Languages
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I find it very surprising that people would have a problem with the language cipher. I for one always thought it was a very cool idea…the feel of a couple of elves talking in elven to one another would suddenly have a much greater impact. Knowing unusual languages would suddenly make so much more of an impact on your character, and would make roleplaying with other races much more rewarding as it adds to the feel of the differences between the races (one of my favourite aspects of the Forgotten Realms setting). Its not that I'm obsessed with realism, I just love the fantasy setting and this would add to that atmosphere greatly.
If the technical barrier of implementing such a system is no longer an issue (the spamming the DM channel thing), then I would be very eager to get it ingame.
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We are more than the sum of our skill points.
We share a common love of the world, not just our own artificial egos. As a player, not as Rico the Knight of Sune, or Ethan the Storyteller, or any of my others, I would resent such a barrier (which is not the same as resenting the players who prefer the realism; I do not). We make allowances and capitulations in the name of the narrative all the time, and compartmentalize data which our other egos are incapable of having. I don't need a memory wipe to keep information from one character spilling over to the other, and I don't need a script widget to keep me from reading things my character doesn't understand.
I don't mean to sound harsh on the subject, but those are my feelings in a nutshell.
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Having an on/off language switch in the inventory would be problematic for me because my PC often switches between languages mid sentence.
Doing it the other way where it garbles text that is tagged as a different language works fine for me though.
Another aspect that this could affect is the roleplay of learning languages. It's difficult for a player to roleplay a partial understanding of a language if all they see of the language is garbled text.
I wouldn't mind it though. I think it's more fun not understanding.
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There are diferent versions, but that's pretty much it, Benji.
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How does a system like this work?
Do you get a useable item in your inventory that you 'turn on' when you're speaking the different language?
Does it filter tagged text (<g>, <e>, etc) that you read based on whether or not you have the token in inventory?</e></g>
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I find a few posts borderline insulting, let's try to keep it civil, please. Trying to make others seem inferior because of their opinion about what is fun and what is not leads nowhere.
To reiterate myself: Language token, yes - when there's Tongues spell. It's only fair.
And even then you risk 100% of the Narfell population having the elven token for no reason at all - just because annoying elves for life just costs at worst 2 points in Craft Armor - most cases it's just free through Int score.
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The Narfell playerbase never ceases to amaze me. I can't believe how outspokenly against language tokens/ciphers some people are.
If your character doesn't know and understand the language anyways, what is the big deal if you can't read it? Do you not want to lose the ability to "subconsciously" metagame? That's what it sounds like to me. I for one love this idea and have always wanted to see it implemented in Narfell. I completely agree with Zyphlin's points. I think it would only enhance roleplaying situations between GOOD roleplayers. Saying you are going to just log off sounds pouty and whiny if you ask me. Roll with it, RP it! It's what you're here for, am I right?
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One doesn't log out now when they see 'garbled' speech because it doesn't happen very often. But if those 'uber geek's as Zyph put it were the majority, and you very frequently saw that (and thus, did not see what they were saying), one would become fairly irritated and annoyed. But I've played Tales of the Silver Marches, and from experience, I do not like language garbling tokens.
Yes, we DO go to 'place x' where others are complaining about the people who are unable to understand the garble go, but we end up *****ing and moaning about 'those damn Elves,' and alienating people spectacularly.
You think the fact that everybody and their mother in Narfell ICly knows Elven is odd? Wait for language garbling tokens. The whole family tree will have a token for Elven.
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As I said myself, I'll be fine with language tokens. Just give us Tongues spell too, it's only fair. The result will be that you'll have people feeling even less exclussive as they do now about their languages. Because you can bet I'll personally cast "Tongues" around anything I don't remotely understand, while right now I just play nice and pretend I actually can't understand it, and RP it that way.
You can't want to have langauge tokens, but not give people their rightful ways to counter them.
Specially as some people mention, text based communicating in foreign languages doesn't portray in any way real communication due to gesturing, tones of voice and many other circumstances. People can type out of the gibberish text how their characters are acting, but that's as prone to metagaming as it is not having the tokens in the first place(dwarf might choose to not make visible gestures so others don't suspect what he's doing/talking about), so I don't see anything gained in that aspect. If people don't trust possible metagaming listeners, I don't trust possible metagaming speakers.
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One way to fix that would be to ungarble anything between braces, parenthesis or brackets.
Gol darrin sool! sly look Kin a nar varkalen…. wink
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When someone is speaking a different language, you can often tell what they are on about through their inflexion and tone.
