Interesting Dialects for GLoG

Creating fictional languages for my GLoG hack and its setting (The Road of Dead Buddhas) and trying to tackle the following:

• Include the diversity and variety of real linguistics
• Interesting (flavorful) dialect choices
• Giving players meaningful choices…
• …while also trying not to overwhelm them (or the GM) with complexity

All of this is also in the context of creating a setting that encourages far-afield exploration and campaigns with yearlong voyages, in the vein of Ibn Battuta or Frodo (and his boyfriend Samwise).

I want something more intricate or complex than free form languages in Errant or Vain the Sword 2E, but complexity for the sake of interesting choices unlike The Dragon Game’s shitty languages.
“Does anyone speak Orc? No? Crusading it is, then…”

My solution: to allow players to learn language families (almost akin to alignment languages or knowing a script or alphabet), as well as specific dialects. The more overlap a language family has with the local dialect, the more clear and concise their understanding of NPCs are.

This is informed by my understanding of how the Arabic language works IRL. Arabic spread across thousands and miles through the religion of Islam and the cultural realm that opened if you spoke the language of the Qur’an, leading to its widespread adoption and proliferation. The far-flung regions where Arabic is spoke - ostensibly the same language - have dialects with such different vocabulary and grammar that Arabic speakers aren’t guaranteed to understand each other.
Instead people learn Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) to act as a bridge between cultures. Moroccans and Syrians would have difficulty chatting in their local dialects, but purposefully lean into MSA when they want to be more clearly understood between each other.

This framework can hopefully provide interesting language choices for fantasy games involving long overland journeys. Historical-inspired games can most benefit from a modular system like this, but it needn’t be. Narratives where you travel to far-off kingdoms isolate you because you don’t know the local tongue, but then you come across one person who knows your language or is close enough to your fantasy analogue to MSA that you can converse and building a relationship.

“Thank the Allfather, you speak Raventongue? Please, I’m new to this city, and I’m looking for the Princess of Crows, you must help me…” is a powerful means for introducing new problems in a story and allowing players to try and figure it out. It makes languages useful to know beyond a choice at character creation, it can provide actionable goals to learn a language during downtime, and it encourages players to think of Hirelings as more than just cannon fodder or pack mules. 

Interesting Dialects

When you make your GLoG PC, you pick 1 Script and 1 Dialect. You know more Dialects for every point above your Mental stat. Additional scripts can only be learned through XP and downtime.

Scripts (also called Sacred Languages) are the broad categories of language, denoting which alphabet or medium the language is written in as well as (typically) what faith or belief system is motivating the culture. This is riffing off of the 1978 D&D idea of “Alignment Languages”, as well as the real world reality that religion and beliefs affects what writing system a language/dialect uses.

All of the dialects in the setting are tagged with two or more sacred languages, allowing a PC who knows one sacred languages to have one point of connection with many different dialects. One point of connection or communication is not total understanding, however…

Language Gates Reaction

Knowing 1 Script lets you Get the Gist.

Knowing 2 Scripts lets you Understand.

Knowing 3 Scripts gives you Familiarity.

One language won’t be influenced by 4+ families. One PC knowing 4+ scripts makes them a nerd.

If you know the dialect or language of a place, you Understand. PCs should advocate that if they are a native speaker and are talking to NPCs in their home that they have Familiarity. GMs should meet PCs halfway on how players use language to try and roleplay with NPCs.

Get the Gist: The GM uses passive language and/or summarized dialogue when speaking as an NPC.

“The shepherd waves his arms, shouting a warning at the approaching cyclops.”

“The trader tells you a tale of flying serpents in the forests from his home, and the kinds of cinnamon trees they make their nests in. He implies if he was gifted wine, he might know a thing or two about how to get rid of their troublesome nests.”

Understanding: The GM uses light summarized dialogue, more often speaking in character and roleplaying more fully. This can mean “doing a voice” but it doesn’t have to.

“The shepherd shouts “Beware! Don’t…cyclops! He waves his hands, great worry on his face.”

“I see that you’re interested in the cinnamon trees of my home, Agnivansha. The serpents have wings there, but they’ve grown to infest all sorts of ports and docks along the coast. Bad sanitation on ships. I’d tell you the trick for finding their eggs, but my throat is real parched. It’s been days since I’ve had wine…”

Familiarity: Not only do you fully understand what they’re saying, but you have +2 to your Reaction rolls thanks to…familiarity…with the local culture, beliefs, and slang.

“The shepherd shouts “Beware, my friends! Don’t kill that cyclops, whatever you do! He’s a diplomatic envoy with a drinking problem!”

“Ah, you speak my mother tongue so well. You are having problems with the flying serpents? My friend it is simple, you must blow a horn and speak this charm…”

For example:

Sacred Language - The Word

Inspired by Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic.

Then I’ll create two dialects, what in other games would be full languages.

