D&D 4E 4e - Is the Terminology the Problem?

[FitzTheRuke]

After running a few sessions it occurs to me that at about 5-6 th level a party can concievably fight monsters from the entire heroic tier.

 

[MaelStorm]

In French exploit has a heroic and noble connotation.

Back to the main subject I agree with the other posters which said it helps to separate the in-game and rule-writing. IMO a good DM is able to transmit information to their players by using a code that only them understand. The players understand that this information is covered partially and must work all the time to uncover the hidden bits. A very bad DM will say to their players: you enter in a room and see 10 skeleton minion soldier, what do you do?

 

[Agamon]

Seriously? Nitpicking the word 'exploit' now?

Yay interwebs...c'mon June!

 

[mxyzplk]

So brave work all in ignoring the point of the original post. But there's a reason people put so much work into wordsmithing in politics, business, and religion. The greater conceptual distance between the terminology you're using and your subject, the greater "distance" you create. This is one of the reasons people criticize D&D for being anti-roleplaying. When you choose to create a lexical and mental gap between the rules and the in-game world, you are making a specific design decision to create "distance" and promote a metagame-heavy gamist environment rather than one condusive to roleplaying or character immersion.

Yes,"hit points" has been a long-standing example of this. But they seem to be going out of their way to add in enough anachronistic terminology to make the game feel like a minis wargame and not a roleplaying game.

Take some other games as counterexamples. In Deadlands, the Western horror RPG, characters have attributes such as "Grit" and "Wind". They have skills such as "Filchin'." When a "huckster" tries to cast a spell (hex), they play a hand of cards against the Manitou spirit to see how well it does. This is how you craft terminology and rules to support the game world rather than contravene it. At least Tweet should know better; he's *written* some of those games. The decision to go the way they have is either a) unplanned and completely lazy, which I find hard to believe, or b) part of a strategic decision to spin the D&D game in that way, which I certainly don't like.

 

[Sphyre]

* Monsters are "artillery".

I agree with others in this thread that exploit is a great word for martial powers, but no one's touched on this:

Monsters can have the artillery role. What is the artillery role? Someone that fires off a lot and blows stuff up. There are multiple other roles that a monster can fall under and not all monsters are in the artillery role.

The greater conceptual distance between the terminology you're using and your subject, the greater "distance" you create.

The words actually fit very well if you know what they are. The problem is that people have to expand their vocabulary and are resistant to learning new words, much less new anything. Therefor they don't understand the true meaning of the words and so they can't see how intuitive they actually are. People drawing false correlations between words and their expectations of the connotation that a word should be used in is the listener's fault, not the speaker's. If you remove ignorance then you remove the problem.

... except for squares. That's a step back from reality, but also a step forward in being compatible with either the metric or english system. I would be happier if they used "spaces" because it's even more abstract but it doesn't imply squares specifically, just however far you decide to define squares as.

 

[DreamChaser]

So brave work all in ignoring the point of the original post. But there's a reason people put so much work into wordsmithing in politics, business, and religion.

<snip>

Take some other games as counterexamples. In Deadlands, the Western horror RPG, characters have attributes such as "Grit" and "Wind". They have skills such as "Filchin'." When a "huckster" tries to cast a spell (hex), they play a hand of cards against the Manitou spirit to see how well it does. This is how you craft terminology and rules to support the game world rather than contravene it. At least Tweet should know better; he's *written* some of those games. The decision to go the way they have is either a) unplanned and completely lazy, which I find hard to believe, or b) part of a strategic decision to spin the D&D game in that way, which I certainly don't like.

Yes...I suppose this is true...but one side effect of said language is that the presuppose and force a specific subgenre on the game. If I want to use the Deadlands rules to play a non-western horror game, I still have the western horror terminology in place. Of course, this would beg the question, why am I using the Deadland's rules for a fairtail set in northern Scotland?

Additionally, there is a second factor: common parlance. There is a reason that historically there has been a common language of diplomacy and trade (in Europe at various times Latin, French; in portions of Africa, Swahili). When you decide upon a single set of terms for things, it makes interaction possible. Like it or not, most terms in role playing are either taken from the historical standards set by D&D or deliberately chosen to not align. Anyone who has played Final Fantasy knowns HP, "spells" are universal fantasy concept (while hexes comes with connotations, at least in American English).

Currently, if I have a player who wants his D&D character to have a wild west feel while another wants a Vampire the Masquerade feel, I don't need to mesh two sets of terminology. Sure, they need to deal with HP instead of wound levels or vitality which does takes us a step out of genre but it allows each of them to have the character they want without going completely out of genre by having an eladrin princess with "Grit" and "Moxie" making a "Chutzpa" test to enact a "hexified articulation"

We also don't use la espada y protege for a English language game (sword and shield in Spanish).


So to answer the question of the OP as well as the post quoted above:

Does terminology affect the sense of setting? Absolutely. We are talking about a game of words.

Does 4e's choice of terminology negatively impact the "feel" of the game? That is a decision only made at the individual level.

Do **I** feel that 4e's terminology is negatively impacting the game? No. I feel that swapping in more elaborate, nuanced, or genre specific words would make the game exclusive, rather than inclusive, concept wise.

DC

 

[RandomCitizenX]

feats being passive abilities now is a weird disconnect.

Just wanted to point out that not all feats are passive. If you look on the pregen cleric, one of his Channel Divinities is labeled as a Feat power (Power of Amaunator to be exact)


I think the terminology is fine as long as it communicates in a decent manner what is going on. Elite monsters are better versions of standard monsters, combat advantage comes when you have the upper hand, defenders mark who they are paying attention to. If they would have just made up word like fwqugogads then I would have a problem with it. The only one I am on the fence about is squares as the standard of measurement, but it is something I can easily live with.

 

[The Little Raven]

Though oddly, this is what bothers me about the kobold minions- if two kobolds with spears show up, I have no idea if they'll be real combatants or die if they trip over a rock.

It's a blow to the use of metagame knowledge in-game, and I'm surprised you're bothered by it. I figured you'd be one of the ones to enjoy that your players don't instantly know what this kobold is capable of, rather than knowing it all since he saw the kobold entry in the MM. I used to have to jump through hoops or entirely rewrite some monsters to get rid of that problem, and now I can just jazz up a monster on-the-fly to keep my players on their toes (without having to worry about the wonky balance with monster design in 3e).

 

[D'karr]

We also don't use la espada y protege for a English language game (sword and shield in Spanish).
DC

Well that would be, "espada y escudo," but I understood and agree with what you were saying.

Terminology does matter. Up to now the only terminology that seemed incongruent, and has bothered me, was "leader" for the party role of healer. I think that motivator would have been more descriptive and keeping with the role of healer by motivating the party to greater deeds of heroics.

Besides that, nothing else has stuck in my craw.

 

[nolifeking]

Somehow I can't see myself playing the party motivator... "Kill that troll or you'll end up living in a van down by the river!"

I do agree with Dreamchaser, I would rather have my game terminology be both inclusive and descriptive of what it actually does.