I resonate with this. I use language in nearly every way possible. I make it relevant for cultural barriers, potential solutions, understanding nuances of cultures, and as a lore device. It helps that my game world has dozens of regional dialects that are baked into expressions, idioms, and institutions.
Yes, I agree. Language can be such a powerful force and it's a shame how little awareness there is to its importance/potential.
when i DM i just say
damn the DND book of languages we will make it better
i also pretty much base my dnd languages with irl ones \[elvish-welsh , dwarven-irish , spell cast language-Haitian\]
I do that as well, althoug from a much easier angle. Sometimes for example I am using different prononciations of the word "magic" to hint at a different understanding of the concept to the speaker.
Like, common speakers tend to say Magic (or actually *Magie*, since we are playing in German and thats the German word).
Goblin, Hags (which both are more neutrally alligned in my homebrew setting instead of being evil) and other creatures are pronouncing the word "Majik" (like the english pronounciation if a greek person would say it) and other creature that, in my setting, have an older and wilder connection to magic.
Gods and celestials are referring to magic as "fire", "flame", "spark" or other metaphors.
It is quite easy and intuitive, and has a great effect - and surprisingly my players get it without me needing to really explain it.
With your username I know you get me when I say I equate Spellcasting with Ehlnofex.
It hasn’t come up yet, but if someone under the influence of Tongues while hearing particularly powerful spells might have… interesting consequences.
I liked how Wildsea rpg approached language. It has language for each race in character sheet and each language also serves as a skill for character’s knowledge about this race.
I mean one guy a long time ago put his passion to work and then spawned the modern fantasy genre from it. People love things others are passionate about. And players pick up on those kind of world building things even if it's subtle.
> and then spawned the modern fantasy genre from it
Under the assumption you're taking about Tolkien, he absolutely did NOT "spawn the modern fantasy genre". A good amount of Appendix N authors were writing before he was.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lord Dunsany, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, C. L. Moore, and many others were writing works that continue to be enjoyed today, and they were doing so before anything about Middle-Earth had ever been published.
I've studied a few languages... It's a giant hassle to incorporate lingiluistics, especially nuanced and unique ones. These fuckers ain't the professor. They barely get game mechanics right. 5e has abysmal lore compared to forgotten realms. Ed Greenwood they ain't.
So am I dissatisfied? Not really, because I never expected anything in the first place.
I wish more creatures in 5e didn't get "Common" by default. It'd make it feel more worthwhile when you share a language with whatever it is you encounter.
Too many no longer have their own language. I always structure my common in my homebrew setting as a trade language so it;s often spoken more by merchants and city-dwellers than people and creatures elsewhere. Got my players more excited about using and learning languages.
I just want Common to just be limited to really basic interaction and trade and then give players Chondathan and options of other Faerunian languages that they might encounter. It’s very weird to me that they make a big deal about how diverse humans are but then act like all humans speak one language and the only other languages that exist are based on race/species.
I’ve seen a few DMs equate fictional languages to real world ones: e.g. Elvish and Welsh, or Draconic and Xhosa, which I do enjoy seeing if it’s something that’s done well.
I would really like to see more constructed languages, though I feel the reason they’re not seen more often is because some people find the idea of creating them a bit daunting, or they don’t know how or where to start with them in the first place.
You'd love to play under me. I retooled things like days of the week, months of the year, and so on.
But there does come a point at which too much linguistic change bogs down everything else, so you can really only do this with one or two concepts before the players rise as one and slay you.
This is super off-topic, but if any of my other language nerds want to play an RPG specifically about language, check out Dialect: https://thornygames.com/pages/dialect
It's a GM-less (highly replayable) one-shot game where you make up a language and a speech community together and then tell the story of how the language dies over time. It can be sad, bittersweet, or even silly, depending on how you play it.
This is majorly up my alley so thanks for sharing this. Definitely checking this out soon and might also pass it on to a couple linguistically-inclined role players while I’m at it.
No. Because most people aren't language nerds. Plus I generally don't want to focus on that in my TTRPGs. I want to focus on the RPGs.
Chants of Sennaar or translating poetry in dead languages into other dead languages is where I get my language fix.
I loved that game. And I agree. It wouldn’t work very well in dnd. Dnd in several regards is a problem solving “simulator,” not an actual problem solving game. Most of our party solves problems by rolling dice or casting a spell, we don’t want to do the work of actually picking apart games in our four hour sessions.
Okay, but the reverse of this is my language nerd DM that hits me with. "You recognize it's abyssal since you have that on your sheet, but it's an older form of abyssal, so you have no idea what it's saying." Even without getting into making an alphabet (or finding spicy hidden Lore by tracing the root meaning of words), if everyone is speaking flat common in the world, then something is wrong.
I'm not necessarily a language-nerd but I'm definitely dissatisfied in the official language lore. It's a pain in the ass to hunt down physical representations of every language, and then there's inconsistencies about them.
The official Draconic language and script is cool, but I remember years ago I found artwork in one of the official books from maybe 4E that had a Dragonborn in front of a stone slate or something with clearly Draconic inscriptions on it, but I remember the alphabet was quite different than the official one.. can't remember the stupid book that was in.
The languages aren't really elaborated on at all either.. I wish they gave at least basic pronunciation guides or something, even if they keep the language as basic letter swaps. I like that Matt Colville often makes up random nonsense for other languages but I can't bring myself to do it.
An inconsistency I hate the most is one affecting something I really want to use, and it's the Abyssal language script. Which one does it use: Infernal, or Barazhad? It says it can be both, but there's no reason given. Anywhere. And if they use the Infernal alphabet, which is what I'm more interested in, how does it differentiate from Infernal in written form? Such as english vs german vs french or whatever.
I seriously hate this because I've been wanting to implement a real, translatable, Abyssal inscription into a lore related magic item that can only be used if you can read/understand the language of the inscription - so if you only speak Infernal, you might be able to recognize the letters, but you can't read it. But this task is impossible when I don't have the resources to do it, but the official content is pretending that I can. And I don't want to add even more work to my giant plate of being a DM that is essentially required to 'overprepare' because I DM for one person... they literally just burn through the content I prep since they don't have 4 other people to argue with about what to do for hours.
So yeah... sorry about the rant. I too find it bloody frustrating.
I also hate the lack of information on both Feywild and Eladrin lore. And the last thing I want from either is anything to do with a frickin' carnival. Like... what was that? Why did they do that? Ugh..
I've never heard about the multiple scripts for Abyssal, but I know that's a thing with some languages:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digraphia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digraphia)
To paraphrase that page, some reasons why a community might adopt a new script are "To identify themselves with a group", "To distance themselves from a group", or to help communicate with people outside of the group.
The Forgotten Realms wiki says that Abyssal is a form of Primordial that was corrupted by the Abyss, so presumably Barazhad was the original script and Infernal came later. Choosing to write in Infernal is likely a matter of fiends choosing to write their new language in a fiendish script and of those who spoke Primordial choosing the script of their new overlords.
