How versatile is literacy?

[farik]

In our group we treat literacy as being relatively broad so for instance if you took literacy for English you get literacy for free with similar languages you are fluent in ie: German, French, Spanish but you would need to purchase a seperate literacy for something like Japanese or Arabic.

 

So how do your groups handle the flexibilty of literacy?

[Solomon]

I'd allow Literacy with English to work for any other alphabet-based writing system, even if not based on Latin alphabet, at no addictional cost. I'd probably require to separately purchase Literacy for syllabic or ideographic writing systems, although this never occured in my campaign.

[Battlestaff]

I don't charge extra points in my preesnt-day superheroic game for literacy. I assume that it goes along with learning languages. And it cuts down on book keeping (is that point for complete fluency, or literacy?).

[Vondy]

Literacy is free in societies where literacy is the norm - so in a modern setting where literacy is the norm they would get it for free along with the language. A GM who's a stickler for points might want to charge for each type of script (alphabet), but that's not really in accordance with the rules.

 

In societies where literacy is not the norm, however, you would technically have to pay for literacy with each new language. I would be fairly lenient about literacy in these societies, however (partially because the players can't relate to not being able to read). I would only charge them for literacy with each type of script (alphabet), since they understand the spoken languages, which is the real key (i.e. once for languages that use the latin alphabet, once for languages that use assyrian script, etc).

 

If you are fluent and literate in english, and you speak german, you can pretty much pick up a german text and read it. It should be no different with weird fake languages (IMHO).