Why Jargon is Bad, and Some Modern Resources for RPG Theory

[Maxperson]

The other is useful for talking about how games work and how participants engage with them, and if one wants to take part in that.... well one can just ignore it all and complain that people are using words they don't understand!

You say that like people don't enter normal conversations and start throwing around jargon like it should mean something to the people in the normal conversation.

It's one thing if a group of you want to talk about GNS in a GNS thread. Knock yourselves out. It's quite something else when people are discussing whether to have an ogre or troll encounter and people come in and start spouting about Player Facing Kickers.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This makes no sense.

Must be the jargon!

You say that like people don't enter normal conversations and start throwing around jargon like it should mean something to the people in the normal conversation.

It's one thing if a group of you want to talk about GNS in a GNS thread. Knock yourselves out. It's quite something else when people are discussing whether to have an ogre or troll encounter and people come in and start spouting about Player Facing Kickers.

Ha “normal conversations”? What are those? And by extension, what would “abnormal conversations” be?

And “group of you”? Yikes.

No one talks about kickers in response to a conversation about trolls and ogres. It’s an absurd hypothetical.

 

[Maxperson]

No one talks about kickers in response to a conversation about trolls and ogres. It’s an absurd hypothetical.

I'm pretty sure you understood the point. This response is unbecoming.

 

[FrogReaver]

Consider for a moment the problem of communication in the following scenario. If you have jargon using certain words and I have jargon using those same words/phrases significantly differently. Must I accept your jargon? Must you accept mine? Whose jargon prevails here?

The criteria for the whole community agreeing on and using jargon in a particular way is the criteria that prevents such a degenerate state from occurring. Calling the mechanism for preventing degenerate communication states from occurring 'gate keeping' isn't just a criticism of just people on this forum, it's a criticism of language and communication as a whole and an unfounded one at that. Without 'gate keeping' as you call it we would never be able to communicate as any given individual could use whatever word or phrase to mean whatever he wanted and it would have to be given equal position in the community no matter how much everyone else had already agreed to use the word/phrase differently. We would all be talking and using the words and no one would know the meaning as words/phrases that aren't accepted in their use have no meaning to the community.

 

[Composer99]

This has already been talked about.

1. I'm in the audience of this thread. I am included in the target audience of any general statement made here.

2. I have never heard the word kicker as defined in this thread until today. To me kicker is something added to sweeten a deal.

3. The definition of kicker is very subtle, nuanced, and difficult to convey.

4. By using the word kicker earlier in the thread we now have added 1000+ words to this thread just trying to nail down a definition.

5. The word kicker has done nothing to save time in THIS PARTICULAR conversation, thus it's an excellent example of "jargon" best used in an audience already on the same page.

This particular conversation (by which I mean the thread as a whole) is about when, how, and whether using jargon in RPGs, or at least in theoretical discussions about RPGs, is or isn't useful. (*)

You're therefore coming across as asserting that discussing when and how jargon is or isn't useful - such as, say, describing a game mechanic that is or comes across as jargon - is inappropriate. Which frankly seems preposterous to assert given what this particular conversation is about.

How is one to come to grips with when, how, and whether using jargon in RPGs or RPG theory is or isn't useful - which necessarily includes being exposed to various sorts of jargon - if one is unwilling to grapple with how various RPGs or RPG-theory frameworks use (or don't use) jargon or jargon-like terms? That's ridiculous on its face.

(*) Snarf is obviously advocating a particular position on the matter in the OP, but there wouldn't be much of a conversation/discussion if no one either disagreed or wanted to add nuance to the position.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm pretty sure you understood the point. This response is unbecoming.

If your point is that people bring unrelated jargon into conversations, I disagree.

If you meant something else, or had an actual example to share, go ahead.

Consider for a moment the problem of communication in the following scenario. If you have jargon using certain words and I have jargon using those same words/phrases significantly differently. Must I accept your jargon? Must you accept mine? Whose jargon prevails here?

Why does one need to prevail? It’s not a contest, it’s a conversation. If this happened, I would say “oh I mean this when I used word X” and then you could respond “ah well I meant that when I used word X” and then we could both proceed with the understanding of what the other meant.

No one needs to be crowned the jargon champ!