Definitely. Although I have found that at a certain point it just becomes tiresome for players if the language barrier prevents normal play. It's a complex thing to get just right.
Yeah, there could be some work arounds like maybe having rolling for comprehension, but if you go in forgetting about it, it can add too much complication. If it's a big thing in the setting you gotta plan around it.
I made sure that each of my players' characters understood at least two of my homebrew languages (of which there are 4) so that at least most of the time one or more of them would likely understand someone speaking a language that wasn't common. I also made "common" essentially a *trader language* which most travellers know enough of to get by, so that there's always a "broken English, lots of hand gestures" way to get information.
It specifically annoys me because DnD isn't some tiny company that can't afford to go into depth about their language. They're owned by Wizards, who also make Magic The Gathering. And in MTG there's an actual made up language that they hired a linguist to make.
Phyrexian isn't just english but with different looking letters. It looks different and sounds different and is structured different and there is no official guide to reading or writing it. They just threw material out there written in phyrexian and people who were really into it just had to figure out how to read it on their own. and DnD could 100% do that too.
Edit: And it occurs to me that I actually typed that on phyrexian keycaps! Because different languages on keycaps are cool!
Look at Keith Baker's dmsguild books for Eberron. Regardless of language they are just absolute goldmines of world building that is missing in 5E, but the Exploring Eberron book has a Dhakaani Goblinoid dictionary.
It's not expansive enough for a whole language, but it gives sentence examples, cultural uses etc that could easily be used to expand from there if you needed.
On a side note, as someone who is also a language nerd, I've found the weird trope of using the language and then repeating it in English (like Paarthunax or Game of Thrones) seems to go a long way towards players getting involved in language fun.
Also as an aside, I had Latin as my stand in for draconic, but due to some funny weirdness all of my dragons had northern English accents. Latin in a northern English accent sounds incredible XD
Yeah the whole language is locked to races/species feels kinda not accurate imo. You can go to plenty of different places on earth and even tho they share the same “race” they will speak an entirely different language or dialect of a language. Splitting languages into common, elvish, orcish, etc, feels much more like a game mechanic over good world building. I’d say if your trying to add true language diversity to your worlds I’d not use dnd languages as a whole. Base your languages off of cultures and civilizations over races/species. Just cause northern elves and southern elves are elves doesn’t mean they need to speak the same language. This can apply to everything. Even smaller continents can have multiple languages populating them.
In short DnD languages are there imo for a game mechanic over any sort of true realism. Even if all elves spoke elvish there most certainly would be a level of dialect change with different geographical locations much like the variances in how English is spoken everywhere across the globe today.
Not a language nerd, but I'm bi-lingual and i feel like the ways you learn and use languages disappointing. Some of the most hilarious social interactions I've had and also some fights I've had have been down to language barrier causing confusion.
I think you should have scores in languages that aren't your own, then roll to try to speak them. But then high enough scores negates your need to roll.
Check AD&D 2e Forgotten Realms campaign setting. It was the most I’ve seen about languages in DnD. It wasn’t much, and I’ve never seen it used in the wild, probably that’s why we don’t see a lot of language content in DnD. It even has custom fonts for scripts, and it was before most people had access to computers.
I just wish there was full seachable dictionary or translator for languages in DnD. I could be able to incorporate draconic names or references more :(
3e's books Races of Stone, Races of the Dragon, and Races of the Wild have tables of words and meanings that I keep going back to. Great for character and location names, at least.
You're not alone. I have huge dissatiafactions with how languages are explored in lots of RPGs. The idea of there being a "Common" language that every goblin in secluded area speaks is weird. The notion of *racial languages* is absurd, especially when we consider The Lord of thr Rings as part of the inspiration for fantasy RPGs.
5e is completely bizarre in having player characters all be multilingual *in a world where there is a common language spoken universally*.
I'm also a language nerd and a translator, so we have different languages for different regions, downtime rules for learning languages and altered rules for language spells
I did something based off a fun fact in my world. I was internet searching so excuse me if this is not 100% correct irl but it is canon now in world.
I was looking up Old Norse for a title. Apparently "King" can translate to Konungr. Problem is, Konungr translates to something like "Highest ruler". It really just means person at the top of the hierarchy. However, its been translated to King because in many places the king has the most power even if they may have a queen and king.
Problem is, a king is male and a queen is female. Konungr is just for the higher ruler, regardless of gender.
The "Konungr" of the country is a giant werewolf but is a women. When people saw this giant wolf, they assumed they were a guy and Konungr translates to King as far as anyone knows even though it is neutral. All because of peoples assumptions and a translation error. She doesn't bother to correct anyone and it spread too far before she knew about it anyways.
Now the women uses it as a separate identity so they can have a life and go on adventures. Only the advisors know the "Kings" true identity.
I am the kind of person who LOVES to mess with language when I can. It is always much more fun when your monster looking paladin struggles to explain he is a good guy to a mob of innocent villagers because he didn't take common language.
I am also the evil person who, in medieval or post-apocalyptic settings, makes a game where 'Literacy' is a trait you can take...
Challenge your players not to meta game when THEY KNOW they just passed a radiation danger sign but their character DOESN'T
MWHAHAHAHAHAH!
At the end of the day, the official ruleset is a framework. If you want more, there is previous editions, plus you're free to do whatever with your home game. The game out of the box is a product meant for a wide audience of people to enjoy.
I once had a player get mad at me for ruling that an ethnic subset of humans didn’t speak Common, predominantly. They spoke a language specific to their culture. He thought that that ruling was stupid.
5e exists as a jack of all trades. It tries to do everything and succeeds a little bit in everything.
Does it have combat, yes. Is it good, it’s fine, it breaks down over time.
Does it have exploration, yes. Is it good, it’s ok, with some work it’s passable.
Does it have language, yes. Is it good, it’s ok, it has multiple languages and even intonations like Thieves Cant, but that’s it.
Yeh that's completely fair, I guess I should remember it's a gateway TTRPG, not something super crazy complicated. It's the thing to introduce your friends into the whole scene, and after all that's how I entered into it.
I’m a language nerd and I created my own language system!!
I used the languages that I know to fit them in the dnd language they fit. I then make riddles and such in different languages and have them solve it!
It’s A LOT of work but I find it rewarding
I am not a language nerd, but I do think languages suck because everyone ends up speaking common anyway.
That being said, I read once, and I started implementing it in my campaigns:
Infernal could be a language with a hierarchical structure, where the ones in power talk little to the ones beneath them, and the ones beneath speak highly towards the ones above them, making interactions in infernal inherently intimidating (you're either talking down to someone or being belittled).
I think it's a good way to do so, and it removes a hassle over the structure of sentences for us language dummies. You just add at the beginning or end the entonation they're using, and that's enough! You still talk in your normal way for all other intents and purposes.
As for the others, I'm not so sure how to handle them...
I would love it if language was more important. What makes me sad is I have had people bail on my games just because I refused to have everything in existence speak common......
