Speak Languages spell?

[PhilHibbs]

40 minutes ago, styopa said:

...I could CERTAINLY understand that someone has Tradetalk skill X and with the spending of a MP could have a chance of making themselves understood to another.  That would be completely logical.  Then, too, you offer the person with Tradetalk a limited utility because it doesn't grant them necessarily the ability to understand what's said BACK.  Just one-way, which is useful enough in "DONT KILL ME" situations, and could even provide limited trade capabilities in "if you give me that cow, I will sell you this bow in trade".

It would be funny if it HAD to include some form of trade, and that part of the grammar of Tradetalk is that every statement is a trade offer.

[styopa]

31 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

It would be funny if it HAD to include some form of trade, and that part of the grammar of Tradetalk is that every statement is a trade offer.

Oh, I like that idea *very* much.

[Tindalos]

On 29 July 2018 at 11:47 AM, soltakss said:

As for a spell that allows anyone to be understood by anyone, sure, it is possible to make up such a spell. As to who would have it, I am not sure. A Communication Deity, maybe Herald, maybe someone new.

Probably Herald's mother, Therelma.

She's a daughter of Lhankor Mhy known as Mother Language. The Theyalan languages are sometimes called Therelmic in her honour.

 

[simonh]

16 hours ago, styopa said:

But if it's a conscious, intentionally executed magical act, then shouldn't there be an MP cost?  

I'm not at all worried about that. Game mechanics don't capture everything, for example that question wouldn't make any sense in HeroQuest and yet both HQ and RuneQuest both attempt to simulate the same world. Maybe language use costs magical energy at an extremely low level - hundredths of an MP. Maybe it uses a different form of magical energy not tracked by the game system. Unless we actually want to make a game out of language and communication in the same way that we do combat, it doesn't really matter.

Edited July 31, 2018 by simonh

[David Scott]

On 7/25/2018 at 1:02 PM, Psullie said:

looking through RQG and older editions for a speak other language spell. It is something I'd expect from Goldentongue cult but can't find one. Simple spell to allow two people to communicate without a common language? Gloranthan babelfish perhaps?

Stepping back to look at the bigger picture, having a universal translator doesn’t seem to fit the background of Glorantha for me. Looking at the latest language tree RQG page 172, the languages described all root back to an elemental source, there’s no universal root. If there was a candidate for magic, I suspect sorcery that incorporates the two source runes of the language and combines them. 

However large parts of my games are based on failed language rolls, I use language rolls all the time in my games. All the players in my game are scrabbling to get their tradetalk up. Even the issaries guy has fumbled his tradetalk roll.

As for tradetalk being magical, I suspect using it is a form of worship of issaries, it’s use in the world is an embodiment of part of the god - likely his voice.

[PhilHibbs]

There's the Translate spell that works on written languages, so you can always find someone who can write the local language, and use the spell on what they write. Given that written language can be translated, I can see a justification for allowing spoken as well. I'm not actually a big fan of the Translate spell though. It solves too many problems for my liking, and could lead to entire scenarios that can be trivially bypassed because the GM forgot that the spell existed. I guess that it's no worse than forgetting that Flight is available.

*Edit* Ah, I see this spell has already been mentioned.

Edited July 31, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[soltakss]

On 7/30/2018 at 4:40 PM, styopa said:

It's an interesting viewpoint on language, though.  Is that your interpretation or did I miss something (admittedly, I had nothing to do with Heroquest, and it seems a lot of the magical structure underpinning Glorantha was evolved there)?

It's more a case of devolution of language.

The first Elemental languages (Darkspeech, Seaspeech, Earthspeech, Firespeech and Stormspeech) were partly magical in nature, as was Draconic, or Old Wyrmish. As other languages sprang from them, they became more mundane and less magical. So, Theyalan came from Stormspeech and then devolved further into Heortling and then further into things like Sartarite, each becoming more mundane and less magical. Earthspeech and Stormspeech sort of combined to make various Theyelan dialects, again each less magical than their parents. Firespeech became Dara Happan, which then combined with some heortling language to become the language of Sun County.

New Pelorian seems to be an attempt to retrofit Pelorian into the Lunar Way, by adding "lost" magical parts to recreate a non-existent parent language.