Help:Glossary

0–9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

0–9

A

Action Economy

The number of actions each PC or NPC gets during a combat or other time-sensitive event. Almost inevitably causes problems if the number of actions available to one character, or one side, is greater than the other. Typical problems include a weaker but faster character effectively being stronger than a strength-based character because they can attack twice in the same amount of time, or a boss monster which has no chance of winning against a group of PCs but is likely to utterly annihilate one of them with the one action it gets between the four/five actions from PCs.

Adventure

A brief story formed of connected plot points that can be played through within one or two sessions. You can obtain pre-written adventures for many role-playing game systems. A longer story, sometimes comprised of many adventures, is called a campaign.

Ameritrash

Term for board games which follow "American" design princples: fancy boards, large numbers of miniatures, strong theming, integration of in-character and player actions, wargame-like movement of pieces, etc. Not necessarily a negative term.

B

BECMI

Basic Expert Companion Masters Immortals, the five books in the original Dungeons & Dragons set published in 1983. Also called "Red Box D&D" or "Mentzer D&D" after its authors. Frequently invoked by OSR fans as an example of a classic game; such fans usually forget that it had feats, weapon special moves, codified stronghold rules and several other features that are actively omitted from most OSR games.

Brain Damage

A tragic medical condition, and not something that should be invoked in regard to traditional games. See Gamer Damage.

C

Campaign

A long-term, overarching story that takes place over numerous sessions. Notoriously difficult to finish in a satisfactory manner.

CCG

Stands for Collectible Card Game. Examples include Magic: The Gathering. CCGs are played using specially designed sets of cards that allow for specific strategies.

Character sheet

One or more pieces of paper that covers the various details of a character, including their various ability scores, skills, combat statistics, backstory and so on. Digital character sheets, being paperless, are usually in plain text to make copy-pasting and updating much easier.

Class

A class-based system divides up player character choices into specific, separate archetypes. A player's choice of character class quite often determines your combat abilities, skills and may impose other restrictions.

D

Darkspot

The opposite of "a moment in the spotlight" - a moment when a character is weak, and has to deal with it. This may be a desirable part of the game or it may result in a frustrated and upset player.

Dice

Polyhedral objects used to generate random numbers, and used in most role-playing games. In most rulebooks they will be represented as d#, where # is the number of sides. Ergo twenty-sided dice are called d20s, eight-sided dice are called d8s, and so on. The one exception to this seems to be the d100, which is typically two ten-sided dice - one for the tens, one for the units.

Dissociated Mechanics

Term popular in the OSR community (and with grognards) that refers to game mechanics which require the player's mindset to differ from what they believe the PCs would be. Examples include collaborative worldbuilding (the character should experience the world, not design it), and mechanics requiring PCs not to striwe to avoid failure.

Dungeon

A location that contains both danger and reward for player characters. Though traditionally a subterranean structure, anything can be a dungeon: a laboratory, an office block, an abandoned spaceship, the fossilised intestines of some long-dead primordial god. As long as there is something worth venturing in for, and something in there protecting it, it can be considered a dungeon.

Dungeon crawl

A type of adventure where the party has to navigate their way through a dungeon, avoiding or overcoming all obstacles in their way. Despite being fairly simplistic, they can still be enjoyable.

E

Eurogame

Board game following "European" (or more particularly German) design principles: reduced components, relatively weak theming, limited connection of in-game and out-game actions or rulings, and short play time.

F

F&F

FATAL & Friends, the Traditional Games thread (or series of threads) containing RPG book reviews. Originally used for mocking bad RPGs, but later expanded to cover obscure but good ones and then all-purpose RPG reviews.

FitD

Forged In The Dark, a category for RPG systems based on the rules of John Harper's Blades in the Dark.

Forge Big Model

"Techniques: Specific procedures of play which, when employed together, are sufficient to introduce fictional characters, places, or events into the Shared Imagined Space... A given Technique is composed of a group of Ephemera which are employed together." If you believe that the previous sentences are a good and helpful way to discuss RPGs, then the Forge Big Model is for you. It probably isn't.

G

Gamer Damage

A condition created by Ron Edwards allegedly caused by ernest attempts to create an actual story by playing Vampire. Symptoms apparently include inability to distinguish a story from its presentation; refusal to operate with dissociated mechanics; and not thinking that the complex conflict resolution mechanism in Sorcerer (by Ron Edwards) is brilliant.

Goon

A regular on the Something Awful forums, or at least someone who's paid their $10.

GM

Short for Game Master, the person who acts as moderator and facilitator for a role-playing game. Their job is usually to apply the rules, to make rulings and judgments when necessary, and to play the NPCs. They may also create the scenario or world that the game takes place in. Can have different names in different systems, such as Dungeon Master, Storyteller, Narrator, and Mister Cavern.

