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Game jargon causing unwanted consequences
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<blockquote data-quote="giant.robot" data-source="post: 6152825" data-attributes="member: 93119"><p>Jargon is simply a fact of life in a game with some form of rules. Even rock, paper, scissors has jargon (words that have special meaning within the context of the game). There's nothing inherently wrong with jargon. It becomes a problem when designers go overboard with jargon or use it to add unnecessary complexity to the system. </p><p></p><p>For instance look at the list of conditions in <a href="http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/conditions.htm" target="_blank">3.5E</a> and <a href="http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/conditions" target="_blank">Pathfinder</a>. Many of the conditions do very similar things and just have different names because someone during the design said "oh well X spell need a special condition, you know, for flavor". That flavor led to the fear spectrum (shaken, frightened, panicked) which I've personally never seen used as written.</p><p></p><p>Jargon doesn't need to be the enemy of conciseness however. Next has the (dis)advantage mechanic. There's a whole bunch of abilities that can just confer advantage or disadvantage to characters and give a duration or save. The flavor text can be as creative as the writers desire but the end effect could be a standard condition that everyone knows. In the appendix (and on the DM's screen) there could be a chart labeled "things that cause disadvantage" and another labeled "things that cause advantage". The game uses jargon effectively since it's not adding cognitive load in players needing to memorize a huge list of effects and the DM has some good guidance on making up their own situations on when to use those mechanics.</p><p></p><p>One of the things I liked the most about 4E was its use of keywords all over the place. Monsters, spells, magic items, and powers all had keywords. If you knew the meaning of a handful of keywords (or keyword categories) you could easily understand any stat block in any of the books. This is something I'm sad to see not have been really carried over to Next as it provided a great deal of clarity. Keywords were a form of jargon but they were far clearer than the clear as mud "natural language" descriptions used in Next.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="giant.robot, post: 6152825, member: 93119"] Jargon is simply a fact of life in a game with some form of rules. Even rock, paper, scissors has jargon (words that have special meaning within the context of the game). There's nothing inherently wrong with jargon. It becomes a problem when designers go overboard with jargon or use it to add unnecessary complexity to the system. For instance look at the list of conditions in [URL="http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/conditions.htm"]3.5E[/URL] and [URL="http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/conditions"]Pathfinder[/URL]. Many of the conditions do very similar things and just have different names because someone during the design said "oh well X spell need a special condition, you know, for flavor". That flavor led to the fear spectrum (shaken, frightened, panicked) which I've personally never seen used as written. Jargon doesn't need to be the enemy of conciseness however. Next has the (dis)advantage mechanic. There's a whole bunch of abilities that can just confer advantage or disadvantage to characters and give a duration or save. The flavor text can be as creative as the writers desire but the end effect could be a standard condition that everyone knows. In the appendix (and on the DM's screen) there could be a chart labeled "things that cause disadvantage" and another labeled "things that cause advantage". The game uses jargon effectively since it's not adding cognitive load in players needing to memorize a huge list of effects and the DM has some good guidance on making up their own situations on when to use those mechanics. One of the things I liked the most about 4E was its use of keywords all over the place. Monsters, spells, magic items, and powers all had keywords. If you knew the meaning of a handful of keywords (or keyword categories) you could easily understand any stat block in any of the books. This is something I'm sad to see not have been really carried over to Next as it provided a great deal of clarity. Keywords were a form of jargon but they were far clearer than the clear as mud "natural language" descriptions used in Next. [/QUOTE]
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