Re: [MUD-Dev] Spoken Languages & Food [was RP thesis...]

[Adam Wiggins <nightfall#user1,inficad.com>]

[Matt C:]
> Yeah, I meet an internal clash of opinions with myself here. I would like
> languages to play some part - but I don't want to make communication with
> other players frustrating in any way. I'm stumped.

This is the fundamental dilema of designing any portion of your game.
How do you make things challanging without making them frustrating?
Frustration, for me, occurs when something is challanging without
actually being interesting or rewarding in any way.  This is why languages
frequently fall into this category - it's frustrating to not be able
to communicate with certain people, but the langauges themselves add nothing.
If I just want to talk to someone privately, I'll use tell.  Thus, there's
no point to me learning another language for the purpose of speaking privately.
I can only scribe my spellbook in one language, so there's no point to
me learning another (obscure) language in order to keep prying noses out
of it.  And so on.  There's nothing interesting or fun about learning a
new language, but by *not* knowing a language things are difficult.  This
is the fundamental problem.  It should be the other way around - you gain
benefits by knowing certain languages, but *not* knowing them doesn't
just render the game next to unplayable.
Secondly, in the specific case of language, it is both unreasonable and
unrealistic to start every race with 100% in their own language and no
knowledge in any other language, unless you're figuring that all the
player's characters were raised on planets far, far away from each other
and then suddenly teleported to the game world the moment their character
is created.