I know I brought up this setting a lot, but I do love it.
So, in the Urban Arcana universe, Shadowkinds (creatures from D&D like elves, goblins, and so on) arriving in the modern world magically forget Common, which is replaced by the local language of wherever they first turn up. This is a one time effect. So an elf appearing in Russia speaks Russian, while an orc showing up in Brazil speaks Brazilian, and a halfelin showing up in Japan speaks Japanese.
One of the organizations in the book is the Swiss Juncture of Gnomes (SJG), a bunch of gnomes whom appeared in Switzerland, got multiple degrees in STEM, and used their gnomish "outside the box thinking" as a consultant company to find creative but workable solutions to various technical problems. They can be hit and miss, as sometimes they get genius ideas, other times they design a "fully functional orbiting laser cannon platform" (direct quote from the book, in short they reinvented the GDI Ion Cannon), which was never built because of cost overruns (too expensive to be practical), in addition to the (unaddressed in their write up) issue of a UN resolution banning space based weaponry meaning the project was in theory workable but got shelved in the end.
And this is where we start running into problems. So Shadowkinds (like, say, Gnomes) speak the local language of the place they arrive in. Switzerland has four (4) official national languages (German, French, Italian and Romansh). I am sure most of you understand the problem now, but just in case: in a place with four (three if you remove Romansh on the basis it has started to be phased out). Which one does the magic pick?
What about contested zones? If an elf shows up in a zone that is contested between two nations with low level armed conflict going on, which language does he speak?
What about Terra Nullius? What happens when a White Scaled Dragonborn (whom can probably survive there long enough to be rescued) shows up in Antarctica?
Use the same system, but narrow it down for the specific regions where each shadowkind appears. For example, a gnome that shows up in a mainly German-speaking region of Switzerland will speak German.
Hello everyone!
I know I brought up this setting a lot, but I do love it.
So, in the Urban Arcana universe, Shadowkinds (creatures from D&D like elves, goblins, and so on) arriving in the modern world magically forget Common, which is replaced by the local language of wherever they first turn up. This is a one time effect. So an elf appearing in Russia speaks Russian, while an orc showing up in Brazil speaks Brazilian, and a halfelin showing up in Japan speaks Japanese.
One of the organizations in the book is the Swiss Juncture of Gnomes (SJG), a bunch of gnomes whom appeared in Switzerland, got multiple degrees in STEM, and used their gnomish "outside the box thinking" as a consultant company to find creative but workable solutions to various technical problems. They can be hit and miss, as sometimes they get genius ideas, other times they design a "fully functional orbiting laser cannon platform" (direct quote from the book, in short they reinvented the GDI Ion Cannon), which was never built because of cost overruns (too expensive to be practical), in addition to the (unaddressed in their write up) issue of a UN resolution banning space based weaponry meaning the project was in theory workable but got shelved in the end.
And this is where we start running into problems. So Shadowkinds (like, say, Gnomes) speak the local language of the place they arrive in. Switzerland has four (4) official national languages (German, French, Italian and Romansh). I am sure most of you understand the problem now, but just in case: in a place with four (three if you remove Romansh on the basis it has started to be phased out). Which one does the magic pick?
What about contested zones? If an elf shows up in a zone that is contested between two nations with low level armed conflict going on, which language does he speak?
What about Terra Nullius? What happens when a White Scaled Dragonborn (whom can probably survive there long enough to be rescued) shows up in Antarctica?
Use the same system, but narrow it down for the specific regions where each shadowkind appears. For example, a gnome that shows up in a mainly German-speaking region of Switzerland will speak German.
Hello! I am just a relatively new D&D player, who also likes SimplePlanes and War Thunder.
My characters are: