Word for role playing game

The list below is a role-playing lexicon, a list of words and abbreviations that are used in or during role-playing, as well as when talking or writing about role-playing. This includes a number of role-playing games.

Lexicon formatting guide
Example	word (wordtype) definition of this word; explanation in other words other word (wordtype1/wordtype2) full meaning, as specific as possible; e.g. a useful example (wordtype1) next full meaning or explanation; e.g. another example or two (wordtype2) third word (wordtype) see: another word
Guidelines	sort alphabetically! in italics: word type redirects to another word original meaning: prefix use capitals only when required: for abbreviations, names, etc. internal links: within explanations, refer to the appropriate section in the lexicon word itself may link to the appropriate article on this wiki never add redlinks, but for RPGs use commas or semicolons, avoid fullstops use «e.g.» for examples

Contents: Top — 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

A

• advanced (adjective)
  • original meaning: ahead in progress, skill, knowledge
  • with a minimum amount of background knowledge about role-playing; e.g. advanced player, advanced role-play
  • well-developed, thoroughly written or researched; e.g. advanced storyline, advanced rules
• alignment (noun)
  • original meaning: taking a certain position or stance, arrangement
  • ethic and moral perspective of a person, institution or nation
• anthropomorphic (adjective)
  • resembling a human or the human form, having human attributes; e.g. anthropomorphic deity
  • with both human (usually anatomical) and animal features; not to be confused with «furry»
• arc (noun)
  • storyline; one part of a bigger story, however often still divided into chapters or episodes
• ARPG (abbreviation)
  • action (genre) role-playing (video) game
  • adventure (genre) role-playing (video) game
  • apocalyptic role-playing (video) game; role-playing (video) game taking place in an apocalypse
• autohit (noun)
  • hit that landed on a character without previous statement of intention
  • role-playing post in which an autohit occurred
• to autohit (verb)
  • to have a hit automatically land on a character
• autohitting (adjective/noun)
  • that autohits, in which is or has been autohit; e.g. an autohitting player, an autohitting post (adjective)
  • act or habit of having a hit automatically land on a character (noun)

B

• B&B (abbreviation)
  • Bunnies & Burrows
• to beta-read (verb)
  • to read up on another character’s abilities or background and implementing this (OOC) knowledge in the role-play
• beta-reading (noun)
  • act or habit of reading up on another character’s abilities or background and implementing this (OOC) knowledge in the role-play
• Bunnies & Burrows (name)
  • name of a role-playing game

C

• canon (adjective/noun)
  • officially part of the book, movie, series (adjective)
  • that what is canon, a recognized set of canon items; a work with longer history and multiple phases in its evolution (games, adaptations, …) may have different levels of «canonicity» (noun)
• charter (noun)
  • original meaning: grant and description of authority or rights, and its related leader roles
  • document used to define the purpose, key roles and organization of a role-playing community
• constitution (noun)
  • original meaning: rules or fundamental principles in which something is constituted or governed
  • see: charter
• critical (adjective)
  • that deals more than the normal damage; e.g. critical hit, critical damage
• cyber (abbreviation/noun)
  • cyber sex
  • cyberpunk role-play (uncommon)
  • derogatory term for erotic role-play (noun)
• to cyber (abbreviation/verb)
  • to have cyber sex
  • derogatory term for erotic role-playing (verb)
• cybering (abbreviation/noun)
  • having cyber sex
  • derogatory term for erotic role-playing (noun)

D

• D&D (abbreviation)
  • Dungeons & Dragons
• death match (noun)
  • role-playing fight that is aimed to result in the death of all but one opponent/team
• DM (abbreviation)
  • death match
  • dungeon master
• dungeon master (noun)
  • D&D term for game master, person who is in charge of or who organizes the game
• Dungeons & Dragons (name)
  • name of a role-playing game

E

• EP (abbreviation, uncommon)
  • experience (points)
• erotic role-play (noun)
  • genre of role-playing in which the content focuses on erotic or sexual themes
• ERP (abbreviation)
  • erotic role-play
• experience (points) (noun)
  • experience or experience points is a way to measure a player’s experience throughout their journey, granted usually when they finish tasks successfully or slay opponents

F

• faction (noun)
  • political entity, association or clan/guild; usually either role-played by an individual, or populated by a group of (mostly) player characters who align with it
• fanon (adjective/noun)
  • influential or widely accepted elements/ideas/concepts of fan fiction; portmanteau of «fan (fiction)» and «canon» (adjective)
  • that what is fanon, a recognized set of fanon items (noun)
• fantasy (adjective/noun)
  • of the fantasy genre, with fantasy elements (adjective)
  • genre of fiction with supernatural and/or magical elements (noun)
• FFRP (abbreviation)
  • Final Fantasy role-play
• Final Fantasy (name)
  • series of role-playing games, as well as motion pictures, anime, e.a.
• Final Fantasy role-play (noun)
  • role-play based on the Final Fantasy universe
  • role-play that takes place in the setting of (one of) the Final Fantasy games
• FL (abbreviation)
  • friend list
• forum role-play
  • role-play that is performed or played out on a forum
• freeform (RP) (noun)
  • type of role-play that applies little restrictions to for instance script or plot, usage of characters and their abilities
  • type of role-play with a limited or even no Manual of Style or other style guidelines
• friend list (noun)
  • contact list; list of people marked as friends on a community (usually to role-play with)
• FRP (abbreviation)
  • forum role-play
• FTF (abbreviation)
  • face to face

G

• game (noun)
  • role-playing game
  • role-play or sim
• game master (noun)
  • person who is in charge of or who organizes the game
• GM (abbreviation)
  • game master
  • god-modding
  • god-moding
• to god-mod (verb)
  • to modify a character during the role-play, both of the own (adding or altering information from its biography) or the other’s character (describing it or its actions different than what is stated or can easily be derived)
• god-modding (noun)
  • act of modifying a character during the role-play
• god-mode (noun)
  • state of being invulnerable (of a character or items of its inventory)
  • not to be confused with: autohit or powerplay
• to god-mode (verb)
  • to go in god-mode
  • to ignore an (offensive) action upon the own character, not explaining how it may have responded or dodged
• god-moding (noun)
  • act of going in god-mode
  • act of ignoring (offensive) actions upon the own character

H

• H&S (abbreviation)
  • hack and slash
• hack and slash (noun)
  • type of game or role-play or style of playing it that emphasizes combat or even violence
• to handwave (verb)
  • to skip or quickly gloss over parts of a story that should not (yet) or can not be explained
  • to skip or quickly gloss over scenes or parts of a storyline with little action (to avoid boredom or time deprivation) or with high risk of breaking rules (sexual or violent themes)
• handwaving (noun)
  • act of skipping or quickly glossing over scenes or parts of a story or role-play
• healer (noun)
  • character class, person whose task is to restore health, cure poisons and sometimes revive, in order to delay or avoid defeat
• health (noun)
  • physical and/or mental condition of a character, including their diseases and corporal quirks
  • value expressing the amount of damage a character can take, usually expressed in hit points (or related terms) and often displayed through a health or life bar; health can decreased by attacking and increased by healing
• horror (adjective/noun)
  • of the horror genre, with horror or macabre elements (adjective)
  • genre of fiction with macabre elements (noun)
• house rule (noun)
  • rule used in a community, organization or club, usually specified because it is distinct from the role-play conventions
• HP (abbreviation)
  • hit points or health points

I

• IC (abbreviation)
  • In character.
• Inbreeding (noun)
  • Original meaning: reproduction between genetically closely related pairs.
  • Sticking to a core group of role-players to organize and participate in sims, with little to no new players.
  • Keeping relatives and friends of a role-playing character to yourself or to the same select group of people, even though there are enough other role-players available.
• In character (noun)
  • In the role-play; in the role of a role-playing character.
• In-character (adjective)
  • Taking place in character
  • Term used in expressions such as in-character information.

J

• JRPG

K

L

• LARP (abbreviation)
  • Live action role-play.
• Level-up (noun)
• Literate (adjective)
  • With proper grammatical, ortographical and syntactical usage of the language role-played in, which may include paragraph-style or novel-style writing and is sometimes additionally regulated by a Manual of Style.
  • Term used in expressions such as literate role-play and literate style.
• Live action role-play
  • Form of role-playing where the players dress up and act like their role-playing characters.

M

• Main character (noun)
  • Major or (most) important character in a book, role-play, etc.
• Manual of Style (noun)
  • Original meaning: set of guidelines to ensure consistency and cohesion.
  • Set of (writing) guidelines defining the style in which one should role-play (e.g. using color codes for characters’ words, always using British/American English).
• Mary Sue (noun)
  • A name to describe a character that is too «perfect» and inexplicably liked by other characters. Often a self-insert character.
• massively multiplayer online role-playing game (noun)
• MC (abbreviation)
  • main character.
• to meta-game
• meta-gaming
  • Act of implementing OOC knowledge in a role-play when the character in question does not have the knowledge.
• MMORPG (abbreviation)
  • massively multiplayer online role-playing game
• MoS / MOS (abbreviation)
  • Manual of Style
• MUD (abbreviation)
  • multi-user dungeon, multi-user domain, multi-user dimension
• munchkin (noun)

N

• Non-playable character (noun)
  • character that is not or cannot be played by a human player.
• NPC (abbreviation)
  • non-playable or non-player character

O

• OC
  • Abbreviation of original character.
• OCC
  • Abbreviation of out (of) character chat.
• One-liner
  • Original meaning: catch phrase, a one-like joke or slogan of an advertisement.
  • Role-playing post that only exists of one line or sentence.
• OOC
  • Abbreviation of out of character.
• OP
  • Abbreviation of overpowered.
• Original character
  • Character part of fan fiction or fanon; a fan-made character.
• Out of character
  • Outside the role-play.

P

• PbE, PBE, PBEM
  • Abbreviation of play-by-email (role-playing).
• PbI, PBI
  • Abbreviation of play-by-internet.
• PbP, PBP
  • Abbreviation of play-by-post (role-playing).
• PbW, PBW
  • Abbreviation of play-by-web.
• PC
  • Abbreviation of personal computer.
  • Abbreviation of player character.
  • Abbreviation of powered characters.
  • Abbreviation of private chat.
• Play-by
  • The actor or otherwise whose image is used to represent a character.
• Play-by-post (role-play)
  • Type of role-play in which the participators play by placing role-playing messages (posts) on for instance bulletin boards or forums.
• Player character (playable character)
  • Character controlled (controllable) by a human player.
• Poaching
  • Original meaning: illegal hunting or killing of animals (i.e. outside the hunting season).
  • Soliciting of members from an established role-play, project or community, especially when this is against their rules.
• Point of view
  • Perspective of the narrator: first, second or third person.
• PoV, POV
  • Abbreviation of point of view.
• PvP, PVP
  • Abbreviation of player versus player, or person versus person.
• PxP
  • Abbreviation of player x player, or person x person.

Q

• Quest
  • Mission for a character or party to complete, sometimes part of a quest sequence and regularly divided into main quests and side quests.
• Quest item
  • Item used (only) in or for a quest.

R

• RM
  • Abbreviation of realistic melee.
• Role-player
  • Person who role-plays; person who plays role-playing games.
• Role-playing character
  • Character used in/for role-playing and wielded by a role-player.
• Role-playing game
  • Game in which the player role-plays, usually with a minimum of choice and character development.
• RPC (abbreviation)
  • role-playing character.
  • role-playing community (uncommon).
• RPG
  • Abbreviation of role-playing game.

S

• science fiction
• School slump
  • Period of time from around late August to early October, shortly after the start of school/college.
  • The effects of the above on role-play, more specifically the steep decline in activity in role-plays with a (fairly) young audience.
• Sim
  • A distinguishable whole (storyline, game) or session of simming.
• Sim-boosting
  • Temporarily joining of a new, inactive or dying role-play to boost its activity or to get it going, usually done by senior players of the community or role-players already active in another sim.
• Sim Leader (SL)
  • An alternative designation for Commanding Officer, particularly in a non-military sim.
• Simmer
  • Type of role-player who (mainly/only) participates in simming.
• Simming
  • Textually role-playing; play-by-post role-playing.

T

• TPK
  • Abbreviation of total party kill.
• TPO (abbreviation)
  • the player of; e.g. Max tpo Captain Barnes

U

• UM
  • Abbreviation of unrealistic melee.

V

W

• WAR
  • Abbreviation of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.
• WoW
  • Abbreviation of World of Warcraft.

X

• XP
  • Abbreviation of experience (points).

Y

Y/N

.Your name,Your OC

Z

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Role-playing games (RPGs) have developed specialized terminology. This includes both terminology used within RPGs to describe in-game concepts and terminology used to describe RPGs. Role-playing games also have specialized slang and jargon associated with them.

Besides the terms listed here, there are numerous terms used in the context of specific, individual RPGs such as Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), Pathfinder, Fate, and Vampire: The Masquerade. For a list of RPGs, see List of role-playing games.

Terms used to play role-playing games[edit]

A[edit]

• Adventure: A set of game sessions united by characters and by narrative sequence, setting or goal.^[1][2]
• Armor Class (or AC): The difficulty to hit a specified target, abstracted from its dodging capacity and armor.^[3][4] «This term was inherited from a naval battle game».^[3]: 203 Many role-playing games that came after Dungeons & Dragons have «abandoned the notion of defining defense as armor class».^[3]: 54
• Area of Effect (or AoE): An effect that affects a zone,^[5] measured by a template, distance in hexagon or ordinary metrics.

C[edit]

• Campaign: A series of adventures.^[6]
• Character: player character: non-player character or game-master character: a fictional character in a role-playing game.^[7][8]
• Character sheet: A record of a player character in a role-playing game, including whatever details, notes, game statistics, and background information a player would need during a play session.^[9][10]
• Character creation: The method used to create a player character.^[11][12][13]
• Critical: (dice) result (- hit / — failure) with lower probability (natural 1 or 20 on an icosahedron, matched dice, etc.) resulting in a strong fictional/mechanical outcome.^[14][15][16]

D[edit]

• Difficulty Class (or DC): A target number to save from an effect.^[17][18]
• Dungeon: An enclosed location that contains hostile NPCs, such as a cave or building.^[19][20] A dungeon crawl is a type of scenario in which players navigate a labyrinth type of dungeon, battling various monsters, avoiding traps, solving puzzles, and looting any treasure they may find.^[21]

F[edit]

• Fumble: Critical failure. syn. Botch.^[22]

G[edit]

• Game master (or GM). The person who runs a role-playing game and arbitrates how actions are resolved and narrated.^[23] In many games, specialized terms are used, as such Dungeon Master for the person running Dungeons & Dragons,^[24] Storyteller for the person running a game set in the World of Darkness or Referee for the person running Traveller.
• Gamemaster’s screen: a folding screen, often of cardboard, used to hide adventure content from the players.^{[25][26]: 191}

I[edit]

• Initiative : The determination of who goes first and in what order declared actions are carried out.^[27][28]

M[edit]

• Metagaming: A player’s use of out-of-character knowledge concerning the state of the game to determine their character’s actions, when said character has no relevant knowledge or awareness under the circumstances.^[29][30]
• Modifier: A number added to or subtracted from a die roll based on a specific skill or other attribute.^[27][31]

N[edit]

• Natural (roll): The number actually on a die, such as a natural 1 or a natural 20, indicating the die’s face shows a 1 or a 20, as opposed to the number rolled plus modifiers.^{[citation needed]}

S[edit]

• Saving throw: A game mechanic in which dice are used to avoid some kind of negative effect on a character.^[30][27]
• Safety tools: An auxiliary ruleset added to a roleplaying game that establishes boundaries, trigger warnings, and communication methods.^[32][33][34] Examples of popular safety toolsets include: Lines and Veils by Emily Care Boss (based on concepts from Sorcery & Sex by Ron Edwards), Script Change by Beau Sheldon, and the X-Card by John Stavropoulos.^[34][32][35]
• Session: A single meeting of a role-playing group.^[36][37]
• Session Zero (or Session 0): The first game session where the game master and players determine the playstyle, mechanics and themes they will use as group in their game. Groups will also determine the expectations and limitations (including use of safety tools) of their game. Some groups also use this session to create characters and establish other parts of worldbuilding for their game.^{[35][38][39][40]}
• Setting: The fictional world in which the game takes place.^[28][4]
• Story guide: Also, «storyteller.» The game master of a game with a strong focus on narrative tropes.^[41]
• System: The set of game mechanics which make up a game.^[4][28]

T[edit]

• THAC0 (which stands for «To hit armor class zero»): In D&D, the number needed on a dice roll for a character to hit an NPC if they have a zero armor class.^[3][30][42]
• Total party kill (TPK) or total party wipe(out) (TPW): The entire party of player characters dies.^[43][44]
• Troupe system: A style of play in which different characters are run by the same player in different sessions; in some cases, the duties of the game master may also be rotated amongst the players.^[45]

Terms used to describe characters[edit]

A[edit]

• Advantage: A positive or useful statistic or trait.^{[citation needed]}
• Attributes: Natural, in-born characteristics shared by all characters. Functional attributes, such as physical strength or wisdom, have a mechanical impact on gameplay while cosmetic attributes, such as visual appearance, allow a player to define their character within the game.^[46]

D[edit]

• Derived statistic: A secondary characteristic based on a character’s attributes (or primary characteristics), which may include such fluctuating measures as hit points or magic points.^{[citation needed]}

P[edit]

• Powers: Extraordinary abilities which make a character special, such as flight or telepathy.^[4]

R[edit]

• Race: Any sapient species or beings that make up the setting. Players can often choose to be one of these creatures when creating their character and each possess different abilities and attributes that distinguish them from one another. Races can also possess their own ethnicities, types, or other description of their physical and cultural heredity. Role-playing games often include fantasy races, mutants, robots and other non-human character types.^[46][3]

S[edit]

• Skills: Learned capabilities, such as spoken languages, horse riding or computer hacking.^[46]
• Statistic: Any attribute, advantage, disadvantage, power, skill, or other trait. In the plural, statistics refers to the information on a character sheet. Often abbreviated as «stats».^{[citation needed]}

Terms used to describe types of games[edit]

A[edit]

• Actual play (or live play): A genre of podcast or web show in which people play tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) for an audience.^[47][48][49] Actual play often encompasses in-character interactions between players, storytelling from the gamemaster, and out-of-character engagements such as dice rolls and discussion of game mechanics.^[49]

F[edit]

• Free-form role-playing game: A rules-light style of game that mostly uses social dynamics for its game system.^[41]

G[edit]

• Gamist: A term from GNS theory describing games in which enjoyment is derived from facing and overcoming challenges.^[50][51]
• Generic: A system that can support a wide variety of settings.^[52][53]
• Genre: A game that adheres to certain fictional tropes, such as fantasy or science fiction.^[54][3][34]

L[edit]

• Live-action (or LARP): A type of role-playing game physically enacted in a troupe acting style.^[3][55]
• Living campaigns (or shared campaigns): A gaming format within the table-top role-playing game community that provides the opportunity for play by an extended community within a shared universe.^[56]

N[edit]

• Narrativist: A term from GNS theory describing games in which enjoyment is derived from creating a good story.^[51]

O[edit]

• Online RPG: A type of computer game that uses RPG-style game mechanics and tropes.^[57]

R[edit]

• Rules-heavy: A game system with heavily codified mechanics, usually encompassing a wide variety of possible actions in a game. The opposite of rules-lite.^{[58][59][60][61]}
• Rules-lite: A game system that uses very general mechanics, usually more focused on narrative actions in a game. The opposite of rules-heavy.^{[58][59][60][61]}

S[edit]

• Simulationist: A term from GNS theory for games in which enjoyment is derived from deep immersion in a new (simulated) world.^[51]

Terms used by gamers[edit]

B[edit]

• Bleed: A term that describes both the positive and negative emotional carry over a player can potentially feel due to the role-playing experiences of their characters. Players can also bring real-life emotions into their role-playing games.^[62][63] «This process has been named bleed by game designer and scholar Emily Care Boss, because emotions from one environment bleed into another».^[28]: 101
• Blue booking: One or a few of the players describing activities of their characters in written form, outside of the role-playing session, creating a sort of ongoing character history and resolving actions that do not involve the rest of the group.^[41]

C[edit]

• Crunch: The rules and mechanics of a game.^[64]

F[edit]

• Fluff: The setting and ambiance of a game, as distinct from the rules/mechanics, particularly in reference to written descriptive material.^[64]

M[edit]

• Monty haul: A pun on Monty Hall (the former host of Let’s Make A Deal), when equipment, abilities, and other rewards are awarded more often than the system intends (or in some cases more often than the system is capable of handling).^[65][66]
• Munchkin: An immature player, especially one who is selfishly focused on dominating play, often by seeking to circumvent the normal limitations placed on characters.^[67][65]

P[edit]

• Powergamer: A player focused on system mastery; a min-maxer.^[41]

R[edit]

• Rule as Intended (or RAI): The rules with the context of the designers’ intent.^[68]
• Rule as Written (or RAW): The rules «without regard to the designers’ intent. The text is forced to stand on its own».^[68] Game designer Jeremy Crawford wrote, «In a perfect world, RAW and RAI align perfectly, but sometimes the words on the page don’t succeed at communicating the designers’ intent. Or perhaps the words succeed with one group of players but fail with another».^[68]
• Roll-playing: A derisive term for rules-heavy games, occasionally to the point of requiring players to focus on game mechanics at the expense of role-playing.^[69][70]
• Rules lawyer: A player who strictly adheres to the rules as written, and enforces them among all other players.^[71][72]

T[edit]

• Twink: A player who engages in system mastery with an explicit focus of exploiting powerful abilities. Similar to powergamer.^[73][74]

References[edit]

This Role Players Gamers (RPG Glossary) is currently being maintained by sdonohue. Please see the this forum thread to discuss additions/modifications to this Glossary. Only with your help can this Glossary be updated and improved — thanks!

For other terms and abbreviations see also:

• Common Tags — Definitions of commonly used tags.
• BGG Glossary — Board Gamer’s Glossary
  • BG Abbreviations — List of board game acronyms.
  • BG Publisher Abbreviations — List of board game publisher acronyms.
• RPG Glossary — Role-Play Gamer’s Glossary
• VGG Glossary — Video Gamer’s Glossary
  • VG Abbreviations — List of video game acronyms.

Introduction
The RPG Geek glossary serves to help identify RPG-related terms you might encounter here at RPG Geek. The definitions given here may not be universally accepted — the sole purpose is to help members of the RPG Geek decipher and understand RPG-related terms that are bantered about on the site. Some terms defined here will have more than one definition; the definitions are always listed in terms of most popular to least. The use of these terms outside of RPG Geek may have alternate meanings — so don’t go quoting us as gospel. Terms considered for the RPG Geek glossary shall include words that have found their way into common use on in RPG-related books (printed or electronic), RPG-related magazines, RPG Podcasts, RPG Blogs and the like. The final decision as to any and all terms and definitions rests with the person currently maintaining the glossary.

#+#, d+a, or dice+adds — Dice roll notation convention used in several older games. The first number is the number of dice, the second is added to the total – e.g., 3+4 is 3 dice plus 4, or 3d+4 in modern notation (see d[X] below). Most games using this notation use only 6-sided dice. Also can be expressed as a subtraction: 4-2 would be 4d6-2, and 9-8 is 9d6-8. Possibly saw first use in early wargaming and certainly was in GURPS 2nd Edition, though not in common use today.

A

Ability(ies) — See Trait.

AC — Armor Class. Used in many fantasy RPGs to represent how difficult it is to hit a character.

Action Resolution — A general mechanic used within the game to drive the story forward. Action resolution most commonly is determined randomly with variable chances of success based on character skills/abilities/stats and often involves dice or a table-lookup to determine outcome and may include degrees of success or failure. Probably originated in discussions at the Forge but has become part of a wider body of language.

Actual Play — 1) A reference to the recording or transcription of a session of play into a form intended to be read by a third party. Actual Play is considered in some quarters to be the sole basis for criticism of game mechanisms as anything «intended» or «expected» is irrelevant in the face of the actual play. 2) Having figuratively played a game.

Advantages — Skills or traits the character has that aid him in the course of game play. Often set at time of character creation.

Adventure — A single challenge, often short enough to be completed in one session. Often makes up one smaller piece of larger story with a beginning and an end, but may be stand alone. Contrast with Campaign.

Adventure Seed — a short description of a setup for an adventure, intended as a jumping off point for a GM to expand into an adventure.

AoO — Attack of Opportunity

AoE — Area of Effect. The area affected by an attack/spell/etc which affects more than one creature or object.

AP — Action Points. 1) Often given to players for use during the game and may be spent to allow their characters to perform actions above and beyond what they may normally do. 2) An acronym for Actual Play (q.v.) 3) Adventure Path or more appropriately Pathfinder Adventure Path.

Attack of Opportunity — Special attacks that a character can make as a reaction to some game event or Character / NPC action.

B

Badwrongfun — 1, Refers to gameplay which some players find morally objectionable; a character or campaign based on rape would be considered badwrongfun by many. 2. Sometimes used to refer to playing a game in a non-thematic way to achieve a comedic effect.

Battle mat — A piece of paper, vinyl, cardboard, lucite, or other substance marked off in a grid (hexagons, squares, offset squares, triangles) for use in simulating combat. Often they are designed to be drawn on with an erasable marker of some kind. Usually used with miniatures to determine precise position information during play.

BBEG — Big Bad Evil Guy. Most often the main antagonist boss NPC for a particular adventure or campaign.

BECMI — Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal. This abbreviation is sometimes used to refer to the various versions of Basic D&D which existed as a separate game from AD&D until the line was renamed D&D with version 3.0.

BMX Bandit — A character who, while competent alone, is rendered useless in the play group by the superiority of another character. Can be a sign of a badly designed system or poor choices in character generation. Taken from the Mitchell and Webb Radio and TV sketch Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit, featuring a superhero team in which one can summon hordes of intelligent superpowered angels at will and the other is quite good at riding his BMX bike.

BNG — Bitter Non Gamer. Person who is unable to join or arrange a gaming group and games by proxy, usually by complaining about RPGs that aren’t the one they’d prefer to play.

Boffer LARP — Boffer LARP is a subset of LARPing usually ran around combat reenactment. Players dress up as combatants and fight using foam weaponry or tickets to represent various skills, spells or effects. It may range from small group and skirmish to full reenactments among hundreds of people. So called for the common term for the type of weapon simulator most commonly used.

Breath or Breath Weapon — Commonly used to refer to a weapon / attack type of a creature, (i.e. dragon, white wolf, hell hound, etc).

Broad Skills — Skills that cover a wide range of activities, such as «Wheeled Vehicles,» «Medical,» «Melee,» or «Artisan.» Systems with broad skills tend to have short lists, often 30-60 skills. Usually seen in design discussions.

BTB — By the Book. See RAW.

Buff — an ability, spell, rules change, or other game mechanic that improves a character’s capabilities.

Bug Hunt — Most often used in a Science Fiction RPG involving nothing more than killing some alien creature(s). See Dungeon Crawl.

C

Called Shot — An attack made by a character which targets a particular area on an opponent or object. Depending on the system a called shot will trade off increased difficulty for increased damage and/or an additional effect. See Hit Location.

Caltrops — A common slang term for 4-sided dice where the traditional tetrahedron shape of the die means a pointy end is always pointing up waiting in ambush for poorly shod gamers.

Campaign — A longer story told by chaining or linking a number of adventures together. Sometimes, one single very long adventure can be called a «campaign». Whereas an adventure may only encompass one to three levels of character improvement, a campaign will allow Player Characters to achieve much more levels of character improvement. Also, the story and overall goals tend to be much more epic than an adventure. Campaigns almost always require more than two or three gaming sessions to complete.

Campaign Setting — The (fictitious) world where a specific adventure or campaign takes place. Lord of the Rings stories are set in the campaign setting of Middle Earth.

Canon — Original material, or referring to «official source material», which is created or accepted by an RPG’s designer(s). Canon is often used to ensure continuity within a RPG or fantasy setting. May refer to mechanics or fluff material.

Caster Supremacy — Games in which magic-using characters are outright better than those without magic. Multiple variations of this exist, such as permissions (the thief has to roll to Hide and have the right circumstances, but the mage can just declare they are turning invisible), subsumption (the thief has to keep their Pick Lock skill levelled at continuous cost; the mage casts Knock), and defense (the fighter spends hundreds of gold on armor to avoid melee, the mage casts Fly).

CGen — Common forum abbreviation for Character Generation.

Chamber LARP — Is a short live action role-playing game which lasts for no longer than a few hours and which takes place in a compact area, maybe just one room. Compared to larger LARPs a Chamber LARP is a type of game which easily can be produced in different cities by other groups than the original organizers. (Blackbox LARP).

Character — The persona being played by a player within the context of a game.

Character Points — A pool of points used to advance a character’s abilities / level / skills / etc. Players often begin with a large pool to design a character, and then earn more as they adventure with the character.

Character Sheet — The document containing a character’s basic traits, skills, carried equipment, background, etc. Historically a single sheet of paper, but is more commonly becoming an electronic document or spreadsheet and/or may be made up of multiple sheets.

Class — The «main area of expertise», “role”, or «job» for a player character. Typical classes in role-playing games with a fantasy setting are fighter, cleric, thief, or wizard. The chosen class typically affects what skills / abilities the player character can learn / use. Classes usually incorporate fixed set of abilities appropriate to the fiction the class represents.

Class-Based — An RPG using character classes to define player character job or role within a group, commonly limiting a player character to one or two areas of expertise. For example, a Fighter class is generally best at melee combat, a Magic User class is generally best at spells and their use in a game.

Clone, X — A character that is a clone of a popular fictional character. In D&D clones of Drizzt Do’Urden are endemic, recently Traveller began to suffer an invasion of Malcolm Reynolds clones.

Collapsing Die — Opposite of an Exploding Die. A collapsing die, when a minimal result is rolled, is rolled again and the result subtracted from the total roll, often resulting in a major failure.

Combat Round — See Round.

Core Rules — The subset of rules that is basic and core to the game. The rules are commonly shared between different games published by the same publisher, (often culled out into a separate book to save duplicate information in each book published). In most cases the core rules are the only rules needed to play an RPG.

CP — Character Points.

Crack, X — 1) Referring to an addictive aspect of gaming. 2) Irresistible new material. Example: “Those cool new dice are total gamer crack.” “D&D 4-point-crack is so cool. I have to buy all the supplements.”

Creature — Term used generically to refer to anything that can take actions / interact within the game / story. (Character / NPC / monster / living objects / undead / etc.).

Crit — Abbreviation for Critical.

Critical — A «critical hit». Generally speaking, a successful attack that causes greater than normal damage to the target. Depending on the RPG may also inflict negative a status or effect onto the target hit.

Cross-Class — 1) Often used to reference a skill, or ability that may be used by more than one class. 2) Used to mean a skill, or ability generally reserved for a specific class which a different class may pick up, often at a reduced level of effectiveness.

CRPG — Computer Role-Playing Game. Refers to role-playing games designed for computer or console play. These are typified by the presence of character development and tactical combat but usually lack the other features of table-top role-playing games as they are usually designed for solo play. Some exceptions exist.

Crunch or Crunchy — Rules-heavy. Referring to rules which detail how actions and/or action resolution is determined. Also includes rules which specify abilities, statistics, monsters, equipment, etc. Often includes little or no story information.

D

d[X] or D[X] — Dice roll notation in which the number in place of X represents the number of sides on the die to roll. Example; d6 refers to the roll of a six-sided die, d8 refers to the roll of an eight-sided die, d20 refers to the roll of a twe—… well, you get the point. (See also d100, d% below.) Strictly, dX refers to generation of a value between 1 and X, inclusive, and need not refer to an actual physical die: for instance, d3 usually means that a d6 is rolled and divided by two, rounded up, to produce a value between 1 and 3. Numbers before the d[X] refer to rolling (and usually summing) that number of dice – e.g., 2d6 means add the rolls of two six-sided dice for a total between 2 and 12. Finally, a plus or minus symbol followed by a number after the d[X] represents a modifier to the dice-roll total – e.g., 1d8+3 = roll one eight-sided die and add 3 to its result for a total between 4 and 11.

d100 or d% — Notation for a percentile die roll, made with a 100-sided die or with two ten-sided dice numbered 0–9 in which one die refers to the tens place and the other refers to the ones place. (A roll of 0 and 0 is most commonly read as 100, not zero.)

Damage — Any harm that comes to characters is usually expressed as damage. It comes in many flavours, not the least of which are: Normal damage (in some systems with multiple damage types, a type of damage with potentially lethal side effects, but mostly likely to stun or injure. Also called half-lethal damage. In several other games, used as a merely as a contrast to Lethal or Aggrivated Damage), Stun Damage (in some systems with multiple types of damage, Stun may be a type of damage resulting only in unconsciousness or impairment of function), Aggravated Damage (a synonym for Lethal Damage). Damage types may be distinguished by the particular kind of hit point that is reduced, as with Composure Damage.

DC — Difficulty Check.

Decker Problem — occurs when a game mechanic results in one player becoming the only one at the table able to participate for a long period of time, leaving the other players bored. The name refers to «deckers» — hackers — in the original Cyberpunk game, which features a complex and tactical hacking minigame in which non-deckers could not participate, and because the game specified that the hacking took place in only a few seconds of in-game time, could not do anything else either.

Deus Ex Machina — An unexpected NPC or plot-device, often only appearing for a single scene, that saves a seemingly hopeless situation. Generally seen as a bad design choice in adventure design. Derives from the classical term with stricter definition: a sudden and unexpected resolution to a seemingly intractable problem. Figuratively, the god from the machine, a solution that seems to arise from outside the fiction.

Dew — Any soda or beverage used during the game. A term used to honor the all venerable Mountain Dew soda, enjoyed by many gamers due to its high sugar and caffeine content.

Dice Training — The superstition that rolling dice repeatedly outside the game will change its statistical behaviour («I rolled all the 1s out of it») or that storing dice with a favourable value showing will «train» it to roll that number more frequently. Sometimes the belief is the reverse, and that storing dice with the least favourable value showing will «use up» the value.

Difficulty Check or Difficulty Class — The player must meet or exceed this, (often a number of a die roll + modifiers), to succeed in an action resolution.

Disadvantage — Skills or traits the character has that deter him in the course of game play. Often set at time of character creation and used to enhance / encourage role-playing.

DM — Dungeon Master. (See Game Master.)

DM Fiat — See GM Fiat.

Drama — A method of action resolution where the GM chooses the result based on what would be most interesting for the story. Probably originated in discussions at the Forge but has become part of a wider body of language.

DMG — Dungeon Master’s Guide the GM book for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games. A core rule book. Sometimes also an abbreviation for «damage».

Dump Stat — A Stat with little or no perceived value, thus one that is often sacrificed or shorted in favor of another one if there is an opportunity to distribute points. Example: Charisma in a D&D dungeon crawl.

Dungeon Crawl — A role-playing game scenario or adventure in which the main focus is exploration of the environment, engaging and fighting any monsters, and collecting treasure. Commonly set in a dungeon made up of hallway and rooms with little to no story line.

Dungeon Master — See Game Master.

E

Effect — A positive or negative element which affects a character, almost always causing modifiers to abilities or allowable actions. Example: stunned, poisoned, hasted, unconscious, etc. Sometimes called a «status effect» or, depending on the context, a «buff» or «debuff».

Experience Points — A system for improving characters in role-playing games. Typically, a character will be awarded experience points for succeeding at challenges, like defeating a monster or completing a mission. After a certain amount of collected experience points, the player character will improve, usually either by increased stats or by achieving new skills.

Expiration Level — Term coined in 3.X Ed. D&D to refer to a level in which a particular class peaked for the most efficient character improvement. In other words, taking any level of a class above the expiration level is less efficient in character improvement than taking a level in other available classes. (Example: Fighter expiration level is level 2).

Exploding Dice — When a certain number is rolled and you get to roll again, adding the second result to the first. Often this may be repeated as long as you continue to roll the trigger number.

Extra — See Minion.

F

Family — Geekdo defines this as a group of games, articles, paraphernalia associated under a single identifying factor. Examples include Dungeons & Dragons and GURPS.

Fanon — A play on Canon, referring to fan created material that has become so ingrained in the community it is accepted as canon even though it hasn’t been ‘canonized’ by the designer / publisher of the RPG.

Fantasy LARP — A LARP with a fantasy theme. Many Fantasy LARPs are also Boffer Larps (q.v.).

Fluff — Opposite of Crunch. Most often story based material designed to enhance role-playing. This material includes background information for NPC’s, scenarios, settings and/or even scenes. Material used to ‘flesh-out’ elements of a role-playing game so they appear in the mind’s eye as more than just a list of statistics. Non-mechanic based material.

Formless — When freeform (see below) goes wrong and the GM judgments become contradictory or so unpredictable it is impossible for players to decide what to do; or when there is no GM, and nobody is prepared to make any judgment at all.

Fortune — A method of deciding the outcome of an action resolution where the GM chooses based on the result of a randomizer (dice, cards, etc).

Frag — 1) To kill another player character. 2) To kill something. 3) To kill using a fragmentation device. 4) Referring to a warhead and/or grenade type device.

Freeform — A role-playing game without a rule set (or a very minimal rule set). All actions and results are decided by the GM, (or sometimes vaguely suggested in the scenario). A role-playing game which emulates improvised theater with a director.

Fudge — Secret modification of a roll or other action resolution by the GM to achieve desired results. Example: GM secretly rolls a 20 on a d20, (in many games considered an automatic hit). Instead of applying a hit to the player character which would kill them outright, the GM declares the roll a miss. GM’s may fudge to the Player’s detriment instead of benefit as well.

Fumble — A «critical failure», generally speaking a particularly bad result when attempting a particular action, usually brought about by a bad die roll or other randomizer. In game terms, results in worst possible outcome.

G

Game Master — Term referring to the person runs the adventure, tells the story, determines what action resolutions mean, etc. for their players. This person, (or persons), runs also all of the NPCs.

Game Master Player Character — Term for character that is part of the party, and played by the GM as if the GM were «just another player.» Though it is entirely a personal choice for the game group, it may be perceived as bad form by the community.

Gamist — 1. A player whose primary objective is to overcome challenges to achieve his goal. 2. A player who typically manipulates game rules to overcome challenges or win points. 3. A game system which encourages players to play to win against fixed challenges, and supports players in doing so.

Gearhead — A player who loves to create weapons, vehicles, equipment, etc in deep detail, the more detailed the better.

Gestalt — Combining classes or other game elements, generally in an attempt to maximize benefits of all used.

Gish — a character that is primarily a fighter, but with some magical ability that is used to enhance their fighting.

Glass Cannon — A unit or character capable of doing a great deal of damage, but is easily defeated.

GM — Game Master.

GM’s Buddy — The player who always gets preferential treatment from a GM.

GM Fiat — The ability for the Game Master to make a judgment that may not follow the rules explicitly but is usually done to speed up play (rather than spend the time looking through the rules during a session) or to re-balance the game while playing.

GMPC — Game Master Player Character.

GNS or GNS Theory — A way of describing players’ «creative agendas» — that is, the basis on which they decide what creative aspects to bring to an RPG in terms of defining their character and choosing their actions — in terms of three sets of priorities: Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism. First coined by Ron Edwards, but widely misused since — frequently now applied to individual RPG experiences or game systems.

Goon — See Minion.

Grainy — Having rules without many fine distinctions between character attributes.

Gun Bunny — A player who loves to have detailed guns for his character.

H

Hack — An adaptation of of one RPG’s system into a different setting, generally by other authors.

Heartbreaker or Fantasy Heartbreaker — an independent game that has had a great deal of work put into it but is likely doomed to fail. A common error is that mechanics the author thinks are innovative actually are not, or have been tried before and failed. However, the most common usage of the term is for low-budget games that attempt to copy or improve Dungeons And Dragons, which are likely to have no chance of succeeding simply because of market dominance and budget. Usually taken to refer to the author’s heart being broken by the idea that their labour of love isn’t up to much, but in its original use by Ron Edwards, referred to the fact that many of these games contained genuinely good ideas and the broken heart was the player’s, that those ideas did not propagate.

Hit Location — In detailed systems the actual location of a particular hit made be rolled after a successful attack. Damage and effect of the attack may the attack may be modified based on where the strike lands. Some systems don’t always randomize location, but allow players to make a «called shot» to target a particular area.

Hit Points — A number which is used to track how much punishment a character can take in combat before collapsing. (Possible dying.) Often subtracting from the total until a character reaches zero or lower.

House Rule — A new or altered version of current rule used by a given group. This rule is not part of the published material for the game.

HP — Hit Points.

Hex map or Hex grid, rarely Hexgrid — 1) A map or mapping system using hexagonal (six-sided) divisions rather than square ones as in traditional graph paper. Often used for large-scale terrain maps, such as those from the The World of Greyhawk campaign setting or the Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set: games such as GURPS and HERO also use hex maps for tactical situations. 2) A game that uses such a mapping system (e.g., «EABA is also a hexgrid game»).

Hexcrawl — a style of gaming, typically Sandbox in nature, where the goal of play is to explore and interact with a geographical region that is mapped using a hex grid. There are often specific rules associated with «revealing» the contents of each hex, travel between hexes, etc. A Pointcrawl is a similar type of game, but with no hexes, only gamemaster defined points of interest on the map, sometimes with lines of travel marked between them.

I

Imploding Die — See Collapsing Die.

Improvement Points — See Character Points.

In Character (IC) — 1) An action or discussion which is meant to be performed by a character in the story of the game. 2) Character behavior in line with the character’s personality.

Indie or Indie RPG — 1) A role-playing game which is created, produced and released outside of traditional mainstream ways. These are often self-published or done by very small press publishers where the creative control generally remains with the designer. 2) Occasionally refers to anything not produced by the big companies, (Wizards of the Coast, Green Ronin, White Wolf, etc.), in the RPG industry.

IP — Improvement Points (See Character Points.)

J

K

Karma — A method of deciding the outcome of the event where the GM chooses the result based on a static attribute of the acting character (your Strength, Dexterity, etc). Originates with Ron Edward’s design essay, System Matters.

