1E/2E/OD&D Hey Rube! and other archaic knowledge

[Bullgrit]

Way back in my earliest days of D&D (age 13-14), I was not especially well read or worldly -- I was an average teenager of 1980.

In reading D&D books back in the day, especially those written by E. Gary Gygax, I often came across a reference to some archaic bit of knowledge/information that I had no way of knowing. We didn't have the Internet or Wikipedia to easily look up such things, so many times the reference just got missed or given an odd look and skipped.

Usually this wasn't a serious problem, but sometimes not knowing or understanding the reference meant I either just didn't get the meaning of the text or even completely misunderstood it.

For instance:

In the module Keep on the Borderlands, there's the rumor for the PCs about "Bree-Yark!" The text explained that it's like the circus call of "Hey Rube!"

I had never heard of "Hey Rube!" I had no idea what this meant. I took the reference to mean that "Bree Yark" was pronounced as "hay ruub" -- and this made no sense to me.

Eventually, through talking with other D&D players, I figured out what Bree Yark really meant, but it was about 30 years after first reading that text that I ever saw any other reference to "Hey Rube!" My oldest son was watching a Scooby Doo episode where the gang is at a circus, and the ring master called out, "Hey Rube!" when a scheme was going down. I remember saying out loud (to my son's confusion), "So that's how it works."

In the module Secret of the Slavers Stockade, the text mentions there's a "dog-eared deck of cards" on a table. I had never heard of anything "dog-eared," and since the cards belonged to a bunch of terrible and nasty humanoids, I assumed the cards were actually made of dogs' ears. Fortunately, I didn't go 30 years before learning what this meant.

Now, I did learn a lot of new words from D&D books (especially EGG's work), and I started reading more due to D&D. But thinking back, it is kind of curious how the early material (especially EGG's) seemed to be written for older, better read, and more worldly-knowledgeable readers. It's like EGG didn't even consider that 10-14 year old kids would be reading the material (even the Basic D&D material), and wouldn't get much of the archaic references. (Thank goodness for some of the glossaries.)

Now adays, from what I've seen in the current (since 2000) books, things like "Hey Rube" and "dog-eared" would be edited to something like "Alarm" and "well-worn."

Is this good or bad, in your opinion?

Bullgrit

[fuzzlewump]

It's an interesting question, but I think the draw of some archaic words might strictly be in nostalgia. If you posed the same question, but instead said it wasn't written by EGG but instead by some writer last month, I think the answer would be clearly that those words would be for the most part not understood, and should be edited and changed.

I'm all for flavorful words, like in Magic the Gathering, I prefer "Sacrifice" to "Discard" and "Battlefield" to "Table," but 30 year old colloquialisms are a different story.

[Henry]

I guess I'm thankful to Gary for his esoteric style (another word for which I have him as my source) and I'm also thankful to this huge, 1000+ page Reader's DIgest Dictionary that my mom bought for me when I was a kid; I looked up a HECK of a lot of stuff in that dictionary when I was reading those old AD&D books. Back then, that was our version of 10-year-olds learning how to code (we were doing that too on our Commodore-64's.)

I do wish they put a little more of that in D&D books nowadays, even though it's against conventional wisdom to do so.

[Celebrim]

The best things about the first edition books is that they read like arcane and esoteric tomes.

This enhanced rather than detracted from their value and the attaction that they had for us young explorers.

[pawsplay]

I remember wondering why a name that sounds like a woman's undergarment would be chosen for a magical item that summons an efreet, not realizing that 1) it's pronounced BRAY-zhur, and 2) in Yankee territory, it is still commonly used to refer to an open fired grill. To me, "brazier" was just the weirdest imaginable word to use for a charcoal burner.

I was a teenager in high school before I "got" pearl of wisdom.

I used to wonder why bugbears lacked any insectile traits.

Bastard sword... sounded naughty. The concept of mixing highborn blood with low did not really sink in until high school as well.

Tarantella. I now recognize this as genius-inspired wordplay. At the time I thought it was really lame to misspell tarantula to name a giant spider monster.

"Ochre" means earthy yellow. It's pronounced O-kur.

Hippogriffs are not the product of the same logic that got us the owlbear, but rather, a mythological griffin variant in their own right.

Rapine is usually pronounced RAPE-ine, not ra-PEEN. It comes from the same root word as "rob." Your mother still doesn't like the way it sounds.

Quisling just sounds like the perfect name for a small, diabolic creature. It actually means "traitor" and comes from the surname of a Nazi collaborator, making it not archaic but recent and politically sensitive.

Lemures are not primates. That would be lemurs. They are Roman spirits, and handily, also sound like Lemuria, an accursed land in the vicnity of Atlantis.

