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MMO terms and tabletop, anyone completely ANNOYED by this?

It's not that it's wrong. It's that the terms are anachronistic and/or tiresomely simplistic. This can impinge on some people's escapism. Therefore, it's not great either.

I find that "pass the chips and salsa", "that's the last piece of pizza", and "let's do wings for lunch" impinge on the escapism a heck of a lot more than those "MMO" phrases.

I learned to relax about a lot of these ridiculous things a very long time ago. Now I just tell dem damn kids to "GET OFF MY LAWN!!!" Because that is totally immersive to the roleplaying...:lol:
 
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RPGs and computer/video games grew up together. They have always shared terms/cross-pollinated. As someone who was already a fan of the Ultima series by the time I first played AD&D, this thread seems a little odd.
 


I'd rather MMO terminology creep into the mix than spoken versions of text emotes and other associated text-bits. At least terms can be roughly approximated into a word category. A tank is a noun, and pull is a true verb action. A larger problem for me will be when my very young children or their friends grow up to say stuff like this:

Me: "The captain picks himself up from the dusty road and shakes his half helm at you 'the Countess will hear of this mark my words!'"
Player: lolls
Me: wait what? Did you literally just say lolls?
Player: oh em gee, surslee
Me: I don't want to live on this planet anymore
*plane shift*
 


Here's a concept.

Work with the players.

Next game you play, have the players create their characters as usual. Now advise them that those characters only exist online in 'the hottest MMORPG' to date... and now have them play their characters as 'themselves' in the 'real' world when they're not online.

See how excited they get.
Inspired by the anime "Sword Art Online", I've actually thought about doing this. The anime is great - the idea could work as an RPG as well.

That way the MMORPG knowledge of players is put in a context which befits it. It's also very meta.
 

It's not that it's wrong. It's that the terms are anachronistic and/or tiresomely simplistic. This can impinge on some people's escapism. Therefore, it's not great either.

Tabletop RPGs come with their own terminology, which in most cases is equally simplistic and no less impenetrable to newcomers. I can't help feeling that this thread is the pot calling the kettle black.
 

When table-top games develop mechanics that in turn mimic MMO concepts, what else are you supposed to call them? We had a Knight PC in a 3.5 game, and we called his special ability aggro because... well, what else do you call it?

Of course, for me, it bothered me that MMO concepts were in the game to begin with as much as the terminology. There's only one or two guys who occasionally talk about character building strategies in MMO-term laden diatribes. Me and another player are deliberately obtuse and refuse to understand what he's talking about most of the time. In general, the rest of us don't care about MMO concepts or terms, because we're not power gamers, and the concept of building characters around MMO-influenced roles is foreign to us--we build characters based on literary roles that we may find interesting.

Of course, this is where the MMO-talkin' guy gets his ammo; to him, we aren't "properly" building our characters to be efficient at the roles that he imagines them to naturally fall into. The problem, as we tell him repeatedly, is his concept of what my character is supposed to be and my concept of what [my own character are supposed to be are often at odds.

Luckily for us, nobody takes these conversations all that seriously, and they rarely come up anyway--and only when we feel like maybe we've had our butts handed to us in a recent combat or something anyway.
 

I find that "pass the chips and salsa", "that's the last piece of pizza", and "let's do wings for lunch" impinge on the escapism a heck of a lot more than those "MMO" phrases.

I learned to relax about a lot of these ridiculous things a very long time ago.


What this guy said. Even though I'm a young buck, I've found that an easier more diplomatic approach to the game works best for everybody. I guess you could say a "casual" approach. Unless you should be so lucky as to find a group where every player shares the same mindset that you do, you're going to run into problems with enforcing one particular play style on a group of people with mixed preferences. Practicing a small amount of leniency has worked well for me.

When we sit down to play D&D, or Pathfinder, or whatever, we agree to a social contract. That contract says that we each have an obligation to contribute equally to the success and fun of the group overall. That may mean swallowing your DM'ing pride and allowing for players to roll up kick back and play casual. It's up to the DM to set a fun stage, and it's up to the players to do fun stuff within that stage.
 
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What this guy said. Even though I'm a young buck, I've found that an easier more diplomatic approach to the game works best for everybody.

Liked your reason for the edit... LOL

This thread reminds me of an interview with Tom Wilson (Biff Tanner in Back to the Future) where he discusses Eric Stolz, as Marty McFly.

Apparently Eric was all into method acting, so that all the other actors had to call him Marty, etc. Tom had a funny bit about how he was going to kick his ass because during a "fight scene", Eric kept pushing Tom and digging into his shoulders. He was going to justify it as, "live by the method, die by the method."

Reading these types of threads makes me think of Psycho in Stripes.

Psycho: "Any of you touches my stuff, and I kill you. Any of you use this MMO stuff at my table, and I kill you. Any of you calls me Francis, and I kill you. "
Everyone Else at the table: "Lighten up Francis."

I can't take people with these type of complaints too seriously.





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