KTAATTS — an acronym for Kill Them All And Take Their Stuff. As a verb, it refers to doing just that. As a noun it is a style of play focused on killing and looting. It originates on forums, mostly those dedicated to Old School Renaissance games. Used especially fondly by Hackmaster players.

L

LARP — Live Action Role Playing. Role-playing as a theater, without the use of character skills, die rolling or cards. Instead, players assume set roles, and then act them out in an improvised theater play. In fantasy LARPs, combat is usually resolved using latex (rubber) swords. Huge scale LARPS are held outside and can involve hundreds or thousands of players.

Lasersharking — The act of combining two or more «cool» elements in one setting, character, or game; based on the erroneous assumption that combining two cool things will result in something twice as cool. Unless you are specifically going for comedy, it is often too easy to go over-the-top, turning the end result into a ridiculous self-parody that cannot be taken seriously — thus making it actually less cool. (e.g. The setting for Rifts. In common parlance at the website The Forge.) Reference: From the Austin Powers movies.

LBB — 1) When used in reference to Dungeons & Dragons (Original Edition) — Little Brown Books. 2) When used in reference to Traveller — Little Black Books. Both are the digest-sized original published forms of each game.

LBEG — Little Bad Evil Guy. Refers to an antagonist NPC meant to challenge the PC’s but is not the BBEG. (Often a lieutenant of the BBEG in a campaign).

Lethal Damage — Also called Killing damage. In systems with multiple damage types, lethal damage has more debilitating effects, require longer healing time, be affected by armor differently and/or may kill the target. See Subdual Damage.

Level — A seriously overloaded word in the RPG world, usually used to refer to a clump of related changes that happen at once when a character advances, though often put to more vigorous duty. In AD&D the term was used to refer to Character Level, Spell Level, Dungeon Level and Monster Level. Context usually was enough to resolve, so a sentence such as «My 3rd level fighter fought 4th level monsters on the 5th level and with hit with a 6th level fireball» could be understood.

Level-Based — Having character proficiency defined by a discrete number; all else being equal, a character of greater level will generally be more capable than a character of lesser level.

Life Points — See Hit Points.

Line of Effect — The term used to describe if an effect, (spell, attack, trap, moving object, etc), may affect something, (Another creature, object, location, etc.). Most often used to determine if something targeted may be affected by an effect.

Line of Sight — The term used to describe the ability of one creature to perceive something, (another creature, object, location, etc.), at any distance. Most often used to determine if something may be targeted.

Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard (LFQW) — The idea that the wizard accumulates power much more rapidly than the fighter.

Little Hitler — A player who seeks to dominate the entire group, not just the characters but the other players and GM. ***BJM: needs reference (this is a common term outside the context of gaming — show me a special place it has in gaming) October 8, 2009***

LoE — Line of Effect.

Lone Wolf — The act of playing an RPG with just a DM and a single player. Possibly stems from the Lone Wolf solo adventure books, later turned into an RPG.

LoS — Line of Sight.

LRP — Live Role-Play, a synonym for the more common term LARP.

Lumping — A system where skills are lumped together into broad groups, such as «pistols» covering ALL pistols from derringers to desert eagles. ***BJM: needs reference October 8, 2009***

M

Magic Points — A designation of the amount of magic power a given character has to perform magic.

Magical Tea Party or MTP — a derogatory term for play dominated heavily by GM Fiat or use of non-codified abilities. Very occasionally considered a bad thing in itself, but far more often objected to because no rulebook should be needed to do it, so a game system that depends on it too heavily delivers limited value for money.

Mana or Mana Pool — See Magic Points.

Mary Sue — A character who is over-the-top perfect and exists to fulfill the fanciful thinking of the player. The original Mary Sue was a fictional character in a set of fan written Star Trek stories where this nothing cadet out smarted Spock, slept with Kirk, saved the Universe, etc.

Meat Shield — A term used to describe a tough character able to withstand powerful attacks. A term oft used in fantasy games with fighter classes. The fighter would place itself between the enemy and the party to shield them from attack. Effectively acting as a shield of meat.

Mech Pilot or Mech Piloting — in addition to the regular meaning from anime, of a character who drives a giant robot, this refers to a player or game system which focuses on choosing between a list of rules codified actions («you’re not saying what a person does in the world, you’re pressing buttons on a mech»).

Melee — 1) Hand-to-hand, hand held weapon combat or to fight in close proximity. 2) A long, knock-down, drag-out fight.

Metagame — 1) Things discussed about the rules by the GM and players as opposed to things happening in-game (by the characters). 2) To calculate success/failure of an action by reviewing character stats and game mechanics, as opposed to acting based on character personality and what the ‘character’ knows.

Metaplot — Figuratively, «the plot about the plot», where the second plot is what develops at the gaming table. Usually an ongoing storyline written by the setting publishers which changes or moves forward the setting over the course the supplements. Sometimes called metastory.

Min-max a.k.a. Min-maxing — 1) A technique of using the rules to try and squeeze every last advantage out of a character rather than design a character that is more reflective of the warts, quirks and disadvantages we all possess. Often this is the result of a player trying to build a character which will achieve unbalanced success in a game. 2) A term used to describe a character designed to maximize one set of abilities, at the expense of minimizing all others. Example: A fighter with high attack, damage, and strength, but little to no intelligence or abilities out of combat.

Miniature — a small model representing a person, persons, a vehicle, or other pawn or actor to be manipulated during the combat simulation portion of the game. Sometimes these can be very elaborate (highly detailed metal sculptures, hand painted). Strictly speaking, only those that are three-dimensional representations are considered miniatures, but in some circles the term has been broadened to encompass any token used for representation.

Minion — A minimally detailed NPC; usually hostile, easily defeated; subject to special rules which require less bookkeeping than a normal NPC.

MM — The Monster Manual for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games. A core rule book.

Moderator — See Game Master.

Monty Hall or Monty Haul Campaign — A type of adventure centered around accumulating as much wealth as possible, as fast as possible, where story takes a back seat to killing the next monster and taking its stuff. Named for the host, Monty Hall, of the game show Let’s Make a Deal, featuring a set of three doors. The association with this type of campaign was due to the host’s catch phrase «What’s behind door number 3?!».

Mook — See Minion.

MP — Magic Points.

Munchkin — A player who uses the rules to try and gain power that is unbalancing to the game including possibly resorting to cheating. See also Min-max.

Murderhobo — 1. A player character who wanders the gameworld, unattached to any community, indiscriminately killing and looting. 2. A style of play in which characters aren’t very connected to the world and casually kill those who oppose them.

Murphy or Murphy’s Rule — A rule which has bizarre consequences in certain special cases. Sometimes these cases are reasonable and the Murphy becomes an actual problem, but in most cases they are rare or obviously inappropriate cases and the Murphy is suggested purely as a joke.

Multi-Class — Combining or using aspects from more than once class / role in a single character. Similar to Gestalt, but frequently done with a sacrifice. (Halting all progression on one of the classes and only advancing the other one, or notably higher costs to advance either class).

Mutt — See Multi-class.

N

Narrativist — A player who plays primarily in order to explore story or narrative properties generated by the game, rather than to prioritize winning or optimization (see Gamist). Or, a game or game experience emphasizing dramatic (or thematic) events and development.

Narrator — See Game Master.

Narrow Skills — Skills that cover a fairly small rage of closely related activities, such as «Drive Passenger Auto», «First Aid», «Broadsword», or «Painter». Systems with narrow skills tend to have long skill lists, often 100-200 skills. Usually seen in design discussions.

Natural # — The result of the actual dice roll, before any modifications are made. Example: a «natural 1» or a «natural 20» on a D20 are often considered «fumbles» or «criticals»

Nerfing — Change made by an authority to the rules reducing the overall effectiveness of a particular ability or system. Can be caused by the publisher revising rules or providing errata or the GM imposing house rules. Generally seen as a negative. It is a reference to Nerf® brand foam toys, especially balls and toy weapons, designed for safety through use of soft foam. In-game abilities that reduce the effectiveness of a character are generally referred to as debuffs, not nerfs (although the same word, buff, is used for in-game abilities and out-of-game changes that improve a character).

Non-Player Character — Any creature in a game that is not controlled exclusively by a player. Most often run by the GM, in certain cases a player may determine actions of a Non-Player Character.

NPC — Non-Player Character.

O

OA — Opportunity Attack, see Attack of Opportunity.

OGL — Open Game License, see Open Content

Old-School or Old-School Revival or Old School Renaissance — 1) A style of game that harkens back to the early days of role-playing and seeks to capture what was best about those games. 2) Often used by older gamers to refer to the time when they first started playing RPGs.

One Character Game — A type of game where there is basically only one type of character to play. Examples would be games like «Judge Dredd» where the players are all assumed to be Judge characters. Some of these games have expansions that allow other character types. ***BJM: needs reference October 8, 2009***

OOC — Out of Character.

Open Content A portion of a rule set that can be freely republished by other people without being considered a challenge to a publisher’s trademark or copyright, after that publisher voluntarily releases it to the public. The first official open content was included in the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 2000, published under the «Open Game License» (OGL). It has since expanded to several other games and game systems. Setting material, such as places and characters, is rarely Open Content, but in many cases certain monsters are. Content that has not been «opened» by the publisher is referred to as Closed Content and cannot be legally reprinted.

Opportunity Attack — See Attack of Opportunity.

Opposed Action — A direct conflict between characters, whether PCs or NPCs. Many games handle this differently than unopposed actions. Examples: fighting, seduction, persuasion, forcing your will on someone, etc.

Optional Rules — Published rules but used at the discretion of the Game Master. Rules not designed to be part of base rules, but can be used, (often by experienced players), to alter game play.

Ouija Board Gaming — where a group wants an RPG experience to have a particular property or quality, but does not want to deliberately or explicitly take steps to achieve that quality. The most common example is players who want the game to have narrative qualities, but at the same time do not want to make choices for their characters on the basis of narrative priorities. Coined by Ron Edwards, who believed it to be dysfunctional, but for some groups it may be a necessary aspect of suspension of disbelief.

Out of Character — 1) An action or discussion made between GM and Players not meant to be performed by characters in game. 2) An action that is not in line with the character’s personality.

P

Party Charter — 1) In-character document establishing the adventuring company, its shares, inheritance and dissolution procedures. 2) Out-of-character document which may include the elements of definition 1, as well as other aspects of play and evironment, including roles in party, snack schedules, and attendance policy. It is a form of Social Contract.

PBEM — Play by E-Mail.

PBP — Play-by-Post. Usually played on a web forum, though it is possible to PBP in any content sharing medium. A slower style of play, but often incorporates much more depth to character role-playing.

PBF — Play-by-Forum. Synonymous with PBP.

Percentile — 1. Rolling either a d100 or two ten-sided dice in which one die refers to the tens place and the other refers to the ones. 2. A system where the primary resolution mode is based on the use of percentile dice.

Player — The physical person playing the game — i.e. not the character(s) they play.

Phase — Usually a sub-unit of a round (a round may comprise several phases). See Round.

PHB or PH — The Player’s Handbook for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games. The latter abbreviation is sometimes spoken as «Fuh». May be used to denote a «Player’s Handbook» from other game systems as well. A core rulebook.

PnP — Pen and Paper. Usually referred to with tabletop RPGs (as opposed to CRPGs — Computer RPGs, etc).

Pseudo-clone — 1) A game designed to make use of supplements for an older out of print game, but with significant rules changes, EG: Castles & Crusades. 2) A rework of the mechanics of a recent system to recapture the feel and setting tropes of an older system. EG: Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game (1st & 2nd Editions). 3) A game designed by mimicking the mechanics of an older game, without concern for compatibility but focusing on similar mechanical approaches. Usually done as a «What if they had been inspired by ___.» EG: Mazes & Minotaurs (1st Edition). Sometimes called a Similacrum.

Point-Based — Having characters that are ‘constructed’ with a budget of points for attributes, skills, abilities, etc; generally as opposed to being determined randomly at character creation.

POD — Print on Demand. Instead of paying for a large print run and then storing it while it sells of unit by unit over a period of time, some publishers decide to print only on demand. No warehouse for stock is needed; physical copies are produced when customers buy them.

Politician — A player who frequently discusses his politics at the game table. ***BJM: needs reference October 8, 2009***

Powers — Supernatural abilities possessed by a character.

Progression Tree — A list of skills, powers, or anything else designed in a linear advancement tree. Advanced abilities are unlocked by earning / buying prerequisites lower on the tree.

Psionics — Powerful abilities of the mind. May be the same as spell-casting but often used in an otherwise magic-free system. (i.e. mind reading, telekinesis, etc).

PvP — Player vs Player. The ability or allowance for players to attack each other directly.

PWYW («Pay What You Want») — a pricing method where the customer sets his own price to purchase an RPG item (usually a PDF file or electronic book) from a publisher or online retailer. In some cases one can set a price of zero and still complete the «purchase», in essence getting a free game or supplement.

Q

Quantum Bear or Grudge Monster — An enemy placed by the GM via GM Fiat that was not previously determined to exist or written in pre-prepared material. Quantum Bears are used in most games to make environments realistic, but some players argue that they can create problems where resource management is involved in combat («how can we plan how many grenades to take if the number of enemies keeps changing?») or the PCs are encouraged to perform set-up before fighting (because this requires the GM to be very careful that appearance of a Quantum Bear does not contradict the PC’s previous actions or information they obtained). Originally taken from a criticism of the Apocalypse World system, although that original criticism was more about the GM running out of ideas for partial costs of actions rather than random creation of enemies.

R

Race — The biological being the player chooses to play. In typical fantasy role playing games, this can be human, elf, dwarf, gnome etc. The choice of race typically affects the basic traits of the character.

Railroading — Referring to a game’s story being forced in a particular direction most often by the GM, usually by the environment being constructed or manipulated to make only one action viable. Commonly perceived as bad form.

RAW — Rules as Written. The literal meaning of the published rules, as opposed to designer’s intent, either assumed or explicitly stated.

Range Bands — 1) System of abstractly measuring movement for combat or chases one dimensionally. Used in Classic Traveller, Pendragon, Diaspora. 2) Measurements of the various distances at which a weapon’s efficiency changes. Used in d6, and several others. 3) System of labeling various distances rather than giving explicit measures. Used in Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller.

Ranged — Ranged combat or an attack/effect that takes place over a distance.

Redshirts — An NPC that has little purpose other than to die. Commonly used in a Sci-Fi RPG setting. Derives from the classic Star Trek television show in which a security detail wearing red uniform shirts accompanied the bridge crew on adventures, almost always to their regret.

Referee — See Game Master.

Ret-Con — Retroactive Continuity typically refers to a change in previous events due to either a rules issue or because of some other mistake on the part of the players or, more often, the GM.

Retro-Clone — a game that is designed to emulate the rules of an older out of print game (so as to be compatible with anything produced for the older system).

Rez — Resurrect a character. The act of bringing a character back from the dead in a game as opposed to having to create a new one. May be achieved through spells or story plot.

Romeroading or Roads to Rome — a reduced form of Railroading in which PCs have a choice of action, but no action they can take can change what ultimately happens («take any road, but all roads lead to Rome»). This is usually invoked in order to create dramatic set-pieces, especially at the end of campaigns. Much less controversial than railroading, in part because it is much harder to avoid.

Roll-Play — Instead of role-play. 1) Often derogatory, used to imply that manipulation of the game system has replaced imagination. 2) Referring to the desire to roll dice instead of acting out character interactions.

Root/Branch — A system where skills start off at a root level, then branch out into various sub skills. An example would be a system where players started off with a basic pistol skill they could use for any pistol, but then had to specify specialties when they raised the skill, such as revolver, semi-auto, auto, etc. ***BJM: needs reference October 8, 2009***

Round — Unit of time in a game which generally limits the number of actions a character can take before another creature / character can act.

Role-play — The act of taking on the role of a character. May be done in any of several modes, including 1st-person dialog, 3rd person narration of action, or even 1st person improvisational acting.

Role-playing Poems — Are short, often LARP-like games designed to be played in 15 minutes. They often focus on a specific experience, rather than character or narrative. (Stoke — Birmingham 0-0)

RPG — Role-Playing Game. 1) In terms of what we tend to list at RPG Geek this means: a) Defined set of rules. b) Allows the player to take on the role of a character. c) Allows the player a strong measure of free will to choose what the character does d) The actions chosen by the player shape and influence the story which unfolds during the game. 2) Under Geekdo classifications, this stands for a game which has a separate set of rules differing it from any other role-playing game, even those with similar names.

RPG Item — Geekdo defines this as any single item of role-playing game paraphernalia.

Rules — The explicit part of the system, specified in the text.

Rules-Heavy— Having many rules to guide action and resolution. Opposite of Free-form.

Rules Lawyer — 1) A person known for arguing GM rules calls by recourse to quoting the rules from the rulebooks. 2) A person who disrupts play by excessive references to rules in play. 3) A player who misrepresents the rules for their own advantage in play.

Rules-Light — Having few rules, leaving much up to player fiat and/or social contract.

S

Sandbox — a style of gaming where the gamemaster purposely avoids providing much or any overt plot or guidance to the players as to what they should be doing. The gamemaster provides a situation (typically a geographical location), and the players interact with that location as they see fit. The metaphor is that players are children playing in a sandbox; within the sandbox they can do anything they want. See Hexcrawl for one specific type of sandbox game.

Save or Saving Throw — An attempt to avoid a detrimental effect, or success at such an attempt. Often phrased as “making a save” (though this can still refer either to the attempt or to success).

Save Or Suck — An ability or spell which requires the target to make a Saving Throw or suffer a debuff severe enough to make them useless (possibly temporarily) in a fight. Such abilities are quite difficult to balance and may indicate Caster Supremacy.

Seed — See Adventure Seed.

Series — Geekdo defines this as a group of RPG Items sharing enough common factors as to indicate continuing theme.

Simulationist — Originally, a gamer who plays in order to discover the results of applying actions within a simulated world (eg, «What if Luke Skywalker never met the droids?»), as focused on the setting without authorial intervention. More commonly, a game experience typified by adherence to simulating the imagined world impartially, as if it were real, often with a high level of detail.

Skills — Area of proficiency. In a typical role playing game, a character will have a number of ‘skills’, namely things they are especially good (or especially not good) at. For example “hide”, “discover hidden things”, “hit with a sword”, etc. Skills are often trainable so they may improve during the course of the game. For more information see Broad Skills, Narrow Skills.

Skill-Based — Having characters that are defined by narrowly-defined skills, e.g. «Broadsword,» «Fast-Talk.»

Skill Points — See Character Points.

Skill Tree — See Progression Tree, but exclusively for skills.

Social Contract — Agreements between a group of players, often implicit, often unique to each group, that guide and/or constrain action. E.g. «no one should interrupt except the GM.» «No character in the story should attempt to rape any other character.» «It is your responsibility to make sure you have fun.»

SOP — Standard Operating Procedure. A series of actions taken mechanistically by a PC, usually because the game world or system requires them to. A classic example is «TLP» — (Check For) Traps, Listen, Pick — representing the steps taken by a rogue when opening an unknown door in dungeon crawling games. Sometimes considered a complaint about older games which required very explicit descriptions of what the PCs were doing (eg, «we search ahead and probe the floor with a 10 foot pole») but where such descriptions became commonplace and thus boring («can’t we just always search ahead and probe the floor with a 10 foot pole?»)

SP — Skill Points

Spell-Slinger — Casting class (magic user, sorcerer, etc).

Splat Book — Supplementary book for a game system covering an individual class, race, clan, tribe or like concept.

Squaregrid — A game that used squares as a map base and for measurement.

SRD — System Reference Document, a term used in the context of the Open Game License (OGL) for all the rules text and mechanics released under OGL to allow other publishers to produce compatible material.

Stats — The numerical value applied to elements of a game. 1) A character’s abilities. 2) The numbers detailing how much damage a sword does. 3) The details of how an object, such as a vehicle, interacts with its fictitious environment.

Status — See Effects. Usually referring to the condition a character is in due to effects.

Story Games — Are RPGs which focus more on the overall story than character building or rules enforcing. Most RPGs can be made to be more story driven given the predisposition of the GM/Players, but clearly some RPGs are more tailored to this style of play. Epistolary Richard compiled a blog post on the origin of the term.

Storyteller — See Game Master.

Subdual Damage — Also called Non-Lethal or Bashing damage. In systems with multiple damage types, subdual damage can generally be healed more quickly. It may be affected differently by armor and usually results in unconsciousness rather than death. See Lethal Damage.

System — 1) The big-picture of a game’s mechanical choices, including not just rules but also design philosophy etc. Or from a story point of view: the method in a game by which new facts are added to the fictional setting. 2) Geekdo defines this as a set of base rules used by more than one RPG.

T

Talent(s) — See Trait.

Tank — Similar to Meat Shield, but refers to a character which can dish out lots of damage as well as take lots. Generally, a character able to go toe to toe with the biggest baddies.

Take X — Where X is a number. Indicates that a roll for a check of some kind (usually skill) is not made but rather it is assumed that X is the result of the roll. Modifiers are added as normal and the result calculated. Examples from the d20 system include «Take 10», indicating the reliable effect of a skill and «Take 20» indicating use of the skill while taking an arbitrary amount of time under no pressure to succeed.

Target Number — the number that a player is required to roll on a dice for an action to be successful. In D&D and other d20 games, also sometimes called Difficulty Class or DC, or just Difficulty.

Template — 1) A set of abilities laid on top of a character / creature to add abilities and/or specialize the character. 2) A pre-made example of a PC, NPC, Item, etc. used to assist in quickly generating multiple copies of something.

THAC0 (pronounced «thack-oh» even though the final character is a zero) — To Hit Armor Class 0. The system of rolling To-Hit used in D&D and AD&D 1st and 2nd edition, where the player’s character sheet showed an initial target number and values were added to or subtracted from it based on the opponent’s armor or defensive abilities. Modern versions of D&D use a simpler system where the opponent’s armor sets the target number and the PCs fighting ability sets the value added to the dice roll.

Third-Party — Publications for a game that are from someone other than a game’s current publisher. Often printed under license.

To-Hit — the most common dice roll in combat; a roll to see if the PC successfully hit their enemy, or vice versa.

TPK — Total Party Kill. The event of an entire group of player characters in a game being wiped out by a threat or challenge. “The dragon caught us by surprise and it became a TPK.”

Trait(s) — A distinguishing characteristic of a character. This could be the ability for a character to size up a fight better than most or perhaps the person has exceptional leadership skills. It doesn’t have to be positive — a bad trait could be a phobia or uncontrollable greed. Some games give advantages/disadvantages for traits. Traits can be further defined by being assigned a numeric or textual value to indicate the competency of the ability being described by the name of the Trait. When numerical, this is normally called an Ability (Typically Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Intelligence, Spirit).

Trap Choice or Trap Option — an option for character generation or development which is listed in a rulebook yet is outright worse than other options, especially if its surrounding description suggests it is better. Generally considered a bad thing since it can result in new players building ineffective characters and not knowing why they are ineffective.

Transhuman — A RPG setting based on transhumanism, the idea that through genetic engineering and cybernetics humans will be able to modify themselves to extreme degrees, becoming «transhuman», possibly even becoming software based entities living in cyberspace. Not technically a term specific to gaming, but perhaps obscure enough to be valuable here.

Turn — See Round.

U

Unopposed Action — An action which requires action resolution, but does not directly involve an opponent. Many games handle this differently than opposed actions. Examples: scaling a cliff, forcing open a door, creating a magic item, etc.

V

Variant Rules — See Optional Rules.

Verisimilitude — «Realism, if this world was real». What’s usually actually meant by someone who complains that a minor rule is «unrealistic» in a game with wizards throwing explosive rainbows.

Virtual Tabletop — A computer program or website/web application that enables live play online. Usually involves a randomizer for live die rolls and may also include maps, counters, character sheets and even rules references. VTs enable play through Voice over Internet, often on a global scale.

W

X

XP — Experience Points.

Y

Z

The way Reverse Dictionary works is pretty simple. It simply looks through tonnes of dictionary definitions and grabs the ones that most closely match your search query. For example, if you type something like «longing for a time in the past», then the engine will return «nostalgia». The engine has indexed several million definitions so far, and at this stage it’s starting to give consistently good results (though it may return weird results sometimes). It acts a lot like a thesaurus except that it allows you to search with a definition, rather than a single word. So in a sense, this tool is a «search engine for words», or a sentence to word converter.

I made this tool after working on Related Words which is a very similar tool, except it uses a bunch of algorithms and multiple databases to find similar words to a search query. That project is closer to a thesaurus in the sense that it returns synonyms for a word (or short phrase) query, but it also returns many broadly related words that aren’t included in thesauri. So this project, Reverse Dictionary, is meant to go hand-in-hand with Related Words to act as a word-finding and brainstorming toolset. For those interested, I also developed Describing Words which helps you find adjectives and interesting descriptors for things (e.g. waves, sunsets, trees, etc.).

In case you didn’t notice, you can click on words in the search results and you’ll be presented with the definition of that word (if available). The definitions are sourced from the famous and open-source WordNet database, so a huge thanks to the many contributors for creating such an awesome free resource.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: Elastic Search, @HubSpot, WordNet, and @mongodb.

Please note that Reverse Dictionary uses third party scripts (such as Google Analytics and advertisements) which use cookies. To learn more, see the privacy policy.

This Role Players Gamers (RPG Glossary) is currently being maintained by sdonohue. Please see the this forum thread to discuss additions/modifications to this Glossary. Only with your help can this Glossary be updated and improved — thanks!

For other terms and abbreviations see also:

• Common Tags — Definitions of commonly used tags.
• BGG Glossary — Board Gamer’s Glossary
  • BG Abbreviations — List of board game acronyms.
  • BG Publisher Abbreviations — List of board game publisher acronyms.
• RPG Glossary — Role-Play Gamer’s Glossary
• VGG Glossary — Video Gamer’s Glossary
  • VG Abbreviations — List of video game acronyms.

Introduction
The RPG Geek glossary serves to help identify RPG-related terms you might encounter here at RPG Geek. The definitions given here may not be universally accepted — the sole purpose is to help members of the RPG Geek decipher and understand RPG-related terms that are bantered about on the site. Some terms defined here will have more than one definition; the definitions are always listed in terms of most popular to least. The use of these terms outside of RPG Geek may have alternate meanings — so don’t go quoting us as gospel. Terms considered for the RPG Geek glossary shall include words that have found their way into common use on in RPG-related books (printed or electronic), RPG-related magazines, RPG Podcasts, RPG Blogs and the like. The final decision as to any and all terms and definitions rests with the person currently maintaining the glossary.

#+#, d+a, or dice+adds — Dice roll notation convention used in several older games. The first number is the number of dice, the second is added to the total – e.g., 3+4 is 3 dice plus 4, or 3d+4 in modern notation (see d[X] below). Most games using this notation use only 6-sided dice. Also can be expressed as a subtraction: 4-2 would be 4d6-2, and 9-8 is 9d6-8. Possibly saw first use in early wargaming and certainly was in GURPS 2nd Edition, though not in common use today.

A

Ability(ies) — See Trait.

AC — Armor Class. Used in many fantasy RPGs to represent how difficult it is to hit a character.

Action Resolution — A general mechanic used within the game to drive the story forward. Action resolution most commonly is determined randomly with variable chances of success based on character skills/abilities/stats and often involves dice or a table-lookup to determine outcome and may include degrees of success or failure. Probably originated in discussions at the Forge but has become part of a wider body of language.

Actual Play — 1) A reference to the recording or transcription of a session of play into a form intended to be read by a third party. Actual Play is considered in some quarters to be the sole basis for criticism of game mechanisms as anything «intended» or «expected» is irrelevant in the face of the actual play. 2) Having figuratively played a game.

Advantages — Skills or traits the character has that aid him in the course of game play. Often set at time of character creation.

Adventure — A single challenge, often short enough to be completed in one session. Often makes up one smaller piece of larger story with a beginning and an end, but may be stand alone. Contrast with Campaign.

Adventure Seed — a short description of a setup for an adventure, intended as a jumping off point for a GM to expand into an adventure.

AoO — Attack of Opportunity

AoE — Area of Effect. The area affected by an attack/spell/etc which affects more than one creature or object.