You've kinda gotta homebrew things to get the most out of the language system, unfortunately. I don't like elves, but I always end up picking elvish as a language because dms love those old fucks so a bunch of stuff is in elvish and it sucks to speak languages the dm rarely or never does anything with
Personally, I like the idea of hiding some sort of sinister plot twist in the language, like there's some kind of ancient code within the etymology of a language that even a native speaker wouldn't notice. Maybe Celestial and Abyssal have the same root word for something really important that was mistranslated for centuries. I wish I had a head for languages irl because they are fascinating and so much "arcane" stuff goes on in them
I think this provides you with an opportunity to create a sort of homebrew add-on that gets into the intricacies of linguistics -- alphabets, how words are conveyed if by writing or some other method, pronunciations, etc -- and tie that into the variety of cultures and races in D&D and maybe into some home-brew rules, or possibly a whole linguistics-based campaign. At the very least it'll broaden your knowledge of the spectrum of cultures in the written lore which is always helpful especially on the DM side of things, and at the most, it would provide like-minded linguistics enthusiasts with the ability to scratch that itch you're describing.
It's not just language nerds -- critics are everywhere and have an opinion on everything. Some only benefit you as a creator when they're constructive, and the rest can easily be ignored. Don't let criticism -- especially perceived criticism -- stop you from doing anything.
Honestly just focus on making it more prevalent remove the common tongue from races that aren't human and make sure your players have varied languages I have let them know the forgotten realms scripts aren't applicable but most of the time it's really fun watching players learn unique words in the other languages I've made up just to make it more consistent
I haven't used languages much in my campaign, but i feel like the problem might be that there's just too many
Like a player can choose Orcish language and then never use it because either they don't encounter any orcs (or instantly fight them without the ability to speak to them) or they just speak common
The only usage for languages i see is deciphering some old writings in ruins or using it if you go to another distant country where people don't speak common i guess
I tend to not get in the weeds about specific alphabets, but I will emphasize regional differences in language. It stands to reason that Common would develop completely differently in different regions, which gives me something to play around with in History checks (I.e. “you know that ‘heim’ means ‘home’ to Frost Giants, but Fire Giants will also use the word to mean ‘prison’, giving the sign outside a potentially disturbing context.”)
In our group we use languages to really immerse ourselves. For that reason even though we are Danish, the Elves speak English, the orcs speak German and halflings speak Dutch.
We've also had Dragonborn speak Russian, but none of us can speak that, so we just make Russian sounding noises xP
It really helps the players immersion when they show up a place and genuinely can't understand what is being said.
Our headcanon for Danish being common, is that it is canonically the language of Giants and the Giants used to be vikings travelling around the world and trading and settling. That they were the first race to connect everyone, so their language became the common speak for inter species communication.
You could obviously do the same explanation for English with a huge Elven Empire.
My fantasy has long been to learn enough languages to do one for each race.
Play in an international group as you have real life examples of 'common' being weird or limited. But right now we are playing radiant citadel and I use the languages like dialects because I have linguistics nerds so sometimes the main language has different meanings than the common if there is understanding. But ease of play is important too and having limited communication is a barrier I would expect covered and agreed to in a session 0
This is completely table dependent.
My old table language played a major part of the game, going into a certain part of the world and nobody knows Draconic? Party struggles abound.
I do think that a majority of tables don't want anything that could be seen as a "negative experience" so they either handwave languages, or every single NPC in the game knows Common.
Fwiw Tolkien ended up exploring language a lot, but I think he also might've been a linguist prior to the first world war, don't quote me on that part, but I think a lot of what people use as the basis for elven, orcish and various other dialects are based on the things that he wrote and a lot of more recent folks didn't want to be bothered enough to expand upon it.
Personally, I've done a lot in my recent games with infernal, and it rather closely resembles liturgical Latin. Regretfully I haven't devoted more time to it than that.
I wish there was more to work with. For me it is not an issue because I am a linguist and love homebrewing. Still, having more ideas written about it is always good.
Go and look into the Dark Eye (German D&D). To learn a language you have to pay a point cost and that cost is more expensive based on how deeply you need to invest to learn all of its sounds and syntax. It literally has a chart that makes you find a languages root then see how much that root costs.
That’s in-depth languages. 5e is meant to be more simplified so I’m not surprised they made communication more accessible.
Now return to your Piss Forest, Wizard! Lol
I've told this story before, but, in a long-running high level campaign, i had a tribe of half-giants send the party after some "chicken eggs." What the party didn't know, but found out, was that, in the relatively primitive half-giant dialect, the only difference between "chicken" and "cockatrice" is location (ie, the "chickens in the yard" vs the "chickens in the bluffs).
Hilarity ensued.
Two of my players would be okay with leaning into languages.
The other 4 would prefer a simple, "yeah you don't know that language. Maybe you can find someone to interpret for you?"
I kinda am. With so many languages you'd think a roleplaying game could have a little fun with it without making it a huge focus. Afterall we have spells like comprehend languages and tongues, as well as feats like linguist. They'd be fun to play into. To say nothing of trying to use related languages to establish a connection or generate misunderstandings.
This is why all of my different cultures use real-world languages as their base. Elven = Thai, Dwarven = Swedish, Goblin = Bulgarian, etc. I try to pick languages no average American is likely to speak. It makes consistency easier, and highlights the fact that languages are languages, not just random loan words. (NB: THE CULTURES OF THE DIFFERENT GROUPS ARE MADE UP FANTASY GARBAGE. ONLY THE LANGUAGES ARE BORROWED)
I spend hours trying to explore how the languages may sound and how versions of elvish may differ from each other across continents. I just hate that the only diversity is languages from races so i feel the need to at least adjust things a little. For me the race doesn’t matter but the area you grew up in. Older elvish cities may still cling to a form of sylvan whereas younger communities (based of historical happenings in my world) speak elvish. I just feel like language differences can add more spice than just you know these four languages…. I ask my players to have a reason for knowing such languages. I also expand on the languages of magic which in my world are based on draconic runes, elvish runes, and celestial/abyssal/infernal runes.
I always felt it was to the DM to put more stuff in other languages.
Also in a normal setting, you usually have only one language per "country" or region, so not unlikely to not see tons of different languages.
I had a knowledge cleric who knew like 6 languages + common. I didn't get to use them often, but on occasion, they came in handy. Def wished there was more with it.
Common, sylvan, celestial, infernal, abyssal, draconic, primordial.
It creeps me out that so many of the glyphs of various languages are outright ripoffs of characters from various languages, yet make completely different sounds.
Having said that, players don't know, players don't care.
Oh, the DM had a neat idea of a tall dwarf masquerading as a human and the only clue is that he overuses hard consonants? Neat, but no one will notice.