GMPC

A GM's player character. The ideal GMPC rounds out an undersized party, providing a non-crucial role that does not steal the spotlight, and will bow out if the roster becomes full. Not every GMPC is an ideal one.

GNS

Gamism Narrativism Simulationism. A categorization for either players or gaming experience that was championed by Ron Edwards but in fact goes right back to rec.games.frp.advocacy on USENET. After 20+ years of unrestricted Internet debate, there are now so many misunderstandings, forked discussions, and confused definitions that it's been diluted into uselessness.

Grognard

Derived from the French for "grumbler", but usually pronounced with a hard G in a tabletop context. Once used by wargamers to refer to themselves, after the informal nickname for the veteran soldiers of Napoleon's army. Now has come to mean general tabletop gamers who are often socially regressive and unpleasant to be around.

Gygax

Ernest Gary Gygax, one of the creators of the original D&D, and arguably one of the initial founders of the hobby. Has become something like a saintly figure among certain gamers, who trust that they know exactly what "Gary would have wanted" which is only by pure coincidence exactly what they themselves want.

Gygaxian naturalism

The idea that you can build an ecology out of unnatural monsters inhabiting abandoned ruins. Rather than making an actual ecology with a food chain and so forth, it's mostly used as an excuse to invent new monsters to punish players for wanting to have fun.

H

I

Inn

Where most adventures begin. Staffed by a gruff innkeeper and some serving wenches, none of whom can move for the sheer number of mysterious strangers sitting in shadowy corners all over the place, waiting around for someone to approach them so they can begin handing out directions to the nearest dungeon.

J

Johnson

The Shadowrun term for the corporate contacts who hire the player characters for less-than-legal jobs, often styled as Mr. Johnson. A forgettable face in an unremarkable suit, with no ties to the corporation who would benefit the most from this job. Plausible deniability is every Johnson's byword.

K

L

M

Magical Realm

A setting, adventure, RPG system or system intended to allow a GM (usually) to inflict their bizarre fetishes on the players. Taken from an episode of the Gunshow webcomic which showed a GM having their players encounter an "enchanted piss forest". Actual examples of Magical Realm works include Blood In The Chocolate (inflation), and Witch Girls Adventures (transformation/female dominance).

Miniature

Often abbreviated to "mini". A small model of a character, creature or vehicle. They are typically made from plastic or pewter, and can either come painted or unpainted. Some wargames involve painting and putting together miniatures that go on to become your army, making it as much of an artistic hobby as a nerdy one.

N

NPC

A non-player character, as opposed to a PC or player character. NPCs are controlled by the GM (but are not GMPCs) and can be anything from a horrible monster to a helpful ally.

O

OGL

The Open Game License, an experiment by Wizards of the Coast in which companies were allowed unlimited use of the rules system from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition with the exception of a small number of rules and details. Led to the creation of Pathfinder as a spin-off from that edition of D&D. Introduced by WotC manager Ryan Dancey, who curiously went to work for the publishers of Pathfinder shortly after introducing it.

OGL debacle

The attempt by Wizards of the Coast in 2023 to replace the Open Game License with a new version with significant additional restrictions and duties - and to "de-authorize" the previous versions, which they had previously claimed they would be explicitly unable to do. Resulted in an industry-wide backlash, the creation of the ORC, and was eventually backed down on.

ORC

The Open RPG Creative license, a license written by Paizo after the OGL debacle intended to take the place of the OGL in order to avoid being affected by any future attempts by Wizards of the Coast to deauthorize parts of the OGL.

OSR

The Old School Rules. Or possibly Renaissance. Revival? Renewal? Despite having an acronym that nobody can quite agree on what it stands for, the OSR manages to share the belief that tabletop game design peaked around 1980 at the latest. Attracts a lot of grognards and other undesirable types, including several actual fascists.

Owlbear

Owl up front, bear in the back, all business.

P

Party

A group of player characters, usually working together toward a common goal.

PbtA

Powered By The Apocalypse, a category for RPG systems based on the rules of Vincent Baker's RPG Apocalypse World. Baker allows the term to be used by any game that drew any amount of inspiration, however small, from Apocalypse World; so there is substantial variation even within games in this category.

PC

A player character, as opposed to an NPC or non-player character. Their actions are controlled by one of the players in the game. Usually each player gets only a single PC, but this is not true for all systems.

Q

Quantum Bear

A negative design term from the OSR community with unclear origin and distorted meaning. Sometimes used as an attack on encounter-based Railroading (eg, no matter what route the players take through the forest they will encounter at least one bear). But seems to have originally referred to Failure models other than Fail in Place, such as where Failing Forward to cook food in a forest camp results in the PC cooking food but a bear entering the camp, with the implication that they would have been safe had they not attempted to make food, or that a better cook would not have encountered a bear. Particularly associated with PbtA.

