Given my linguistics background, I always disliked the fact that beast races/ creatures are capable of full speech. This is physiologically impossible, and it's always broken immersion for me in fantasy games, where I still expect some form of verisimilitude.
However, I was delighted when I read about Orcs and their speech impediments, as well as Saurians having their own speech limitations with limited vowels and different consonants. Not to mention the "dragons can talk only in legends" bit, which I absolutely loved, given the unreliable narrator factor in Forbidden Lands.
In this vein, there's something that bothers me, which is Wolfkin as a playable kin. At some point I can read that they communicate between one another through howls and such, but there's an awkward omission on how they, as playable kin, would communicate with other kin. Not to mention that they despise other kin anyway.
So my first thought is to ban this kin from being payable at my table outright, unless all the party plays as Wolfkin.
Just wondering what is everybody's opinion on this. Full disclaimer, I am still halfway through the GM's handbook, so there may be some stuff I am missing.
Disclaimer: the world you paint for your players is yours. You must choose on which parts you adhere to the book and in which part you don’t. You can’t adhere to everything, it will lead to incongruencies. TL;DR: it’s your game and each version of th forbidden lands is different. All I can give you is my thought. Conflict only drives a story in an interesting manner when it is resolvable by various means. If the kin were indeed as hateful towards each other as depicted from time to time, we would just play Warhammer. I myself find groups more interesting that are mixed. In one I play an Orc (and quite enjoy speaking imfrofferly), but one that realised that infighting got the orcs nowhere - not only need they cooperate among themselves but also with the other kin. But I digress… Anyways, being able to talk to others is paramount for this endeavour.
I’m also very fond of atypical kin-choices, even if most FbL-Kin have a neat little twist. I kinda wish there were mallards in this game, too^^ The technical limitations for forming proper syllables are there, no doubt, but I personally are quite willing to handwave it in order to create a heterogenious (and hopefully interesting) group with their own set of tensions. There’s other things that I would disregard, or think about disregarding - slave trade, in my eyes, makes little sense in Ravenland, for example.
That Wolfkin and Mallards are able to communicate with humans - could be some kind of magic. Much like that wolfkin (and/or mallards) exist and that halfling babies…. do what they do.
Yeah, I agree that mixing up groups and turn them into motley crews can make them more interesting. I'll leave that to my players, but looking forward to hear what they are coming up with!
Beasts are a different story. As opposed to your preferences, I personally like my fantasy worlds to be as less Walt Disney-like as possible, and mallards are definitely something I would not enjoy. 😀
I'm also not a fan of magical communication in this case, I'd say I'm going with the different head/ throat physiology for Wolfkin to make them able to speak with a degree of verisimilitude. And I'll probably add the more feral wolfkin, who will be mostly hostile and unable/ unwilling to speak!
Yeah, I get the comparison with disney movies, but that's not the case. It can get goofy at times, you need a gritty/dangerous game to counterbalance. I played Dragonbane recently, playing a mallard that gets enraged easily is fun - until you fight demonic corruption & deadly manticores. I played a game decades ago where little 15cm faeries where on the table as playable characters. sounds disney, too, but I asure you - eyeballs are no tiny target in this case. The setting was also rather dark, but I can't remember what it was called.
Bottom line - to each their own, I guess. You're not missing out if you remove the wolfkin as playable characters or sentient society as a whole. Would be a different story with goblins and halflings, they will become important in a later campaign.