Saying Magic Words
As an area for role-playing, “language” is both rich in potential and generally underutilized in D&D-like games. I’m not the first to observe this, and many attempts at customizing the D&D language system have been made. Gus L. at Dungeon of Signs tweaks language in his Fallen Empire setting to make role-playing challenges more entertaining. Josh at Rise Up Comus aims to make languages meaningful in new contexts. Warren D. at I Cast Light! has rules for talking to animals, based on similar rules from Jack at Rotten Pulp. Peter Kisner at the Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop simplifies how languages are categorized and learned. I have even played with the idea myself, attempting to reduce the list of languages to only those with distinct narrative rolls.
Three speech bubbles clipart, Flaticon, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.
One of many difficulties that a revamped language system faces is being spread thin. Suppose four adventurers know nine languages between them (including common). Core 5e provides for 8 “standard” languages, 8 “exotic” languages, and 2 “secret” languages. If they encounter someone who doesn’t speak common,1 they might have about a 50% chance of being able to communicate, despite being an impressively multilingual group. These systems also rarely allow for the idea of sub-fluent communication like “I can say ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘thank you,’ and count to ten.”
So we can do a lot to make languages weirder and more nuanced, but we should also keep an eye on the ability to “pick up” languages in unorthodox ways. We see this in old-school D&D, for example, with alignment languages, which do not cost skill points or require high ability scores.
What if, then, some languages can be spoken by having a relevant spell prepared. This is basically the old idea of spell memorization effects. Using a 5e list of languages and a BX Magic-User’s spell list,2 I might propose the following:
- Abyssal — Ventriloquism
- Celestial — Light
- Draconic — Fireball
- Deep Speech — Dispel Magic
- Infernal — Detect Evil
- Primordial — Water Breathing
- Sylvan — Growth of Plants
- Undercommon — Infravision
How does it work in the fiction? It’s common in GLoG spaces for the spells you’ve memorized to “live” in your head. They have wants and needs and they can talk to their caster to negotiate for these. But now some spells can function as little babelfishes. If Water Breathing can translate primordial for you, it’s happy just for the opportunity to get out of the spellbook more often. (But once cast, maybe it’s too exhausted to help.)
We could go further! What if the only way to speak Infernal is to have Detect Evil memorized? Then the key to speaking Infernal is a thorough understanding of the detection of evil, and vice versa. The language is the spell. Even non-casters have the spell memorized, only they don’t know how to use it. All Elves know the spell Elvish, but maybe not what it does. And what happens if you cast your last language, your last symbolic representation of the world? (Maybe nothing?) What does the spell Common do? If you cast your alignment language, do you become neutral?
This particular train of thought was inspired by a conversation with the ever-superlative David Schirduan, but happily timed to line up with July’s Blog Carnival, hosted by Rook and conveniently on the theme of language and linguistics.
In modern D&D, “common” is often understood to be universal. This appeals to expediency (including my own), but it has not always been the case. In B/X, for example, “common” is simply the tongue of “most humans, dwarves, elves, and halflings,” while monsters have only a 20% chance to speak it. Interestingly, “human dialect” is in its list of 20 additional languages.↩︎
Since this isn’t for a current game, I’m using whatever lists are closest to hand.↩︎