An everchanging gaming language?

[Dannyalcatraz]

Personally, I like "Gish" as a generic term, but only use it online. My game group wouldn't have the foggiest idea what I was talking about if I used it.

So I'll never get to describe a Ftr/MU scoring a killing blow with a crit by saying "Gish gash, gush...Gosh!"

 

[Iosue]

And Iosue , as the one that piqued my interest, I would be especially interested in examples you could give.

I certainly think the process has been a gradual one, and if you've been involved in the game constantly through the years, you might not notice it. Late 2e's Combat & Tactics and Skills & Powers flowed more or less naturally into 3e, and late 3e's Book of Nine Swords flowed more or less naturally into 4e. When I look at the rules for 3e, I see something that recognizably TSR-era, as well as something recognizably 4e. So let me stress that I by no means think of 3e or 4e as "not D&D", despite feeling unfamiliar with the new terminology. It's been 25 years since I started playing, so of course the game is going to change and evolve, and I hold no resentment for the folks who first got into the game with WotC-D&D. Unless, of course, they start putting down the D&D of my era as "out-dated", "poor designed", and so on. Nor am I at all unaware of the differences between the D&D I grew up with in the 80s and 90s and the D&D of the 70s.

That said, here's where I see differences.

First of all, any talk of charop immediately throws me out of my D&D language comfort zone. Particularly with 3e (but that's only because I'm familiar with 4e). When a conversation turns to builds, or 3e caster imbalance, I quickly lose the whole thread of the conversation. As mentioned earlier in the thread, talk of tiers, dipping, gishes, multiple ability-score dependencies, and so on, is simply not something I ever associated with D&D back when I played from 1987 to 1998.

But the differences also go more fundamental. We didn't "build" or "optimize" characters, we "rolled them up". In my day, we talked about "to-hit matrices" and later "THAC0". Now they talk about BAB (if 3e/PF) and Base Attack Roll Modifiers (if 4e). So I say "to-hit roll", but now people say "attack roll". Saves, of course, are a big one. When I think of saving throws and D&D, I think of vs. Death Ray, vs. Polymorph, vs. Dragon Breath, etc. Nowadays, save means Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. Or those are Non-Armor Defenses, which is another term I never associated with D&D.

When I played, a "turn" in D&D was 10 minutes of in-game time, during which PCs moved at a certain rate and a turn sequence was followed, and a "round" was 10 seconds of in-game time, during which PCs moved at a separate rate, and a combat sequence was followed. Now a "turn" means the actions each player respectively takes in a round, and a "round" means going through the full initiative order. On a related note, in my day "initiative" referred to being able to go first in a battle. Now it refers to the order of the individual participants.

We used to talk about "wandering monsters", but those are pretty much gone from the game. The "core four" to me are "cleric, fighter, magic-user, thief". Now it's "cleric, fighter, wizard, rogue". If I said, "My character is a Warlock," it meant, "My character is a 6th-level magic-user." Now it means, "My character invokes an eldritch blast through a pact with a supernatural being," and if you change that, people get upset. We used to buy "modules". Now people buy "Adventure Paths" and "splatbooks".

3rd and 4th talk about Standard Actions, Swift/Minor Actions, Move Actions, and Free Actions. People talk about DCs and CRs. Their characters take Feats. They make Spot and Perception checks (and note that I'm not saying those didn't exist in TSR-D&D; I'm talking about language). They make Attacks of Opportunity/Opportunity Attacks and either suffer or impose a host of conditions that I can never really remember off the top of my head. Sure, 4e has its powers and new mechanics like Healing Surges, but from my POV 3e has its Iterative Attacks, Level Adjustment/Effective Character Level, and a host of special abilities. Many of those special abilities existed in one form or another in TSR-D&D, but the way 3e presented them changed the conversation.

Both with 3e and 4e, WotC attempted to expand their base by appealing to gamers who were not, at that point, interested in playing D&D. For 3e, this meant going highly simulationist, rules-as-physics, with all sorts of ways to customize characters. 4e brought in a higher level of balance through mathematical precision, and features reminiscent of indie-games that gave players more narrative control. And while these moves may have been somewhat tangential to my interests in D&D, how can I blame them? So more folks, who were at best indifferent to TSR-D&D and at worst actually disliked it, joined the D&D family. And as far as I'm concerned, welcome to them! I've had many an interesting conversation with folks with playstyles and expectations wildly different from mine. But they've also had an effect on the conversation.

