[Fairy Tale OD&D] It's Pretty Awesome When Everything Speaks "English"

Certainly the classic D&D language minigame is a nice bit of resource managment ("Who speaks sphinx, c'mon someone?"), but for my Lyonesse-inspired OD&D game I went whole hog with "pretty much everyone speaks the same language" and is usually pretty chatty. Foreigners, Dwarves, Goblins, Giants, even Zombies ("Oy! I'm already dead mate, no point in threatenin' me!") and Chimerae.

It ties in with delight in Jack Vance's eloquent monsters ("Please quit struggling and lie down peacably so I can enjoy eating you sir...") and it also comepletely removes the character generation speed bump of languages spoken, which I've been pretty much mashing through and ignoring for years now.

The one phenomenon I've noticed with this is that sometimes a player will continue to attempt negociating with or browbeating a monster after hostilities have commenced ("Stop! Stop!","There's no talking me outta eating your man-flesh, arrgh!"), which is pretty hilarious.

The session before last a PC was transformed into a toad by hag; although a traditional interpretation of such a transformation would involve him being only able to ribbit and croak, I got my head out my ass and ruled that the toaded PC was indeed capable of speech. Unsurprisingly, much hilarity ensued and the player was able to participate in the following events, so it worked out pretty much perfectly. Plus the player attempted talking like a toad, which was a real laff riot as well.

I also quite enjoy having counterintuitively chatty monsters such as zombies and chimerae, which certainly ramps up the absurdity and the fairy tale vibes, although I haven't gone completely off the deep end and had ordinary animals speaking, now that would be just too wacky for this particular game.

Languages - Planet Algol Common

Algol Common - A synthetic language created by one of the civilizations of the Ancients.

Algol Common is responsible for the "Ur-Language" hypothesis espoused by some Earth Men scholars. Algol Common was engineered for the human brain, and has "linguistic virus" properties with true humans such as Earth Men and Algol Men. This allows such true humans to learn Algol Common rapidly when immersed in an environment of it's speakers or when someone is teaching it to the subject in a period ranging from hours to weeks depending on the subject's intelligence; but usually taking a week for one of average intelligence.

Algol Common can be learned and spoken by nonhuman and semi-human beings, but in such cases it takes half of the normal period of time to learn; Algol Common was designed to be easily learned but was engineered for true human brains. Many nonhuman species, especially inhuman individuals or those possessing limited intellects, are only able to capable of using simple words and concepts when communicating in Algol Common, and such creatures prefer using their own languages.

Algol Common is spoken almost universally by Algol Men, aside from pocket exceptions of extremely isolated or isolationist societies, and many nonhumans know it as well, making it the language of trade and diplomacy planet wide. Although one of the races of the Ancients created Algol Common, it does not seem to have been widely used by the civilizations of the Ancients, although exceptions are found. However, there are assorted specialized and secret languages utilized by Algol Men as well.