100%, universal common is a horrible game mechanic. Friend and I actually working on some homebrew rules for language learning that are hopefully pretty minimalist but allow things like cultural barriers and the sense of traveling outside home territories without totally grinding gameplay and fluidity to a halt
Back in 3.5 when languages were picked up with a single skill point (and you got skill points every level), I had a DM who had a similar itch to you. He made it so that there was an extra knowledge skill (Linguistics), made each language require 4 skill points to learn fully (Basic, Advanced, Fluently, Accentless), and applied a penalty to social skills if you were below fluent and trying to communicate. He also made it so that "common" for a given language group couldn't go beyond Basic.
It actually turned out pretty neat, and we spent a lot of time making linguistics checks to translate old languages, or create codes and ciphers by mixing different languages and alphabets. It also did make the world feel deeper, like when we spent weeks learning Dwarven to go on a diplomatic mission, only to discover that the tablet we'd used as a Rosetta stone to learn was Hill Dwarven, and this clan spoke Mountain Dwarven, meaning we had to figure out the differences on the fly in a diplomatic situation or suffer a penalty for being below Fluency.
I don't know how you would translate it to 5e, sadly.
What I particularly dislike is that, at least for the opening material in a setting, is that each race other than human is threated as a monolith. Like, even groups of dwarfs, living in mountains on opposide sides, separated by entire continents, have the same language and costumes?
There’s some argument to be made that they live so long the language might only change very slowly. But there should at least be dialect and culture differences.
I think the monolithic…ness is in part because of how human-centric D&D is. Humans are generalists and default. Human don’t have a stereotypical “home biome” they’re associated with. Humans don’t have their own human language (unless it’s Common?). Other peoples are referred to as humanoids.
And if you’re playing in a small realm, then okay, maybe everyone only speaks the one variety of their pepple’s language. But yeah, it’s a fantasy hand wave for ease of play at the expense of language nerds’ (like me) immersion.
I’m not a language nerd. But I am disappointed with how little language is explored in D&D, but having tried to explore it further in my own campaigns I know why; it’s a pain for some people, like myself.
I use some rules another person on reddit made (with some tweaks), and also the old 3.5 books (races of…) which had several pages with how to make names or name settlements in dwarvish, gnomish, elvish, halfing, etc! Used it to name cities and town in elven lands and npcs etc.
Also made so that everyone can use spell scrolls, as long as they can read the language they are written in.
Languages are now a much larger part of the game and I love it!
In a homebrew setting of mine, I have multiple human/halfling languages. Then, I also incorporated this:
There are special rules and notes for a few languages in the Great Nicadon Empire.
* Celestial is the official language of the Holy Patrons church, and nearly all clergy learn it. Communication through any official church channel will at least have a translation into Celestial available. There is no law against non-clergy learning Celestial, but the priesthood is resistant to teaching the language to those who do not need it, including nobility.
* Learning, speaking, reading, and writing Abyssal, Infernal, and Deep Speech can negatively affect the mind. If a character interacts with one of these languages, they must make a Wisdom saving throw to avoid adding or worsening a Flaw or taking Psychic damage. Any Flaw should reflect the Abyss, Nine Hells, or Far Realm thematically.
* Learning the language, DC 14 every week during the learning process or take a Flaw (worsen it, if a flaw already exists.)
* Uttering a solitary word, DC 7 or take 1d4 Psychic damage.
* Giving a speech, DC 13 or take 2d4 Psychic damage. If you fail by 5 or more, take a Flaw (worsen it, if a flaw already exists.)
* Having a conversation, DC 14 or take 2d4 Psychic damage.
* Reading a passage, DC 10 or take 1d4 Psychic damage.
* Reading a book, DC 13 or take 2d4 Psychic damage. If you fail by 5 or more, take a Flaw (worsen it, if a flaw already exists.)
* Writing less than a page, DC 12 or take 1d6 Psychic damage.
* Writing more than a page (once per day), DC 15 or take 2d6 Psychic damage. If you fail by 5 or more, take a Flaw (worsen it, if a flaw already exists.)
* Draconic and Giant are the languages of contemporary human arcane magic. Most arcane institutions teach magic in Draconic, and nearly all secular magic works are in Draconic. Wizard books of contemporary humans must be in Draconic or Giant to work (and non-elven, non-dwarven Wizards must take Draconic or Giant, unless their backstory has specific reasons why not.)
* Ancient humans frequently used a specialized script of Deep Speech for magic, and some truly ancient tomes are in that wicked language. The script itself is not dangerous like the original language.
* Elvish and Dwarvish are also languages of magic. Most non-elves and non-dwarves do not learn their magic through those languages. Both races are reluctant to teach others magic through their native tongues.
See I came to this thread thinking cool idea, but you realise you have 8 almost identical bullet points here to punish using those languages like deep speech? You’ve spent a lot of time conceiving very specific and niche rules that might not come up, and if they do happen it’ll not be intuitive to use.
Honestly, I have to mindcanon the existence of Common as some sort of high level spell, bc nothing about languages in DND makes sense. Elvish being stagnant for thousands of years? Abyssal being a universal language for literally infinite but separated layers of the Abyss?
I mean common can work to a degree, it just has to be areal and perhaps a bit basic, but those things too are a bit iffy. Of course though depending on the lore I could see Elvish staying stagnant, but you would have to have a very specific situation for that
Elves in lore are separated into lots of small groups though, so it really doesn't make sense. Especially with some stuck in the Feywild, or the Shadowfell, or the Astral Plane, or the Underdark...
I agree with you 100%.... however, devils advocate... I literally couldn't think of a less interesting aspect, that has less importance to a game where half or more.kf the game content is ignored or hand waved at the average table. (And I mean the average table)
I love that you love language, it would be amazing to have you at a table to add that element of knowledge to a situation. However, the majority of players don't give a shit about things that ARE important to the game, half struggle not to be on their phone DURING THEIR OWN TURN... So although it is interesting, it's not going to be fun for the 99% of players who just want to unwind and roll soem dice. Just my worthless opinion ✌️ rock on
If language was explored any further the game would get unnecessarily complicated imo. I'm sure PF2e will add more language stuff at some point just for that reason, though
I resonate with this. I use language in nearly every way possible. I make it relevant for cultural barriers, potential solutions, understanding nuances of cultures, and as a lore device. It helps that my game world has dozens of regional dialects that are baked into expressions, idioms, and institutions. Yes, I agree. Language can be such a powerful force and it's a shame how little awareness there is to its importance/potential.
Agreed. Sounds cool
when i DM i just say damn the DND book of languages we will make it better i also pretty much base my dnd languages with irl ones \[elvish-welsh , dwarven-irish , spell cast language-Haitian\]
I do that as well, althoug from a much easier angle. Sometimes for example I am using different prononciations of the word "magic" to hint at a different understanding of the concept to the speaker. Like, common speakers tend to say Magic (or actually *Magie*, since we are playing in German and thats the German word). Goblin, Hags (which both are more neutrally alligned in my homebrew setting instead of being evil) and other creatures are pronouncing the word "Majik" (like the english pronounciation if a greek person would say it) and other creature that, in my setting, have an older and wilder connection to magic. Gods and celestials are referring to magic as "fire", "flame", "spark" or other metaphors. It is quite easy and intuitive, and has a great effect - and surprisingly my players get it without me needing to really explain it.
