Perusals & Progressions: Alignment Languages

I've been a bit slack in making new posts, but I've been laid up with the flu.  This has left me with a lot of time for non-brain-intensive activities like reading comics and watching pro wrestling, but not a lot of mental energy for things like writing and working on D&D-related activities.  But I'm back, and today I want to figure out how I'm going to deal with one of D&D's more puzzling elements: alignment languages.  For the most part I'm trying to stick to OD&D and Chainmail when building the rules of my campaign, but because alignment languages have pretty strong setting element implications I want to take a look at how they've been tackled through various editions.  So I'm bringing back Perusals & Progressions, which I used a few times in the past to examine how spells changed through the editions.  I figured I can do the same thing with other elements of the game, so here we go with a thorough look at the history of alignment languages.

Original D&D

"Law, Chaos and Neutrality also have common languages spoken by each respectively. One can attempt to communicate through the common tongue, language particular to a creature class, or one of the divisional languages (law, etc.).  While not understanding the language, creatures who speak a divisional tongue will recognize a hostile one and attack."

This is all that the three OD&D booklets have to say on alignment languages, and if we left it here it wouldn't be a problem at all.  If the war between Law and Chaos is as all-encompassing as the books make it seem, it makes perfect sense that each side would have some sort of common language to enable communication between various races and factions.  And of course the other side would react with hostility upon hearing the opposing language (although I'd be inclined to interpret it a bit more widely that just an automatic attack).  The main point of interest here is that Neutrality has a common language as well, indicating that it's not just an indicator that someone's staying out of the struggle, it's a third faction in that struggle, an active participant in the war that's fighting against both of the other sides.

Supplement II: Blackmoor

Supplement II throws an interesting wrinkle into the mix, with assassins being the only class able to learn new alignment languages.  (Law or Chaos, as assassins in OD&D were always neutral.)  Actually, now that I look at it there's nothing in the rules stopping other classes doing the same thing, but giving this ability to assassins implies that it's a special ability unique to them.  Anyway, it makes sense for their roles as deceptive killers and spies.

Basic Set (Holmes)

The Basic Set uses pretty much the same verbiage to describe alignment languages as OD&D, but because Holmes Basic has an expanded alignment system so too are the range of alignment languages expanded.  Instead of Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic we now have Lawful Good, Lawful Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Evil, and Neutrality.  At this point it's starting to get a little unwieldy for me.  Three sides, each with its own language, seemed quite neat and plausible, but five sides is stretching things a bit.

BX, BECMI and the Rules Cyclopedia

I'm lumping these versions of the game together, because they are generally consistent, and I'm also a little less likely to follow their lead than I am the path of AD&D.  And aside from that, they all say pretty much the same thing, so I can knock 'em all out at once.

For the D&D line, we are back to Law, Chaos and Neutrality as the only alignments.  The rules describe each alignment language as a "secret language of passwords, hand signals, and other body motions" that is known by all PCs and intelligent monsters. They are never written down, and the only way to learn a different one is to change to the same alignment.  If someone does this, they forget their old alignment language and start using the new one immediately.

AD&D 1e Players Handbook

Now we're getting into the real meat of it.  The 1e PHB finally introduces the complete 9-point alignment system, with a different language for each: chaotic evil, chaotic good, chaotic neutral, lawful evil, lawful good, lawful neutral, neutral evil, neutral good, and neutral.  If I thought five alignment languages was a stretch, nine is well past my limit...

A character can only know the language of their alignment, and should they change sides they'll forget the old language (just as in BX and its descendants).  The exception to this is the assassin class, which retains its ability from OD&D to learn other alignment languages.

AD&D 1e Dungeon Masters Guide

As you'd expect, this is where Gygax gives his most detailed treatise on alignment languages.  He begins by justifying their existence in terms of the real-world use of secret languages by various organisations, and the use of Latin by the medieval Catholic church.  He then limits their use in a couple of ways.  The first is by stating in ALL CAPS that the languages are never used in public, and not before making certain the person you're talking to is of the same alignment.  The second is by limiting the use of alignment languages to topics about the precepts of the alignment, and rudimentary communication about health, hunger, thirst, etc.  They supposedly only have a vocabulary of a few score words, so while they exist, it seems that Gygax is doing his best to rein them in to a simple "hey, how are ya?" and the occasional basic ethical discussion.

A whole paragraph is spent on what happens when a character speaks in their alignment language in public.  The best reaction you'll get is to be thought "unmannerly, rude, boorish, and stupid", and even people of your own alignment will give you the old "I don't know this guy".  Those of opposed alignments might mark you out as someone to be dealt with later (which is at least more nuanced than the instant hostile attack you'd get in OD&D).

