Borderline powergaming with regards to languages

[Mediva]

Well, one of my characters is a los santos police officer and is one of maybe three total officers who can speak Russian. I've roleplayed this character being able to speak russian since I created her. It's listed on her PD application from almost a year ago when I applied. Her parents are an American and a Russian immigrant, and she has many russian family members, so of course she learned the language. She has a more english last name because she's married and thus her last name has changed, but even then she had her American father's last name.

 

She has no qualms using the language and has managed to communicate on scenes with people who roleplay knowing almost no english. It's not metagame if you've roleplayed it since you made your character. It's also unrealistic to assume you can use a foreign language around cops and others and that you will never not once run into someone who will be able to understand what you are saying unless they happen to have an eastern european name hovering above their head.

[Karner]

It depends on education of the character, some education systems push you into learning a 2nd language, oftentimes a third.

 

I personally think it's fine for most characters to use phrases of some languages and maybe speak a second fluently. It mostly depends on the character and their background.  I personally can greet, introduce and have an introduction conversation in the major European languages but that's it. 

 

Thankfully Duolingo is free...

 

If in doubt, throw a report up.

Edited March 14, 2021 by Karner

[marbella mondays]

My character knows three languages. I think the issue is people not roleplaying the knowledge of it properly n using it to powergame. My character knows languages that benefit her, and her needs.

 

Maybe add a thing to /attributes which tells people what languages you speak. 

[marbella mondays]

1 minute ago, Lop said:

What about a languages list that you fill in on character creation; and if you want to add a language to that, an admin has to approve that with proof of roleplay?

That could work, maybe it's something only staff can see for reports.

[charles]

23 hours ago, Karner said:

It depends on education of the character, some education systems push you into learning a 2nd language, oftentimes a third.

 

I personally think it's fine for most characters to use phrases of some languages and maybe speak a second fluently. It mostly depends on the character and their background.  I personally can greet, introduce and have an introduction conversation in the major European languages but that's it. 

 

Thankfully Duolingo is free...

 

If in doubt, throw a report up.

This.

 

 

[reall]

While I don't think there should be restrictions on knowing languages, some kind of 'language register' thingy on character creation could be useful so that people can't asspull knowing languages the moment they seem someone speak them.

[Torlo]

21 hours ago, bidi bidi bom bom said:

My character knows three languages. I think the issue is people not roleplaying the knowledge of it properly n using it to powergame. My character knows languages that benefit her, and her needs.

 

Maybe add a thing to /attributes which tells people what languages you speak. 

That's not the issue, the issue is people rping a fluent 100% understanding of EVERY language they claim their character knows by simply saying "I learned it online" or "My cousin taught me" it's been stated multiple times in this thread already, rp what your character would realistically understand. That seems to be a major misunderstanding of rping languages, on this server it's either you know it all or you don't know it, in reality it doesn't work that way at all.

[DLimit]

Even if one were to supposedly learn a decent amount of a language, they wouldn't be able to fully comprehend different slangs and dialects as each language has a wide-variety of different regional and generational dialects and slang terms that are unknown to the person that learns the basic "official" version of the language. 

[Koko]

55 minutes ago, DLimit said:

Even if one were to supposedly learn a decent amount of a language, they wouldn't be able to fully comprehend different slangs and dialects as each language has a wide-variety of different regional and generational dialects and slang terms that are unknown to the person that learns the basic "official" version of the language. 

Agreed, I'm bilingual in English and Spanish (on top of speaking three other unrelated languages, just for the sake of argument in the sense that I'm a language guy), understand more slang in English than in some varieties of Spanish due to the internet. Put me up against some Puerto Rican and as an actual Spaniard born and raised in Spain I'll have trouble sometimes if they speak in a lot of slang.

Edited March 15, 2021 by Koko

[Mediva]

As far as I have seen, I've never really seen anyone indicate their foreign language speech is slang heavy. Just putting the tag of [Korean] for example indicates someone is speaking korean, doesn't indicate they are using some wildly obscure subset of Korean. Getting upset that someone either RPs understanding what you've said or replies to it, because you feel that your characters usage would be difficult for anyone but your group to interpret is a bit one sided.

 

I agree that people just suddenly understanding languages they probably never roleplayed understanding before is a problem, and it's definitely a power-game. You just can't assume that is always the case though, but maybe having a field during character creation that cannot be edited with out admin approval could help. Like you list known languages. That way someone interjects in your conversation unexpectedly you can just /ex <name> and see its listed as a language.

 

The only issue here is that this may incite metagame. Someone could just /ex <name> see that they know "Korean" for example and then decide not to speak around them because you OOCly know they would be able to listen in.

 

Perhaps the solution would be to make this information visible to Admins only, that way if concerns of power gaming do arise the Admin can verify and resolve the RP situation easily.