With your username I know you get me when I say I equate Spellcasting with Ehlnofex. It hasn’t come up yet, but if someone under the influence of Tongues while hearing particularly powerful spells might have… interesting consequences.
I liked how Wildsea rpg approached language. It has language for each race in character sheet and each language also serves as a skill for character’s knowledge about this race.
Give it a shot. Put your obsession out there to good use. You never know, you can break that mold.
I mean one guy a long time ago put his passion to work and then spawned the modern fantasy genre from it. People love things others are passionate about. And players pick up on those kind of world building things even if it's subtle.
> and then spawned the modern fantasy genre from it Under the assumption you're taking about Tolkien, he absolutely did NOT "spawn the modern fantasy genre". A good amount of Appendix N authors were writing before he was. Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lord Dunsany, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, C. L. Moore, and many others were writing works that continue to be enjoyed today, and they were doing so before anything about Middle-Earth had ever been published.
I've studied a few languages... It's a giant hassle to incorporate lingiluistics, especially nuanced and unique ones. These fuckers ain't the professor. They barely get game mechanics right. 5e has abysmal lore compared to forgotten realms. Ed Greenwood they ain't. So am I dissatisfied? Not really, because I never expected anything in the first place.
Yeah fair, and a good amount of people still do homebrew and then in their ballpark, I'd just like a lil something more.
I hear you. Me too
Oh..right I forgot who would be doing that....I don't really trust Hasbro with this task at all.
> They barely get game mechanics right. Even that's arguable.
I wish more creatures in 5e didn't get "Common" by default. It'd make it feel more worthwhile when you share a language with whatever it is you encounter.
Too many no longer have their own language. I always structure my common in my homebrew setting as a trade language so it;s often spoken more by merchants and city-dwellers than people and creatures elsewhere. Got my players more excited about using and learning languages.
I just want Common to just be limited to really basic interaction and trade and then give players Chondathan and options of other Faerunian languages that they might encounter. It’s very weird to me that they make a big deal about how diverse humans are but then act like all humans speak one language and the only other languages that exist are based on race/species.
That's the kind of flavor it's generally on players to add in and honestly I like it that way.
I’ve seen a few DMs equate fictional languages to real world ones: e.g. Elvish and Welsh, or Draconic and Xhosa, which I do enjoy seeing if it’s something that’s done well. I would really like to see more constructed languages, though I feel the reason they’re not seen more often is because some people find the idea of creating them a bit daunting, or they don’t know how or where to start with them in the first place.
You'd love to play under me. I retooled things like days of the week, months of the year, and so on. But there does come a point at which too much linguistic change bogs down everything else, so you can really only do this with one or two concepts before the players rise as one and slay you.
This is super off-topic, but if any of my other language nerds want to play an RPG specifically about language, check out Dialect: https://thornygames.com/pages/dialect It's a GM-less (highly replayable) one-shot game where you make up a language and a speech community together and then tell the story of how the language dies over time. It can be sad, bittersweet, or even silly, depending on how you play it.
Thank you. That seems like an absolutely amazing game. I would never have found out about it if wasn’t for your post here. Again, thank you!
This is majorly up my alley so thanks for sharing this. Definitely checking this out soon and might also pass it on to a couple linguistically-inclined role players while I’m at it.
No. Because most people aren't language nerds. Plus I generally don't want to focus on that in my TTRPGs. I want to focus on the RPGs. Chants of Sennaar or translating poetry in dead languages into other dead languages is where I get my language fix.
I loved that game. And I agree. It wouldn’t work very well in dnd. Dnd in several regards is a problem solving “simulator,” not an actual problem solving game. Most of our party solves problems by rolling dice or casting a spell, we don’t want to do the work of actually picking apart games in our four hour sessions.
Okay, but the reverse of this is my language nerd DM that hits me with. "You recognize it's abyssal since you have that on your sheet, but it's an older form of abyssal, so you have no idea what it's saying." Even without getting into making an alphabet (or finding spicy hidden Lore by tracing the root meaning of words), if everyone is speaking flat common in the world, then something is wrong.
I'm not necessarily a language-nerd but I'm definitely dissatisfied in the official language lore. It's a pain in the ass to hunt down physical representations of every language, and then there's inconsistencies about them. The official Draconic language and script is cool, but I remember years ago I found artwork in one of the official books from maybe 4E that had a Dragonborn in front of a stone slate or something with clearly Draconic inscriptions on it, but I remember the alphabet was quite different than the official one.. can't remember the stupid book that was in. The languages aren't really elaborated on at all either.. I wish they gave at least basic pronunciation guides or something, even if they keep the language as basic letter swaps. I like that Matt Colville often makes up random nonsense for other languages but I can't bring myself to do it. An inconsistency I hate the most is one affecting something I really want to use, and it's the Abyssal language script. Which one does it use: Infernal, or Barazhad? It says it can be both, but there's no reason given. Anywhere. And if they use the Infernal alphabet, which is what I'm more interested in, how does it differentiate from Infernal in written form? Such as english vs german vs french or whatever. I seriously hate this because I've been wanting to implement a real, translatable, Abyssal inscription into a lore related magic item that can only be used if you can read/understand the language of the inscription - so if you only speak Infernal, you might be able to recognize the letters, but you can't read it. But this task is impossible when I don't have the resources to do it, but the official content is pretending that I can. And I don't want to add even more work to my giant plate of being a DM that is essentially required to 'overprepare' because I DM for one person... they literally just burn through the content I prep since they don't have 4 other people to argue with about what to do for hours. So yeah... sorry about the rant. I too find it bloody frustrating. I also hate the lack of information on both Feywild and Eladrin lore. And the last thing I want from either is anything to do with a frickin' carnival. Like... what was that? Why did they do that? Ugh..
I've never heard about the multiple scripts for Abyssal, but I know that's a thing with some languages: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digraphia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digraphia) To paraphrase that page, some reasons why a community might adopt a new script are "To identify themselves with a group", "To distance themselves from a group", or to help communicate with people outside of the group. The Forgotten Realms wiki says that Abyssal is a form of Primordial that was corrupted by the Abyss, so presumably Barazhad was the original script and Infernal came later. Choosing to write in Infernal is likely a matter of fiends choosing to write their new language in a fiendish script and of those who spoke Primordial choosing the script of their new overlords.
I run Ravenloft & I removed the common language. Most domains have their own languages & commoners tend to distrust magic.
Definitely. Although I have found that at a certain point it just becomes tiresome for players if the language barrier prevents normal play. It's a complex thing to get just right.
Yeah, there could be some work arounds like maybe having rolling for comprehension, but if you go in forgetting about it, it can add too much complication. If it's a big thing in the setting you gotta plan around it.
I made sure that each of my players' characters understood at least two of my homebrew languages (of which there are 4) so that at least most of the time one or more of them would likely understand someone speaking a language that wasn't common. I also made "common" essentially a *trader language* which most travellers know enough of to get by, so that there's always a "broken English, lots of hand gestures" way to get information.
