Brainwave:
Brainwave:
Your alignment is replaced with your caste - High, Medium, Low. Call them Noble, Artisan, Peasant, or Brahmin, Vaishya, and Shudra, or whatever you like. Alignment already basically means squat in most practical terms, so it's not like you're losing something valuable.
But the upside is - suddenly Alignment Language makes sense. Suddenly high-caste players can commune in HighCasteish (let's call it Kshatri) instead of Parbati or Sauvi, whereas the largely-high-and-middle-caste party might be frustrated that the lower-caste retainers are talking to each other in LowCasteish (Shudri, for example) and they can't understand wehther they're just making jokes at the PCs expense or whether they're plotting mutiny.
Your alignment is replaced with your caste - High, Medium, Low. Call them Noble, Artisan, Peasant, or Brahmin, Vaishya, and Shudra, or whatever you like. Alignment already basically means squat in most practical terms, so it's not like you're losing something valuable.
But the upside is - suddenly Alignment Language makes sense. Suddenly high-caste players can commune in HighCasteish (let's call it Kshatri) instead of Parbati or Sauvi, whereas the largely-high-and-middle-caste party might be frustrated that the lower-caste retainers are talking to each other in LowCasteish (Shudri, for example) and they can't understand wehther they're just making jokes at the PCs expense or whether they're plotting mutiny.
Following from that - I want to make language a bigger thing in my campaign. Like the traditional "you get X number of extra languages per INT above 11" or whatever. The issue is unlike traditional D&D where there are dwarves and elves and gnomes, there aren't that many obvious languages for a player to speak in Yoon-Suin. If they're in the Oligarchies, knowing Sauvi or the Yellow City Pidgin won't really help. They could know a bit of Dwarvish, sure, but a lot of the bestiary doesn't lend itself to obvious languages. You could give Belu or Pishacha their own languages, but why in the name of christ would anyone have the oppertunity or desire to speak Pishacha?
ReplyDeleteAlasdair Lawrence i suspect more human languages are the answer. Each hundred kingdoms polity (or historical grouping of 2-5 cities) has its own dialect. The market language is Common, it covers only the most basic exchanges and communications, and most dialects are local embellishments and evolutions of the tongue - except a few areas, of course, settled/conquered by people from afar or local language isolates.
ReplyDeleteSimilar treatments for the oligarchies, boat tribe groupings, eras of Yellow City calligraphy or poetics, etc.
Very annoying: "Oh you know fantasy-Vietnamese? Too bad we're in fantasy-Namibia." I allow players to claim their languages as they go, up to their maximum. So if a player has an extra language, then they can claim to know fantasy-Namibian when we get to fantasy-Namibia, but then they have to stick to it.
ReplyDeleteFor the alignment languages, I play it that PCs of an alignment seem to be able to "read" others of their alignment better, such that they can make themselves well-understood even with gestures and pantomime. True story: Travelling in Japan, we had this one friend who just seemed to be magically able to make himself understood, despite not knowing the language. He "spoke" alignment-Japanese.
This works well with the approach described by Alasdair Lawrence. Nobility, whatever their language, would have an easier time being understood by fellow nobility. Similarly with peasants. Very cool idea, Alasdair Lawrence, thank you.
Alasdair Lawrence Interesting point about there not being many obvious languages. In my head every dwarf citadel had/has its own language, as does every oligarchy and its surroundings. The Hundred Kingdoms is a sprachbund. Probably everybody in a given city can understand the dialects of the neighbouring city, but the language of the people in the westernmost and easternmost cities are mutually incomprehensible. Most of the supernatural creatures (pishacha, rakhosh, hohools and so on) probably don't have their own languages and just speak the local human one.... Grasshoppermen and ogre magi have their own languages, but can't really think of others off the top of my head. I like Ben George's way of doing it because it's actually the most realistic. Why would anybody learn languages from really far away, or those spoken by people they never interact with? If you're in fantasy Cambodia, of course your second language is fantasy Vietnamese rather than fantasy Finnish. Making people choose their languages before they know anything about the setting doesn't make sense, really.
ReplyDeleteDavid McGrogan ah, yes I should have explained what I meant about not many languages - I also assume each citadel (and its diaspora) have their own dwarven language (plus an Old Language that is actually written in the ancient ruins, something only scholars would read). My issue was I couldn't think of many languages that would be obvious for a poor, low-caste individual to speak besides their dialect, Common, and a thieves cant or something. The obvious, realistic answer is "they simply wouldn't need to speak any other languages", but why should the posh nobles have all the fun, I don't want to say to my low caste player "oh no despite having intelligence 18 you don't get any other languages because there are none nearby to speak, and everything else requires education and contact which you haven't had growing up in the ghetto". It was less a genuine problem with the setting and more a comment on how to be All Things to All People, which is my own personal conundrum to mull. I also agree Ben George's way is how I'll likely do it, but all the same it requires I the GM come up with languages for the players to pick at some point.
ReplyDeleteBrian Richmond Porque No Los Dos? I'm still keeping Lamarakhi and Parbati and the like - the barge king and former slave can still converse. I don't think it has to be an Either/Or conversation when it comes to alignment, caste, and culture. If anything, having lots of different overlaps creates a lot of possibilities to put players in situations where they can use secret langauge none of the NPCs understand, or themselves be thwarted when they spy on a cabal of nobles only to find they're chatting in High Caste language. All of the languages you described are really cool, and further demonstrates that having lots of languages tied to belief, geography, group and culture is a great way to infuse a sense of Wider World to the setting.