Troll Lord Games

What do you guys do for this, atribute checks, purchase new languages, or...

I usually give them what the race is listed to know. However Languages do not play that big of a role in my games so they are usally there for decorative purposes.
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The Lord of Ravens
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Starting languages equal to Int modifier plus mother tongue if any special traning grants other languages those are in addition to that number. A character may leave slots unused to later learn a language during gameplay.

Learning above that number is possible though, Gms call.
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"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects." - Attributed to Herman Melville.

I should probably ammend my post; I've a habit of posting half-thoughts lately as I'm mulling stuff over.

I was reading the original Greyhawk Gazetteer last night and enjoyed Gaygax's interest in various human cultures.

I've never bought the whole:

"What race are you?"

"Human friend, exactly like you, o' traveller from the other side of the planet..."

I like humans to have much variation in dress, culture, worldview and language.

Indeed, I can't wait for the party to hit the first outpost only to ask: "O.k...which one of us speaks Baklunish?"

So I'm kicking around giving access to a language for every intelligence modifier, or allowing characters to trade in xps for them...

I think that is pretty much what I answered there, though attaching a xp cost for languages above the modifier would work well too. My favorite setting is midnight, there we have 3 different human races and 3 different elven races, dwarves are behind with two main groups, the kurgun, living mostly on the surface, and the clan dwarves, living mostly on the underground, they have many more dialects though, since they are usually isolated in holdfasts due to the war against the Shadow.
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"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects." - Attributed to Herman Melville.

In my games, the races get their own racial languages, plus and additional language based on INT bonus. I also use a simply skill system that kind of mimics 2E's proficiency system. With a skill (proficiency) slot, the characters can "purchase" another language. Of course, the characters have had to study, or come into contact with the language in some way in order to learn it.

.......................................Omote

FPQ
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Duke Omote Landwehr, Holy Order of the FPQ ~ Prince of the Castles & Crusades Society

Since my primary area of interest is modern languages, I grappled with the question of how to deal with languages in RPGs for quite some time. Eventually, I came to the conclusion it was simply better to get rid of them. Unlike varying cultural elements, which can set the backdrop (or even the focus) for a lot of games, I find languages to be kind of useless.

In any system where there are multiple languages, if a single character knows a language, then the entire party knows it. Enforcing otherwise simply makes the game slow and boring:

P1: "Tell her we want to find Graddamon's Quarry."

P2: "We we want to find Graddamon's Quarry."

GM: "It's to the northeast of town. Beware, many bugbears call it their home now."

P2: "It's to the northeast and crawling with bugbears."

P1: "Would they have taken the archaeologist there?"

...and so on.

Furthermore, any ancient inscription in a ruin that the PCs come across is not likely to be written in, say, Goblin. It'll be in that notorious Old Tongue, whatever the heck it's called in that particular game. And of course nobody has Old Tongue as a proficiency, or one of them does and so the whole party does.

Even the basic reason behind having all PCs know "Common," is cited as making the game more playable. If the PCs can't communicate with each other, or with the cities, towns, and encampments they must go to, then one seriously needs to consider why one is playing the game at all.

So, in any RPG played by sane people, whatever the rules might say, there are effectively two languages: the one the PCs know, and the one they don't. Anything that the GM wants to get across will be in the language they know, and anything the GM wants to hide will be in the language they don't. Furthermore, there will always be a translator in the form of a book, person, or magical spell of some sort that will eventually, after some degree of effort, translate the language the PCs don't know.

And while anecdotes aren't evidence, I cite a personal experience of this sort of effect taken to an unfortunate extreme:

GM: "It's in Old Gnomish, so you can't read it."

Me: "Actually I took Old Gnomish back at 1st level, since I'm a historian and well... you said we'd be dealing with gnomes a lot in this game."

GM: "Oh, well, it's in a cryptic form of Old Gnomish, so you aren't really sure what it says."

Because the GM had forgotten that I'd taken Old Gnomish--one of the languages in his campaign--and his plot relied on the fact that we'd have to... well... find a translator later on in the dungeon. Specifically a gnome archaeologist imprisoned by bugbears in an ancient ruin by Graddamon's Quarry. Fortunately, everybody in the party at least had the sense to take Gnomish (or was indeed a gnome), so the situation above about finding the place didn't happen.

The inscription, as you may see, wasn't actually in Old Gnomish: it was in the language the PCs didn't know. It just ended up being an unfortunate semantic mix-up. If the GM had been more aware of our abilities as PCs, he likely would have put it in some other language (Ancient Gnomish?).

So while languages might seem cool, I find that player interest is much better captured by cultural elements and social rolls.

Know what, you are actually right. That is why any setting without any sort of common tongue ends up with one anyway..
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"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects." - Attributed to Herman Melville.

I just rule on the spot if a PC can understand something or not, based on their background and in-game exposure/actions. If they specifically pursue a language, I'll say "write that down" and if it comes up later, they know they 'have it." The runic languages are different as they are in effect means of spellcasting... so they are much harder to learn (either you get it as a class ability, or you don't) but some of it can be learned as far as being able to identify it, and read it, but not using the spell abilities.

Nifelhein wrote:
Know what, you are actually right. That is why any setting without any sort of common tongue ends up with one anyway..

Exactly. My two favorite languages were always Druidic and Undercommon, though. Often "Common" is justified as a "trade tongue" or "pidgin" or whatever, but considering all humans have Common as their sole language this... is kind of silly.

However, nobody in the Underdark actually speaks Undercommon as their "native" language, so it really is a trade tongue of sorts. I can imagine a smattering of Drow, Mind Flayer, and Duergar words all thrown together into a pastiche with some rudimentary grammar and other loanwords as well.

And Druidic is a secret language used for secret stuff, which is awesome. Thieves' Cant, while interesting, is simply slang.

All the more reason I regret that I can't find a better way of handling language.

I take a cue from Robert E. Howard's Conan stories and make languages varied and therefore have zillions of them, considering the races on my gaming planet that have written and/or oral languages.

Having traveled to foreign lands myself teaching English as a second language I know two things: 1) You don't learn by osmosis and 2) If you want to eat, buy things and be an active member of that society you will begin to pick up words really quickly through immersion into the culture. Therefore my characters can have a dozen languages, those they start with and those they pick up, the latter of which go in progressions of fluency. I try not to overcomplicate this notion, but also try to make it as diverse as possibly.

Pactmaster I agree.

I've always 1 used languages as a social statas thing (very historic. A roman if he want's to be seen as learned speeks Greek also. A Celt that wants to look more polished speeks Latin etc.

I also rule that if you speak a branch of a langage then you can comunicate in all the assoicated langages but it is only "combat Italian" at a basic level - picture all the American joes in Italy trying to get good vino & pick up on the local girls & you have the skill level down-

Neither is significant in the average dungan crawl type game but when you are in that town across the desert, there is ALOT of social ramifications. That comes into more role playing fun than hard & fast dice rules. Just more of a flavor thing for me....
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As mentioned in another thread in this section, but relevant here: I enjoy the simplicity of the C&C rules, especially as it allows me to add my own that help with the flavor of the game, like languages.

Language can be quite disarming and an excellent icebreaker or at least can be used to help people avoid a good leg-breaking. Back in college I hung out with a heavily international crowd and one of my techniques in helping foreign people stay in one piece in Idaho was to alter the slang vocabulary to the point that it was more confusing to locals than offensive. This caused a lot more levity than anger in the end and I still use language as a powerful tool in gaming.