Quote from: beeber;563373thought the whole concept ridiculous and never used them.

Right up there with level titles in terms of being totally useless.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;563359I always thought that was fairly cut and dried myself.

It's not a conversational language, it's a series of body cues, gestures, obscure phrases, etc. to establish who or what ones ethos are.  It's like the masonic handshake or what-have-you.

Or any of several dozen jargons.  You can extend a few phrases and ideas to general conversation, but talking about car repair or gardening using computer jargon would be exceptionally difficult, and relies on the other person having the same understanding of a particular analogy.  And vice versa, of course; planting cycles or weeding tools make computer repair difficult, at best.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;563388For example I made a game that just had  heaven, hell and earth. The races were also culturally and  linguistically fragmented. So you might have one area where elves would  speak the same language as ogres or halflings and humans tended to share  a cluster of languages. On top of that, the much more limited  cosmologyy introduced all kinds of issues (especially in the 3E system,  which is what I was using at the time).

This is more of a useable concept, in my opinion.  For example, Dwarves  living in France would possibly know 'Dwarven', but they would speak  French on a daily basis, and would probably end up with some kind of  pidgin or creole when dealing with other Dwarves in different parts of  France.  It would reasonably depend more on the dominant society or culture of an area.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;563388For example I made a game that just had heaven, hell and earth. The races were also culturally and linguistically fragmented. So you might have one area where elves would speak the same language as ogres or halflings and humans tended to share a cluster of languages. On top of that, the much more limited cosmologyy introduced all kinds of issues (especially in the 3E system, which is what I was using at the time).

This is more of a useable concept, in my opinion.  For example, Dwarves living in France would possibly know 'Dwarven', but they would speak French on a daily basis, and would probably end up with some kind of pidgin or creole when dealing with other Dwarves in different parts of France.

Quote from: Elfdart;563412Right up there with level titles in terms of being totally useless.

My favorite level title was for a Samarai.

One of the level titles was 'Ninja'



Grand Master of Flowers was a great one too.

I always thought it was something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXSLcYQHqFQ&feature=related

Never had a problem with them. After Call of Cthulhu or In Nomine or any other similar game, it was a very clear concept for me. It's like speaking any occult knowledge openly, but would be instantly recognizable to those in the know. Several intelligent but racially different creatures of similar alignment mutually understanding their alignment's ethos and symbols isn't far fetched to me. Sorta like humans of different cultures might have similar understandings of "the Light" or "the Sun" or "the Great Fire" or "the Bringer of Dawn", they all realize they roughly follow a similar belief system.

And why would thieves know any? Because sneaking into organizations and collecting information is sorta what they do. If you're wandering around various cultists to steal artifacts, you better know a few right words or you'll be dead. Again, I don't see what's so hard about this, especially in the light of CoC and other RPGs. If you don't like alignment as a tool to structure your setting, fine, but I found it a useful tool.

Quote from: Opaopajr;563480Never had a problem with them. After Call of Cthulhu or In Nomine or any other similar game, it was a very clear concept for me. It's like speaking any occult knowledge openly, but would be instantly recognizable to those in the know. Several intelligent but racially different creatures of similar alignment mutually understanding their alignment's ethos and symbols isn't far fetched to me. Sorta like humans of different cultures might have similar understandings of "the Light" or "the Sun" or "the Great Fire" or "the Bringer of Dawn", they all realize they roughly follow a similar belief system.

And why would thieves know any? Because sneaking into organizations and collecting information is sorta what they do. If you're wandering around various cultists to steal artifacts, you better know a few right words or you'll be dead. Again, I don't see what's so hard about this, especially in the light of CoC and other RPGs. If you don't like alignment as a tool to structure your setting, fine, but I found it a useful tool.

Eh?
So a chaotic good barbarian from the Stepps can communicate with a Chaotic good elf from France because of some quixotic sign language ? which can be learnt but you don't need to learn it if you are of the same belief system?

By all means have a cult language that followers of Sithag the Cruel know or just except that the whole idea is daft and roll with it but speaking as a lapsed anthropologist who specialised in ritual processes don't try to justify it with anything approaching a real world analogy

Quote from: Opaopajr;563480And why would thieves know any? Because sneaking into organizations and collecting information is sorta what they do. If you're wandering around various cultists to steal artifacts, you better know a few right words or you'll be dead. Again, I don't see what's so hard about this, especially in the light of CoC and other RPGs. If you don't like alignment as a tool to structure your setting, fine, but I found it a useful tool.

Like a complex set of shibboleths.  Very nice.

What can exist are things like "religious language", and I'm not talking about things like Sanskrit or Latin, but rather, that religious affiliations tend to use certain jargon and speak in certain ways that allow them to recognize their own, and that outsiders cannot easily grasp (to the extent that it can constitute a test of whether a person is what they claim to be, even).

Two evangelical christians will be able to use certain keywords or catchphrases with each other, for example.  

And its not just christians by any means; western buddhists are stupidly terrible about this; they'll use words like "equanimity" or "skillful means" or talk about having a "sit"; fashionable buddhists have created a whole language of jargon to show off how hiply buddhist they are.

RPGPundit

Quote from: jibbajibba;563498Eh?
So a chaotic good barbarian from the Stepps can communicate with a Chaotic good elf from France because of some quixotic sign language ? which can be learnt but you don't need to learn it if you are of the same belief system?

By all means have a cult language that followers of Sithag the Cruel know or just except that the whole idea is daft and roll with it but speaking as a lapsed anthropologist who specialised in ritual processes don't try to justify it with anything approaching a real world analogy

I agree with this. Don't forget that D&D assumes the existence of something called a "common tongue", which has never existed in the real world except arguably English today. (There have always been lots of lingua francas, but usually very localised and never extending over a great geographical distance.)

So while it would be completely mad to believe that a Chaotic Good human from Kazakhstan could communicate in "Chaotic Good" with a Chaotic Good elf from France if we go by real world logic, by D&D logic where those two people have another language in common, the "common tongue", it makes more sense.

I use to use them way back when 1st edition came out but after awhile we soon decided we couldn't figure out what the hell they where all about, so we dropped the use of them, now I do use the Common Tongue and a Thieves' guild sign language when running OSRIC 1E stuff, the thing is they have to put what guild they are apart of as well, so there are many different Thief Guild Sign Languages as well.

I played 1st and 2nd Ed DnD wayback when they were new..
I have to say I never thought much of the whole alignment language thing and didn't use them ever.
Especially as there's various other languages like "Thieves cant" abyysal, undercommon, etc etc that cover races and cultures with similar views anyway.

In a setting which respects the core D&D planar universe, the souls of sentient beings could derive from / be powered from / originate from the energies of the relevant alignment plane. This energy contains within it certain information (memes/genes), such as: behaviour patterns, sociability, risk taking, etc. Included in this information is "alignment language", which could be anything from a few gestures to a full blown communication system (whatever works for the setting).

All creatures are built up from: nurture, life experience, and nature. Nurture comes from one's parents (amniotic tank, or whatever), life experience comes from growing up, and nature comes from the primal energies of existence. If neutral good creatures all have hardwired-in behaviour templates, no reason why they don't have hardwired-in linguistic templates as well.

In an non-alignment-planar setting, alignment languages are about as improbable as "common" or "racial languages". Linguas franca don't usually stick around that long and certainly not at the communication distances of most settings.

I never even thought alignments were a good idea, never mind the even more nonsensical alignment languages.

Maybe "alignment language" is more how like, when you meet someone new and after sussing out how they're dressed, how they talk, their attitudes, you tell yourself "this guy's probably a tea-party republican".

Or maybe its like gaydar.

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