Hot answers tagged terminology
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Railroading is forcing the characters into the prewritten story that the master created. It's generally frowned upon, because it disrupts the free-will oriented nature of roleplaying. In some cases however, some railroading is required.
A typical example is the following. Suppose the characters enter a city, and find a riot or similar event. The most ...
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That's interesting, as being a non-native English speaker I always assumed it was one of the accepted meanings. So as every time I realize one of these things, let's check the wiktionary:
Verb
soak (third-person singular simple present soaks, present
participle soaking, simple past and past participle soaked)
(transitive)
4- To allow ...
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As with anything, usage varies, but usually when people say "sandbox" today they mean a campaign that does not have a specific prescribed storyline, but one where the GM sets up a world (or at least a small section of one) and the PCs are free to wander where they will, and find adventure where they will. It's about freedom of choice.
Pure sandbox play is ...
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Tobias,
I am glad you asked, as this question is near and dear to my heart (as I am writing a game called Steampunk Crescendo).
To me, 'punk is about the following:
There needs to be a dystopia (power concentrated into a central hub and denied to the outlying segments of society).
There needs to be a status quo that sucks compared to the current ...
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Originally coined for Bruce Bethke's unpublished book of the same name, cyberpunk was used to describe a high tech setting full of low lives. The punk suffix is therefore used to describe the seedy or criminal element which has become associated with the "gritty" feel in a lot of games in this genre. The other subgenres, like steampunk and biopunk, simply ...
29
1991.
"Soaking damage" first became common after Vampire: The Masquerade used the terms "soak roll" and "soak dice" in regard to the dice pool used to reduce incoming damage. As an opposed roll, the dice would "soak up" the incoming damage, and the character would take what was left.
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A "Death Spiral" is something that can happen in games where your combat skill is affected by your health (or similar attribute). If you take a hit, your combat skill decreases slightly (making it harder for you to hit the opponent and/or easier for the opponent to hit you).
While there is a certain realism to this, it can often quickly lead to the "death ...
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You've identified an opponent as your guy: you're paying extra attention to where he is and what he's doing, so that you can mess him up at a critical time.
I melee combat, it's like man-to-man defense in sports. You're always on him, always in the way. You're a major distraction because you're hard to ignore; on top of that, ignoring you usually means ...
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A milestone occurs after every two encounters (although the count is reset by taking an extended rest). Characters receive an action point and any other rewards the GM wishes to offer.
I don't have a DDI subscription, but this can be found on page 22 of the Essentials Rules Compendium and page 259 of the Player's Handbook.
I don't remember it ever being ...
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Class level is your level in whatever specific class is being referenced. If you see "[class name] level", that also refers to class level, though that usage isn't very common.
Character level is the sum of all your class levels in each class.
Plain old "level" is, unfortunately, ambiguous. It usually means character level, but if you see it as part of a ...
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"Natural" means an unmodified roll.
The number you see printed on the die when you just throw it. Not adding or subtracting bonuses, penalties or rerolling. Just the number you see.
Terms will differ in individual games and groups, but usually the total result (natural roll plus any modifiers) is just called your "roll," or we'll say "I got a 25." In some ...
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It is indeed a new term used to describe conventional, normal RPGs in the "traditional" tabletop RPG format as opposed to newfangled indie games. It is not pejorative in nature, though it is used a little grudgingly as it mainly exists to distinguish "games that work like most every RPG ever as opposed to whatever crazy new variation you've come up with" in ...
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Well the thing is it's not a gaming specific term; there's plenty of definitions outside Ron's Big Model specific one.
Social Contract Definition
The term "Social Contract" (or "social compact") got its start from Rousseau and those types who defined it as "An agreement among the members of an organized society or between the governed and the government ...
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The Wikipedia entry on Role-playing game theory is rather comprehensive. It makes note of the Threefold Model, GEN Theory, The Big Model, Color Theory, Channel Theory, The Turku School, and The Meilahti School, each of which is an example of a particular theory of roleplaying games.
The page leads with this definition of RPG theory:
A role-playing game ...
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The place names actually have a bit to do with the actual geography of the location. @dpatchery does a good job summing up what the places are, since you asked about the linguistic nature of the place names, I'll elaborate a bit further.
The short answer is all of your interpretations are valid, and have to do with the authors doing an intricate ...