The section ends with a confusing bit about how not all intelligent creatures automatically know their alignment language.  The example given is that of Blink Dogs, who apparently are instinctually lawful good, and don't speak their alignment language because they have not "intellectually embraced the ethos of lawful good".  Note that they have an Average rating in intelligence, so they're about as smart as humans.  Dragons are given as an example of monsters that do know their alignment language.  Which is helpful to know, but it leaves alignment languages for monsters in a very nebulous state.  Which monsters know their alignment languages?  Before the DMG, I would have said any that are smart enough to be able to talk.  Afterwards, I have no idea, and I guess it's up to each individual DM to work it out.  Cheers Gary!

As in the PHB, changing alignment means you instantly lose the ability to use your alignment language.  You can only sign crudely in the new language.  It's not until you gain a new level of experience that you can fully use the new language, so there's a bit of an adjustment period that comes with an alignment change.

AD&D 2nd Edition

Wait.  Hooooold on a second.  Where is it again?  I'm flicking through the PHB, I'm flicking through the DMG...  Do you mean to tell me that there are no alignment languages in AD&D 2nd edition?  That they got "Zebbed" right outta there?  That is a surprise.  I've read the 2e core books a bazillion times, and I've never noticed this.  It was my edition of choice for a solid decade plus, but because I learned from the Mentzer Basic Set I guess I just brought forward a lot of assumptions from that and never questioned their absence in 2e.  Well, moving right along then!

D&D 3rd Edition and beyond

From this point there's not much to say, because alignment languages aren't a factor in modern D&D.  Which makes sense to me, as in my experience they were rarely used and often house-ruled out of the game.  (Well, I suppose it's not a house rule, as they were never in 2e in the first place.)  What we do have in 3rd edition are some languages from the outer planes that could serve as stand-ins: Infernal, the language of devils and Hell; Abyssal, the language of demons and the Abyss; and Celestial, the language of the Upper Planes.  4e does its own thing (because of course it fucking does), with Supernal (the language of angels, devils and gods) and Abyssal (the language of demons).  And 5e plays it safe (because of course it does, bless its bland little heart) by pretty much going back to what 3e did.

Tying It All Together

This is going to be a tricky one...  I was reasonably happy to go with alignment languages as being developed during the earliest wars for ease of communication, and passed down so that everyone knows at least a little bit of the relevant one.  But for me the big sticking point is the way that characters automatically forget their language when they change alignment.  If that's something I'm going with (and I really am going to try to get to a by-the-book AD&D game) then I can't see a way around the languages being somehow supernatural in nature.

If that's the case, the obvious link would be to tie them to the gods, or the outer planes at the very least.  D&D's planar cosmology is intrinsically tied to alignment as a concept, so linking it with alignment languages would also make sense.  If I look forward to 3rd edition and beyond, each alignment language could be a dialect of Abyssal (Chaotic Evil), Infernal (Lawful Evil), or Celestial (Lawful? Good), although I feel like there needs to be a fourth language in that axis for Chaotic Good...

So anyway, one or more gods in ancient times instilled their followers with the "primordial language of the gods/demons/devils".  But why?  To what purpose?  I keep going back to the origin of my campaign world as cobbled together from planets ruined in a cosmic war as the last refuge for its survivors at the end of time. In that situation, with peoples brought together from a multitude of worlds, there are going to be a lot of communication issues, and communication is something that would be key to surviving such an initially harsh environment.  So maybe whatever being brought that world together also wanted to gift its new inhabitants with a way to bridge the language gap.  And maybe it was too difficult to instil a language that would be understood by everyone, but less difficult to instill the ability to communicate with those of a like ethos.  And thus were born the various alignment languages, supernaturally instilled in every sentient being, and shifting to match a person's ethos and personal alignment.

One last question remains, and that is why some sentient creatures know their alignment language, and others (such as blink dogs) do not.  As for that, my first instinct is to say that maybe these creatures were not sentient in the earliest days of the world, when the language of the gods was instilled.  They developed their intellects and ethos gradually in the centuries that followed, and while they developed their own languages, they have no intrinsic ability to speak their alignment language.  I might have to think about this more, but if I'm being honest I feel like this was a bit of a misstep by Gary in the first place.  I do wonder if it's something he might have developed further in his own 2e, but as it stands in 1e it's making something more uncertain than it needs to be.

So those are my thoughts right now.  I don't love what I've come up with on this first pass, but I don't exactly love alignment languages to begin with.  But as I've said, I want to run O/AD&D in as complete a manner as I can, and play with all of the game's elements as written.  And that means I need to include alignment languages, along with their weird idiosyncrasies such as how they are forgotten when a PC changes alignment.  It also means I need some sort of explanation for why this thing exists in the game world.  I may never tell the players; as far as they're concerned, I'm just going to tell them that alignment languages exist, they work this way, and nobody knows why.  They are "the language of the gods", and that's all anyone knows.  But I have an explanation that works for me, and I can give it to them if they really want to know and go digging.  (And as for the entity who pulled the Last Earth together in the first place?  I have some ideas about that too...)