Language Lore

The worlds have many languages and scripts that a character can learn. Learning and improving them is comparable to any other skill a character might choose. The TSC% is a measure of a character’s ability in using the language.

Learning Languages: A character must have a teacher or a book to learn a new language.

Fluency: Measures how well a character understands others or how well he can make himself understood in a given tongue. There are some guidelines on Language fluency in the table below.

Use the crit die result to gauge the degree of clarity of speech in trying to be understood by those native to the tongue being spoken. The higher success crit die, the better the understanding of the communication. The lower failure crit die the greater the misunderstanding. The result of this is increasingly more important with the lower fluency PSF%. For instance a crit die of 06 on a failure to communication is far less severe for a character with a 75 PSF% than one with 32 PSF%. At 75 PSF% a character is fluent, while he might make mistakes, the general nature of the conversation will be reasonably clear. At a 32 PSF% the mistakes are more likely to be serious either offensive or garbled. However a success with a crit die 10 always allows the meaning to be conveyed with clarity and no misunderstanding. Failure with a crit die of 01 always has the meaning misunderstood with complications arising.

Reading and Writing: The lower a character’s INT the harder it will be for him to read and write. In C&S it is assumed that they have come by the opportunity to learn to read and write their own tongue. However, if you wish a more historical game, such opportunities were incredibly rare and the might require some lengths in order to reading and writing skills. It should always be remembered that for game purposes you must have minimal fluency in a language before you can start to learn to read and write it.

Speaking and reading and writing a language are considered separate skills. Literate characters should record a separate TSC% for their ability to read/ write and speak a language. Table Language Read Write Modifiers shows the DF which can be used when learning to read/write a language that one has marginal fluency in. The DF cannot be greater than DF 7 or less than DF 1