AP — Action Points. 1) Often given to players for use during the game and may be spent to allow their characters to perform actions above and beyond what they may normally do. 2) An acronym for Actual Play (q.v.) 3) Adventure Path or more appropriately Pathfinder Adventure Path.

Attack of Opportunity — Special attacks that a character can make as a reaction to some game event or Character / NPC action.

B

Badwrongfun — 1, Refers to gameplay which some players find morally objectionable; a character or campaign based on rape would be considered badwrongfun by many. 2. Sometimes used to refer to playing a game in a non-thematic way to achieve a comedic effect.

Battle mat — A piece of paper, vinyl, cardboard, lucite, or other substance marked off in a grid (hexagons, squares, offset squares, triangles) for use in simulating combat. Often they are designed to be drawn on with an erasable marker of some kind. Usually used with miniatures to determine precise position information during play.

BBEG — Big Bad Evil Guy. Most often the main antagonist boss NPC for a particular adventure or campaign.

BECMI — Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal. This abbreviation is sometimes used to refer to the various versions of Basic D&D which existed as a separate game from AD&D until the line was renamed D&D with version 3.0.

BMX Bandit — A character who, while competent alone, is rendered useless in the play group by the superiority of another character. Can be a sign of a badly designed system or poor choices in character generation. Taken from the Mitchell and Webb Radio and TV sketch Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit, featuring a superhero team in which one can summon hordes of intelligent superpowered angels at will and the other is quite good at riding his BMX bike.

BNG — Bitter Non Gamer. Person who is unable to join or arrange a gaming group and games by proxy, usually by complaining about RPGs that aren’t the one they’d prefer to play.

Boffer LARP — Boffer LARP is a subset of LARPing usually ran around combat reenactment. Players dress up as combatants and fight using foam weaponry or tickets to represent various skills, spells or effects. It may range from small group and skirmish to full reenactments among hundreds of people. So called for the common term for the type of weapon simulator most commonly used.

Breath or Breath Weapon — Commonly used to refer to a weapon / attack type of a creature, (i.e. dragon, white wolf, hell hound, etc).

Broad Skills — Skills that cover a wide range of activities, such as «Wheeled Vehicles,» «Medical,» «Melee,» or «Artisan.» Systems with broad skills tend to have short lists, often 30-60 skills. Usually seen in design discussions.

BTB — By the Book. See RAW.

Buff — an ability, spell, rules change, or other game mechanic that improves a character’s capabilities.

Bug Hunt — Most often used in a Science Fiction RPG involving nothing more than killing some alien creature(s). See Dungeon Crawl.

C

Called Shot — An attack made by a character which targets a particular area on an opponent or object. Depending on the system a called shot will trade off increased difficulty for increased damage and/or an additional effect. See Hit Location.

Caltrops — A common slang term for 4-sided dice where the traditional tetrahedron shape of the die means a pointy end is always pointing up waiting in ambush for poorly shod gamers.

Campaign — A longer story told by chaining or linking a number of adventures together. Sometimes, one single very long adventure can be called a «campaign». Whereas an adventure may only encompass one to three levels of character improvement, a campaign will allow Player Characters to achieve much more levels of character improvement. Also, the story and overall goals tend to be much more epic than an adventure. Campaigns almost always require more than two or three gaming sessions to complete.

Campaign Setting — The (fictitious) world where a specific adventure or campaign takes place. Lord of the Rings stories are set in the campaign setting of Middle Earth.

Canon — Original material, or referring to «official source material», which is created or accepted by an RPG’s designer(s). Canon is often used to ensure continuity within a RPG or fantasy setting. May refer to mechanics or fluff material.

Caster Supremacy — Games in which magic-using characters are outright better than those without magic. Multiple variations of this exist, such as permissions (the thief has to roll to Hide and have the right circumstances, but the mage can just declare they are turning invisible), subsumption (the thief has to keep their Pick Lock skill levelled at continuous cost; the mage casts Knock), and defense (the fighter spends hundreds of gold on armor to avoid melee, the mage casts Fly).

CGen — Common forum abbreviation for Character Generation.

Chamber LARP — Is a short live action role-playing game which lasts for no longer than a few hours and which takes place in a compact area, maybe just one room. Compared to larger LARPs a Chamber LARP is a type of game which easily can be produced in different cities by other groups than the original organizers. (Blackbox LARP).

Character — The persona being played by a player within the context of a game.

Character Points — A pool of points used to advance a character’s abilities / level / skills / etc. Players often begin with a large pool to design a character, and then earn more as they adventure with the character.

Character Sheet — The document containing a character’s basic traits, skills, carried equipment, background, etc. Historically a single sheet of paper, but is more commonly becoming an electronic document or spreadsheet and/or may be made up of multiple sheets.

Class — The «main area of expertise», “role”, or «job» for a player character. Typical classes in role-playing games with a fantasy setting are fighter, cleric, thief, or wizard. The chosen class typically affects what skills / abilities the player character can learn / use. Classes usually incorporate fixed set of abilities appropriate to the fiction the class represents.

Class-Based — An RPG using character classes to define player character job or role within a group, commonly limiting a player character to one or two areas of expertise. For example, a Fighter class is generally best at melee combat, a Magic User class is generally best at spells and their use in a game.

Clone, X — A character that is a clone of a popular fictional character. In D&D clones of Drizzt Do’Urden are endemic, recently Traveller began to suffer an invasion of Malcolm Reynolds clones.

Collapsing Die — Opposite of an Exploding Die. A collapsing die, when a minimal result is rolled, is rolled again and the result subtracted from the total roll, often resulting in a major failure.

Combat Round — See Round.

Core Rules — The subset of rules that is basic and core to the game. The rules are commonly shared between different games published by the same publisher, (often culled out into a separate book to save duplicate information in each book published). In most cases the core rules are the only rules needed to play an RPG.

CP — Character Points.

Crack, X — 1) Referring to an addictive aspect of gaming. 2) Irresistible new material. Example: “Those cool new dice are total gamer crack.” “D&D 4-point-crack is so cool. I have to buy all the supplements.”

Creature — Term used generically to refer to anything that can take actions / interact within the game / story. (Character / NPC / monster / living objects / undead / etc.).

Crit — Abbreviation for Critical.

Critical — A «critical hit». Generally speaking, a successful attack that causes greater than normal damage to the target. Depending on the RPG may also inflict negative a status or effect onto the target hit.

Cross-Class — 1) Often used to reference a skill, or ability that may be used by more than one class. 2) Used to mean a skill, or ability generally reserved for a specific class which a different class may pick up, often at a reduced level of effectiveness.

CRPG — Computer Role-Playing Game. Refers to role-playing games designed for computer or console play. These are typified by the presence of character development and tactical combat but usually lack the other features of table-top role-playing games as they are usually designed for solo play. Some exceptions exist.

Crunch or Crunchy — Rules-heavy. Referring to rules which detail how actions and/or action resolution is determined. Also includes rules which specify abilities, statistics, monsters, equipment, etc. Often includes little or no story information.

D

d[X] or D[X] — Dice roll notation in which the number in place of X represents the number of sides on the die to roll. Example; d6 refers to the roll of a six-sided die, d8 refers to the roll of an eight-sided die, d20 refers to the roll of a twe—… well, you get the point. (See also d100, d% below.) Strictly, dX refers to generation of a value between 1 and X, inclusive, and need not refer to an actual physical die: for instance, d3 usually means that a d6 is rolled and divided by two, rounded up, to produce a value between 1 and 3. Numbers before the d[X] refer to rolling (and usually summing) that number of dice – e.g., 2d6 means add the rolls of two six-sided dice for a total between 2 and 12. Finally, a plus or minus symbol followed by a number after the d[X] represents a modifier to the dice-roll total – e.g., 1d8+3 = roll one eight-sided die and add 3 to its result for a total between 4 and 11.

d100 or d% — Notation for a percentile die roll, made with a 100-sided die or with two ten-sided dice numbered 0–9 in which one die refers to the tens place and the other refers to the ones place. (A roll of 0 and 0 is most commonly read as 100, not zero.)

Damage — Any harm that comes to characters is usually expressed as damage. It comes in many flavours, not the least of which are: Normal damage (in some systems with multiple damage types, a type of damage with potentially lethal side effects, but mostly likely to stun or injure. Also called half-lethal damage. In several other games, used as a merely as a contrast to Lethal or Aggrivated Damage), Stun Damage (in some systems with multiple types of damage, Stun may be a type of damage resulting only in unconsciousness or impairment of function), Aggravated Damage (a synonym for Lethal Damage). Damage types may be distinguished by the particular kind of hit point that is reduced, as with Composure Damage.

DC — Difficulty Check.

Decker Problem — occurs when a game mechanic results in one player becoming the only one at the table able to participate for a long period of time, leaving the other players bored. The name refers to «deckers» — hackers — in the original Cyberpunk game, which features a complex and tactical hacking minigame in which non-deckers could not participate, and because the game specified that the hacking took place in only a few seconds of in-game time, could not do anything else either.

Deus Ex Machina — An unexpected NPC or plot-device, often only appearing for a single scene, that saves a seemingly hopeless situation. Generally seen as a bad design choice in adventure design. Derives from the classical term with stricter definition: a sudden and unexpected resolution to a seemingly intractable problem. Figuratively, the god from the machine, a solution that seems to arise from outside the fiction.

Dew — Any soda or beverage used during the game. A term used to honor the all venerable Mountain Dew soda, enjoyed by many gamers due to its high sugar and caffeine content.

Dice Training — The superstition that rolling dice repeatedly outside the game will change its statistical behaviour («I rolled all the 1s out of it») or that storing dice with a favourable value showing will «train» it to roll that number more frequently. Sometimes the belief is the reverse, and that storing dice with the least favourable value showing will «use up» the value.

Difficulty Check or Difficulty Class — The player must meet or exceed this, (often a number of a die roll + modifiers), to succeed in an action resolution.

Disadvantage — Skills or traits the character has that deter him in the course of game play. Often set at time of character creation and used to enhance / encourage role-playing.

DM — Dungeon Master. (See Game Master.)

DM Fiat — See GM Fiat.

Drama — A method of action resolution where the GM chooses the result based on what would be most interesting for the story. Probably originated in discussions at the Forge but has become part of a wider body of language.

DMG — Dungeon Master’s Guide the GM book for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games. A core rule book. Sometimes also an abbreviation for «damage».

Dump Stat — A Stat with little or no perceived value, thus one that is often sacrificed or shorted in favor of another one if there is an opportunity to distribute points. Example: Charisma in a D&D dungeon crawl.

Dungeon Crawl — A role-playing game scenario or adventure in which the main focus is exploration of the environment, engaging and fighting any monsters, and collecting treasure. Commonly set in a dungeon made up of hallway and rooms with little to no story line.

Dungeon Master — See Game Master.

E

Effect — A positive or negative element which affects a character, almost always causing modifiers to abilities or allowable actions. Example: stunned, poisoned, hasted, unconscious, etc. Sometimes called a «status effect» or, depending on the context, a «buff» or «debuff».

Experience Points — A system for improving characters in role-playing games. Typically, a character will be awarded experience points for succeeding at challenges, like defeating a monster or completing a mission. After a certain amount of collected experience points, the player character will improve, usually either by increased stats or by achieving new skills.

Expiration Level — Term coined in 3.X Ed. D&D to refer to a level in which a particular class peaked for the most efficient character improvement. In other words, taking any level of a class above the expiration level is less efficient in character improvement than taking a level in other available classes. (Example: Fighter expiration level is level 2).

Exploding Dice — When a certain number is rolled and you get to roll again, adding the second result to the first. Often this may be repeated as long as you continue to roll the trigger number.

Extra — See Minion.

F

Family — Geekdo defines this as a group of games, articles, paraphernalia associated under a single identifying factor. Examples include Dungeons & Dragons and GURPS.

Fanon — A play on Canon, referring to fan created material that has become so ingrained in the community it is accepted as canon even though it hasn’t been ‘canonized’ by the designer / publisher of the RPG.

Fantasy LARP — A LARP with a fantasy theme. Many Fantasy LARPs are also Boffer Larps (q.v.).

Fluff — Opposite of Crunch. Most often story based material designed to enhance role-playing. This material includes background information for NPC’s, scenarios, settings and/or even scenes. Material used to ‘flesh-out’ elements of a role-playing game so they appear in the mind’s eye as more than just a list of statistics. Non-mechanic based material.

Formless — When freeform (see below) goes wrong and the GM judgments become contradictory or so unpredictable it is impossible for players to decide what to do; or when there is no GM, and nobody is prepared to make any judgment at all.

Fortune — A method of deciding the outcome of an action resolution where the GM chooses based on the result of a randomizer (dice, cards, etc).

Frag — 1) To kill another player character. 2) To kill something. 3) To kill using a fragmentation device. 4) Referring to a warhead and/or grenade type device.

Freeform — A role-playing game without a rule set (or a very minimal rule set). All actions and results are decided by the GM, (or sometimes vaguely suggested in the scenario). A role-playing game which emulates improvised theater with a director.

Fudge — Secret modification of a roll or other action resolution by the GM to achieve desired results. Example: GM secretly rolls a 20 on a d20, (in many games considered an automatic hit). Instead of applying a hit to the player character which would kill them outright, the GM declares the roll a miss. GM’s may fudge to the Player’s detriment instead of benefit as well.

Fumble — A «critical failure», generally speaking a particularly bad result when attempting a particular action, usually brought about by a bad die roll or other randomizer. In game terms, results in worst possible outcome.

G

Game Master — Term referring to the person runs the adventure, tells the story, determines what action resolutions mean, etc. for their players. This person, (or persons), runs also all of the NPCs.

Game Master Player Character — Term for character that is part of the party, and played by the GM as if the GM were «just another player.» Though it is entirely a personal choice for the game group, it may be perceived as bad form by the community.

Gamist — 1. A player whose primary objective is to overcome challenges to achieve his goal. 2. A player who typically manipulates game rules to overcome challenges or win points. 3. A game system which encourages players to play to win against fixed challenges, and supports players in doing so.

Gearhead — A player who loves to create weapons, vehicles, equipment, etc in deep detail, the more detailed the better.