Communication in NWN is largely through text. To gauge the nature of how words would be pronounced we have to rely on the words themselves, combined with emotes and punctuation.Using language tokens leaves you with just punctuation and emotes. I hate to hark on but a lot of people's use of punctuation can be pretty suspect (including mine) at the best of times, and emoting the tone of your speech would mean switching the token off and on again.
This means that someone might be shouting at you in Elven or even asking a question, and you would have no idea. In real life, you can draw a lot of information from the way that things are said without knowing the language. In NWN you cannot do this as our communication in the game is so heavily dependant on text. To take away word content would disable someone's ability to really appreciate how characters are communicating.
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I have to chuckle a bit about people saying they’d log out, because when it actually occurred, no one did. Just the opposite really.
I had an entire prayer sequence in Uthgardt for Maya. She would sit in prayer by the monument to the fallen soldiers near where the Hoarans are now, and pray.
“Vaa si kar, naerva annis, var Tempus….”
And so on. I made it all up. No one could possibly understand it in real life.
You know what? When the Nars was busy back then, she often gathered a crowd. People would actually stop by, listen, and wait for her to finish.
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However you're viewing it only one way. Could it not instead create interesting RP in and of itself?
Right now people rarely seem annoyed with various races talking non-stop in their racial tongue because OOCly we can still read and understand so its not like there's dead silence even though ICLy there would be.
With the garble, would you log out? Why? Because you don't want to RP anymore? Or would you act IC concerning two people that are just yapping away in an ununderstandable language in a common public place while completely ignoring you?
Or perhaps you RP your curiosity to the strange or beautiful or harsh sounding language, leading them to take notice to you and change the conversation or emote their action and body language more so you can pick up from that.
Or perhaps you start speaking in a language you don't think they know, proving a poitn as you attempt to make them look at you as if you're rude talking to yourself in a way they can't understand.
Perhaps you turn around and look for someone else, or perhaps you talk to the one other person at the fire ignoring or even complaining about those yacking away in an unfamiliar tongue.
I understand a bit of the frustration and such with not being able to read it and seeing garble, but I think some are so steadfastly against it that they won't stop a moment and think "If I wasn't opposed to this or unopposed, if I just ran into it, what would I do?"
For example, what if you had two people who were UBER geeky and actually KNEW elven (or hell, was using Klingon as Orcish
) and was speaking it in game. Would you just log out upon seeing it or would your character interact with that strangeness?To me, I like the notion, because rather than helping me OOCly by giving me something to read it helps me ICly by giving me a more accurate situation to react and RP against in more interesting ways imho.
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As Rith said earlier, I think I'd rather just log out if I came to the gate and saw two Elves speaking in Elven, and could hear only garbles. Considering how OFTEN this is the case, I'd be against language tokens with garbling. I know it helps with subconscious metagaming (believe me, I avoid that like a plague), but most people would say that speaking aloud, even if it's in an obscure tongue, is not a reliable method of concealing your message. Assume anyone can understand you anyway.
I like to read the conversations too, if only oocly, though for the most part, my character will understand because the language in question is Elven and Havon is an Elf.
I'm too tired to go on, but I'll just reiterate that I'm wholly against garbling.
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@58e3ef2443:
Don't forget that you can "spend" skill ranks on speak language by leaving them unspent in character generation and levelling (and that Speak Language is a cross-class skill always except for bards and requires two points [one for bards]). Also don't forgot that in most cases you know a regional language, a racial language (if non-human) and common, not to mention bonus languages from intelligence. You can generally assume, at character generation, that you have the means to learn any language listed here. However be reasonable. Don't assume that your barbarian who grew up in the wild with animals can know Seldruin, the ancient high magic tongue. When learning new languages after levelling up, you need a teacher, except for the dead languages; to learn these, you will need a lot of history books and most likely a far more learned scholar at your disposal. Under no means are you forced to use this system. You can spend your whole time on Narf speaking common if you wish, and many will. If, however, you have an eye for the fine details and enjoy such things, I feel this a comprehensive guide to languages in Narfell and Faerun.
Knowing and using languages other than common is optional. I don't think languages are a big enough deal that they need to be rigorously checked. If a DM sees some 8 intelligence Barbarian talking in abyssal, they're probably going to get told that they can't possibly know this language.
I notice for the most part people follow these rules, and, I don't think you'll get slammed for accidentally using sign language for four years anyway.
