LANGUAGE LEARNING

Over the years, there have been many proposals to allow characters to learn additional languages. I would like to revive the discussion, since the last GM post (about learning languages) in this folder was six years ago.

Some of these ideas may not be new, but here are my thoughts on how to implement the ability to learn additional languages. (It is not really possible to simulate realistic language learning in DragonRealms, so I am just hand-waving that aspect.)

Currently, all characters are (mechanically) fluent in Common and their racial language. I propose that characters be able to learn one or more additional languages depending on skillset and scholarship ranks. This scales to 1500 ranks, giving scholarship some much needed high-rank applications. It also gives some additional benefits for being lore-primary or lore-secondary, which is largely seen as useless if you are not a crafter.

Feat	Lore Primary	Lore Secondary	Lore Tertiary
understand 3rd language	250	375	750
speak 3rd language	500	750	1,500
understand 4th language	750	1,125
speak 4th language	1,000	1,500
understand 5th language	1,250
speak 5th language	1,500

The rank benchmarks can be adjusted, but the idea is for skillset placement to determine how many languages you can learn and how easy it is to learn them.

For each language you wish to learn, you must learn to understand it before you learn to speak it. (For example, you cannot choose to speak Gamgweth unless you have already chosen to understand Gamgweth.)

Additionally, performance ranks could determine how proficient you sound. For example, at only 100 ranks in performance, a person speaking Gamgweth as a second language might speak "in broken Gamgweth." (This would show up in the description of the language, not the actual text of the message.) With enough ranks in performance, the descriptor would disappear entirely and just be "Isharon says in Gamgweth."

Performance	Proficiency
0	barely comprehensible
100	broken
200	rudimentary
500	passable
750	nearly perfect
1,000	[none] (fully proficient)

For example:
Isharon says in nearly perfect Gamgweth, "We are meeting in Crossing in two anlaen."

The rank benchmarks and descriptors may vary, and there could be separate benchmarks depending on skillset placement, but you get the idea.

Performance is almost solely used for TDPs, so it would be nice to make use of it in a way that is not just spamming the room with a flashy zill concerto.

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ACCENTS

Additionally, I propose the option to speak Common with an accent. Everyone would have the option of speaking with their racial accent. For example:

Isharon says in an Ilithic accent, "Good evening."

Additionally, citizenship should confer the ability to speak with the accent of that region (and possibly some cities within that region). For example:

Isharon says in a Zoluren accent, "The Elpalzi forces are nearly at our gate."

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

sortable list of all Trader-owned shops and inventory: http://www.elanthia.org/TraderShops/

armor and shields: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Armor_and_shield_player_guide

>>Millerk131: I'm not sure I would be on board with the performance suggestion, and here's why. My trader travels around the world delivering goods or selling gems and bundles for folks when she's in an area. It makes sense that she would learn extra languages to do this, but for her to play zills in order to increase the skill with which she speaks? That doesn't make sense to me. If I don't force her to sit around playing zills all the time, she would never speak very well.

Performance is badly in need of a rewrite, and in the future, it may very well include a lot more than playing instruments. (I would assume, too, that other training methods will become available.) Being able to sound more like a native speaker, at least accent-wise, requires the ability to perceive and mimic sounds, which could be a fitting application of performance.

Using performance to affect a native accent was actually my first idea, but I abandoned it when I couldn't decide on a good way to implement that in the description of how you speak. My original proposal was something like thickly accented, moderately accented, minimally accented, etc.

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

sortable list of all Trader-owned shops and inventory: http://www.elanthia.org/TraderShops/

armor and shields: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Armor_and_shield_player_guide

I like it.

I might turn performance part on its head though. I'd make it so a learned language had some sort of pseudo-skill behind it and the way to move from broken to accented to fluent would be to actually use the language, which would teach performance as you learned.

I would also put some matrix in there that different races have an easier or harder time mastering different languages. Dwarves might have a harder time perfecting Elven, Humans might have problems with Rakash. Everybody would have trouble learning the impenetrable S'Kra.

Anabasis

>> I would also put some matrix in there that different races have an easier or harder time mastering different languages. Dwarves might have a harder time perfecting Elven, Humans might have problems with Rakash. Everybody would have trouble learning the impenetrable S'Kra.

I'd rather see racial languages die completely and become regional languages than this happen, TBH. I know that's a pipe dream, but I hate racial languages. They don't make sense.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

>> I disagree on the merit that they are differing races with different origins, different cultures, and largely developed independently of other races.

Okay, but that's also true of many real-life cultures, and obviously not all Humans in real life speak the same language. In DR, take Ilithic for example. Why does the several thousand year old isolated desert culture speak the same language and dialect as the several thousand year old isolated mountain culture thousands of miles away? It's flat-out not how languages work. They'd probably continue to be mutually intelligible after a few generations but they would become dramatically different languages.

When you have languages like S'Kra which were developed in part due to physiological differences, you'd still see regional drift into dialects and eventually those differences would make them become different languages. S'Kra from Muspar'i should speak a different language than S'Kra from Reshalia (especially since they actually have different physiology too in the form of snouts vs flat faces) because they're physically separated and have distinct and unique cultures, which are both the biggest major driving forces behind language development.

Gorbesh is how language should be done -- you have two distinct races, but which share the same region and have enough cultural overlap where it's likely they would all be speaking the same language. I would also frankly expect Prydaen and Rakash to either speak the same language or have their own cultural languages along with a third "pidgin" language that incorporates elements of both.

So that's why I don't like racial languages. It fails to take into account both physical separation and the fact that dramatically different cultures exist even within the same racial groups. We know how languages develop among and between distinct cultural and racial groups in real life; we've got an entire field dedicated to studying it. Physiology throws a little wrench into it, but not enough of one to justify my Musparan-raised Human speaking fluent Gamgweth but not a lick of S'Kra or Ilithic.

Sadly, I realize these ships have all sailed. It's just a minor frustration I have with fantasy games in general, because they almost all handle language like this.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

Yes please, and instead of using your hobby or career for crafting, be able to use it to bump up your language ability.

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"I think anything that forces you to do something no sane adventurer would do just in order to train is ridiculous."
DR-SOCHARIS

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"Phelim, what have I wrought?"
GM NaOHHI
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Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Vic

Personally, I think the whole crafting tech system should be scrapped as it is in favour of "lore slots" that are earned based on circle, like spell slots. You could only put a certain number of lore slots into a skill (perhaps with the limit being determined the same way that the current crafting techs are awarded).