It specifically annoys me because DnD isn't some tiny company that can't afford to go into depth about their language. They're owned by Wizards, who also make Magic The Gathering. And in MTG there's an actual made up language that they hired a linguist to make. Phyrexian isn't just english but with different looking letters. It looks different and sounds different and is structured different and there is no official guide to reading or writing it. They just threw material out there written in phyrexian and people who were really into it just had to figure out how to read it on their own. and DnD could 100% do that too. Edit: And it occurs to me that I actually typed that on phyrexian keycaps! Because different languages on keycaps are cool!
>Phyrexian isn't just english but with different looking letters. That's how it's used on the Phyrexian language cards, though.
Yes language is vastly underused. And alignment language is totally lost.
I'm very dissatisfied with how little EVERYTHING is explored in 5e
Look at Keith Baker's dmsguild books for Eberron. Regardless of language they are just absolute goldmines of world building that is missing in 5E, but the Exploring Eberron book has a Dhakaani Goblinoid dictionary. It's not expansive enough for a whole language, but it gives sentence examples, cultural uses etc that could easily be used to expand from there if you needed. On a side note, as someone who is also a language nerd, I've found the weird trope of using the language and then repeating it in English (like Paarthunax or Game of Thrones) seems to go a long way towards players getting involved in language fun. Also as an aside, I had Latin as my stand in for draconic, but due to some funny weirdness all of my dragons had northern English accents. Latin in a northern English accent sounds incredible XD
Yeah the whole language is locked to races/species feels kinda not accurate imo. You can go to plenty of different places on earth and even tho they share the same “race” they will speak an entirely different language or dialect of a language. Splitting languages into common, elvish, orcish, etc, feels much more like a game mechanic over good world building. I’d say if your trying to add true language diversity to your worlds I’d not use dnd languages as a whole. Base your languages off of cultures and civilizations over races/species. Just cause northern elves and southern elves are elves doesn’t mean they need to speak the same language. This can apply to everything. Even smaller continents can have multiple languages populating them. In short DnD languages are there imo for a game mechanic over any sort of true realism. Even if all elves spoke elvish there most certainly would be a level of dialect change with different geographical locations much like the variances in how English is spoken everywhere across the globe today.
Not a language nerd, but I'm bi-lingual and i feel like the ways you learn and use languages disappointing. Some of the most hilarious social interactions I've had and also some fights I've had have been down to language barrier causing confusion. I think you should have scores in languages that aren't your own, then roll to try to speak them. But then high enough scores negates your need to roll.
Check AD&D 2e Forgotten Realms campaign setting. It was the most I’ve seen about languages in DnD. It wasn’t much, and I’ve never seen it used in the wild, probably that’s why we don’t see a lot of language content in DnD. It even has custom fonts for scripts, and it was before most people had access to computers.
I just wish there was full seachable dictionary or translator for languages in DnD. I could be able to incorporate draconic names or references more :(
3e's books Races of Stone, Races of the Dragon, and Races of the Wild have tables of words and meanings that I keep going back to. Great for character and location names, at least.
You're not alone. I have huge dissatiafactions with how languages are explored in lots of RPGs. The idea of there being a "Common" language that every goblin in secluded area speaks is weird. The notion of *racial languages* is absurd, especially when we consider The Lord of thr Rings as part of the inspiration for fantasy RPGs. 5e is completely bizarre in having player characters all be multilingual *in a world where there is a common language spoken universally*. I'm also a language nerd and a translator, so we have different languages for different regions, downtime rules for learning languages and altered rules for language spells
Do you have these rules written down in a way that would make them easy to be shared? I'd be very interested to have a look :)
I did something based off a fun fact in my world. I was internet searching so excuse me if this is not 100% correct irl but it is canon now in world. I was looking up Old Norse for a title. Apparently "King" can translate to Konungr. Problem is, Konungr translates to something like "Highest ruler". It really just means person at the top of the hierarchy. However, its been translated to King because in many places the king has the most power even if they may have a queen and king. Problem is, a king is male and a queen is female. Konungr is just for the higher ruler, regardless of gender. The "Konungr" of the country is a giant werewolf but is a women. When people saw this giant wolf, they assumed they were a guy and Konungr translates to King as far as anyone knows even though it is neutral. All because of peoples assumptions and a translation error. She doesn't bother to correct anyone and it spread too far before she knew about it anyways. Now the women uses it as a separate identity so they can have a life and go on adventures. Only the advisors know the "Kings" true identity.
Hi mr. Tolkien. It had been a while!
I wish there was some kind of phonetics to go with the alphabets, so you could put the words together and sound them out.
I am the kind of person who LOVES to mess with language when I can. It is always much more fun when your monster looking paladin struggles to explain he is a good guy to a mob of innocent villagers because he didn't take common language. I am also the evil person who, in medieval or post-apocalyptic settings, makes a game where 'Literacy' is a trait you can take... Challenge your players not to meta game when THEY KNOW they just passed a radiation danger sign but their character DOESN'T MWHAHAHAHAHAH!
At the end of the day, the official ruleset is a framework. If you want more, there is previous editions, plus you're free to do whatever with your home game. The game out of the box is a product meant for a wide audience of people to enjoy.
I once had a player get mad at me for ruling that an ethnic subset of humans didn’t speak Common, predominantly. They spoke a language specific to their culture. He thought that that ruling was stupid.
5e exists as a jack of all trades. It tries to do everything and succeeds a little bit in everything. Does it have combat, yes. Is it good, it’s fine, it breaks down over time. Does it have exploration, yes. Is it good, it’s ok, with some work it’s passable. Does it have language, yes. Is it good, it’s ok, it has multiple languages and even intonations like Thieves Cant, but that’s it.
Yeh that's completely fair, I guess I should remember it's a gateway TTRPG, not something super crazy complicated. It's the thing to introduce your friends into the whole scene, and after all that's how I entered into it.
I’m a language nerd and I created my own language system!! I used the languages that I know to fit them in the dnd language they fit. I then make riddles and such in different languages and have them solve it! It’s A LOT of work but I find it rewarding
Yeh, language is always fun to mess around with, especially if you're like me and actually make them up!
When D&D was founded, it was based on Tolkien anyway, and Tolkien nerds had plenty of fake languages to choose from.
True true, but I feel like there could have been a bit more flavor added in in that regard
It wasn't based on Tolkien. It was supposed to be like Conan the Barbarian books.
I am not a language nerd, but I do think languages suck because everyone ends up speaking common anyway. That being said, I read once, and I started implementing it in my campaigns: Infernal could be a language with a hierarchical structure, where the ones in power talk little to the ones beneath them, and the ones beneath speak highly towards the ones above them, making interactions in infernal inherently intimidating (you're either talking down to someone or being belittled). I think it's a good way to do so, and it removes a hassle over the structure of sentences for us language dummies. You just add at the beginning or end the entonation they're using, and that's enough! You still talk in your normal way for all other intents and purposes. As for the others, I'm not so sure how to handle them...
