RPG linguistics hack

[zdashamber]

So, the trouble with all RPGs that have "linguistics" skills/feats is that you pay the points that you would pay for something nifty, but in game, it's really boring to have the PCs stuck around a bunch of people who they can't talk to. (Mike S puts this well.) So having useful info in the possession of someone who doesn't speak the PC language happens maybe once or twice a campaign, if the GM remembers that Bob over there could use a bone thrown to him. "Linguistics" turns out to be as useful as "Glassblowing" but it's usually charged at the rate of "Doing spinning jump kicks".

I'm considering running a game where the PCs are international troubleshooters for something like the Carter Center, where they're going to be dealing with the hundreds of obscure languages of Africa or Asia. It occurs to me: perhaps this trouble could be fixed if you had the PCs divide up "linguistics" between them, say 60% to Bob who studied languages with the CIA, 20% to Martha who was raised by ambassadors, 10% to Jin who bounced around Asia on a merchant ship, 5% each to Sasha and Palana who will have to explain their knowledge of Yoruba if it ever comes up. Then when they're faced with a guy who's frantically explaining something in Bambara, roll a d20 and see who gets it.

Maybe have the option of someone paying a fate point to whoever wins, getting the language, and also another 5% of the spectrum from the winner's chunk to represent the buyer's bettered odds of knowing obscure languages. Or paying a fate point to the pot to get the language at a crummy me tarzan you jane level, in addition to Bob's fluency. If the PCs weren't going to agree about how to split up the linguist niche at the beginning, probably an auction would sort it fairly. And everyone gets the languages they list at the beginning which are part of their character concept.

Comments

[sodzilla.livejournal.com]

A thought-worthy idea! And yes, this is an area that definitely needs fixing. My personal current cringe-inducer in this regard is Star Wars: Saga Edition, where a character has to be well above average intelligence in order to learn ANY languages beyond the one or two she knows from the beginning (this in a universe where most of the canon characters are multilingual!) but I don't think I've ever seen a RPG system that handled this well.

[rvdammit.livejournal.com]

From the way you describe Saga it sounds like PC's should start with 2, then get another one each time the get a stat bonus, with extra's for Int. And translation droids seem faily common as well.

[evilmagnus]

Eh, how about every session you have players draw straws. The one who wins gets the Language Card for the session, and they have to come up with a reason why they speak the particular language of the week. These reasons should a) not be repeated and b) get more outlandish as the campaign progresses. From "I studied it at MIT" to "As a child, my father took in an orphan goatherd from a small tribe just outside of 'blah', which is remarkably similar to 'foo'!"

[rvdammit.livejournal.com]

I like this idea. I also like the way its handled in Adventure!, where each level of skill represents familiararity with a language family.

[shadowflyer.livejournal.com]

This sounds like it was inspired by Tales from the Floating Vagabond, which frankly is never a bad thing in my book....

[jimhenley.livejournal.com]

Madeline, this is cool. You could add one more layer that would work like chancel points in Nobilis: If the PCs as a group want 100$ coverage, they have to somehow buy 100% coverage. Otherwise, there's a percentile range where they don't know what the stranger is saying. So maybe they can buy 60, 80 or 100% coverage, with one person getting half, another a fourth and the rest as equal a share of what's left as is possible. You do face the tradeoff of How much incomprehension is entertaining then.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

How much language knowledge is fun is certainly going to be campaign-specific... Like in the Star Wars example above, I'd think it would be less fun to have 100% coverage. Going to the occasional non-Republic world and having nothing in common with the native sophonts sounds like a nice possibility.

Buying the right to understand NPCs from the GM, I don't think that works, because that bases the campaign design decision of "how often do we want bafflement" on an unrelated economy of chargen points. The reason I suggest buying it from other players at all is that I'm thinking that allows for there still to be the niche of "the guy who knows languages liek whoa", if someone wants that.

[evilmagnus]

The other option is to do what we do in real life: hire a local translator. ;)

If the PCs are roaming Africa, there could be a small repeating cast of local translators all with their own issues and plot hooks. The Lives & Loves of the translators could be the recurring 'B' plot.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Hoom. Perhaps when Palana wins the die roll her ability to know Bambara is based around the way she hired a poor sad-looking fellow to carry her bag and he can translate...

Translators remove the option of the PC making the choice to intentionally mistranslate to the other PCs. "No, seriously, there are demons in that mine" / "He says we should look out for rotten timbers"... And there's a lot of nitty gritty boring drag possible with finding a translator and schlepping around an NPC who can't really die without putting the PCs in the annoying situation of being unable to communicate.

[(Anonymous)]

"Mike S puts this well."

I do? I mean, cough, I do!

(I don't recall having said anything like this, though I certainly do agree.)

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd remembered kvetching to you about how I always take Linguistics kinds of things, but it turns out to be one of those "places to waste points to illuminate character" that happen in all systems; and you pointing out that having the PCs unable to talk to people is a GM decision that doesn't add to fun... Huh. Well, anyway, it's the kind of thing you might say. :)