Hey everyone. So recently my team and I have been doing some playtesting for our new project, and I was playing a talker character. I was attempting to communicate with someone who didn't speak my language, and I didn't speak his. Thankfully I had a brain augment that allowed me to understand him but he didn't have anything to help him do the same.

So I decided to try to craft a rudimentary sentence in his language and use miming gestures along with it. Our GM made me roll a Knowledge check, which gave me 4d6, and said that for every success I would successfully impart one word to the other person, and the order of the dice would correspond to which words were understood. I didn't think much of it at the time but it made for an interesting interaction, and it was completely discretionary on the part of the GM.

I asked this question on a reddit thread and didn't get any good examples, and it made me realize I'm not aware of any good mechanics for dealing with linguistic barriers. I'm curious if anyone here has a good example they have come across, or has an idea of what might work in a particular rules system.

Love to know what y'all think!

Tom.

Rolemaster Standard System has the Communication Static Maneuver Table for getting your idea across and a more general table describing linguistic ability at different ranks.  Shadowrun had its skill relationship flowchart thing for language families.  GURPS first to third edition treated languages as skills while fourth treats languages as advantages with three points buying native fluency, two points accented, and one point broken with the written and spoken versions of the language being bought as separate languages.

Rather than messing about with known languages as is common in D&D, in my simple dungeon-crawling game I've tried two methods.

The first: Roll a check when encountering a monster. Success means perfect communication. Failure means a limited vocabulary plus one bonus word. Critical failure indicates a severely limited vocabulary. To be clear, the vocabularies were written down on the character sheet. Simple things like "you, me, where, safety, 1, 2, lots", etc.

The second: As above, save that on failure the characters and the monsters can only communicate in three-word phrases, back and forth, taking turns. Critical failure indicates only single words back and forth.

I much prefer the second thus far. I feel that it nicely captures the feel of stilted and awkward communication without too severely limiting what can be said.

To simulate the harsher reality of being misunderstood or simply unable to get an idea across clearly, I'm considering having the players roll a d6 each time they speak, with a 1 indicating a total breakdown in communication. Perhaps a miscommunication table upon which they can roll would help.


At the end of the day, the one thing I absolutely wish to avoid is the total inability to understand a monster or creature. I find it boring and useless. Encounters without communication are called combats. A peaceful or wary encounter with creatures the PCs cannot speak with is a frustrating waste of everyone's time.

David Johnson, I was unaware of the first example you gave and I will have to look it over, but I am somewhat familiar with Shadowrun and GURPS. I guess I'm more wondering if there are ways to get around having to make language be built into a skill point system. Like I've never taken any spanish classes or really studied the language, but just from reading a sign or there and picking up some common words in every day life I'm fairly sure I could get a very basic and crudely formed message across in several situations should the need arise. So in the context of a game i'd say I have no real skill points allotted to a second language but I still have some small ability to be understood, even if just on a surface level.

How do you gamify the lack of a formalized language knowledge? I'm going to brush up on GURPS and SR now that you mentioned it though.

And Trinculoisdead that is an interesting way to resolve it. I also prefer the sound of the second one as i think it would allow for more roleplay scenarios to arise. It's hard to ride the fine line between penalties and rewards when you already come into the scenario assuming that the interaction is limited from the start, but I think that gets close to it.

   I like to use the language rank system from M.E.R.P/Rolemaster, whereby you know a language at a rank between one and five.
Representing varying degrees of fluency.

  1)   Capable of using simple phrases and simple questions ("Safe to Eat?" "Danger Ahead?"), no reading or writing.
  2)   Allows simple speech on simple subjects, as long as both parties speak slowly and carefully, can read simple sentances but
        no writing.
  3)   Allows speech with the fluency of the average native speaker, but with an accent.  Can read and write at about a 5th grade level.
  4)   Speech as above, but with the ability to read and write at the average level of literacy (generally around a 9th grade level).
  5)   Allows speech with no accent and complete fluency.

   I've always liked that system, and ported it wholesale into my current AD&D campaign, with a bit of tweaking it works quite well.
Helps with all the ridiculous number of languages demi-humans speak in AD&D, i give them one or two ranks of most of the languages
they start with, and they'll have to spend time and language slots to learn more.  Usually i use 1 additional language=three ranks,
of four for a Magic-user or cleric.  Seems to adapt well to most systems with a little work.

   That said, in the situation there, since neither party had even one rank, i'd probably have them try to communicate via pictures or
hand gestures, with an intelligence check to see if the message was understood, and if it wasn't i'd allow the other party a wisdom
check to see if they could earn a chance to try a different approach and get another check against intelligence, and if that failed, they're
out of luck.
   

RM2 and MERP just use language ranks with no roll, rating, or table.  In defense of RMSS I will only say, "Bork,bork freborking bork bork.  Whoa! Gibberish!"