The design paradigm of a disperse system that encourages DMs to add their own innovations and make their own case-by-case judgments is now called "lazy design". Game interaction through Player-DM give-and-take is now called "mother-may-I". The primary thrust of 5e design is, "We want you to be able to adjust the game to play however you want, be that grim and gritty or horror or high fantasy." In the 80s this was taken as a matter of course. Now this has been called "incoherent". All the D&D books I read in the 80s, from B/X to BECMI to AD&D advised to use fudging as a tool. This is now a vehemently reviled strategy. We talk about "sandbox" and "railroads". Again, I'm not saying that such differences and debates didn't exist back in the day, but the language has changed, and with that change I do think battle lines have become a little more defined.

And let it not be thought that I'm saying all the change has been for the bad. Back in the day you heard the terms "roleplaying vs. rollplaying", "munchkins", "min/maxers", "Monty Haul", and with the attendant smug superiority. Those terms have generally fallen out of use and out of favor. You hear them from time to time, but it's no longer the mainstream to put down the playstyles those terms contemptuously referred to. New terms, like "badwrongfun" and "One-True-Wayism" have come up, and I think for the better.

 

[Viking Bastard]

It took me a while to decypher a lot of the jargon here after I returned from my 7-year gaming hiatus. It was less the new jargon and more the old jargon being used slightly differently that threw me off, making me misunderstand a lot of posts.

Now I've gotten used to the new language and am having difficulty thinking of examples. After I got wise to the Forge, things became somewhat clearer.

 

[Plaguescarred]

Freelance Game Designer Robert J. Schwalb talked about game language in a recent interview on Ain't It Cool News that i think is pertinent;

D&D is a game that’s steeped in tradition and the methods by which we understand how to play the game kind of feed back into the language game we’re playing when we talk about D&D. So any kind of radical departures from those mechanisms changes the way we talk about that game. Now obviously something like getting rid of THAC0, for example, was probably the best thing to happen to D&D. Now if you say THAC0 to someone who comes into D&D post 3rd Edition, they don’t know what you’re talking about. And that causes a sort of language fuzz. Certainly you can get someone to come in and say “I have a brilliant vision for how D&D should play and will radically overhaul this game.” So what happens is they blow up D&D. We saw – as much as I love 4th Edition – 4e did just that. “We’re going to radically redesign D&D” and it blew it up and now we have a language problem. Because what I think about D&D is no longer true to these people who play D&D.

 

[Wicht]

Lot of good comments and observations...

I certainly think the process has been a gradual one, and if you've been involved in the game constantly through the years, you might not notice it. Late 2e's Combat & Tactics and Skills & Powers flowed more or less naturally into 3e, and late 3e's Book of Nine Swords flowed more or less naturally into 4e. When I look at the rules for 3e, I see something that recognizably TSR-era, as well as something recognizably 4e. So let me stress that I by no means think of 3e or 4e as "not D&D", despite feeling unfamiliar with the new terminology. It's been 25 years since I started playing, so of course the game is going to change and evolve, and I hold no resentment for the folks who first got into the game with WotC-D&D. Unless, of course, they start putting down the D&D of my era as "out-dated", "poor designed", and so on. Nor am I at all unaware of the differences between the D&D I grew up with in the 80s and 90s and the D&D of the 70s.

That said, here's where I see differences.

First of all, any talk of charop immediately throws me out of my D&D language comfort zone. Particularly with 3e (but that's only because I'm familiar with 4e). When a conversation turns to builds, or 3e caster imbalance, I quickly lose the whole thread of the conversation. As mentioned earlier in the thread, talk of tiers, dipping, gishes, multiple ability-score dependencies, and so on, is simply not something I ever associated with D&D back when I played from 1987 to 1998.

I think a lot of this goes to play-style and harkens back to a point made above that sometimes the changes in vocabulary is not so much new terms as new ways of thinking. I hardly ever think in terms of builds, and I never consider caster-imbalance, though I have played 3e since its release and have kept in the d20 system with Pathfinder. Though I understand the terms being used, I have trouble relating to the thinking behind them when I read/hear them. And I say this as someone that does freelance writing for the system. I strive to keep abreast of the concerns of people so that I can keep it in mind when writing, but I have a hard time taking it seriously as legitimate concerns because it is so foreign to my actual gaming style. Like you, such conversations pull me out of a certain comfort zone. So I am not sure this is edition specific language, so much as game style specific language.

