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Devil's Advocate
 
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I'm trying to come up with a decent way to physrep speaking foreign languages without a)having to get the players to speak fluent foreign or b)doing that "hand over your head - i'm speaking russian" thing.
A side note to this is written languages, but that's easier to do. Foreign language IC docs with an OOC translation attached for people with the skill would do it i think??
If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing.
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Prodigal
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The only way I have seen that I have liked is the 'Voice of the Seraph' method: pick a 'characteristic phrase' for each language, and when you swap to that language (and every now and again if new people seem to be showing up and listening) say it. (For instance, they had "I say!" for English, "Achtung!" for German.) Comedy accents also help denote 'I am speaking vaguely this kind of foreign', with the occasional phrases confirming people's guess.
On the other hand, that method might not be quite so useful for a deadly serious game, rather than a pulp-based one. CUTT operate the 'put your finger over your mouth if you're not speaking Common, occasionally tell people in an OOC aside what you're speaking if they look interested' method, which doesn't work very well (eavesdroppers may not realise what langauge it is, putting your finger over your lips is kind of awkward if you have ambi-daggers and want to say something just before you slaughter someone violently (and would hence like to be in position to start slaughtering immediately), having to drop completely OOC for the asides is suboptimal) but we couldn't think of anything better which was actually feasible to implement.
Maelstrom: Jessily the Wemic, previously Tourmaline of Weaver
CUTT: Kerriville the Ninth, previously Ref 07/08
EOS: Study the Venin
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Wag
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| Its a difficult one for many reasons. One way, obviously, is to make it a hard skill and expect the players to learn another language (whether real world or made up) but the effort involved would be massive for little in game benefit that I can see. I have, however, known players make up languages in game between themselves. For example, the Oonym in Waypoint made up a language of clicks and whistles (like whale song). Though most of it seemed to be based on inflection rather than actual vocabulary. So, the tone of voice was enough to tell those watching (and the person being communicated to) that the speaker was angry but nothing more specific than that. As you say, written is easier - especially if you have a translation on hand.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Ruins of Empire 1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester
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Wag
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I think the two ways (I've heard of) doing it well have just been covered - either you have a tongue-in-cheek game with "I say!" phrases or you use hard skills (nothing physreps a foreign language as well as a foreign language - I hear good things about Belgian events where people play races depends on where they come from - I think Brits are Orcs - if you speak a little French, then your character speaks a little Elvish).
Short of that, I don't think you can work languages in. However, I did play (one event!) in a group with a dialect so strong it sounded like a different language (the Kakakalin Anaxa from the latter days of Omega), based on simple synonym substitution and a reduced alphabet. Took about half the event to get the hang of it, but when it kicked in it was hard to stop and you got the advantage of being able to speak to others of your group without other people understanding easily, while at the same time actually speaking a language that people could pick up reasonably quickly (it being largely just highly accented English with a few extra words thrown in).
If you're not going to go for any of those options, then don't have foreign languages in your game. If you can't physrep something, don't put it in your game. It's perfectly possible to have only one language, but lots of interesting dialects and secret written cipher languages and that's all implementable.
Marios
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Apprentice
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| Whilst playing a group of Woodland Indian characters at a CP event we just spoke a load of made up nonsense to each other whenever anyone outside of our group was around. With pointing and hand gestures it was reasonably effective. We also had a couple of the group that could speak 'common English' and so acted as our translators. Now I'm not sure how applicable this is across a whole system as we had to pretend not to understand English but it worked fairly well and made things a lot more interesting/fun for us. Also, I seem to recall from my distant youth that whilst at school several groups of the girls spoke in one of those playground languages where you add in additional syllables at specific points of the words. Don't know if you could use something like that but again people would have to learn it... Si
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Wag
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| Sarah here I've never seen this work, so if you manage it do tell us how! How about 'Allo 'Allo style accents? Trouble is it will a-be a bit comedy, and b-will slip under pressure.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Ruins of Empire 1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester
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Heroic Knight
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What about a lot of slang words for commonly used words? I remember hearing conversations between people who had played a lot of Planescape and you couldn't understand what they were going on about.
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"Stick around!"
-Governor of California throwing a hunting knife into a man's chest
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I do talk a good fight
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Marios (7/20/2006)
However, I did play (one event!) in a group with a dialect so strong it sounded like a different language (the Kakakalin Anaxa from the latter days of Omega), based on simple synonym substitution and a reduced alphabet. Took about half the event to get the hang of it, but when it kicked in it was hard to stop and you got the advantage of being able to speak to others of your group without other people understanding easily, while at the same time actually speaking a language that people could pick up reasonably quickly (it being largely just highly accented English with a few extra words thrown in).
We did something similar with the Gaan family of minotaurs at Omega, with the High Gaan language, which often seemed largely to consist of variations on the word "BATHPAP," but which in fact was mostly comprehensible to other Gaan. We also had a "Low Gaan" language (phys repped by speaking RP English) that we could drop into for the benefit of the ignorant who didn't comprehend High Gaan, though we would usually make them sweat for five minutes conversing among ourselves in High Gaan first.
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