Writing Every Day 16: A Failure to Communicate

I have a love/hate relationship with languages in RPGs.

On one hand, I like the depth that languages imply for a game world. Having distinct languages and regional dialects helps make the world feel more real. It provides interesting talents for PCs to invest in. Our world has tons of distinct and often unique languages, so it stands to reason that the game world should too, right?

On the other hand, I loathe languages in an RPG because of the obstacles they can impose. Now, I'm not thinking about obstacles that I put in place for the PCs to overcome. I'm fine with those. Trying to interrogate someone when there's no shared language can result in some innovative action by the PCs, finding a manuscript written in a language the PCs don't speak can encourage them to visit a new location I want to showcase in search of a translator, and on and on.

The obstacles I'm thinking of are the unintended ones that I haven't prepared for and that don't do the game any good. A PC without a shared language with the rest of the party is fun for almost no time at all. It can prevent coordination and cohesion and either excludes that PCs character or pushes the PC into the spotlight far too often. It makes the job of the Game Master and other players harder than it needs to be.

One workaround many games use is the universal language. Some language that every PC is assumed to know regardless of their background. This sort of irks me too. I like the idea of a world where communication is not guaranteed, where, like in our own world, critical negotiations can falter because of a mistranslation of key terms. A world where linguistic complications can arise exactly when and where I need them to.

The way I've handled this situation in my own games is the idea of trade languages. A trade language isn't universal by default. Instead, it's usually known only by characters, be they PCs or NPCs, who would have a reason to learn them. In addition, a trade language is only as good as the ties between cultures. So, for instance, if I have the game start in Citystate A it will have a trade language that it shares with its closest neighbors Citystates B and C, as well as its trade partner across the sea Citystate D. Any PC or NPC with a decent excuse for why they would possess the language have it gratis. The reason I do this is so PCs have a reasonable expectation that they can communicate with characters in the surrounding area while they find their footing in game, with a few additional far-flung regions if I decide the game needs a change of scenery.

I also make the trade languages of my games pidgins or creoles of the languages that make up the trade partners. In my mind the languages have basic constructions with easy to parse rules. My reason for doing so is that even if a character doesn't speak the trade language, he or she can pick out a handful of keywords in any exchange because they're spoken in a language the character is familiar with. If the conversation is trivial, I'll often let the player know what's been said and tell him or her that they only get the general gist of what was said. If the conversation is more important, and misunderstanding could result in consequences or interesting encounters later on, I'll have that player make a roll to determine how successfully he or she follows the dialogue.

There's an important bit of info that's buried in the above regarding the spread of these trade languages: they only go as far as the trade does. When the PCs travel into the great unknown such languages still exist, but they have no assumption of knowing them and have to actually invest advancement in learning them. But if trade spans the globe in the game world some version of a trade language is widespread, either chosen from the language of a primary economic power or a nightmarish hybrid of multiple different tongues.

To send you out, one of my favorite world-building moments from one of my favorite films, relevant to this topic.