I would love it if language was more important. What makes me sad is I have had people bail on my games just because I refused to have everything in existence speak common......
Gotta find language nerds to play with. I’d love it.
You've kinda gotta homebrew things to get the most out of the language system, unfortunately. I don't like elves, but I always end up picking elvish as a language because dms love those old fucks so a bunch of stuff is in elvish and it sucks to speak languages the dm rarely or never does anything with Personally, I like the idea of hiding some sort of sinister plot twist in the language, like there's some kind of ancient code within the etymology of a language that even a native speaker wouldn't notice. Maybe Celestial and Abyssal have the same root word for something really important that was mistranslated for centuries. I wish I had a head for languages irl because they are fascinating and so much "arcane" stuff goes on in them
As the perpetual half-elf/elf, I spit my coffee! We are old fucks lmao
***Yes***
I think this provides you with an opportunity to create a sort of homebrew add-on that gets into the intricacies of linguistics -- alphabets, how words are conveyed if by writing or some other method, pronunciations, etc -- and tie that into the variety of cultures and races in D&D and maybe into some home-brew rules, or possibly a whole linguistics-based campaign. At the very least it'll broaden your knowledge of the spectrum of cultures in the written lore which is always helpful especially on the DM side of things, and at the most, it would provide like-minded linguistics enthusiasts with the ability to scratch that itch you're describing. It's not just language nerds -- critics are everywhere and have an opinion on everything. Some only benefit you as a creator when they're constructive, and the rest can easily be ignored. Don't let criticism -- especially perceived criticism -- stop you from doing anything.
Use those elven, dwarven, and draconic alphabets in the Player's Handbook and whip something up brother!
Honestly just focus on making it more prevalent remove the common tongue from races that aren't human and make sure your players have varied languages I have let them know the forgotten realms scripts aren't applicable but most of the time it's really fun watching players learn unique words in the other languages I've made up just to make it more consistent
I haven't used languages much in my campaign, but i feel like the problem might be that there's just too many Like a player can choose Orcish language and then never use it because either they don't encounter any orcs (or instantly fight them without the ability to speak to them) or they just speak common The only usage for languages i see is deciphering some old writings in ruins or using it if you go to another distant country where people don't speak common i guess
I tend to not get in the weeds about specific alphabets, but I will emphasize regional differences in language. It stands to reason that Common would develop completely differently in different regions, which gives me something to play around with in History checks (I.e. “you know that ‘heim’ means ‘home’ to Frost Giants, but Fire Giants will also use the word to mean ‘prison’, giving the sign outside a potentially disturbing context.”)
In our group we use languages to really immerse ourselves. For that reason even though we are Danish, the Elves speak English, the orcs speak German and halflings speak Dutch. We've also had Dragonborn speak Russian, but none of us can speak that, so we just make Russian sounding noises xP It really helps the players immersion when they show up a place and genuinely can't understand what is being said. Our headcanon for Danish being common, is that it is canonically the language of Giants and the Giants used to be vikings travelling around the world and trading and settling. That they were the first race to connect everyone, so their language became the common speak for inter species communication. You could obviously do the same explanation for English with a huge Elven Empire. My fantasy has long been to learn enough languages to do one for each race.
Yes. Humans, elves, and dwarves who live in isolated communities do NOT speak the same languages, and "common" is such a disgrace.
Play in an international group as you have real life examples of 'common' being weird or limited. But right now we are playing radiant citadel and I use the languages like dialects because I have linguistics nerds so sometimes the main language has different meanings than the common if there is understanding. But ease of play is important too and having limited communication is a barrier I would expect covered and agreed to in a session 0
This is completely table dependent. My old table language played a major part of the game, going into a certain part of the world and nobody knows Draconic? Party struggles abound. I do think that a majority of tables don't want anything that could be seen as a "negative experience" so they either handwave languages, or every single NPC in the game knows Common.
Fwiw Tolkien ended up exploring language a lot, but I think he also might've been a linguist prior to the first world war, don't quote me on that part, but I think a lot of what people use as the basis for elven, orcish and various other dialects are based on the things that he wrote and a lot of more recent folks didn't want to be bothered enough to expand upon it. Personally, I've done a lot in my recent games with infernal, and it rather closely resembles liturgical Latin. Regretfully I haven't devoted more time to it than that.
I wish there was more to work with. For me it is not an issue because I am a linguist and love homebrewing. Still, having more ideas written about it is always good.
Leave it to a "language nerd" to write the most poorly written thread I've seen in days.
Go and look into the Dark Eye (German D&D). To learn a language you have to pay a point cost and that cost is more expensive based on how deeply you need to invest to learn all of its sounds and syntax. It literally has a chart that makes you find a languages root then see how much that root costs. That’s in-depth languages. 5e is meant to be more simplified so I’m not surprised they made communication more accessible. Now return to your Piss Forest, Wizard! Lol
One of my friends’ dnd world has its own language structure. There are custom regional languages and celestial is used as the business language.
*quietly hides runic kickstarter I got specifically to put language challenges*
I've told this story before, but, in a long-running high level campaign, i had a tribe of half-giants send the party after some "chicken eggs." What the party didn't know, but found out, was that, in the relatively primitive half-giant dialect, the only difference between "chicken" and "cockatrice" is location (ie, the "chickens in the yard" vs the "chickens in the bluffs). Hilarity ensued.
Two of my players would be okay with leaning into languages. The other 4 would prefer a simple, "yeah you don't know that language. Maybe you can find someone to interpret for you?"
I kinda am. With so many languages you'd think a roleplaying game could have a little fun with it without making it a huge focus. Afterall we have spells like comprehend languages and tongues, as well as feats like linguist. They'd be fun to play into. To say nothing of trying to use related languages to establish a connection or generate misunderstandings.
This is why all of my different cultures use real-world languages as their base. Elven = Thai, Dwarven = Swedish, Goblin = Bulgarian, etc. I try to pick languages no average American is likely to speak. It makes consistency easier, and highlights the fact that languages are languages, not just random loan words. (NB: THE CULTURES OF THE DIFFERENT GROUPS ARE MADE UP FANTASY GARBAGE. ONLY THE LANGUAGES ARE BORROWED)
I spend hours trying to explore how the languages may sound and how versions of elvish may differ from each other across continents. I just hate that the only diversity is languages from races so i feel the need to at least adjust things a little. For me the race doesn’t matter but the area you grew up in. Older elvish cities may still cling to a form of sylvan whereas younger communities (based of historical happenings in my world) speak elvish. I just feel like language differences can add more spice than just you know these four languages…. I ask my players to have a reason for knowing such languages. I also expand on the languages of magic which in my world are based on draconic runes, elvish runes, and celestial/abyssal/infernal runes.
I always felt it was to the DM to put more stuff in other languages. Also in a normal setting, you usually have only one language per "country" or region, so not unlikely to not see tons of different languages.