But the differences also go more fundamental. We didn't "build" or "optimize" characters, we "rolled them up". In my day, we talked about "to-hit matrices" and later "THAC0". Now they talk about BAB (if 3e/PF) and Base Attack Roll Modifiers (if 4e). So I say "to-hit roll", but now people say "attack roll". Saves, of course, are a big one. When I think of saving throws and D&D, I think of vs. Death Ray, vs. Polymorph, vs. Dragon Breath, etc. Nowadays, save means Fortitude, Reflex, and Will. Or those are Non-Armor Defenses, which is another term I never associated with D&D.

Again some of this is playstyle specific, not edition specific. I still make my players "roll up" their characters.

The BAB I had not considered (an example of jargon one takes for granted due to familiarity), though the saves I can see. I still have a habit of saying, "make a saving throw," to which I am always queried as to which one. The concept of a save remains though, but the jargon has changed somewhat tis true.

When I played, a "turn" in D&D was 10 minutes of in-game time, during which PCs moved at a certain rate and a turn sequence was followed, and a "round" was 10 seconds of in-game time, during which PCs moved at a separate rate, and a combat sequence was followed. Now a "turn" means the actions each player respectively takes in a round, and a "round" means going through the full initiative order. On a related note, in my day "initiative" referred to being able to go first in a battle. Now it refers to the order of the individual participants.

Quibble - in Pathfinder, a round is still a matter of seconds (though 6 not 10). And initiative can be used interchangeably in a number of ways, so that it is still common to ask, "who has initiative," and refer to "initiative order." That may be a game-group specific difference not an edition specific manner of speech.

We used to talk about "wandering monsters", but those are pretty much gone from the game. The "core four" to me are "cleric, fighter, magic-user, thief". Now it's "cleric, fighter, wizard, rogue". If I said, "My character is a Warlock," it meant, "My character is a 6th-level magic-user." Now it means, "My character invokes an eldritch blast through a pact with a supernatural being," and if you change that, people get upset. We used to buy "modules". Now people buy "Adventure Paths" and "splatbooks".

I still buy modules. And still use wandering monsters when appropriate. I do find that I dislike the tendency created by class names to pigeonhole character roles into the appropriately titled class. Its something I've pushed back against in my own small way in my writing by distinguishing between character roles and character classes so that not all Samurai must belong to the samurai class and not all ninjas use the ninja class and an assassin is somebody who kills people, not somebody with a certain class. It is what it is, but I always think there must be a better way to perceive the classes in relation to the roles.

And let it not be thought that I'm saying all the change has been for the bad. Back in the day you heard the terms "roleplaying vs. rollplaying", "munchkins", "min/maxers", "Monty Haul", and with the attendant smug superiority. Those terms have generally fallen out of use and out of favor. You hear them from time to time, but it's no longer the mainstream to put down the playstyles those terms contemptuously referred to. New terms, like "badwrongfun" and "One-True-Wayism" have come up, and I think for the better.

Again, some of this is group specific, more than edition specific. Or maybe its age specific. I still use a lot of the first terms but not so much that latter terms. In fact those last two grate on me.

One semi-random thought. Munchkin is not the pejorative it once was. I blame Steve Jackson.

 

[Jester David]

Okay now my interest is piqued, what examples of vocabulary differences in relation to the game do you see between BECMI and, let's say, 3rd edition?

Attack of opportunity, Fort save, BAB, skills, skill points, skill check, feats, stat boost, caster level, concentration check, hardness, damage reduction, conditions, grapple, 5-foot step, standard action, move action, swift action, touch AC, flat-footed, full attack, slashing damage, space/ reach, DC, item slots, Prestige Class, bonuses (sacred bonus, circumstance bonus, armour bonus, deflection bonus, etc).

There's a lot. 3e likely introduced far, far, far more than 4e. And Pathfinder added some more with things like CMB, CMD, archetypes, and other Paizoisms.

But when I listen or read the average 4e thread on game design, I am often lost in trying to follow. It seems to me that 4e added far more new concepts in terms of vocabulary than any other edition, with things like Dailies and Healing Surges.

So is this just me? How do others see it?

