Language Barrier

In my career DMing 3rd edition D&D, I have seen a bizarrely disproportionate number of new players take the Sylvan language, because it seems cool and logical. When you play a new game, you don't know how to optimize under the set of rules, and so you make interesting, but ultimately unsound choices for reasons you had no idea about. Sometimes those are subtle.

What I find interesting about such a complex game as D&D is that some unsound choices are not subtle at all. After all, you're a ranger. You spend time in the forest. Why wouldn't you learn the language of forest dwellers?

Mainly because no one speaks it. I haven't looked through the Monster Manual, but the number of creatures who speak Sylvan is probably one of those one-hand counting deals.

I was talking to my friend, Monte, once about why a multiplicity of languages in D&D is cool, but in Star Wars is a pain the ass. We more noted the discrepancy than attempted to explain or rectify the problem. But here's what I think:

D&D has a relatively small, closed set of languages. There are 20 in the SRD, representing more languages than your character will care to learn (especially considering low-level language comprehension spells). But the three or four that you know still represent a significant percentage of all available languages. There's a not-terrible chance you can understand any given language.

When the DM says that someone is speaking in a strange language, you lunge for your character sheet--is it Gnome? Infernal? Sylvan? It's possibly the dumbest, simplest kind of mini-game nestled in D&D: Did I make a successful blind choice? It's a crappy game; it's nickel slots--low stakes, low payout, all luck. But it's still compelling occasionally, in a reptilian-brain way.

In Star Wars, with a kajillion languages, the odds make it more like a lottery. "Trandoshans? Yes! I speak Dosh!" That might happen once in an entire campaign, if that often. After a couple of those moments without winning, you don't want to play anymore.

So there's that. But the unsound crux in D&D is that these multiple-but-not-overwhelming language options are unevenly distributed. Lots of monsters speak Undercommon, Goblin, Giant, Draconic, or Abyssal. But way fewer monsters speak Celestial or Sylvan. Statistically, you just shouldn't bet on Sylvan.

This disparity is compounded because someone who speaks a "good" language like Celestial or Sylvan is likely to be an ally. A DM needs that person to deliver info, not withhold it.

Different languages exist in fantasy games for two reasons: flavor, and to hide information. Flavor is great, and it informs design. But it is forest when you are looking at one particular tree. Important, but not pertinent.

Hiding info, on the other hand, is very pertinent, and doing it linguistically is an underused aspect of D&D adventure design. I've got half a mind to tweak the language rules in my campaign to offer more opportunity for interestingness here. But I've only really got half a mind for it, so it probably won't get done soon.

Until then, an easy fix is to create and employ more monsters who speak Sylvan or Gnoll or Ignan or whatever just to jump-start this underused mini-game. Because I like it when players make unsound choices for fun reasons, and I'd rather reward them for that than let the rules tacitly punish them.