Fix your OSR and Old D&D language rules.

The old D&D rules used the Intelligence score to indicate how many languages a character knows. Popular clones like Swords & Wizardry make Intelligence even more powerful in this respect. Basically, smart D&D characters know a lot of languages. The list of languages suggested typically includes not only the languages of player character races, like Elvish and Dwarvish, but also monster races like Goblin, Giant, and Dragon tongues.

None of this makes any sense, even remotely. Language acquisition has little to do with intelligence. It is true that some people with disabilities of various kinds, which perhaps could translate into D&D terms as a low INT score, may have a harder time learning languages, especially literacy. But the key to learning languages is not to be smart—unless you learn them all at a university—but to start young and to practice regularly. It shouldn’t really matter what your Intelligence score is. If you are exposed to a language early, or immersed in it for a long period, you will learn it. Did your rogue who speaks Dragonish grow up in a house full of chatty dragons? Probably not! Did your cleric who speaks Goblin have a hobgoblin nanny as a child? No, because your cleric is still alive. If you didn’t spend plenty of time with those creatures, you don’t speak their language.

Maybe, you say, your character learned only to read their language. You did not need dragons around for that. But that would require substantial schooling. When did you do that? Did your  character go to school to learn to read Dragon writing? And what did those monsters write, from which you could learn to read it? Where are the Dragonish novels and volumes of Bugbear poetry? Ah, you say, that’s the point: it’s easy to learn them because they are simple languages of simple-minded monsters? There is no Hill Giant literature, just graffiti scratched on rocks. In that case, why does it take a high INT score to learn these languages? Why doesn’t everybody pick up their primitive signs lists before they head into the Hills of the Giants?

In some D&D rules, thieves suddenly sprout the ability to “read normal languages,” even if they can’t speak those languages, as in Swords & Wizardry at third level. So, killing monsters and collecting treasure from dungeons teaches thieves (and nobody else) literacy in a variety of languages? What!?

Now, some of you may say that this is just a fantasy game so it’s not that important to be realistic. But think. Do you allow experienced heroes to fall a hundred feet onto solid stone and walk away without a broken bone, brushing the dust off their shoulders? Or do you allow player characters to haul ten thousand gold coins around without slowing their pace? Oh, wait, if you play D&D, you probably do that, too…! Okay, let’s try this: Do you allow normal swords to spray flowers and fighters to sprout wings at will? That’s how “realistic” these language rules are, when your smart level-one Paladin can make conversation with Elves, Dwarves, and Trolls, all in their own languages—unless he grew up in a town populated by Elves, Dwarves, and Trolls. But the average-intelligence characters who grew up in the same town can’t speak any of those languages!

Languages known should be a function of character background, not Intelligence. This can be turned into a random background table, if you want, but whatever you do, the languages a character knows should be a major factor in designing background stories for your characters. Every language known points to some substantial life experience and contact with a different kind of people or creature.

If you ditch the rule on INT and languages, there are many interesting things you can do instead. A character who lived on a frontier with a humanoid population, where interaction with those others was common, may have learned some of that non-human language. This can be a really fun background feature. Adopt this as something unusual and you have an interesting, and rare, character trait. “Borg was kidnapped by kobolds once. That’s how he can understand their chattering! But he sure has the scars to show for it.” “Where Jimli the Dwarf grew up, the goblins and dwarves had a truce for a while. That’s how he learned to talk to those green creatures.”

Likewise, being half-elf or half-orc or half-whatever becomes meaningful, when those half-breeds speak both parents’ languages. They are now truly intermediaries between their two heritages, and it matters. Only such characters should have those multilingual capabilities, unless there are interesting background stories.

The other front requiring work is in the variety of human (and non-human) languages. There is the weird idea that every intelligent species has just one language. Why do all Goblins and Hobgoblins, etc., speak the same language: the Goblin tongue? If there are goblins all over the Known World, why don’t they have different languages as humans do? Tolkien, who was a philologist, got this one right when he wrote that orcs had lots of mutually unintelligible languages, even more so than humans. If your character can speak Goblin, can she speak with all goblins in every country and on every island?

And then there’s the Common Tongue. As convenient as it is for DMs to allow one language to have universal currency, there is no such thing. Yes, there are lingua francas in the world. But the point of a lingua franca is that most people use it as a second language. Often, speakers of a lingua franca can’t express themselves fully in it. They use it only for essential communication.

In my games, there is no such thing as a generic Common Tongue. The region in which the game begins has a tongue that is common there, and I sketch out the foreign tongues that one may be likely to hear and learn in this region. These are all other human languages. As the game develops, the possibility of going to foreign countries comes up, and that creates an exciting new experience for players. Non-human languages are not an issue because I discourage non-human player characters to begin with. If the non-humans are there, they naturally become go-betweens and representatives of their different non-human cultures. Being non-human then has more meaning in the group.

Along these lines, there is a huge improvement if we flip from old-school D&D rules forward to the 5e games of today. In 5e, characters know languages according to their background. Perfect. And the Common Tongue in 5e is a concession to the need to have characters of different races in communication with each other. As many qualms as I have about the core mechanics of D&D, which continue in 5e, this is one of many examples in which OSR is not superior because it’s fresh and simple and original. It’s an area in which OSR is just primitive and undeveloped and not well thought-out, plain and simple. Original here means undeveloped.

How much more exciting a game can be in which the player characters encounter foreigners with whom communication is difficult! The need to find a trustworthy interpreter can lead to all kinds of adventure possibilities. If player characters spend a long time in a vicinity and interact with the locals, they can pick up some ability with a new language. Again, languages known becomes a feature of the character’s story. It makes a character interesting.

A little thought about languages in your game can open some fun possibilities for character development and setting design. Try it!