I think 4e was a little more hard on the language since so much of it swapped from natural language to technical terms and keywords. "Burst 5 within 20" tells much to a 4e player but nothing to a non-4e player. But is also got rid of or altered quite a few terms 3e used, so there's quite a bit of relearning that goes on.
At-will, Encounter, and Daily are the big additions as are burst, blast, close, ranged. Tier, Heroic, Paragon Path, Epic Destiny, marking, healing surge, minor action, etc. And many of the keywords in the glossary.

4e fans don't help and have really embraced acronyms and portmanteaus to speed internet discussion. Charismadin, AEDU, PP, OA, and the like.

 

[Remathilis]

As a primary-D&D player, I don't much care for WoWisms like "toon" or "mob", but I really hate it when they show up in RPG discussions. Maybe that's part of it.

I'm with you, mostly.

Even back in the late 90's during 2e, we used "tank" to refer to a plate-mail warrior or "loot" to refer to found treasure. It was a natural fit found in Everquest that worked in our game. We worked in "buffs" and "nerfs" into the lingo as well.

4e really brought that home though when defenders controlled aggro while controllers debuffed and nuked, leaders buffed and healed, and the strikers dps'd against the mob of minions and the solo boss monster. Afterwards, we took a short rest to cool down and searched for the treasure parcels.

The term "toon" however burns me with a passion of fire and hatred. They are a character. A PC if you need a short hand. "Toon" is just a term for something you play-and-toss, often with no connection, no personality, or do so just to see if you're build works. Toon reminds me of those munchkin gamers who don't create characters, that create statistical aberrations.

 

[Wicht]

Attack of opportunity, Fort save, BAB, skills, skill points, skill check, feats, stat boost, caster level, concentration check, hardness, damage reduction, conditions, grapple, 5-foot step, standard action, move action, swift action, touch AC, flat-footed, full attack, slashing damage, space/ reach, DC, item slots, Prestige Class, bonuses (sacred bonus, circumstance bonus, armour bonus, deflection bonus, etc).

There's a lot. 3e likely introduced far, far, far more than 4e. And Pathfinder added some more with things like CMB, CMD, archetypes, and other Paizoisms.

Some of those I can see, others I regard though as rather intuitive regardless of edition; and still others I know for a fact predate 3e.

Armor bonuses, while not the technical term used, for example, are present in every edition; though, like Thac0, the term denotes a specific way of looking at the math; but the idea is consistent throughout editions (I tend to think the inversion 3e did was actually a good thing, and like much of the 3e changes was so intuitive one wonders why it was not always done that way. Skills (as a concept) predates 3e, though the jargon changed a bit, as did caster level (the level of your caster), a concentration check, being flat-footed, having a longer reach and bonuses (bonuses!? There were +1 bonuses to magic items from the get go). Also, damage types from different weapons surely predates 3e. Especially blunt vs. slashing. One always, always wanted clubs and maces against skeletons as opposed to arrows and swords. (Okay, I double checked - 1e Monster Manual had weapon types matter against skeletons; basic set did not) Granted, some of these terms were made more specific in 3e, but the concepts were always there and there was little problem adapting the jargon. I would postulate that most of these terms (with some Jargon like BAB being the exception; though the concept is basic to every edition) wouldn't actually cause much confusion if players from two different editions were talking about their game experience.

I think 4e was a little more hard on the language since so much of it swapped from natural language to technical terms and keywords. "Burst 5 within 20" tells much to a 4e player but nothing to a non-4e player. But is also got rid of or altered quite a few terms 3e used, so there's quite a bit of relearning that goes on.
At-will, Encounter, and Daily are the big additions as are burst, blast, close, ranged. Tier, Heroic, Paragon Path, Epic Destiny, marking, healing surge, minor action, etc. And many of the keywords in the glossary.

4e fans don't help and have really embraced acronyms and portmanteaus to speed internet discussion. Charismadin, AEDU, PP, OA, and the like.

While 3e defined a lot of terms, the concepts were the same and I think that was why 4e was harder on the language. So many concepts changed. And I think you are right that 4e players tend to talk more technically than 3e players. I think a lot of this goes back to playstyles. And while some of the terms are intuitive (an at-will power is pretty easy to comprehend), others make little sense in the tradition of the game. When I hear "healing surge," my first instinct is to think cleric spell. The whole idea of a healing surge is completely foreign to every other edition of the game. I think you would have a much harder times finding examples of the same in 3e where the very concept is just so novel and edition specific. That may just be familiarity bias, but I have to think it is not entirely such.