The criteria for the whole community agreeing on and using jargon in a particular is the criteria that prevents such a degenerate state from occurring. Calling the mechanism for preventing degenerate communication states from occurring 'gate keeping' isn't just a criticism of just people on this forum, it's a criticism of language and communication as a whole and an unfounded one at that. Without 'gate keeping' as you call it we would never be able to communicate as any given individual could use whatever word or phrase to mean whatever he wanted and it would have to be given equal position in the community to how everyone else had agreed to use the word/phrase. We would all be talking and using the words and no one would know the meaning as words/phrases that aren't accepted in their use have no meaning to the community.

 

[FrogReaver]

If your point is that people bring unrelated jargon into conversations, I disagree.

If you meant something else, or had an actual example to share, go ahead.



Why does one need to prevail? It’s not a contest, it’s a conversation. If this happened, I would say “oh I mean this when I used word X” and then you could respond “ah well I meant that when I used word X” and then we could both proceed with the understanding of what the other meant.

No one needs to be crowned the jargon champ!



View attachment 250101

Meme not cool. We done.

 

[Charlaquin]

That's what frustrates me every time I see references to a "spectrum" of RPGing from "railroads" through "linear adventures" to "sandboxes".

Definitely also a frustrating framing!

Jargon also supports analysis. You can't do serious analysis without using technical terms that encode already-established premises, frameworks, results, etc.

Sure, but people also need to be on the same page about that encoding for the analysis to be productive. Otherwise you end up with… Well, online forum discussions.

Edwards' framework is in my view very powerful for understanding purist-for-system, or process, simulationist play. It is also, in my view, very helpful for understanding classic D&D play. Only after reading Edwards was I able to go back to writing by Lewis Pulsipher and Roger Musson and really understand what was going on in their late-70s/early-80s D&D advice.

Maybe it helps people who don’t enjoy that kind of play to conceptualize it in a way that makes sense to them. And I think that’s what makes it feel so condescending. It seems to exist to explain to people who really love the style of play it defines as Narrativist, why anyone would like those other, non-Narrativist types of games. But the explanations it gives seem not to resonate with a significant portion of people who do like those sorts of play, which indicates to me that it’s probably missing something.

As a simple analogy, imagine I love vanilla ice cream and hate chocolate and strawberry, and I invented a theory explaining the three Flavor Agendas, which I called “Fruity,” “Dark,” and “Rich,” and claimed that ice cream can only serve one flavor agenda at a time. An ice cream can involve multiple Flavor Agendas, like if you put chocolate chips in your strawberry ice cream, but that only allows you to shift back and forth between Flavor Agendas, you can’t actually combine chocolate and strawberry, that would create an Incoherent Flavor. So well-made ice cream should really try to understand what Flavor Agenda it’s serving and try to focus on serving that as best it can, rather than trying to combine flavors. Also, I explained the Fruity Agenda as being about reproducing the flavor of a specific fruit as accurately as possible, the Dark agenda as being about emphasizing intense, low flavor notes like bitterness and earthiness, and the Rich Agenda as being about accentuating the mellow, creamy, dairy notes… People might think I was missing the mark on why they enjoy their favorite ice cream flavor. Especially if it’s Neapolitan.

 

[Charlaquin]

Kicker is a noun. It refers to an event that occurs in the imagined world. The event is authored by the player, and it must present some dramatic change in that player's character's circumstances - the inciting incident - that propels them into play. The propulsion will normally both be literal (the PC is kicked out of their normal comfortable circumstances) and metaphorical (the PC's orientation or motivation changes, or is challenged, so that they can't just stay the same person they once were). Because we're talking about play of an RPG, for all this to happen and to actually unfold in some fashion, the GM has to be constrained in their authorship: they have to honour, build on, place pressure on and riff off the kicker that the player has authored for their PC.

So, yes, it is shorthand for player-authored inciting incidents, which the GM must honor, build on, and pressure.

 

[Charlaquin]

This would implicate jargon like "linear", "sandbox", "railroad", "murder-hoboism", "munchkin", etc, wouldn't it?

I think linear is pretty much used in its common meaning - it literally describes something that occurs in a straight line from point A to point B. That it refers to gameplay structure is usually evident from context. The rest of these, yes, are jargon.