I want languages to matter, but not be so caught up in simulating real-world linguistics that it bogs down the game or starts to really monkey with the scope and mechanics of the skill system.  As an example, something like this:

1. Compared to something like D&D (a language for every family of monsters), get it down to a manageable number within the campaign area, reflecting culture more than fantasy biology.  Within a certain geographic region, there is only going to be one dominant language, though of course creatures will wander in from elsewhere with another language.  If the dwarves of the Iron Mountains speak their own language, it's because they are isolated and the only people that really live there.  If other creatures have lived there a long time, they speak the same language.  Whether it started with dwarves and spread to them or vice versa or came from some other off-shoot is completely a setting thing.

2. Assume that families of languages are subsumed into the rules below, with GM judgment interceding where warranted.  Likewise, there is no "common", though there are often 1 or 2 languages serving that role for trade in the campaign area (but not beyond).

3. When creatures originate in an area completely outside the campaign area, all bets are off, barring some kind of "Imperial Rome" type of setting with a vastly spread language.

4. Language levels are Rudimentary (R), Basic (B), and Fluent (F).  Anyone can get Rudimentary with time and exposure and a little bit of paying attention.  No mechanical cost.  You start learning the Thunder Speak of the nomadic tribes, hang around a little and you'll get R level.  Basic requires actual study and thus cost about half a "skill pick/improvement" whatever that translates to in the game.  Fluent requires a full pick.  (Don't read those as D&D 3E or 5E picks, which would be inflated.  Think something more like a half point or point in GURPS or Hero System.)

5. Rudimentary requires an Intelligence check or equivalent to communicate, and can't do more than, well, rudimentary concepts.  Basic means that you can talk for free about any simple things, and can try the check for more complicated ideas.  Fluent means you talk for free at pretty much everything, except perhaps very sophisticated concepts, idiomatic expressions, and the like, which might require the appropriate check of the appropriate skills.  Or in other words, at Fluent, it's not the language that is the barrier but your understanding of the subject.

All of the above assumes that the campaign will have a limited list of reasonably useful languages, maybe 10-15, 6 to 20 at the outside.  Each character should get at least one language for free at fluent, based on their culture and location.  Learning Basic in a couple more should mean you can function most civilized places. 

How "realistic" and complex do you want it? Some games just use a "know/don't know" rating for understanding languages and get by just fine. There are even some games that totally ignore languages other than to occasionally waive a narrative flag that "you can't understand this" when it's plot relevant. OTOH, there are crunchy systems that can spend several pages on this stuff (which then might get ignored and become wasted text the first time somebody learns a certain spell or has a technological universal translator). So, what are you really looking to do?

Quote from: HappyDaze on February 08, 2022, 10:57:38 AM
How "realistic" and complex do you want it?

From a roleplay perspective I guess I want it as realistic as I can get it. How can i bring that arduous yet rewarding experience of breaking down that language barrier through any means available? And solidify it into a set of non skill based rules that force you to address it in the moment without aid, just like you may do in real life.

Now from a practical standpoint I can see where this would be quite tricky to pull off without being, as you said, full of complicated and ultimately ignored text. So as close as we can get to that ideal is something I'm very interested in.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 08, 2022, 10:27:39 AM
I want languages to matter, but not be so caught up in simulating real-world linguistics that it bogs down the game or starts to really monkey with the scope and mechanics of the skill system.

5. Rudimentary requires an Intelligence check or equivalent to communicate, and can't do more than, well, rudimentary concepts.  Basic means that you can talk for free about any simple things, and can try the check for more complicated ideas.  Fluent means you talk for free at pretty much everything, except perhaps very sophisticated concepts, idiomatic expressions, and the like, which might require the appropriate check of the appropriate skills.  Or in other words, at Fluent, it's not the language that is the barrier but your understanding of the subject.

All of the above assumes that the campaign will have a limited list of reasonably useful languages, maybe 10-15, 6 to 20 at the outside.  Each character should get at least one language for free at fluent, based on their culture and location.  Learning Basic in a couple more should mean you can function most civilized places.

See this is starting to get towards what I'm idealizing, it still isn't quite as freeform as I would like, meaning it still breaks into defined tiers in this version, but it gets towards the mechanical process itself. Also I completely agree that languages should matter without weighing down speed of play.

In our project we have 7 cultures each with their own language, and while one of those 7 belongs to the antagonists and you rarely have need of it, we still want to make life in this melting pot of a city have a lingual diversity that colors roleplaying. The brain augments that players have help because it makes you able to understand, but you cannot be understood unless they have the augment (most don't) or you speak their language. So we effectively cut out half of the problem, but I'm really interested in finding a way to work out the other half in a way that is simple in mechanics but comes off as true to life.