Languages House Rule

[Yak Face]

In my campaign I'm trying out an alternate approach to the Languages skill. Given that I've never had a PC who was an intellectual who studied the theory of language or some such, I'm requiring my PC's to advance only language specializations. They can have as many as they want - but each must be advanced on its own. I've heard of a few people who know multiple languages in RL, but that took enormous study of each one. I assume that most species in Star Wars do not share a base language (like Western nationalities have with Latin), so learning one does not necessarily help when learning another. I felt that dumping skill points into the main skill and suddenly gaining some measure of fluency in every language in the civilized galaxy seemed... unreasonable.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Does this seem fair, or am I overlooking something? Should I make the generic Languages skill and Advanced skill like Medicine?

An obvious problem is the published stats for protocol droids who really CAN speak almost any language...
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[Ankhanu]

That's reasonable... or you could run each language as a skill (kind of like Scholar and schools of thought), and for the linguistically gifted, allow the use of an overarching Languages skill as an advanced skill, allowing for a better broad-based understanding of languages, and used to, for example, decipher a new language they'd not been exposed to.
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[Jedi AlanRocks]

Mostly I want PC's and NPC's to be able to communicate, so there's no real advantage to trying to figure out what languages everyone speaks. When a PC and an NPC start conversing I have them roll their languages D and if it's a good roll they can speak to eachother. If they fail the roll they need an interpreter. If it's close, then the accent is think and some words are unintelligible. Like the book sez, it's a big Galaxy with lots of languages so everybody probably knows three or four- including Basic (or english, if you prefer)

[vong]

Personally this is how i figure languages in my games

The language skill represents a basic (potentially) of the spoken word. It gives enough to understand the gist of what is being said. It would be like going to another country to learn their language, you learn how to communicate very quickly, but not very well. You learn to understand enough to get by.

The Spec is spending time studding the language, so you can actually start to understand more complex thoughts. as a rule for PCs to communicate with each other - if the spec D is 1D higher then the language skill, i dont bother rolling any more as the chr is good enough i to let it slide for the sake of RP.
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[mdlake]

I second Vong's approach. Speaking twenty or thirty human languages is rare enough (though my high school German teacher spoke 23!) here on real live earth; speaking a couple dozen alien languages is quite unrealistic--but Star Wars ain't exactly a realistic setting, either. The loose rules simulate the SW environment, where the audience hears the occasional buzz-and-squawk of inhuman speech but the heroes can always speak to anyone with something significant to say.

Although the occasional language barrier has its place ("He doesn't like you. I don't like you either.") they're a terrible nuisance as a regular game feature. So I use the 1stEd "unrealistic way that's simple" rules: every time someone has a conversation in an alien tongue, roll to see how much information gets through. And, like Vong, I presume that anyone who actually invests in one of the hillion jillion languages available as a specialization is able to speak it fluently.

Do you really want your PCs dumping half their xps into languages, and still being able to converse with only 10%...or 1%...or fewer!...of the aliens that lend so much exotic tone to the setting?

[Yak Face]

Excellent thoughts guys - thanks for those! I may moderate my approach. At the very least it's easy to adopt the specialization=fluency approach. I'll ponder the rest and adjust accordingly.
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However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -Sir Winston Churchill

[garhkal]

I prefer a system where the base languages skill is just that, your natural aptitude to learn languages. Every D above the attribute makes one additonal language you know well. NO specialties.
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[Barrataria]

[Whill]

In the Star Wars films, being able to understand multiple languages is very common. Even Chancellor Palpatine knows Huttese according to the subtitles in AotC.

The game reflects this first by having a raw linguistical ability that is used to possibly understand any language. If someone specializes in a specific language and has at least 5D, then he is considered fluent in that language (and there's not much point in advancing it further). Also, if someone makes 10 successful difficult language checks in a specific language he is not fluent in, he suddenly becomes fluent in that language also.

My interpretation is that in the Star Wars galaxy, the linguistic part of most sentient species' brains is more highly advanced than ours. Even the humans of the Star Wars galaxy are slightly different that the humans on Earth.

But I also tend to agree that having language barriars can also bring down the story. Who wants to drag a protocol droid around? And I enjoy characters like Indiana Jones that know a dozen languages. They have a high Language skill.

I am generous with languages. In character creation, my PCs all get a fluency in Basic for free, regardless of species. Then, each PC also gets one additional language fluency for every D of the Languages skill (or Knowledge). So a PC with only 2D in languages still starts with Basic and 2 other language fluencies, all indicated on his character sheet. Each time he becomes fluent in a new language, that one is listed also.
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[vong]

Cool, thats a very D&Desque way of doing things

interesting way to gain new languages, 10 difficult checks in a row

I definitely dont think languages should inhibit pc communication, but am all for it with NPCs
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[Raven Redstar]

I do it the same way as Whill. Also, if your players are playing Force users, the translation power can easily make them able to communicate with any sentient species, even droids.

[garhkal]

[Whill]

[Whill]

[Whill]