Brock Savage wrote:

I guess my question would be, what's the goal of adding linguistic realism to a roleplaying game? If the goal is to ensure that knowing multiple languages is interesting or rewarding, there are easier ways to get the same results. If the goal is for players to pantomime to get their point across to strangers, I guarantee it will be fun exactly one time. If the goal is an old-school DM screw job because the players don’t know this or that language, then it becomes a "language tax" because players aren't stupid and will cover their bases if it happens more than once. 

I think the goals would be increasing immersion in the setting, getting more players involved in NPC interactions, and reinforce the tribalism of different cultures by applying reaction modifiers depending on language used.  With my current player group, they've pretty much got all the languages covered, so it's not so much a barrier as an added element to consider with interactions.

Ar'Pharazon wrote:

Great insight everyone! 

Agreed!
 

jcstephens wrote:

Koine Greek would probably be the closest historical equivalent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek

 

Thanks, very interesting. Solidifies my choice of "common regional tongues", though I guess technically they'd be "supraregional".

Blackadder23 wrote:

mabon5127 wrote:

Is there real-world historical precedent for a "common tongue" as used in many fantasy RPG's?   This seems to diminish the value of knowing languages as everyone knows this common tongue. 

Latin during the Middle Ages (given that most fantasy worlds are about the size of Europe, if not directly based on Europe).

I'm not sure making a big deal out of languages would be particularly true to the source material. Even when there are different languages, the protagonist speaks pretty much all of them anyway. How many languages does Conan, an unlettered barbarian, speak? Randolph Carter seems to speak every language in the Dreamlands, including the monster languages! It's a pain in the ass for an author to handle languages realistically, let alone a referee. Certainly PCs that can't talk to one another freely would be an enormous headache for little gain IMO.

Unless you use a movie like the 13th warrior as source material.  They had a language barrier, worked a way to get rid of it in the story, and it was fantastic. It wasn't the story but added a lot to it. That's the kind of opportunity I want to present in a game. Trust me I don't want to endlessly harass the players with a intra-group language barrier unless they want that!  But in game opportunities to make communication or lack there of drive the adventure, I think that could be fun! 
 

There's no reason to assume all NPCs speak common nor to have anything written in it except if the author of the putative work would have found that useful. But you gotta figure most stay-at-home NPC types would not bother with this lingua franca and would just stick with what they know. Merchants and those who make money off adventurers and sailors would bother to speak it, but not everyone.

Just saying you can get rid of a lot of the parts of Common that annoy you without changing anything about the game or worrying about remembering complex systems of distance to population centers. Just make every interaction of the PCs with the world friction-full and interesting and potentially entertaining but don't punish the players by making them worry about it in terms of their characters' telling one another "you go left, I'll go right."

mabon5127 wrote:

Is there real-world historical precedent for a "common tongue" as used in many fantasy RPG's?   This seems to diminish the value of knowing languages as everyone knows this common tongue. 

Yes, depending on the time and place in the world. Old world “common tongue” examples would be, old Aramaic, Ancient Greek, ancient Latin, Arabic, Spanish, English.

All of these have been or are current “common tongues” in the world. Totally dependent on which world power at the time has dominance and by what location it holds dominance.

Of course over time evolution happens to the tongue that has primacy. Examples would be Latin based languages, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and others being derivatives of Latin and  local dialects.

English from 1000 years ago being incomprehensible to English today. English today being the lingua franc of the western world. It continues to evolve., sometimes nonsensically, but evolving nonetheless.