This is an adaptation of the Spycraft language rules, which do a very nice job, and actually are pretty easy to adopt into a FATE framework. Doyce Testerman did the initial write-up; I lowered the difficulty levels a notch, and added the "going up in Languages" bits.

In the espionage genre, agents are generally much more facile with learning and mastering foreign languages than the standard FATE rules would indicate. These rules have been added to simulate that genre. The idea is that while occasional ignorance of a language adds a bit of spice and variety to the difficulty of scenario, learning a lot of foreign languages (or spending a lot of skill ranks to get there) is not what the genre is all about.

Languages are known as fluent (you can read, write, or speak them well, but with an accent or other mannerism that makes it clear it is not you native tongue), or natively (read, write, and speak the language like a native; folks would be surprised to find you're "not from these here parts").

Use these guidelines for use of the Languages skill.

• If you are transferring a character from another campaign, keep the list of languages you already know (for the sake of continuity if nothing else).

• Whenever you come across a foreign language that you don't already know and haven't encountered in the course of play before, make a check against your Languages skill on the below table to see if you know it. (Note that the difficulty scale may be altered based on one's native tongue and character experiences/Aspects).
  • If the check succeeds ...
    • write the language down on your sheet as fluent. The language isn't new to you -- you already knew it, but it hasn't come up in the course of the game before now.

    • if, by an Aspect you have, it makes sense that you would know the language natively, you can burn a box on that Aspect (regained as usual) to know that language natively.

    • if the check succeeds with an MoS of 2+, you know the language natively.

  • If the check fails, you are unfamiliar with the language. You've never learned it, and must take it (in the future) by raising your Languages skill. Make a note that you don't know it (for future references).

Language Type	Examples	Difficulty
Common	English, Spanish, French, German, Morse Code	Average
Uncommon/Difficult	Croatian, Swahili, Korean, Chinese	Fair
Rare/Unique	Bantu, Navajo, Basque	Good
Ancient/Specialized	Ancient Greek	Great

• When you add a level in Languages, you can do one of the following:
  • Add two unknown langauges (previously checked or not) as fluent
  • Add one unknown language (previously checked or not) as native
  • Upgrade two known fluent languages as native

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Skills