Delving Wolf

This week's post is directly inspired by  this post  from Prismatic Wasteland, one of the best TTRPG blogs I know. Go give it a read, it's worth it. In short, that post wonders why D&D (and most TTRPGs derived from it) have a "Common tongue" that everyone seems to know - even though in 1974's OD&D non-human NPCs only had a 20% chance of knowing Common, but let's not nitpick - and most non-human species have their own language, shared between all members, no matter how far in the world (or multiverse, in some cases) they are spread, when that was not usually the case in the real world's Middle Age, which D&D is obviously inspired by. It then gives 3 possible solutions for this discrepancy: Ignoring it altogether, to avoid adding complications to the game, but they don't like this solution and neither do I;  Gamifying it, making it so that PCs don't start with a list of known languages, but every time they encounter a new one an...

A few days ago I was watching this video about alignment languages and ways to make them more interesting ingame (and also how Gygax actually intended them when he created them). I found it interesting that these were never supposed to be actual languages, but rather a way to give other classes what Thieves got in Thieves' Cant; not a full-blown language, but a bunch of signs and gestures used to subtly convey a message. Therefore, lawful creatures would be able to make subtle signs that only other lawful creatures could decipher, but chaotic creatures would be able to spot those signs and become immediately aggressive. A little bit too convoluted for my tastes. The video author, though, has an interesting idea: maybe each organized religion and follower of a specific deity has their own "language", which they can use to recognize each other while in the wilderness. This is an interesting idea, and a cleric could start with such a knowledge and immediately become a more ...