Topic: Languages

[Right Wing Wacko]

If one does not wish to use the language "rules" as presented in RMFRP due to a lack of many different languages in the campaign world, what would be a "balancing" solution?
I am thinking more along the lines of how languages are handled in D&D, but not so many (omitting the planar/elemental and alignment languages)... mostly just racial and humanoid languages.
But at the same time, I understand that the language ranks given to the races in RMFRP are balanced with the other skill ranks and, consequently, the races are balanced...

Any ideas?

[Nejira]

I more or less stripped all ranks from races and put them into Culture instead. This resulted in that almost all had Native tongue (race or region) and Common tongue (a trade language). A few races such as Dark Elves and other freethinkers (read secret buggers) didn?t get the Common tongue.

This was what they all got:
Native (S8/W5)
Common (S5/W4)

[markc]

 As a house rule I have doubled the meaning of the ranks, so now you need 12 ranks instead of 6 to be fluent. IMO it makes more sense and takes a litte longer to learn a new language.

I also do not use langues for alignment, magic college, etc like they give as an example in Ess Comp. But I have played in a game that had a special lang for each spell list and you got a bonus to the language for the number of ranks in the spell list but you also needed a specific number of ranks to in the language to buy a specific rank of the list.

MDC

[Fidoric]

According to the campaign you game in, you may also want to discard adolescence ranks in written languages as literacy is not that common in certain worlds. I did this in my campaign without givnig any ranks in other skills. Then only ones with ranks in written langages are those of noble cultures.

[Greyaxe]

According to the campaign you game in, you may also want to discard adolescence ranks in written languages as literacy is not that common in certain worlds. I did this in my campaign without givnig any ranks in other skills. Then only ones with ranks in written langages are those of noble cultures.

STOLLEN!!
I also dont allow a "Common" toung, so investing in languages is a good idea.

[Phil]

I was considering splitting language skills into:
Language (speak)
Alphabet (write)

So, for example, you might have English 8 ranks, French 6 ranks, German 1 rank and Latin Alphabet 4 ranks, giving you English S8 R4, French S6 R4 & German S1 R1.

In designing a new campaign world, I'd also be inclined to have mandatory specialisation, and have different types of Elvish as dialects of a common Elvish language for example - so, in Middle Earth, a Noldor might have Elvish 4 ranks, but that would count as 8 ranks for the Quenyan dialect and 4 for Sindarin. Not so sure about that specific example actually, but as a principle it allows you to differentiate languages whilst having a good common level of understanding and fewer overall language skills.

[Right Wing Wacko]

Thanks all for the ideas...