The working title of the game I'm writing is Chronoplex. It is a time travel game that emphasizes the 'travel' element. I'm happy to share more details of the game, but I don't want to inundate you all with info (brevity being the soul of wit and all) and my question doesn't really demand it anyway.

My question is in regard to handling foreign languages. Characters in Chronoplex could find themselves anywhere in the world between about 200 BCE to about 1950 CE. Not only could there be different languages by location, but because of language evolution old languages sound very different from their modern counterparts.

So how might I handle that? I could choose to ignore it and have everyone speak a sort of "common" language, but I think that might take away from the setting. An alternative I've considered is allowing each player to know a number of words in whatever the current language is based on their aptitude score. My thought is that with the right key words and adequate descriptions of tone of voice players might be able to piece together enough to get by. Does this sound like it could work? Are there other ideas out there I could pursue? Any advice anyone can offer is much appreciated.

What do you consider important in your game?

Is it the exploration of exotic locales where the characters are completely out of their element? If so, then you might want characters unable to communicate effectively with the people around them.

Are you more interested in having the characters confront local issues? If this is the case, then you might want a magic widget (eg. Tardis effect, translator nanites, magic...) that automatically translates languages but might have occasional trouble with specific regional dialects.

Simple questions.

What do you think language rules will add to you game? Do you think these language rules will detract from the actual point of the game, or add to it?

Just some ideas...

V

Honestly, I don't want language to get in the way, so I want any rules related to it to be simple, almost transparent. The focus of Chronoplex is about journeying and my concern has always been that language barriers would take too much of the spotlight.

The Tardis effect might actually work well considering how I've structured the setting. I'm going to explore that option further. Thanks for the idea! :)

Vulp's right. If your game is about communication or language, then you should have rules about communication and language. If that's not what your game is about, then either handwave it or toss in the effect with some other mechanic -- a modifier to a persuasion roll or something.

-L

A favorite handwave of time traveling language problems (I took that in college, I think) is the local accent -- usually Shakesperean.
Adding "thees and thous" might sound funny (and what's not to laugh at in a good anachronism) but it'll prove effective.

Of course, players could steal a language device from a Roddenberry-esque future.

If we are talking about using unrealistic technology here...
I'd introduce the Babel Fish from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Or something like selecting a package of neuro-linguistic templating, where a character has the capacity to know N number of languages, which in game they select prior to arrival, so you still have a chance for the multi-linguist to shine, but otherwise its taken care of. Out of character, I would say they just haveN number of slots to define, and you allow them to be defined as play flows.

Or you use any number of reasons as to why they know several languages local to the given scenario time and locale, and never think about it again.

Here's my thought in a nutshell. In Chronoplex, tempors live within areas of non-time, known as chroneurisms, created by the temporal radience from the exit of time conduits. The sheath surrounding a chroneurism is responsible for a number of not-fully-understood phenomena that make life in the plex possible. I see no reason why proximity to a sheath couldn't also be responsible for allowing characters to understand and speak different languages. It might also be fun, then, to see a slow degradation in speaking/understanding languages as characters get further from the chroneurism.

I'm not sure there even needs to be a mechanic for this. It could just be an optional convention that a GM may use as he sees fit. Thoughts?

How about an actual translator, as in someone they use their Chromophone to call that's an expert on that particular language (if not dialect). So you could get this Chinese Telephone game element when it would be fun (nuances lost in translation, awkward misunderstanding) or a must-use-a-huge-compound-term to describe something that doesn't fit the characters' base language (e.g. the thirty words for snow in Innuit would be thirty strings of descriptive phrases in English, not succinct terms).

And when it's a trivial exchange ("Where the toilet?") you can just ignore the whole intermediary translator NPC.

And you can have plot hooks revolving around (a) no one's EVER studied this language in use by four clan in the Amazon basin or (b) the damned Chronophone is on the fritz; gotta use pantomimes.

Finally, want a BIG brain freeze? Cultural mores and practices are a LOT stickier for the average time traveler. Got a female PC? She better not try to speak unless spoken to in MANY old societies. Make eye contact with someone, or step on their shadow, or touch your hair: instant bristling wall of spears or cocked rifles. There's 101 things one might do out of habit or simple distraction that could result in blunt force trauma or incarceration in a muddy hole in the ground.

Traveler, be meek, be humble, and study up before you jump!

If your time-travelers are trained experts and not just people who threw the technology together a la Back to the Future or Primer, they've probably already studied several historical languages. 200 BCE isn't all that long ago, and we know quite a bit about many languages from then. In fact, if we've had time travel technology for a while, people have probably already gone back in time and studied the languages firsthand. Even if time travel is new, PCs can be taught important languages by future versions of themselves. That's probably the easiest way to handwave away the language barrier.

If you want to try a slightly in-depth mechanic handwave, you can give player-characters access to tapes of languages in different times, then do the "learn a language while you sleep" thing.
Crichton did this in the book Timeline. Previous observers were able to record pieces of the language, corportate magic processed them, and the players had a "Learn 13th Century Oxatan while you sleep" tape.

Some kind of token or character point can be spent on gaining languages, if you wanted to have different players specialize in locales/time periods, then each player can serve as the 'translator.'

(thanks to BillVolk for the dose of verisimilitude.)

Maybe only people with certain kinds of minds can time-travel freely. Some kind of thought pattern or structure or instinct has to exist to do it safely, or at all. A happy side-effect of this is a phenomenal aptitude for language (and maybe social adjustment in general). A few hours of listening and observing is all it takes for someone with this kind of brain to fit into almost any (human?) society reasonably well, and they'll pass for a native a week after that.

Then the question is, how long do they retain this? Can they "turn it off" when they travel to a new time? Some chance of getting "stuck" thinking like an 18th century French aristocrat? If so there are some story possibilities there of going to retrieve another time traveler who became too acclimated to their visit.

You could also have a few options available on how to deal with language, and they have tradeoffs. If the Chronophone is available alongside something like the trait I was talking about above, that's sort of an interesting tradeoff. There's no risk associated with the phone, but if you lose it or it breaks or you're in a really weird situation, it won't work. The trait is always with you, for better or worse.

There's a lot of ways you could handle this, depending on such things as where they come from (do all time travelers come from one place/time or are they recruited from across time) or how exactly time travel works, frankly I suggest just handwave it but give a technobabble/magibabble excuse for it and maybe include a mechanic for phlebotinum breakdown that would require them to do some of the other ideas presented here. (if that makes no sense at all go to tvtropes.org, it'll eat your soul! in a good way)

Also, no offense aimed at you, but I personally HATE time travel, so I hope you think of, and adress all the implications time travel could have.