Regarding Thieves Cant, my PC Daveth knows this and I have spent the point on it from creation. People should, and hopefully will spend the point on it. Rogue is a very wide open class and it wouldn't make sense RP wise for all rogue classed people to suddenly know Thieves Cant (especially most fighter/rogue barbarian/rogue combos).
As for the language token system, I care not either way. It'd be neat, but I don't see it as being essential at all. I often have a lot of fun reading conversations even if I can't take part. Not being able to read what people are saying at all is, well, just kind of annoying and they may as well just be whispering to each other. Though I'd certainly be willing to give it a try, it'd be interesting to see what happens. Though I do wonder the same things as Fraoch.
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I'm not sure that knowledge of languages would be checked rigorously enough before tokens got dropped. I'm not aware of anyone been challenged on whether they've actually paid for one.
Case in point, I've been using sign for 4 years having apparently not paid enough for it. No-one's ever asked me how it was learned or whether I'd paid. I used to advocate recording languages known - on the forums, and where they can't just be changed on the fly.
Someone who has rp'd knowing a particular language for however long suddenly learns that they actually never knew it because it isn't an automagically gained language (thieves cant eg) - how does that get dealt with? I've also had people say that their pc knows a language because x dm said so because of y event.
Do they get a forced rebuild (taking an absolute age for the dms to check all skills and feats are otherwise unchanged) or will they end up just getting a token dropped. In which case we're left with a situation where people have illegal languages which have been legitimised.
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Compressed both posts into one. If a DM wants to delete this one feel free.
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If those language tokens happen, I'd like Tongues spell implemented ingame simultaneously. I know Rith at least will always have it prepared.
Here's a couple of PnP spells related to languages that would make sense to implement if there's dev time being put into making languages more realistic:
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Could we use something like Craft Weapon as a generic skill dump?
If so, I wonder if you could automate the process somehow with an NPC that would give you your choice of language tokens based on your intelligence modifier and your race. You can then buy a new token for every 2 points you have in craft weapon (or in the case of bards every 1 point). It would simply check how many tokens you have and compare it to what your total number possible is (race + int mod + points in craft weapon) and if the number of tokens is less you can buy more.
You could even allow DM dropped tokens to be done by doing something like [elven] for normal and [granted, elven] for DM dropped and just have the above NPC check for ones without the granted. That way if say, a Celestial bestows upon a PC the knowledge of its language for a period of time they can speak it without the need to spend skill points.
I imagine you'd see a clamor before long for the ability to cast "tongues" and "Comprehend languages" if something like this happened though. I wonder if you can script a way to give or take away items based on a duraction of time. Since we don't have .hak spells, perhaps if push came to shove you could give classes that could theoritically cast those spells a 1/day item that casts it which would drop an "all languages" token on them which would work with any of the <language>markers they'd type and have it last for a short static period of time before it removes the token. Wouldn't be perfect, but would at least be something to represent that there is magic out there that can make people understand you.
Sorry, now I'm just musing.</language>
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@4542acc04c=Zyphlin:
I absolutely loved the language tokens on another server. It enhanced the RP of situations, both in the possible "rudeness" of speaking in a foriegn tongue in the middle of a large group of other people as well as the benefits of knowing something others don't.
While I've never known a huge amount of metagaming to come about due to the <e>or whatever other language symbol, it does play into the thing I used to talk about often which was subconsious metagaming. Its something every player does, even the best, because its simply whats goes on in my mind. If OOCly you know the big main villian is actually the friendly farmer down the road and his sons are actually the assassins out to get you, then even if you're trying really hard not to metagame various things that previously may've gone unnoticed to you now suddenly may seem more devious in your mind not on purpose but simply due to it now subconsiously being more hyper aware of certain things. This could work backwards as well, with you konwing something making you shy away from a clue you find because you're afraid you only thought it a clue due to your OOC knowledge (when in reality you would've realized it anyways).
I think in general if something can help alieviate a bit of the potential for such subconsious metagaming to occur and can have a net positive effect on the game (which personally I think the garble would) I think its worth while to do if it wouldn't hurt the server stability</e>
I think it might also help to avoid the situation where 2 [dwarves/elves/hins] are speaking dwarven/elf/furryfoot and the 18 year old human girl walks up and says [d/e/h] "I speak dwarven/elf/furryfoot too!"
Its always been annoying to me–and I think that using a system like this would at least require people to "prove" that they actually can.
Would there be an opportunity to test this?
