like a Cultural Familiarity, then Omnilingual could have been priced at 10 points, like Cultural Adaptability (my model for the pricing).

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Why 20 languages? Omnilingual (the base version) costs 40 points. It gets you Accented use of languages. Accented use of a language costs 4 points. Dividing 40 by 4 gets you 10, which seems to say that it pays off if there are more than 10 languages in common use.

I agree that that's expensive. But the issue seems to be more that languages in GURPS (and in many games) are priced quite high in proportion to their narrative utility. If a language cost 1 point, like a Cultural Familiarity, then Omnilingual could have been priced at 10 points, like Cultural Adaptability (my model for the pricing).

Hmm... I remember narrative utility pricing from BESM and Tri-Stat, where it applied to skills and floated according to genre demands. That could make some sense here (leaving off the float). I'm thinking something like Broken - 0*; Accented - 1; Native - 2. * Broken would only be free for one language (assuming you are in a situation where that would make sense), after which you could buy additional languages at Broken proficiency at 1 cp for two. Jigger the numbers as you see fit. You could adapt Language Talent to that pricing, but I'm disinclined to.

Although I dislike cost modifying ads in general, I've put Language Talent on a *bunch* of my own characters (my lack of ability to pick up another language has led to a fascination with polyglots).

[Tyneras]

You could have 1 character point convert into 4 or 6 "Language points" and distribute them however.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Why 20 languages? Omnilingual (the base version) costs 40 points. It gets you Accented use of languages. Accented use of a language costs 4 points. Dividing 40 by 4 gets you 10, which seems to say that it pays off if there are more than 10 languages in common use.

You're right. I was working from faulty memory and got the point costs wrong.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

You're right. I was working from faulty memory and got the point costs wrong.

Okay. Given that, on one hand, if you accept that languages are priced appropriately, the cost of Omnilingual is actually less unreasonable than that of Cultural Adaptability; it's rare for a GURPS campaign to have more than ten distinct cultures, but having more than ten languages is pretty easy. On the other hand, I think this points to at least part of the problem being the high cost of languages.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Even most of the "too expensive" complaints come from buying literacy separately for each one, though if we were still using the 3e half points knocking the cost down to 1/2, 1, 2 would've been reasonable.

Are you advocating only learning writing once for both english and spainish, or are you saying most adventurers shouldn't bother to learn to write their foreign languages?

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

By now I'm no longer confident this is a solid reason anymore, since the hours-to-points ratio is not meant to represent actual realistic correlation, but rather a playable arbitrary number to have some kind of answer when a PC decides to start studying a skill.

What about capabilities though? speaking another language is fairly impressive, and adds a fair amount of functionality to a character. It should probably get cheaper the more you know, and language talent does that, but only after some pretty heavy investment.