Gestalt — Combining classes or other game elements, generally in an attempt to maximize benefits of all used.

Gish — a character that is primarily a fighter, but with some magical ability that is used to enhance their fighting.

Glass Cannon — A unit or character capable of doing a great deal of damage, but is easily defeated.

GM — Game Master.

GM’s Buddy — The player who always gets preferential treatment from a GM.

GM Fiat — The ability for the Game Master to make a judgment that may not follow the rules explicitly but is usually done to speed up play (rather than spend the time looking through the rules during a session) or to re-balance the game while playing.

GMPC — Game Master Player Character.

GNS or GNS Theory — A way of describing players’ «creative agendas» — that is, the basis on which they decide what creative aspects to bring to an RPG in terms of defining their character and choosing their actions — in terms of three sets of priorities: Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism. First coined by Ron Edwards, but widely misused since — frequently now applied to individual RPG experiences or game systems.

Goon — See Minion.

Grainy — Having rules without many fine distinctions between character attributes.

Gun Bunny — A player who loves to have detailed guns for his character.

H

Hack — An adaptation of of one RPG’s system into a different setting, generally by other authors.

Heartbreaker or Fantasy Heartbreaker — an independent game that has had a great deal of work put into it but is likely doomed to fail. A common error is that mechanics the author thinks are innovative actually are not, or have been tried before and failed. However, the most common usage of the term is for low-budget games that attempt to copy or improve Dungeons And Dragons, which are likely to have no chance of succeeding simply because of market dominance and budget. Usually taken to refer to the author’s heart being broken by the idea that their labour of love isn’t up to much, but in its original use by Ron Edwards, referred to the fact that many of these games contained genuinely good ideas and the broken heart was the player’s, that those ideas did not propagate.

Hit Location — In detailed systems the actual location of a particular hit made be rolled after a successful attack. Damage and effect of the attack may the attack may be modified based on where the strike lands. Some systems don’t always randomize location, but allow players to make a «called shot» to target a particular area.

Hit Points — A number which is used to track how much punishment a character can take in combat before collapsing. (Possible dying.) Often subtracting from the total until a character reaches zero or lower.

House Rule — A new or altered version of current rule used by a given group. This rule is not part of the published material for the game.

HP — Hit Points.

Hex map or Hex grid, rarely Hexgrid — 1) A map or mapping system using hexagonal (six-sided) divisions rather than square ones as in traditional graph paper. Often used for large-scale terrain maps, such as those from the The World of Greyhawk campaign setting or the Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set: games such as GURPS and HERO also use hex maps for tactical situations. 2) A game that uses such a mapping system (e.g., «EABA is also a hexgrid game»).

Hexcrawl — a style of gaming, typically Sandbox in nature, where the goal of play is to explore and interact with a geographical region that is mapped using a hex grid. There are often specific rules associated with «revealing» the contents of each hex, travel between hexes, etc. A Pointcrawl is a similar type of game, but with no hexes, only gamemaster defined points of interest on the map, sometimes with lines of travel marked between them.

I

Imploding Die — See Collapsing Die.

Improvement Points — See Character Points.

In Character (IC) — 1) An action or discussion which is meant to be performed by a character in the story of the game. 2) Character behavior in line with the character’s personality.

Indie or Indie RPG — 1) A role-playing game which is created, produced and released outside of traditional mainstream ways. These are often self-published or done by very small press publishers where the creative control generally remains with the designer. 2) Occasionally refers to anything not produced by the big companies, (Wizards of the Coast, Green Ronin, White Wolf, etc.), in the RPG industry.

IP — Improvement Points (See Character Points.)

J

K

Karma — A method of deciding the outcome of the event where the GM chooses the result based on a static attribute of the acting character (your Strength, Dexterity, etc). Originates with Ron Edward’s design essay, System Matters.

KTAATTS — an acronym for Kill Them All And Take Their Stuff. As a verb, it refers to doing just that. As a noun it is a style of play focused on killing and looting. It originates on forums, mostly those dedicated to Old School Renaissance games. Used especially fondly by Hackmaster players.

L

LARP — Live Action Role Playing. Role-playing as a theater, without the use of character skills, die rolling or cards. Instead, players assume set roles, and then act them out in an improvised theater play. In fantasy LARPs, combat is usually resolved using latex (rubber) swords. Huge scale LARPS are held outside and can involve hundreds or thousands of players.

Lasersharking — The act of combining two or more «cool» elements in one setting, character, or game; based on the erroneous assumption that combining two cool things will result in something twice as cool. Unless you are specifically going for comedy, it is often too easy to go over-the-top, turning the end result into a ridiculous self-parody that cannot be taken seriously — thus making it actually less cool. (e.g. The setting for Rifts. In common parlance at the website The Forge.) Reference: From the Austin Powers movies.

LBB — 1) When used in reference to Dungeons & Dragons (Original Edition) — Little Brown Books. 2) When used in reference to Traveller — Little Black Books. Both are the digest-sized original published forms of each game.

LBEG — Little Bad Evil Guy. Refers to an antagonist NPC meant to challenge the PC’s but is not the BBEG. (Often a lieutenant of the BBEG in a campaign).

Lethal Damage — Also called Killing damage. In systems with multiple damage types, lethal damage has more debilitating effects, require longer healing time, be affected by armor differently and/or may kill the target. See Subdual Damage.

Level — A seriously overloaded word in the RPG world, usually used to refer to a clump of related changes that happen at once when a character advances, though often put to more vigorous duty. In AD&D the term was used to refer to Character Level, Spell Level, Dungeon Level and Monster Level. Context usually was enough to resolve, so a sentence such as «My 3rd level fighter fought 4th level monsters on the 5th level and with hit with a 6th level fireball» could be understood.

Level-Based — Having character proficiency defined by a discrete number; all else being equal, a character of greater level will generally be more capable than a character of lesser level.

Life Points — See Hit Points.

Line of Effect — The term used to describe if an effect, (spell, attack, trap, moving object, etc), may affect something, (Another creature, object, location, etc.). Most often used to determine if something targeted may be affected by an effect.

Line of Sight — The term used to describe the ability of one creature to perceive something, (another creature, object, location, etc.), at any distance. Most often used to determine if something may be targeted.

Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard (LFQW) — The idea that the wizard accumulates power much more rapidly than the fighter.

Little Hitler — A player who seeks to dominate the entire group, not just the characters but the other players and GM. ***BJM: needs reference (this is a common term outside the context of gaming — show me a special place it has in gaming) October 8, 2009***

LoE — Line of Effect.

Lone Wolf — The act of playing an RPG with just a DM and a single player. Possibly stems from the Lone Wolf solo adventure books, later turned into an RPG.

LoS — Line of Sight.

LRP — Live Role-Play, a synonym for the more common term LARP.

Lumping — A system where skills are lumped together into broad groups, such as «pistols» covering ALL pistols from derringers to desert eagles. ***BJM: needs reference October 8, 2009***

M

Magic Points — A designation of the amount of magic power a given character has to perform magic.

Magical Tea Party or MTP — a derogatory term for play dominated heavily by GM Fiat or use of non-codified abilities. Very occasionally considered a bad thing in itself, but far more often objected to because no rulebook should be needed to do it, so a game system that depends on it too heavily delivers limited value for money.

Mana or Mana Pool — See Magic Points.

Mary Sue — A character who is over-the-top perfect and exists to fulfill the fanciful thinking of the player. The original Mary Sue was a fictional character in a set of fan written Star Trek stories where this nothing cadet out smarted Spock, slept with Kirk, saved the Universe, etc.

Meat Shield — A term used to describe a tough character able to withstand powerful attacks. A term oft used in fantasy games with fighter classes. The fighter would place itself between the enemy and the party to shield them from attack. Effectively acting as a shield of meat.

Mech Pilot or Mech Piloting — in addition to the regular meaning from anime, of a character who drives a giant robot, this refers to a player or game system which focuses on choosing between a list of rules codified actions («you’re not saying what a person does in the world, you’re pressing buttons on a mech»).

Melee — 1) Hand-to-hand, hand held weapon combat or to fight in close proximity. 2) A long, knock-down, drag-out fight.

Metagame — 1) Things discussed about the rules by the GM and players as opposed to things happening in-game (by the characters). 2) To calculate success/failure of an action by reviewing character stats and game mechanics, as opposed to acting based on character personality and what the ‘character’ knows.

Metaplot — Figuratively, «the plot about the plot», where the second plot is what develops at the gaming table. Usually an ongoing storyline written by the setting publishers which changes or moves forward the setting over the course the supplements. Sometimes called metastory.

Min-max a.k.a. Min-maxing — 1) A technique of using the rules to try and squeeze every last advantage out of a character rather than design a character that is more reflective of the warts, quirks and disadvantages we all possess. Often this is the result of a player trying to build a character which will achieve unbalanced success in a game. 2) A term used to describe a character designed to maximize one set of abilities, at the expense of minimizing all others. Example: A fighter with high attack, damage, and strength, but little to no intelligence or abilities out of combat.

Miniature — a small model representing a person, persons, a vehicle, or other pawn or actor to be manipulated during the combat simulation portion of the game. Sometimes these can be very elaborate (highly detailed metal sculptures, hand painted). Strictly speaking, only those that are three-dimensional representations are considered miniatures, but in some circles the term has been broadened to encompass any token used for representation.

Minion — A minimally detailed NPC; usually hostile, easily defeated; subject to special rules which require less bookkeeping than a normal NPC.

MM — The Monster Manual for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games. A core rule book.

Moderator — See Game Master.

Monty Hall or Monty Haul Campaign — A type of adventure centered around accumulating as much wealth as possible, as fast as possible, where story takes a back seat to killing the next monster and taking its stuff. Named for the host, Monty Hall, of the game show Let’s Make a Deal, featuring a set of three doors. The association with this type of campaign was due to the host’s catch phrase «What’s behind door number 3?!».

Mook — See Minion.

MP — Magic Points.

Munchkin — A player who uses the rules to try and gain power that is unbalancing to the game including possibly resorting to cheating. See also Min-max.

Murderhobo — 1. A player character who wanders the gameworld, unattached to any community, indiscriminately killing and looting. 2. A style of play in which characters aren’t very connected to the world and casually kill those who oppose them.

Murphy or Murphy’s Rule — A rule which has bizarre consequences in certain special cases. Sometimes these cases are reasonable and the Murphy becomes an actual problem, but in most cases they are rare or obviously inappropriate cases and the Murphy is suggested purely as a joke.

Multi-Class — Combining or using aspects from more than once class / role in a single character. Similar to Gestalt, but frequently done with a sacrifice. (Halting all progression on one of the classes and only advancing the other one, or notably higher costs to advance either class).

Mutt — See Multi-class.

N

Narrativist — A player who plays primarily in order to explore story or narrative properties generated by the game, rather than to prioritize winning or optimization (see Gamist). Or, a game or game experience emphasizing dramatic (or thematic) events and development.

Narrator — See Game Master.

Narrow Skills — Skills that cover a fairly small rage of closely related activities, such as «Drive Passenger Auto», «First Aid», «Broadsword», or «Painter». Systems with narrow skills tend to have long skill lists, often 100-200 skills. Usually seen in design discussions.

Natural # — The result of the actual dice roll, before any modifications are made. Example: a «natural 1» or a «natural 20» on a D20 are often considered «fumbles» or «criticals»

Nerfing — Change made by an authority to the rules reducing the overall effectiveness of a particular ability or system. Can be caused by the publisher revising rules or providing errata or the GM imposing house rules. Generally seen as a negative. It is a reference to Nerf® brand foam toys, especially balls and toy weapons, designed for safety through use of soft foam. In-game abilities that reduce the effectiveness of a character are generally referred to as debuffs, not nerfs (although the same word, buff, is used for in-game abilities and out-of-game changes that improve a character).

Non-Player Character — Any creature in a game that is not controlled exclusively by a player. Most often run by the GM, in certain cases a player may determine actions of a Non-Player Character.

NPC — Non-Player Character.

O

OA — Opportunity Attack, see Attack of Opportunity.

OGL — Open Game License, see Open Content

Old-School or Old-School Revival or Old School Renaissance — 1) A style of game that harkens back to the early days of role-playing and seeks to capture what was best about those games. 2) Often used by older gamers to refer to the time when they first started playing RPGs.

One Character Game — A type of game where there is basically only one type of character to play. Examples would be games like «Judge Dredd» where the players are all assumed to be Judge characters. Some of these games have expansions that allow other character types. ***BJM: needs reference October 8, 2009***

OOC — Out of Character.

Open Content A portion of a rule set that can be freely republished by other people without being considered a challenge to a publisher’s trademark or copyright, after that publisher voluntarily releases it to the public. The first official open content was included in the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 2000, published under the «Open Game License» (OGL). It has since expanded to several other games and game systems. Setting material, such as places and characters, is rarely Open Content, but in many cases certain monsters are. Content that has not been «opened» by the publisher is referred to as Closed Content and cannot be legally reprinted.

Opportunity Attack — See Attack of Opportunity.

Opposed Action — A direct conflict between characters, whether PCs or NPCs. Many games handle this differently than unopposed actions. Examples: fighting, seduction, persuasion, forcing your will on someone, etc.

Optional Rules — Published rules but used at the discretion of the Game Master. Rules not designed to be part of base rules, but can be used, (often by experienced players), to alter game play.

Ouija Board Gaming — where a group wants an RPG experience to have a particular property or quality, but does not want to deliberately or explicitly take steps to achieve that quality. The most common example is players who want the game to have narrative qualities, but at the same time do not want to make choices for their characters on the basis of narrative priorities. Coined by Ron Edwards, who believed it to be dysfunctional, but for some groups it may be a necessary aspect of suspension of disbelief.

Out of Character — 1) An action or discussion made between GM and Players not meant to be performed by characters in game. 2) An action that is not in line with the character’s personality.

P

Party Charter — 1) In-character document establishing the adventuring company, its shares, inheritance and dissolution procedures. 2) Out-of-character document which may include the elements of definition 1, as well as other aspects of play and evironment, including roles in party, snack schedules, and attendance policy. It is a form of Social Contract.

PBEM — Play by E-Mail.

PBP — Play-by-Post. Usually played on a web forum, though it is possible to PBP in any content sharing medium. A slower style of play, but often incorporates much more depth to character role-playing.

