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When you create a character in Dungeons & Dragons, one of the abilities you generate is Intelligence. The Wizard character is designed around this ability, and a high intelligence benefits your skill choices. But for most characters, the Intelligence modifier is used for determining the number of languages they know; this stat is duly noted, and often forgotten. Your Elf Fighter knows Elven and Common, and that is it, as everyone speaks common, or so it seems. Yet another dimension can be added to your games if a little more attention is paid to language: here I have a couple of suggestions on how to do just that.

First of all, a believable D&D world will have many characteristics of our own real one, with many different countries or realms, peoples, and cultures. In our real world, the English language is very common, but it is certainly not universal. In France, Germany, or Italy, for example, you would not find English sufficient enough to travel, but you would find a fair number of English-speaking locals with whom to converse. If you happen to, say, go to India, the only English you would hear would be in the major cities. These people don't speak English, and communication reverts to semantics and sign language. Even people in other countries who know rudimentary English cannot converse freely with it, much less read and write it. The PC's in your games do not live in a vacuum either, and will eventually travel somewhere where common is not so common.

When they stumble upon the farmer in the road and ask for the nearest inn, they may get a shrug of the shoulders, a confused look, or the farmer may be thinking to himself, "In what?". Use this type of scenario as a means for more role-playing. If they want to find an inn, they will have to communicate the desire to the farmer in some way. When they get to the inn, using casual speech and slang terms will challenge (or frustrate) the party; they will soon be more conscious of themselves being the 'foreigners'. (Of course, it's also a dead giveaway that you're not from around there, which can alter NPC's reactions!).

When planning a game or campaign, you will often find yourself creating maps, letters, notes, and such, designed for the PC's to see and use. You probably speak the same as your players, so these are easy for them to read and understand. If they are in a 'foreign' land, write these out in the native language. Doing this will again challenge the players to decipher the language they do not know, adding again to role-playing opportunities. Perhaps they have to scour the village for a common-speaking native? If you are not well-versed in Halkorian, or whatever it is, you don't have to be a J.R.R. Tolkien and invent your own language. Use real-world ones. You can assign Halkorian as German, Alaris as French, and so forth. There are a lot of free translation web sites that can turn your 'common' phrase into Halkorian in an instant. The language barriers apply to signs as well. The King's Head Inn in Halkor may read as Head Inn Des Konigs, if Halkorian equals German.

If and when a PC gets to a point in your campaign where they can choose a new language, think again in terms of real-world. Have the PC go through the steps of learning the language. This could involve finding a school or a teacher for instruction, arranging for payment for such, or encouraging them to initiate some relationship, past or present, to accomplish this goal. They may have to journey to that language's native land. It would all depend upon the rarity of the language in a given area and access to instruction for it. Think for a moment how long it would take you to learn a foreign language, much less find the resource for this and to become fluent in it. The PC who insists upon "Ignan" as his new language will probably have a challenge before him. In this case he might have to find clerics of Kossuth who could act as teachers. Who knows what they might require as payment? A matter of supply and demand, perhaps. All of this scenario of instruction and studying will take time away from adventuring. The stranger the language, the more difficult the challenge of the finding the needed instruction and the more time required to learn it. So, the PC needs to project toward these possible consequences before he spontaneously picks an obtuse language. There is more involved than just jotting down "Ignan" on his PC sheet.

Language is often treated nonchalantly in gameplay, when actually it could be true opportunity for enhancing and enlarging everything from relationships to adventures. It's the old adage that everything affects everything else, so don't miss the chance for more interesting and involved campaigns. It could be argued that complicating scenarios in this way could detract or lead off on unneeded tangents from the main course of a campaign. In role-playing, as in life itself, there are always unplanned and tedious challenges to be faced while trying to reach main goals. The process itself, while somewhat unexpected in its steps at times, can sometimes even aid in reaching the original goal. Besides, what's truly interesting about the purely planned and superficial pathway? The challenges that come up along the way are the spice of the game! "C'est la vie!"