Footpad is a real word that refers to a robber on foot, not some weird metaphorical reference to a cat.

[Flatus Maximus]

Originally Posted by Henry

I do wish they put a little more of that in D&D books nowadays, even though it's against conventional wisdom to do so.

<derail>This is what I find sad. As a teacher, I often wonder, "What's so wrong with challenging folks?" That they might have to actually look something up or, gods forbid, learn something new?</derail>

[Andor]

Originally Posted by Bullgrit

It's like EGG didn't even consider that 10-14 year old kids would be reading the material (even the Basic D&D material), and wouldn't get much of the archaic references. (Thank goodness for some of the glossaries.)

He didn't. It was meant for old wargamers like him. And if he did consider it, he would have (rightly) thought that they could just look it up in a dictionary. Thats www.dictionary.com for you kids in the audience.

[Celebrim]

Originally Posted by Flatus Maximus

<derail>This is what I find sad. As a teacher, I often wonder, "What's so wrong with challenging folks?" That they might have to actually look something up or, gods forbid, learn something new?</derail>

Yes.

There is no hope for culture until engineers, scientists, and inventors are again considered sexy. I'll think we've turned an important corner when you can stop a school boy on the street and ask him to name is favorite scientist with as good chance of getting an answer as if you asked his favorite athelete. I'll think we've hope for the future when an educated adult can rattle off 200 or so names of engineers, inventors, and scientists as easily as they can rattle off the names of 200 actors and actresses. That would be change I can believe in.

In the mean time, I plan on subversively corrupting as many youths as I can get my hands on, into the dangerous anti-establishment counterculture I espouse. Old school gaming is but one tool in my arsenal.

Save the cheerleader: save the world.

[Henry]

Originally Posted by Celebrim

Yes.

There is no hope for culture until engineers, scientists, and inventors are again considered sexy.

Again??? Were they EVER?

I'll think we've turned an important corner when you can stop a school boy on the street and ask him to name is favorite scientist with as good chance of getting an answer as if you asked his favorite athelete.

I can't think of a single time in history where this has EVER been true - even prior to 1950 you'd find kids more likely to know Joe Dimaggio and Jackie Robinson than Albert Einstein or Robert Oppenheimer. In Ancient Rome kids were more likely to know Spartacus than Archimedes.

But I agree that it's more likely to be in the future than the past. Geek Chic has never been more prevalent than today -- one of CBS Network's top shows is Big Bang Theory, after all.

[Greg V]

I agree with the OP. I absolutely love this aspect of the game, especially in its early history when as an impressionable 6-year-old I picked up the purple-box Basic Set. I try to include a little something along those lines in every adventure I write. Unfortunately, as has been mentioned, it mostly gets edited out.

[El Mahdi]

Originally Posted by Flatus Maximus

<derail>This is what I find sad. As a teacher, I often wonder, "What's so wrong with challenging folks?" That they might have to actually look something up or, gods forbid, learn something new?</derail>

I don't think this is a derail at all. In fact, I think it gets right to the heart of the matter.

I think it's a bad thing that an expansive vocabulary and challenging use of language is avoided. Having to look up a new word does more than simply teaching one a new word. A new word can be a window on to a different culture, a different time, a different language, or just a different way of thinking. All of those things cause the mind to learn, change and grow - all of which are good for us in so many ways - and bad for us in none.

It's win-win.

Writing to the lowest common denominator is bad for everyone. It ensures the lowest common denominator stays the lowest common denominator. With no chance or need for improvement - ever.

I agree with Flatus Maximus - it is sad.

[Celebrim]

Originally Posted by Henry

Again??? Were they EVER?

Sure. End of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century up to the first world war, the childhood heroes would have been inventors, engineers, builders and so forth. Professional sports were just taking off, and cinema was still in its infancy. The geeks meanwhile were building skyscrapers, huge passenger liners, bridging chasms, building dams, building huge machines, power plants, etc. Little kids love that stuff, and society in general was fascinated by all this new stuff.

Other than geeks, the 'cool' in this era was largely owned by the heroic age explorers like Roald Amundsen and (in a slightly different form) Buffolo Bill. This is 'World's Fair' and 'National Geographic' era (not incidently chaired by Alexander Graham Bell).

I can't think of a single time in history where this has EVER been true - even prior to 1950 you'd find kids more likely to know Joe Dimaggio and Jackie Robinson than Albert Einstein or Robert Oppenheimer.

By 1950 the geeks had undermined themselves by creating a diseminatable visual arts culture, spawning the modern celebrity culture and creating 'fame' as we now it. Although there are great players before Babe Ruth, prior to the Babe Ruth era few people could follow the exploits of a great athelete. And, I think you underestimate the celebrity status of Albert Einstein.

