Quantum Languages for Basic D&D
Or, testing your character’s skill as an ambassador only when there is something at stake.
As my Mothership boxset goes into cyrosleep for a few months while I work on some modules and supplementary pamphlets, it’s time to look ahead to what I’ll be running in the new year — a first playtest of a Black Wyrm/Ragged Hollow town sandbox using Old School Essentials. I absolutely should be fleshing out the treasure tables, writing some small dungeons and giving the NPCs more than Priest (Nervous).
But instead, I got distracted by languages.
More specifically, some recent Discord conversations reminded me of Prismatic Wastelands Quantum Languages (which itself references several other posts) and made me aware of Dungeonfruit’s Thirteen Tongues (Making Languages Interesting). These are both great, and I’ve previously playtested a less developed version of Prismatic’s rules in my own system.
However, we’re dealing with the strict retroclone here, the B/X, the Red Box — so how do we work something simple into that framework?
The Goal
We want something that’s easy for the players to understand and leads to interesting outcomes. Taking a little time to resolve any procedure isn’t too much of an issue, because these rules won’t be coming into play all that often. Overall, choosing to use this should be beneficial much more often than not, because we want players to both take risks and try to interact with spoken or written languages to generate a richer experience.
For example, my B in GCSE German means I have crossed the country via snorkelling, mountain biking and windsurfing.
So we need:
Multiple degrees of “language success” and “language difficulty”
A resolution system that provides that level of variation in outcome
Terms and conditions for when you can deploy the procedure
The Development
Interesting levels of success in languages are pretty easy to imagine; fluency grants a bonus, and lets you explain complex ideas (no need for rules around that — it’s implicit by the use of the word fluent). At the other end of the scale, miscommunication naturally gives rise to all sorts of farcical situations — even when traps are involved.
In between those two extremes, we can offer various bargains such as being able to read a language but not speak a word. And the more widely spoken or accessible a language is, the easier it is to pick up.
For resolution, we could look at a roll under ability score, but I think adapting the Reaction Roll itself (or at least the 2d6 bell curve) gives us a better representation of typical languages. You’re seldom terrible or brilliant — mostly it’s just how much effort you need to put in and how articulate your vocabulary is.
Then, the whole purpose of this procedure is that you only apply when something is actually at stake. Again, both the Reaction Roll and a classic Saving Throw are our guides here. If you hear about the Temple of the Goblin King, do our adventurers research the local Goblin dialect and customs? Of course not — they aren’t some sort of nerd, they want treasure and they don’t want anyone else to get there first.
The Procedure
Caveat: These rules assume Alignment Languages are not being used, because having essentially four languages (Common + 3 alignments) in the world renders this exercise a little pointless.
All player characters begin play knowing The Common Tongue. They also have language slots equal to 2 + their Intelligence Modifier.
Non-human races must fill a language slot with the tongue of their kin on character creation. They are automatically fluent in this language.
Characters with other languages available (e.g. Gnome for Dwarves) may fill slots with these during character creation. These are also considered fluent.
In play, a character may declare they are filling an empty language slot if:
This character has not encountered this language before.
The language is present and can be interacted with. E.g. it is available in its written or spoken form, be it via an NPC, a book, a magical recording etc.
Roll 2d6 + Charisma Modifier on the following table, also applying a further modifier for the difficulty of the language:
Easy (+1) this language is simple and widely used.
Standard (+0) used only by specific groups day to day, but follows typical structure.
Difficult (-1) obscure, unusual ways of speaking by small populations
Extremely difficult (-2) dead languages with no native speakers, the secret tongues of cults and spies.
Note: Referees may apply some discretion to both “has never encountered this language before” and the difficulty of the language. For example, if a character declares that they wish to use some downtime to study a previously encountered language, this should allow them to make a roll when they encounter it again.