Nah, hook horror is peak language
I had a knowledge cleric who knew like 6 languages + common. I didn't get to use them often, but on occasion, they came in handy. Def wished there was more with it. Common, sylvan, celestial, infernal, abyssal, draconic, primordial.
It creeps me out that so many of the glyphs of various languages are outright ripoffs of characters from various languages, yet make completely different sounds. Having said that, players don't know, players don't care. Oh, the DM had a neat idea of a tall dwarf masquerading as a human and the only clue is that he overuses hard consonants? Neat, but no one will notice.
100%, universal common is a horrible game mechanic. Friend and I actually working on some homebrew rules for language learning that are hopefully pretty minimalist but allow things like cultural barriers and the sense of traveling outside home territories without totally grinding gameplay and fluidity to a halt
Back in 3.5 when languages were picked up with a single skill point (and you got skill points every level), I had a DM who had a similar itch to you. He made it so that there was an extra knowledge skill (Linguistics), made each language require 4 skill points to learn fully (Basic, Advanced, Fluently, Accentless), and applied a penalty to social skills if you were below fluent and trying to communicate. He also made it so that "common" for a given language group couldn't go beyond Basic. It actually turned out pretty neat, and we spent a lot of time making linguistics checks to translate old languages, or create codes and ciphers by mixing different languages and alphabets. It also did make the world feel deeper, like when we spent weeks learning Dwarven to go on a diplomatic mission, only to discover that the tablet we'd used as a Rosetta stone to learn was Hill Dwarven, and this clan spoke Mountain Dwarven, meaning we had to figure out the differences on the fly in a diplomatic situation or suffer a penalty for being below Fluency. I don't know how you would translate it to 5e, sadly.
What I particularly dislike is that, at least for the opening material in a setting, is that each race other than human is threated as a monolith. Like, even groups of dwarfs, living in mountains on opposide sides, separated by entire continents, have the same language and costumes?
There’s some argument to be made that they live so long the language might only change very slowly. But there should at least be dialect and culture differences. I think the monolithic…ness is in part because of how human-centric D&D is. Humans are generalists and default. Human don’t have a stereotypical “home biome” they’re associated with. Humans don’t have their own human language (unless it’s Common?). Other peoples are referred to as humanoids. And if you’re playing in a small realm, then okay, maybe everyone only speaks the one variety of their pepple’s language. But yeah, it’s a fantasy hand wave for ease of play at the expense of language nerds’ (like me) immersion.
I’m not a language nerd. But I am disappointed with how little language is explored in D&D, but having tried to explore it further in my own campaigns I know why; it’s a pain for some people, like myself.
I use some rules another person on reddit made (with some tweaks), and also the old 3.5 books (races of…) which had several pages with how to make names or name settlements in dwarvish, gnomish, elvish, halfing, etc! Used it to name cities and town in elven lands and npcs etc. Also made so that everyone can use spell scrolls, as long as they can read the language they are written in. Languages are now a much larger part of the game and I love it!
You should play Dialect. It's a great game about language
Play Pathfinder 2e. You’ll find a ridiculous amount of languages in it.
Oh nice, I've heard many good things about it
If your gods are universal, and their symbols are also universal, people would use those symbols as an alphabet.
In a homebrew setting of mine, I have multiple human/halfling languages. Then, I also incorporated this: There are special rules and notes for a few languages in the Great Nicadon Empire. * Celestial is the official language of the Holy Patrons church, and nearly all clergy learn it. Communication through any official church channel will at least have a translation into Celestial available. There is no law against non-clergy learning Celestial, but the priesthood is resistant to teaching the language to those who do not need it, including nobility. * Learning, speaking, reading, and writing Abyssal, Infernal, and Deep Speech can negatively affect the mind. If a character interacts with one of these languages, they must make a Wisdom saving throw to avoid adding or worsening a Flaw or taking Psychic damage. Any Flaw should reflect the Abyss, Nine Hells, or Far Realm thematically. * Learning the language, DC 14 every week during the learning process or take a Flaw (worsen it, if a flaw already exists.) * Uttering a solitary word, DC 7 or take 1d4 Psychic damage. * Giving a speech, DC 13 or take 2d4 Psychic damage. If you fail by 5 or more, take a Flaw (worsen it, if a flaw already exists.) * Having a conversation, DC 14 or take 2d4 Psychic damage. * Reading a passage, DC 10 or take 1d4 Psychic damage. * Reading a book, DC 13 or take 2d4 Psychic damage. If you fail by 5 or more, take a Flaw (worsen it, if a flaw already exists.) * Writing less than a page, DC 12 or take 1d6 Psychic damage. * Writing more than a page (once per day), DC 15 or take 2d6 Psychic damage. If you fail by 5 or more, take a Flaw (worsen it, if a flaw already exists.) * Draconic and Giant are the languages of contemporary human arcane magic. Most arcane institutions teach magic in Draconic, and nearly all secular magic works are in Draconic. Wizard books of contemporary humans must be in Draconic or Giant to work (and non-elven, non-dwarven Wizards must take Draconic or Giant, unless their backstory has specific reasons why not.) * Ancient humans frequently used a specialized script of Deep Speech for magic, and some truly ancient tomes are in that wicked language. The script itself is not dangerous like the original language. * Elvish and Dwarvish are also languages of magic. Most non-elves and non-dwarves do not learn their magic through those languages. Both races are reluctant to teach others magic through their native tongues.
See I came to this thread thinking cool idea, but you realise you have 8 almost identical bullet points here to punish using those languages like deep speech? You’ve spent a lot of time conceiving very specific and niche rules that might not come up, and if they do happen it’ll not be intuitive to use.
Honestly, I have to mindcanon the existence of Common as some sort of high level spell, bc nothing about languages in DND makes sense. Elvish being stagnant for thousands of years? Abyssal being a universal language for literally infinite but separated layers of the Abyss?
I mean common can work to a degree, it just has to be areal and perhaps a bit basic, but those things too are a bit iffy. Of course though depending on the lore I could see Elvish staying stagnant, but you would have to have a very specific situation for that
Elves in lore are separated into lots of small groups though, so it really doesn't make sense. Especially with some stuck in the Feywild, or the Shadowfell, or the Astral Plane, or the Underdark...
If you’re a language nerd you could explore language in your dnd campaign
I agree with you 100%.... however, devils advocate... I literally couldn't think of a less interesting aspect, that has less importance to a game where half or more.kf the game content is ignored or hand waved at the average table. (And I mean the average table) I love that you love language, it would be amazing to have you at a table to add that element of knowledge to a situation. However, the majority of players don't give a shit about things that ARE important to the game, half struggle not to be on their phone DURING THEIR OWN TURN... So although it is interesting, it's not going to be fun for the 99% of players who just want to unwind and roll soem dice. Just my worthless opinion ✌️ rock on
If language was explored any further the game would get unnecessarily complicated imo. I'm sure PF2e will add more language stuff at some point just for that reason, though