The Articles of Dragon: "Languages Rules Leave Lots of Room"

Issue #66 of Dragon (October 1982) includes several different articles related to fantasy languages and their use in Dungeons & Dragons adventures and campaigns. While not all of them are good, several are – or at least are interesting enough that I still remember them after all these years, which is why I'll be devoting a few more posts to them, including today's. The first of these interesting language articles is A.D. Rogan's "Language Rules Leave Lots of Room for Creativity in Your Campaign." It's not the most inspired title by any means, nor does it really convey much about its content. Nevertheless, it does, in my opinion, raise some good questions about languages in (A)D&D and provides some intriguing answers to them.

The first thing one needs to know about this article is it's primarily concerned with linguistics, specifically the connections between languages, their degree of mutual intelligibility, and what sort of information a given language is capable of conveying. That probably sounds hopelessly nerdy, even within the context of RPGs, and it probably is. For a kid like me, who was deeply interested in foreign languages and their development, this was catnip. Add in that Rogan's article includes language trees showing how he imagines some of the demihuman, humanoid, and monster languages relate to one another (and, in some cases, to human languages), I found it really enjoyable.

Consider this language tree, which I hope is at least somewhat legible:

Here, Rogan makes connections between Middle Elfin and the languages of elven subspecies, woodland and fairy creatures, and even the secret language of the Druids. As I said above, it's hopelessly nerdy stuff, but simply looking at this language tree tells me a lot about the author's own fantasy setting. Ultimately, that's what makes the article so remarkable: it illustrates how something as specific as languages and their interrelationships can help to define a fantasy setting. 

Of course, Rogan doesn't limit himself to examining language trees, cool as I found that as a kid. He also devotes quite a lot of time to looking at what the AD&D rules say or imply about languages, literacy, and similar questions. As it turns out, the rules say quite a lot about these topics, though rarely in a cohesive way. That makes sense, since most of the comments are scattered across multiple books, written over the course of several years. Further, these comments are usually, like so much in Dungeons & Dragons, ad hoc rules put together to deal with specific problems, like how many languages can a character speak and so forth. Rogan attempts to make sense of them all, or at least raise questions for each referee to consider as he makes his own fantasy setting.

Naturally, I don't agree with all of Rogan's answers. For example, he assumes that members of the monk class must be illiterate, because they are unable to make use of scrolls and lack the thief's read languages ability. That's a defensible, if odd, extrapolation of the AD&D rules and one I don't share. However, it is, in my view, a good illustration of the kinds of things a referee might want to consider as he tackles the question of languages and literacy in his campaign setting, especially if that setting is an original one of his own creation. This article is, therefore, a useful one with a lot of recommend it. As I've said a couple of times already, I thought pretty highly of it in my youth and found, in re-reading it, that it still holds up reasonably well.