Alignment Language

After two-and-a-quarter pages dedicated to alignment, Gygax adds a third of a page to this subject.  And then another half page to "changing alignment," which unfortunately I'll have to tackle later.  In toto, Gygax dedicated 1% of the DMG's content to alignment here; and later, he'll talk about it more.  I can't imagine any subject of less relevance to D&D; or any content that is a greater waste of my time.  But this isn't "my" time; this is the reader's time ... and with alignment continuing to be a central theme in D&D, with hundreds of thousands of DMs, I'm stuck.

Right off, Gygax states,

"Alignment language is a handy game tool which is not unjustifiable in real terms. Thieves did employ a special cant. Secret organizations and societies did and do have certain recognition signs, signals, and recognition phrases — possibly special languages (of limited extent) as well. Consider also the medieval Catholic Church which used Latin as a common recognition and communication base to cut across national boundaries."

He hasn't explained what it is yet and already he's defending its inclusion.  He stresses that the thieves "did" have a cant, clearly having argued with people about it, since he's anxious to hang the concept on it.  Thieves didn't, not really; the essential reliable sources suggest more of a slang than a "language," which we have today and which children still habitually develop.  His phrasing that special languages "possibly" existed doesn't make a strong case, either.  But most idiotic of all is that he thinks "personality" is a logical basis for a language, rather than the examples he gives of societies, cabals and professions.  But then, in his system, all the druids would be of like alignment and all the thieves as well.  As if this were sensible, given what we know of thieves, criminals or other groups that gather.

This language was supposed to be secret and limited to a few score words (again, obviously slang).  In places, the way it's presented is rather ridiculous:

"Druids could discuss at length and in detail the state of the crops, weather, animal husbandry and foresting; but warfare, politics, adventuring, and like matter would be impossible to detail with the language."

My, that's useful.  It's ever so important to keep those needful details about crop growth from becoming common knowledge!  Good thing there are no farmers around to witness the weather and husbanded animals — they might spill the beans.

Consider this line that starts the third paragraph:

"Any character foolish enough to announce his or her alignment by publicly crying out in that alignment tongue will incur considerable social sanctions."

Clearly, Gygax felt the players should metagame their alignments In Game as part of their character's make-up.  It's all so strange, it's no wonder the section has dropped through the cracks, as it were.

I feel an apology is warranted.  It's hasn't been my goal in discussing the DMG to cut into Gygax point-by-point ... but the previous content, spanning four pages, deserves nothing else.  With so many useful and concrete aspects to set up and make practical in my game world, I don't have any interest in devising languages that will enable players to talk about crops or inquire about the health of someone else of the same alignment.  Since when is openly stating in a public forum, "I feel fine, thank you," considered a subversive statement?  I find myself pounding my head on the table.  Any game-writer foolish enough to announce his or her dumbfuckery to this degree by publicly crying out in English words should incur considerable written sanctions!

I'll probably come around to the subject again, when reaching that point in the DMG, but language is very limited as a game feature in role-playing.  The game is communication, between players and between the party & DM.  Any information critical to the game that's stated in another language by another race, or written on a wall, will eventually have to be stated in the language used by the players; so the only real use of an unreadable language is to suspend the time between when the party sees the lettering and when the party discovers what the lettering means.  This is sometimes useful; but very, very rarely.  I suspect it is overused among DMs, as I've had an online player enter my world as a 1st level mage, taking Comprehend Languages as one of his initial three spells.

This baffled me, though I let it slide.  A low-level mage is a spongy punching bag where combat is concerned; they can't fight, they can't take damage, when they do hit it's a pin-prick.  Yet, with three well-chosen spells, cast at critical moments, they can turn the tide of a losing battle and preserve the party.  This takes skill: to recognize WHEN to cast and WHAT to have in one's arsenal.  Stripping that arsenal by one-third in order to take an expositional spell, which will only reveal information that will ultimately become revealed in time anyway, is like my saying you can have only three apps on your phone, period, and you choose one that will tell you when the bus comes.

From the choice, I must extrapolate that the "you don't understand their language" is a well that other DMs go to constantly, so much that it's desperately needful because the experience is so fucking annoying.  When I first began to play, we dutifully wrote down that we understood elvish, orcish, goblinish and gnoll, or whatever the hell else ... which played out as a redundancy whenever we would talk to elves, orcs, goblins or whatever.  "Oh, I speak (blank)," we would say, and then an ordinary conversation would commence, in our table's language ... which spoiled any sense of "specialness" that pretending to speak in another language provided.  I quickly understood what a waste of time this was; why go through the pretense of other languages when we were going to say everything in English anyway?  So I dropped it from my game, never looked back, and never had a player express any wish for me to reinstall the language concept.

Occasionally, I put something on a wall the players can't read.  It makes a nice decoration.  They know they're going to find out what it says anyway, so they don't fret much.  And if someone happens to have a scroll of comprehend languages (who the hell would waste a spell-slot with it?), then it's nice.

That's most of what I have to say on language.  I've said it before, but hell, never hurts to re-iterate a relevant point.