Hi everyone,

I just ordered my book a few days ago and its on the way, but I was wondering if anyone has seen how the language system works in the book (I tried search it, but to no avail). If I wanted to host a game of WW1 battle of the Somme which turns into a war of the worlds scenario, could I test the players on their ability to speak German, French or any other languages?

17 hours ago, surfusa said:

Hi everyone,

I just ordered my book a few days ago and its on the way, but I was wondering if anyone has seen how the language system works in the book (I tried search it, but to no avail). If I wanted to host a game of WW1 battle of the Somme which turns into a war of the world scenario, could I test the players on their ability to speak German, French or any other languages?

I don't have my book handy but as I recall it, it's silent on the matter.

I'd just handle it beforehand and not like d20 where "suddenly you know a new language because level 4!"

One of the things that matters is background of the characters, and the class/economic realities of the day. So, using the Great War - If your characters are American or Australian, two monolinguistic states (at that time) without much contact with Continental languages, I'd ask for background to explain how they knew French or German. And I'd make the check daunting, upgraded twice if they didn't have one.

Given for example the strong French influence in America (engaging rebels as a proxy unit in the fight against Britain, then encouraging them to spin it as a "war for an ideal of freedom", lols) or the fact the largest diaspora at the time was German, you could have someone whose background made them able to understand French or German. Hard to envision both, but it's possible. Work with your players on that front though.

Australia? Some German expats settled in the Barossa Valley in South Australia, doing what they cannot do in Germany and making good wines - but mostly Australia's made up for Scots, Irish, Welsh and working class English at that time. The ruling class were usually upper class Brits sending their third son to make a name in the Colonies. Bit of hostility to contintental Europeans - my Dutch immigrant (well, technically a refugee since the Dutch East Indies was no more) father experienced a bit of racism here, despite being quite blonde and white.

If your character is South African, I'd let them understand German (not speak) with a hard check. Afrikaans is mostly Dutch and English, with a minor German influence but the gap from Dutch to German is enough that you might understand the jist of what is said. If I said "mijn vader am nederlands geboren" to a German, they'd probably understand it.

If your characters were British, background is essential for languages. Remember, the British Army at this point was very much a class based institution. Ordinary middle-class soldiers rarely were high ranking officers; lieutenant (pronounced lef- tenant of course!) or thereabouts. No working class soldier would be in a command position though - that went to the sons of "Good Families", i.e. the upper class. Competency was rarely a factor here, just how blue the blood was. But, what was a factor was that the Public schools taught students French, German, and Latin.

So, a toff character - easy check for those languages. Can understand and speak. Middle class? Hard check unless pre-agreed proficiency with the GM. Working class? Daunting upgraded. There's almost no chance they speak or understand French or German.

This is a pre-globalisation, pre-mass air travel world so most working and middle class people can't afford yet to head over to France or Spain to get skin cancer in a violent 2 week beachside sunbathing extravaganza.

It’s probably just like the Star Wars game, in which language is only a barrier when it is important to the narrative, and otherwise should not be a problem.

15 minutes ago, Johan Marek Phoenix Knight said:

It’s probably just like the Star Wars game, in which language is only a barrier when it is important to the narrative, and otherwise should not be a problem.

It's a bit different in a WWI scenario.

Star Wars is much more like a fantasy story in its approach to language. People are exposed from birth to a variety of languages beyond basic, and as such will have picked up a little of a lot of languages, with varying fluency in a few specifics like Huttese.

Part the narrative around the two wars, especially the second*, revolves around the need for language skills. So working it into background for realistic or modern world games is probably more necessary. Even, to an extent, for sci-fi (I'm thinking about Firefly and how the cast were allegedly speaking Chinese despite butchering the tones and thus, not speaking Chinese).

Fantasy or space fantasy? Your point is dead on and I'd endorse it.

Thanks for the tips, I think I will be talking to my players once I get something set up!

In some places (the adventure moduals in star wars that is) that knowing a language was divisable by knowledge of where the planet was, knowing how to speak huttese would mean a knowledge roll in outter rim or knowing the wookie language a mid rim or what ever. Success means you could decipher what was being said even if it was just the jist of it. Added success or advantages meant you got the whole story, failure meant you didn't get it or if the gm was being particularly cruel, that you understood it but what was that about your momma?

In any case I like the idea of explaining how you might know the language a bit and then falling over on the roll to back it up a bit, but that's me.

I don’t have the book yet, so take this as spit-balling.

One of the options discussed is changing or adding skills. I would do this for a game where it was important to have more emphasis on a particular facet of the game. It sounds to me that language is more important for this game, so you would want to add skill or talents to address this.

As you want to avoid binary know / don’t know I would make languages be a new set of skills that people can take. Everyone gets one for free at ‘native’ level, others cost.

Naturally the next question is how difficult is communication, and how similar or different are languages? I’m on my phone at the moment but will come back later with some more suggestions on this.

Picking this up again...

There is a concept called language families which would be useful for deciding how similar or otherwise languages are to each other. This is a real thing, a friend who is Italian can get by in lots of European countries as the Romantic Languages are all influenced by Latin which is, of course, the root of the modern Italian language. For a Europe focussed campaign you probably want to concentrate on the Indo-European part of the language family tree.

So, native speakers get to communicate in their own language without a roll and start with a competent level of skill for free (a Genesys-head will need to say what level of skill would count here... books still on the way).

You can learn other languages as a skill as normal. When you want to communicate in a second tongue you need an easy roll for conversational level, more tricky for something technical like business language or (in a war context) trying to discus specialised things like military matters.

If you are trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak your language the difficulty increases for every significant step of difference between the languages. You would need to decide what constituted a ‘significant’ step for the campaign you are planning, depending on how much of an issue you want it to be for the players. Maybe at least one dice should be stepped up to a Challenge dice to allow for catastrophic mid-communication?

I don't recall seeing any mention of language - but then I only did just skim the book last night. If I had to quantify it, I would approach it with a player justifying knowing those languages and going with what is logical ("Well, my character grew up on a constant stream of anime and manga back in the VHS days when you could only get unsubbed, undubbed bootlegs. That's how I'm passingly familiar with Japanese") and if I needed to have a roll, I'd go with an Education roll, modified by how out there the language is (a extremely local dialect of mandarin would be <><><><><>, mainstream German to an native english speaker might be a <> with a black.)

Or, if it was circumstantial - say that you're trying to bluff your way past that Nazi checkpoint - I might skip the roll, let them go with the con roll modified with a ton of black dice for their really lousy german accent and strange pronunciation.

It is totally reasonable for your setting to include Knowledge[German] and Knowledge[French] etc., or a little more generic, Knowledge[Languages].