Beyond this, in 4e, other otherwise common words are given entirely new technical meanings, such as "Heroic." "Heroic" takes on an entirely new definition in 4e where the use of the word by the player of one edition is going to mean something completely different; for example, "My character went on a heroic quest," tells a story (of sorts) in every other edition, but in 4e it likely only means that the character was a certain level. I think creating technical jargon using common words using new, novel definitions is a poor design decision in terms of making a game inclusive in conversation. It is one thing to make "reach" a technical term where the term means how far a character or monster can reach. But to take the term heroic, and make it exclusive of all activity outside a certain range of levels creates confusion in the language. In my opinion anyway.

 

[Jester David]

Armor bonuses, while not the technical term used, for example, are present in every edition; though, like Thac0, the term denotes a specific way of looking at the math; but the idea is consistent throughout editions (I tend to think the inversion 3e did was actually a good thing, and like much of the 3e changes was so intuitive one wonders why it was not always done that way.

I was using armour bonus as an example of typed bonuses. Mage armour provides an "armour bonus" to AC, not to be confused with a deflection bonus, dodge bonus, shield bonus, or any of the other types of bonus that can boost AC. Just having a "bonus" is not language change but having a +1 longsword provide a "+1 enhancement bonus" to attack and damage rolls is.

Also, damage types from different weapons surely predates 3e. Especially blunt vs. slashing. One always, always wanted clubs and maces against skeletons as opposed to arrows and swords. Granted, some of these terms were made more specific in 3e, but the concepts were always there and there was little problem adapting the jargon.

If memory serves, weapons were divided along B/P/S but it wasn't a damage type. Things just did damage and the source of the damage was used in terms of description. 3e just simplified it by typing the damage (fire damage, slashing damage, etc).

And I think you are right that 4e players tend to talk more technically than 3e players. I think a lot of this goes back to playstyles. And while some of the terms are intuitive (an at-will power is pretty easy to comprehend), others make little sense in the tradition of the game

Ehhhh.... maybe.
4e tends to attract the technical player, really complimenting people who enjoy that playstyle. But the same type of people, talking and discussing 3e, don't sound any less technical. It's really just the ratio of people playing the edition and how technical they're being.

Beyond this, in 4e, other otherwise common words are given entirely new technical meanings, such as "Heroic." "Heroic" takes on an entirely new definition in 4e where the use of the word by the player of one edition is going to mean something completely different; for example, "My character went on a heroic quest," tells a story (of sorts) in every other edition, but in 4e it likely only means that the character was a certain level. I think creating technical jargon using common words using new, novel definitions is a poor design decision in terms of making a game inclusive in conversation. It is one thing to make "reach" a technical term where the term means how far a character or monster can reach. But to take the term heroic, and make it exclusive of all activity outside a certain range of levels creates confusion in the language. In my opinion anyway.

This isn't restricted to 4e. D&D has many terms that come from common language but mean different things based on context. Look at the Order of the Stick "level" joke.

 

[Wicht]

I was using armour bonus as an example of typed bonuses. Mage armour provides an "armour bonus" to AC, not to be confused with a deflection bonus, dodge bonus, shield bonus, or any of the other types of bonus that can boost AC. Just having a "bonus" is not language change but having a +1 longsword provide a "+1 enhancement bonus" to attack and damage rolls is.

Right, but while 3e specified the mechanics, the language remained the same and was interchangeable from one edition to the next. A suit of +1 armor cuts across editions and a 3e player telling a BECMI player that his fighter found a +1 Undead Bane Longsword would be easily understood.

If memory serves, weapons were divided along B/P/S but it wasn't a damage type. Things just did damage and the source of the damage was used in terms of description. 3e just simplified it by typing the damage (fire damage, slashing damage, etc).

I don't know if you are just arguing semantics between weapon type and damage type, but the B was bludgeoning, the P was piercing, and the S was slashing. Which were all damage type indicators. This mattered in AD&D, though not in Basic. Different weapon types would harm different things but not others. Likewise, fire was always more effective against some things than others; ditto with cold. This was nothing new to 3e, though 3e most certainly codified it more clearly. But the language and the concepts did not really change much.

This isn't restricted to 4e. D&D has many terms that come from common language but mean different things based on context. Look at the Order of the Stick "level" joke.

It has always existed to some extent, but mostly in terms that cut across editions (such as level, class, etc.).