Language in role-playing games

In the real world, language connects us, and yet keeps us apart. It does the same for characters in role-playing games. But the participants, the players and the gamemaster, usually speak the same language. What can in-game language do for you?

It can frustrate. If you use the rules as written for most versions of Dungeons & Dragons, the party's player characters won't be able to communicate with most fantastical creatures. If the default engagement you're expecting from your players with any sufficiently different entity is hack and slash, with some sneaking and running away when appropriate, then maybe that's just fine. But you could also harness this frustration into a challenge for both you and your players. If the NPCs can't speak to PCs, you have to express their physical reactions, which can help immerse both you and the players in the imaginary world. The players, in turn, have to come up with novel ways of overcoming the language barrier, adding non-verbal detail to their characters.

This can go beyond the possibility of occasionally parleying in a random encounter. Generally, it can be difficult to explain why the party of PCs has to swoop in and solve a problem that several existing, well developed societies cannot resolve; however, if two factions are separated by a language barrier, that only the party can bridge, this immediately creates a credible rationale. This happened early in the campaign I'm currently running: one PC spoke one faction's language, while another PC shared a language with one bilingual member of the second faction, leading to a big game of telephone, which in turn was a good way to add subterfuge, so that the players felt involved and hoodwinked at the same time. Paradoxically, this also cemented ties of friendship and trust that are holding the campaign together to this day.

Even when the party is not necessary for translation, multiple factions attempting to work together without sharing a common language makes any attempt at coordination an elaborate affair, potentially public, with serial translation as representatives speak. It's not necessary for you as the GM to repeat the same thing several times, but this process is a good place to have specific NPCs react to specific items of data as they are brought up in their language, and any PC who can understand more than one of the languages spoken has a distinct advantage in that regard. Again, this came up multiple times in my campaign.

Moving forward, the frustration that comes from having limited direct communication can result in a unique form of character growth. A player can try to use the time their character has spent with a society in order to have it learn the language. A system like RuneQuest allows that to happen directly; you can fudge with Dungeons & Dragons to get a similar result, especially if, like me, you dispensed with racial languages to the point where a character had a few extra "language slots" that have remained unused.

So language adds possibilities and interesting challenges, enables novel types of adventures, and can even guide you in directions to advance your character. So have at it!