Quicksandbox

Combination of "quicksand" and "sandbox". A game which claims to offer the PCs free reign to explore a setting, but does so with such little prompting, direction, or clear interim goals that the PCs are left wandering in the void, never knowing what they're supposed to do.

R

Railroad

A form of campaign or adventure in which the PCs have no effective choice of action at the narrative level; PC choices are typically restricted to problem solving or combat tactics. Called the Episodic structure by Laws. The typical Railroad adventure is guarding a transport of some kind (ironically usually not a train); the PCs can choose how to fight off or pass hazards as they appear, but cannot choose the transport's route nor leave it.

Railroading

A notoriously subjective term that refers to the GM managing circumstances or events to push the PCs into a single course of action, although usually only applied in cases where this is negative (it is not railroading for the GM to describe a burning building with the expectation that the PCs flee, for example). Typical examples of problematic railroading are:

• the combination of events and circumstances is unreasonable (the PCs are walking along a road through a nearly featureless plain, they decide to depart from the road and explore and a Tyrannosaurus Rex appears and chases them back onto the road - an example from Jonny Nexus)
• the course of action is one that is obvously unreasonable (a Traveller scenario left the PCs with no money and searching for a job, but expected that the PCs would choose to apply to a job ad that was obviously a scam and would get them kidnapped, even when a handout was provided showing several other reasonable jobs too)
• the constraint on action is substantial compared to the campaign premise (a Star Trek campaign that begins with the ship's reactor immediately failing and the ship having to land on a nearby planet to search for dilithium crystals, thus forcing the focus from space exploration to a single planet)

Road to Rome / Romeroading

A form of campaign or adventure in which a set number of scenes are prearranged to occur; the PCs can choose how they pass between them, but not prevent them from happening. Called the Set-Piece structure by Laws. For example, the players may be given their own choice as to how to investigate the hidden cult in town, but however they choose to do so, they will eventually confront the cult leader in their hidden chapel; and they will always arrive just before their ritual is due to complete, no matter how long they took. Can be much more acceptable than Railroading, but can be frustrating if mismanaged.

RPG

Role-Playing Game.

S

SA

Something Awful, the forum that brought us all here.

SOP

Standard Operating Procedure; a task carried out so often and so predictably by PCs that it no longer needs to be described at the table. A typical issue with OSR games in which players are often expected to describe every step of searching a hazardous dungeon; while announcing that your PC is poking every tile ahead with a 10' wooden pole to check for pits and hammering spikes into door hinges to prevent the doors closing behind them might provide exciting immersion for the first few games, it becomes rather tedious on the twentieth dungeon.

Splat

A trait of a character that is chosen from a fixed list; or, more specifically, a character's membership in a group that defines their identity and capabilities. Different from a Class in that a Splat is typically also an actual social organization to which the PC belongs, for example a clan of vampires.

Splatbook

A supplementary book for a role-playing game, most often covering one particular subject. Their contents can vary in terms of quality and quantity. Too many splatbooks for one system can turn the game unstable. Came from White Wolf and their tendency to publish "kithbooks", "clanbooks", "tribebooks", etc, which were together referred to as "splatbooks".

Story

The sequence of events that are played out during an RPG. Not necessarily written in advance to any particular extent. The original and nature of stories in RPGs is a topic of constant circular argument between fans of different playstyles.

Story Now

Like GNS, a term heavily diluted via decades of Internet debate. In its original meaning, it meant that the players should start a campaign capable enough to be the main characters of stories, rather than having to level up to that point. In its second meaning, it meant that the story should be written during play, not before or after. In its third meaning, it's the name of Ron Edwards' game system for Spione.

Storygame

An RPG that focusses on producing a pleasing narrative as the result of play, and requires players to play with this goal in mind, rather than assuming they will play their characters to win. Sometimes used as an insult by Grognards.

T

TG

Traditional Games, the Something Awful subforum for board games, wargames and RPGs.

TRPG / TTRPG

Tabletop, or possibly Tactical or Table Talk, Role Playing Game. Usually used to distinguish tabletop based RPGs from purely computer-based ones such as Baldur's Gate. Just to keep everyone confused, some groups prefer to use RPG to mean only TRPGs, and CRPG to mean computer-based ones.

U

V

W

World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game

A euphemistic reference to Dungeons & Dragons(tm) used on third-party books to avoid mentioning the trademarked name. Arguably untrue: Call of Cthulhu often exceeds the popularity of Dungeons and Dragons in countries where fantasy traditions differ from those that D&D represents, and the effect of this on world popularity is dramatic. Most books are careful not to refer to it as the world's best roleplaying game.

X

Y

Z