This was a totally different time. As a semi-tangental example, this was a time when Army and Navy were college football superpowers because soldier was the 'sexy' status accruing profession of the day. Today, every schoolboy could name you ten QB's in the NFL, but almost none of them could name you 10 commanders in the field - former or at present. There is something very basic at work here. You could make the mistake of thinking that the problem here is money, but that actually reverses cause and effect. The money is with whatever it is with because that is the idolized, status accruing profession, socially exalted profession that gets you invited to parties - or to put it bluntly - what a man does if he wants to get laid (or at least keep that option open). If you change what is idolized, if you change the cultural interests, and if you change where the competition is, then the money follows it. Culture is everything.

In Ancient Rome kids were more likely to know Spartacus than Archimedes.

I can't speak for that era. I don't honestly know who Roman children would have idolized beyond obvious figures like Julius and Augustus. Gladiators? Generals? Orators? Poets? (There really was an era when poets were treated like rock stars and lived like it, see for example Lord Byron.) Chariot Racers? Mystics? I don't know. Records from the era are so relatively scanty and framentary that I'm not sure anyone really knows, nor am I really sure that anyone at the time would have cared to record anything like that.

Augustine's Confessions indicate to me that things must not have changed to much, because his description of life in the street gangs of Carthage could almost be 20th century in some aspects. His boyhood idol was Cicero though, and I'm fairly sure we can't take a nerd like him (charismatic as he apparantly was) to be fully typical of who young Roman children.

It's an interesting topic, and I'd love to have an answer.

But I agree that it's more likely to be in the future than the past. Geek Chic has never been more prevalent than today -- one of CBS Network's top shows is Big Bang Theory, after all.

There is a possibility of the return of 'geek cool', but I don't think we are fully on that path yet.

[Orius]

Hmm, the first thing that came to mind when I saw the title of this thread was Rube Goldberg machines. And yeah, they certainly apply to classic D&D when ever the tinker gnomes are out and about.

Though I understand the meaning of "rube" as was commented on in the original post. I didn't pick that up from D&D, but some archaic and erudite words probably entered my vocabulary from the game somewhere, though I already had a pretty good vocabulary by the time I started playing.

Originally Posted by Henry

Again??? Were they EVER?

The exact same thing came to my mind when I read this. The geniuses have never been widely famous or idealized. Einstein's a notable exception, and there a few others here and there, but they are by and far exceptions and not the rule.

[AFGNCAAP]

Well, OD&D and 1st ed. AD&D stuff did serve to broaden my horizons. I know that the Deities & Demigods entries for Finnish Mythology and the Lankhmar Mythos kicked off my interest in both.

The "recommended reading" list got me to read Jack Vance's Dying Earth and the Elric stories, as well.

I'm of the Atari 2600/C-64 era myself, though having grown up around more older folks than peers of my age, I had a fair amount of exposure to terms & terminology used by my parents' & grandparents' generations early on in life. My vocabulary benefitted from it (though my social skills suffered). So terms like "dog-eared" and "rube" weren't so alien to me.

I also learned the seemingly "odd" pronunciation of some words due to this, as well: the "k" sound of the "ch" phoneme in Greek-originating words like "chimera" and "chaos", for example.

However, a lot of language elements, as well as cultural references, that I learned were introduced through D&D.

[cattoy]

Ahh yes, I have memories of running off to the dictionary to look up all the words I didn't quite get on that random encounter table...

haughty courtesan indeed.

[jaerdaph]

Hex maps - "How come we can never travel directly east or west?"

[Raven Crowking]

Originally Posted by fuzzlewump

might strictly be in nostalgia

[jaerdaph]

Originally Posted by cattoy

Ahh yes, I have memories of running off to the dictionary to look up all the words I didn't quite get on that random encounter table...

haughty courtesan indeed.

To this day I credit Gary Gygax for my SAT scores, math and verbal.

[TerraDave]

Originally Posted by Celebrim

Sure. End of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century ....

Bill Cody, Davy Crocket, gun-slingers from any number of dime store novels, baseball and college football players, traveling performers, the local cowboy, cop, or militia captain. Even George Washington and Honest Abe. And, most strangely to us, don't leave out clergy and preachers.

I doubt the "cult" of Thomas Edison then was realy any greater then Bill Gates or Steve Jobs today.

[Hobo]

Really? People aren't familiar with the phrase dog-eared?

Gygax's vocabulary was nothing compared to Clark Ashton Smith's. Now there's a writer who used odd words all the freakin' time.

And I suspect the readership of Weird Tales in the twenties and thirties was mostly teenaged boys, too.