[d20house]

Dialects

d20house assumes a fantasy setting in which adventurers are exposed to a wide variety of accents, dialects, and languages. While they might adapt quickly to this wide variation, it still seems that regional variations in language may pose minor problems for them.

In this context, an accent in a minor variation in speaking (or writing) that marks a speaker's location or sub-group. Real-world examples include English as spoken in England, America, Germany, India, or mild pidgins. As adventurers are used to a wide variety of heavy accents, accents provide flavor but are not significant enough to affect communication.

A major variation or branch in a language is called a dialect. Dialects can be as minor (such as Spanish versus Mexican or German versus Austrian) or major (such as Middle English versus modern English) as you desire. Communicating across dialects is tricky but not impossible. In general, dialects often correspond to different regions, races, or subraces that share a language.

When a character learns a language, note the dialect (if any) of the environment in which she learned the language. Examples: Elven[Drow], Elven[High], Goblin[Bugbear], Common[Eastern Kingdoms]. Scripts may also have dialects.

Cross-Dialect Communication. When two speakers share a language but not a dialect, both parties must communicate slowly and carefully, clarifying any misunderstandings along the way. This laborious process inhibits verbal subtlety, meaning most social manipulations (such as Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, or Intimidate checks) are at -2. Similarly, reading another dialect--which often contains non-standard characters, words, and grammars--will take significantly longer to puzzle out. However, such communication does not normally require a Language check (though succeeding at one may allow this process to happen faster).

If this slow back-and-forth clarification process is not possible (such as when a character is eavesdropping on a conversation in a foreign dialect), the listener must make a Speak Language (situational synergy: Listen) check to see if they understood the message.

Learning dialects for free. Additional dialects of a language you already know may be learned through play rather than bought with ranks. A character can learn a new dialect by spending at least a week conversing, practicing, or receiving training in that dialect.

Generous GMs may also let players use this method to learn dialects without knowing the parent language. In this case, your grasp of the language is very primitive: you cannot understand any other dialect of that language, and even any communication within the dialect you do know is made as if it were cross-dialect.

Reading aloud. When reading aloud a phonetic script of language you do not speak, your poor pronunciation will produce a unique dialect. Listeners who speak that language will have to treat it as cross-dialect communication.