Language in Fantasy Gaming
As I continue to try and put together an original fantasy world for my RPG campaigns, I keep running into problems with languages. I don't mean the terminology of the game, I mean the in-universe languages spoken by the characters, and what they imply about the game's assumptions toward the world in which our stories will take place. Let's take a look at the current setup (using D&D 5th Edition as an example, though other fantasy games have similar issues), go over the problems it creates, and then talk about possible solutions. Okay, so in D&D, the overwhelming majority of characters speak approximately two languages: "Common," and a racial language corresponding to the character's race. Certain backgrounds will give you additional languages, but those will basically be selected from among other racial languages. In other words, every language that isn't Common is a racial language. Elves speak Common and Elvish, dwarves speak Common and Dwarvi...