daggerfall ~ language skills

[kossai]

really like idea of language skills in daggerfall - orcish , nymph , daedric , those ones . though not always massively useful , and imagine most do not receive much lore attention , really kind of like ... reminder , hey , this is people and culture too . maybe if able to communicate and understand each other , can come to peaceful agreement and not have to fight .
wish something like this would have come back in later games . next closest thing without mods is probably kynareth's boots of crusader in oblivion , which when player wear , all forest animals will be peaceful . but still have to fight minotaurs , spriggans , various creatures that by all accounts would have suitable cognition for language and culture too .

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> this is people and culture too . maybe if able to communicate and understand each other , can come to peaceful agreement and not have to fight .<<

They may have dropped it in later games because the point was to make people fight. That seems reductionist to me, but I'm not their target audience.

As a roleplaying game master, I often used languages to shift the spotlight from one character to another so everyone got a turn doing things.

Re: Thoughts

[kossai]

to some extent sure , but lore books do explore culture of some of these creatures - orcs in particular would fight hard for status as people of empire and become playable as of morrowind , no longer just generic enemies .
feel like kind of take away from part of roleplay and canonical lore aspects to make every single one of these creatures as bloodthirsty monster which can not reason with , despite cognition and culture on par with anyone else . in terms of stories , some fights would be unavoidable even if theoretically know language due to oppositional goals and affiliations , but very welcome to be able to avoid some fights as player and build stories around that .

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

You know, there are at least 2 real-world-accurate ways to incorporate language that require only simple coding and roleplay:

1) Speaking someone's native language gives a morale bonus. It makes them like you if you're doing it when nobody else is.

2) And that gives you a discount on prices, which for game purposes I'd set at 10% or so, but I've seen it go 75% or more. Similarly, it should increase the chance of a character telling you key information, or even only telling you if you ask in their native language.