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"Railroading" and "sandbox" are two opposite ends of a spectrum, and as a result both are good in varying degrees.
Really, railroading is any in-play modifications the GM makes to the world to accomplish his own story or other goals. In computer gaming it's called "linear." You are going to go from set piece A to B to C, most likely in that order, your ...
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A: At-Will
E: Encounter
D: Daily
U: Utility
It refers to the basic structure of the powers that balances the classes and keeps the approximate effectiveness of powers between classes equal. (i.e. a 5th level daily in any class is approximately on par with a 5th level daily in any other class.)
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The term definitely predates D&D - the term "twenty dollar gold piece" has been in use for the $20 Double Eagle and $10 Eagle coins of the late 19th century, and also the $5 gold coin, as well.
"Gold Piece" In Print
The term is used in the Lebanon Daily News, 1 Nov 1965, of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, bottom, in an advert for old coins under the left column ...
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To provide some further context, the phrase film theory is quite common.
Film theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large. Film theory is not to be confused with general film ...
15
If you check wiktionary, you'll see that it comes from the French, and it has both implications of 'old soldier' and of 'grumbling curmudgeon'.
EDIT As for the actual origin, this thread has a link to this page where an explanation is given:
The term 'grognard,' as applied to
veteran wargamers, was first coined
back in the early 1970's by John
...
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Although I mostly agree with @Brian's answer of "Highly Variable," swingy isn't used just to indicate the standard deviation of a single die roll.
Yes, you can call a 1d20 more "swingy" than a 3d6 mechanic, but the term is also used on a larger scale, as in "swingy" combat is combat where overall results can be highly variable. This can be from a number of ...
14
The exact answer is system-specific. In FATE games, they'll be Fate points. In some d20 variants, they're Action points, in Buffy they're Drama points. And they function differently on a system-by-system basis, too. They're not a simple +1 / point as in your example in FATE or Buffy, for example. I can't tell you what they do in d20 games.
In general, I ...
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Play, write or referee one of the older editions of Dungeons and Dragon. Older edition meaning every version of AD&D/D&D prior to D&D 3.0. Although some will quibble on AD&D 2.0.
Some may talk about play styles but if you survey everybody that you could remotely include in the OSR. The only common thing you can say is that "They play older ...
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A MacGuffin is a device, object, or abstract need whose finding or obtainment is the force that pushes characters and evildoers into action.
While MacGuffins is a typical plot device to push a story forward, in D&D is rather typical (I would say almost cliched) to use a broken MacGuffin, where the single pieces must be found and assembled. This allows ...
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"Paranoia Combat" is largely the brainchild of Jon Chung, a poster on rpg.net. You can see some of the basic implementations (and rationales) at this link. These solutions were established in response to the notion that Second Edition Exalted, as written, is too lethal — that is, there are enough things that will kill a non-maximized Solar in one action that ...
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There is no solid definition of the term of the sort that you're suspecting there might be: there is no agreement across RPGs for what exactly Thaumaturgy is or means, though outside RPGs it does have a solid (though pedestrian) English definition.
As KRyan and Simon Gill's answers have pointed out in excellent detail, the word itself, prior to ever being ...
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According to this:
I'm pretty sure that I understand what an Ash-Can is: It's a text that comes implicitly (and maybe explicitly) packaged with a disclaimer ... "contents are sold as-is, no guarantee of quality is implied, nor should any be inferred."
And According to wikipedia:
An ashcan copy is a term that originated in the Golden Age of Comic ...
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D&D has had the term "saving throw" back through at least 1e (though I don't have the exact text handy). Supposedly Gygax himself created the term, though I've also heard it was common in miniatures-based wargaming at the time Chainmail was being created (though this may have been referring to the concept rather than the specific term).
It's called a ...
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The word “thaumaturgy” is Greek for “miracle worker,” and was originally applied to several Christian saints, specifically those for whom miracles were not a rare or occasional thing, but a matter of course.
Starting in the 16th century, the word was generally associated with occult secret societies; this is where most fantasy RPGs ...
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In their current usages, with the release of D&D 4.
Similar classification systems have been around for decades... longer even than MMO's.
Champions made mention of Bricks, Blasters, Mentalists, and several other Superheroic archetypes back in the mid 1980's...
But, generally, until D&D 4, pen & paper RPG's generally avoided these types ...
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