PBF — Play-by-Forum. Synonymous with PBP.

Percentile — 1. Rolling either a d100 or two ten-sided dice in which one die refers to the tens place and the other refers to the ones. 2. A system where the primary resolution mode is based on the use of percentile dice.

Player — The physical person playing the game — i.e. not the character(s) they play.

Phase — Usually a sub-unit of a round (a round may comprise several phases). See Round.

PHB or PH — The Player’s Handbook for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games. The latter abbreviation is sometimes spoken as «Fuh». May be used to denote a «Player’s Handbook» from other game systems as well. A core rulebook.

PnP — Pen and Paper. Usually referred to with tabletop RPGs (as opposed to CRPGs — Computer RPGs, etc).

Pseudo-clone — 1) A game designed to make use of supplements for an older out of print game, but with significant rules changes, EG: Castles & Crusades. 2) A rework of the mechanics of a recent system to recapture the feel and setting tropes of an older system. EG: Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game (1st & 2nd Editions). 3) A game designed by mimicking the mechanics of an older game, without concern for compatibility but focusing on similar mechanical approaches. Usually done as a «What if they had been inspired by ___.» EG: Mazes & Minotaurs (1st Edition). Sometimes called a Similacrum.

Point-Based — Having characters that are ‘constructed’ with a budget of points for attributes, skills, abilities, etc; generally as opposed to being determined randomly at character creation.

POD — Print on Demand. Instead of paying for a large print run and then storing it while it sells of unit by unit over a period of time, some publishers decide to print only on demand. No warehouse for stock is needed; physical copies are produced when customers buy them.

Politician — A player who frequently discusses his politics at the game table. ***BJM: needs reference October 8, 2009***

Powers — Supernatural abilities possessed by a character.

Progression Tree — A list of skills, powers, or anything else designed in a linear advancement tree. Advanced abilities are unlocked by earning / buying prerequisites lower on the tree.

Psionics — Powerful abilities of the mind. May be the same as spell-casting but often used in an otherwise magic-free system. (i.e. mind reading, telekinesis, etc).

PvP — Player vs Player. The ability or allowance for players to attack each other directly.

PWYW («Pay What You Want») — a pricing method where the customer sets his own price to purchase an RPG item (usually a PDF file or electronic book) from a publisher or online retailer. In some cases one can set a price of zero and still complete the «purchase», in essence getting a free game or supplement.

Q

Quantum Bear or Grudge Monster — An enemy placed by the GM via GM Fiat that was not previously determined to exist or written in pre-prepared material. Quantum Bears are used in most games to make environments realistic, but some players argue that they can create problems where resource management is involved in combat («how can we plan how many grenades to take if the number of enemies keeps changing?») or the PCs are encouraged to perform set-up before fighting (because this requires the GM to be very careful that appearance of a Quantum Bear does not contradict the PC’s previous actions or information they obtained). Originally taken from a criticism of the Apocalypse World system, although that original criticism was more about the GM running out of ideas for partial costs of actions rather than random creation of enemies.

R

Race — The biological being the player chooses to play. In typical fantasy role playing games, this can be human, elf, dwarf, gnome etc. The choice of race typically affects the basic traits of the character.

Railroading — Referring to a game’s story being forced in a particular direction most often by the GM, usually by the environment being constructed or manipulated to make only one action viable. Commonly perceived as bad form.

RAW — Rules as Written. The literal meaning of the published rules, as opposed to designer’s intent, either assumed or explicitly stated.

Range Bands — 1) System of abstractly measuring movement for combat or chases one dimensionally. Used in Classic Traveller, Pendragon, Diaspora. 2) Measurements of the various distances at which a weapon’s efficiency changes. Used in d6, and several others. 3) System of labeling various distances rather than giving explicit measures. Used in Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller.

Ranged — Ranged combat or an attack/effect that takes place over a distance.

Redshirts — An NPC that has little purpose other than to die. Commonly used in a Sci-Fi RPG setting. Derives from the classic Star Trek television show in which a security detail wearing red uniform shirts accompanied the bridge crew on adventures, almost always to their regret.

Referee — See Game Master.

Ret-Con — Retroactive Continuity typically refers to a change in previous events due to either a rules issue or because of some other mistake on the part of the players or, more often, the GM.

Retro-Clone — a game that is designed to emulate the rules of an older out of print game (so as to be compatible with anything produced for the older system).

Rez — Resurrect a character. The act of bringing a character back from the dead in a game as opposed to having to create a new one. May be achieved through spells or story plot.

Romeroading or Roads to Rome — a reduced form of Railroading in which PCs have a choice of action, but no action they can take can change what ultimately happens («take any road, but all roads lead to Rome»). This is usually invoked in order to create dramatic set-pieces, especially at the end of campaigns. Much less controversial than railroading, in part because it is much harder to avoid.

Roll-Play — Instead of role-play. 1) Often derogatory, used to imply that manipulation of the game system has replaced imagination. 2) Referring to the desire to roll dice instead of acting out character interactions.

Root/Branch — A system where skills start off at a root level, then branch out into various sub skills. An example would be a system where players started off with a basic pistol skill they could use for any pistol, but then had to specify specialties when they raised the skill, such as revolver, semi-auto, auto, etc. ***BJM: needs reference October 8, 2009***

Round — Unit of time in a game which generally limits the number of actions a character can take before another creature / character can act.

Role-play — The act of taking on the role of a character. May be done in any of several modes, including 1st-person dialog, 3rd person narration of action, or even 1st person improvisational acting.

Role-playing Poems — Are short, often LARP-like games designed to be played in 15 minutes. They often focus on a specific experience, rather than character or narrative. (Stoke — Birmingham 0-0)

RPG — Role-Playing Game. 1) In terms of what we tend to list at RPG Geek this means: a) Defined set of rules. b) Allows the player to take on the role of a character. c) Allows the player a strong measure of free will to choose what the character does d) The actions chosen by the player shape and influence the story which unfolds during the game. 2) Under Geekdo classifications, this stands for a game which has a separate set of rules differing it from any other role-playing game, even those with similar names.

RPG Item — Geekdo defines this as any single item of role-playing game paraphernalia.

Rules — The explicit part of the system, specified in the text.

Rules-Heavy— Having many rules to guide action and resolution. Opposite of Free-form.

Rules Lawyer — 1) A person known for arguing GM rules calls by recourse to quoting the rules from the rulebooks. 2) A person who disrupts play by excessive references to rules in play. 3) A player who misrepresents the rules for their own advantage in play.

Rules-Light — Having few rules, leaving much up to player fiat and/or social contract.

S

Sandbox — a style of gaming where the gamemaster purposely avoids providing much or any overt plot or guidance to the players as to what they should be doing. The gamemaster provides a situation (typically a geographical location), and the players interact with that location as they see fit. The metaphor is that players are children playing in a sandbox; within the sandbox they can do anything they want. See Hexcrawl for one specific type of sandbox game.

Save or Saving Throw — An attempt to avoid a detrimental effect, or success at such an attempt. Often phrased as “making a save” (though this can still refer either to the attempt or to success).

Save Or Suck — An ability or spell which requires the target to make a Saving Throw or suffer a debuff severe enough to make them useless (possibly temporarily) in a fight. Such abilities are quite difficult to balance and may indicate Caster Supremacy.

Seed — See Adventure Seed.

Series — Geekdo defines this as a group of RPG Items sharing enough common factors as to indicate continuing theme.

Simulationist — Originally, a gamer who plays in order to discover the results of applying actions within a simulated world (eg, «What if Luke Skywalker never met the droids?»), as focused on the setting without authorial intervention. More commonly, a game experience typified by adherence to simulating the imagined world impartially, as if it were real, often with a high level of detail.

Skills — Area of proficiency. In a typical role playing game, a character will have a number of ‘skills’, namely things they are especially good (or especially not good) at. For example “hide”, “discover hidden things”, “hit with a sword”, etc. Skills are often trainable so they may improve during the course of the game. For more information see Broad Skills, Narrow Skills.

Skill-Based — Having characters that are defined by narrowly-defined skills, e.g. «Broadsword,» «Fast-Talk.»

Skill Points — See Character Points.

Skill Tree — See Progression Tree, but exclusively for skills.

Social Contract — Agreements between a group of players, often implicit, often unique to each group, that guide and/or constrain action. E.g. «no one should interrupt except the GM.» «No character in the story should attempt to rape any other character.» «It is your responsibility to make sure you have fun.»

SOP — Standard Operating Procedure. A series of actions taken mechanistically by a PC, usually because the game world or system requires them to. A classic example is «TLP» — (Check For) Traps, Listen, Pick — representing the steps taken by a rogue when opening an unknown door in dungeon crawling games. Sometimes considered a complaint about older games which required very explicit descriptions of what the PCs were doing (eg, «we search ahead and probe the floor with a 10 foot pole») but where such descriptions became commonplace and thus boring («can’t we just always search ahead and probe the floor with a 10 foot pole?»)

SP — Skill Points

Spell-Slinger — Casting class (magic user, sorcerer, etc).

Splat Book — Supplementary book for a game system covering an individual class, race, clan, tribe or like concept.

Squaregrid — A game that used squares as a map base and for measurement.

SRD — System Reference Document, a term used in the context of the Open Game License (OGL) for all the rules text and mechanics released under OGL to allow other publishers to produce compatible material.

Stats — The numerical value applied to elements of a game. 1) A character’s abilities. 2) The numbers detailing how much damage a sword does. 3) The details of how an object, such as a vehicle, interacts with its fictitious environment.

Status — See Effects. Usually referring to the condition a character is in due to effects.

Story Games — Are RPGs which focus more on the overall story than character building or rules enforcing. Most RPGs can be made to be more story driven given the predisposition of the GM/Players, but clearly some RPGs are more tailored to this style of play. Epistolary Richard compiled a blog post on the origin of the term.

Storyteller — See Game Master.

Subdual Damage — Also called Non-Lethal or Bashing damage. In systems with multiple damage types, subdual damage can generally be healed more quickly. It may be affected differently by armor and usually results in unconsciousness rather than death. See Lethal Damage.

System — 1) The big-picture of a game’s mechanical choices, including not just rules but also design philosophy etc. Or from a story point of view: the method in a game by which new facts are added to the fictional setting. 2) Geekdo defines this as a set of base rules used by more than one RPG.

T

Talent(s) — See Trait.

Tank — Similar to Meat Shield, but refers to a character which can dish out lots of damage as well as take lots. Generally, a character able to go toe to toe with the biggest baddies.

Take X — Where X is a number. Indicates that a roll for a check of some kind (usually skill) is not made but rather it is assumed that X is the result of the roll. Modifiers are added as normal and the result calculated. Examples from the d20 system include «Take 10», indicating the reliable effect of a skill and «Take 20» indicating use of the skill while taking an arbitrary amount of time under no pressure to succeed.

Target Number — the number that a player is required to roll on a dice for an action to be successful. In D&D and other d20 games, also sometimes called Difficulty Class or DC, or just Difficulty.

Template — 1) A set of abilities laid on top of a character / creature to add abilities and/or specialize the character. 2) A pre-made example of a PC, NPC, Item, etc. used to assist in quickly generating multiple copies of something.

THAC0 (pronounced «thack-oh» even though the final character is a zero) — To Hit Armor Class 0. The system of rolling To-Hit used in D&D and AD&D 1st and 2nd edition, where the player’s character sheet showed an initial target number and values were added to or subtracted from it based on the opponent’s armor or defensive abilities. Modern versions of D&D use a simpler system where the opponent’s armor sets the target number and the PCs fighting ability sets the value added to the dice roll.

Third-Party — Publications for a game that are from someone other than a game’s current publisher. Often printed under license.

To-Hit — the most common dice roll in combat; a roll to see if the PC successfully hit their enemy, or vice versa.

TPK — Total Party Kill. The event of an entire group of player characters in a game being wiped out by a threat or challenge. “The dragon caught us by surprise and it became a TPK.”

Trait(s) — A distinguishing characteristic of a character. This could be the ability for a character to size up a fight better than most or perhaps the person has exceptional leadership skills. It doesn’t have to be positive — a bad trait could be a phobia or uncontrollable greed. Some games give advantages/disadvantages for traits. Traits can be further defined by being assigned a numeric or textual value to indicate the competency of the ability being described by the name of the Trait. When numerical, this is normally called an Ability (Typically Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Intelligence, Spirit).

Trap Choice or Trap Option — an option for character generation or development which is listed in a rulebook yet is outright worse than other options, especially if its surrounding description suggests it is better. Generally considered a bad thing since it can result in new players building ineffective characters and not knowing why they are ineffective.

Transhuman — A RPG setting based on transhumanism, the idea that through genetic engineering and cybernetics humans will be able to modify themselves to extreme degrees, becoming «transhuman», possibly even becoming software based entities living in cyberspace. Not technically a term specific to gaming, but perhaps obscure enough to be valuable here.

Turn — See Round.

U

Unopposed Action — An action which requires action resolution, but does not directly involve an opponent. Many games handle this differently than opposed actions. Examples: scaling a cliff, forcing open a door, creating a magic item, etc.

V

Variant Rules — See Optional Rules.

Verisimilitude — «Realism, if this world was real». What’s usually actually meant by someone who complains that a minor rule is «unrealistic» in a game with wizards throwing explosive rainbows.

Virtual Tabletop — A computer program or website/web application that enables live play online. Usually involves a randomizer for live die rolls and may also include maps, counters, character sheets and even rules references. VTs enable play through Voice over Internet, often on a global scale.

W

X

XP — Experience Points.

Y

Z

Media complement one another: Movies, TV series, video games, etc. often convert into one another. As they do so, tropes in one genre often become tropes in another. One of these is the Role Playing Game or RPG, a popular form of video games. RPGs themselves are conversions from table-top paper gaming, which often involved acting. (Hence the «Role Playing» part of the name.) As this has increased, we see more and more RPG aspects in series, especially Anime & Manga. See also Role-Playing Game ‘Verse.

    open/close all folders 

    A 

    C 

    D 

    E 

    F 

    G 

    H 

    I 

    K 

    L 

    M 

    P 

    R 

    S 

    T 

    V 

    W 

    X 

---