Manalabadi (The Word, Canopic) The language of Manalabad

Seurish (The Word, Divasti) The language of Seuraman and its surrounding lands

These two dialects are both tagged with The Word and two other sacred languages, Canopic and Divasti. If a PC knows The Word script, they can Get the Gist from any NPCs who are speaking Manalabadi or Suerish. A PC who knows the Divasti sacred languages can only Get the Gist from Seurish speaking NPCs, and has no idea what the Manalabadi NPC is saying. If no one in the party has it covered, they must rely on a translator or hired guide type hirelings.

This system sort of assumes that all the PCs can read, with the breakdown of languages into Scripts and Dialects. How would an illiterate PC (or group of NPCs) interact? Maybe they’d only Get the Gist instead of having full Understanding, or rolling a social stat could overcome that barrier!

Many TTRPGs divide their languages into Common and Exotic languages, Common vs Rare, etc. This system doesn’t do that inherently, but the players create such distinctions through the characters they build. A language is only “exotic” - a charged term - because no one speaks it and you’ve got to rely on the human labor of Hirelings (or magic, or adventure…) to overcome that obstacle.

A group of PCs in my setting who start off in The Land of Heroes slaying dragons would have a different conception of “exotic”, faraway places than a group of PCs on the other side of the map, exploring snail-filled caves on The Serpent Sea.

PCs pick languages for interacting with NPCs and settlements big and small. How does this system effect exploration and dungeon design? What about dead languages, or magical languages from other worlds?

If PCs go down into a dungeon and they don’t speak the language of that dead empire, they’re SOL (shit outta luck). Which is how a lot of Old School dungeons are already designed, with very few clues.

Languages don’t just appear out of nowhere and usually descend from previous languages, so I imagine most dungeons would allow for a PC or two to be able to Get the Gist and get clues from the dungeon’s environs. “You find a warning sign,” or “There’s a Canopic symbol of rebirth on the button”. Which is what GMs do anyways designing dungeon rooms, but codified in the languages that players pick and spend time learning between adventures.

And, of course, magic lets you get weird with it. Wizards read so much esoteric stuff maybe they’ve got a 1-in-6 chance just to understand some written text, obscure or no. Elves can get The Gist of all languages that are dead to Mortals, but they just don’t like to (it’s a social faux pas). The scrolls you pulled out of an ancient dungeon still work, but if you actually know Kuralic script you get to roll an extra Magic Die when you roll it. If you read a cursed scroll (which might just be old, magically-broken down scrolls?) it will cause a blowback or Doom unless you know the obscure Marharan High Priest dialect, and knowing Divasti will let you at least attempt a save.

In a game where PCs stay in one place and form a deep home, this system doesn’t change too much at the table. Players should be able to use languages as a tool in their character’s arsenal to interact with the setting. In a campaign featuring long, Ibn Battuta or Frodo style journeys across the world ,this system can allow for conflict and conflict-resolving tools.

Dialects of my GLoG setting The Road (of Dead Buddhas)

Sacred Languages

• The Word
  • Language of The Brass Scriptures
  • Classical Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic
• Divasti
  • Language of Daevabad, dating back to the (now fallen) Marharan Empire (analogous to fantasy Persia)
  • Persian/Farsi [name borrowed from The City of Brass books]
• Annuvaran
  • Called the Eightfold Tongue, it’s the liturgical language of Annuvaran philosophy and the Thousand Thousand Gods of Agnivansha
  • Sanskrit [name borrowed from Gubat Banwa]
• Kuralic
  • Language of Heroes! Spread by the Pax Vachiritai left behind after the Topaz Khan’s conquests a generation prior.
  • There’s a secret cant called High Kuralic that’s available only to those who have slain a dragon.
  • Mongolian top-down script. We need more Mongolian fantasy!
• Canopic
  • Spread by the conquest of Sanakht the Eternal. Imagine if Alexander the Great was a fantasy Egyptian pharaoh instead of a Macedonian. Indo-Greek becomes Indo-Pharonic, etc.
  • Coptic, Greek, Pharonic Egyptian hieroglyphs

Dialects

Manalabadi (Word, Canopic)

Madain (Word, Canopic)

Seurish (Word, Divasti)

Khatyish (Divasti, Canopic)

Khorish (Anuvvaran, Divasti)

Gopuran (Word, Divasti, Annuvaran)

Dragon Pyramids of Taksh (Canopic + Kuralic)

Tashi (Kuralic, Divasti)

Galgaretsam (Kuralic, Annuvaran)

Khazbaatur (Kuralic + High Kuralic)

Here are ten possible permutations of the learnable Dialects that have at least two Scripts, so that players can have a bridge of common language with new peoples. This is the most basic draft of my Silk Road GLoG hack's language system, hoping to refine it to be simpler / more straightforward and to bring in more magic and whimsy to a system that assumes a historical Earth-inspired setting. 

Trade tongues and creoles are close in the pipeline too.

Thank you for reading. This is a revival of a blog draft from September 23'.
If I had the time, I would’ve written a shorter GLoG post.