Gameisms...

[Nightchilde-2]

Do you have any "gameisms" in your group? Little bits of terminology that only you or your group would understand?

Sure you do!

In one of our sessions, the party was trapped between two portcullises, with archers in the room above the gatehouse raining arrows and boiling oil down through murder holes.

Try as they might, every time the party tried to break or raise one of the portcullises, they would fail by two or three. Eventually, after the battle (which took about an hour real-time and took out fully a 3rd of the party) and they were able to spend time to actually raise the portcullises, the term "fudging portcullis" (though, replace 'fudging' with a term that would make Eric's Grandmother blush) was coined.

Now, "fudging portcullis" or even "portcullis" seems to be used in my group to mean "something that should easily be overcome but for some reason is REALLY difficult for us to do."

 

[Henry]

"Ah, Screw it"

This was the party Wizard's cue that he was about to drop a fireball, back in the days when Fireballs still had explosive expansion (2nd Edition). When the party heard this, he was VEEERY likely to drop a fireball at ground zero (thanks to his ring of Fire resistance).


"Suspicious- DM"

This, muttered under their breath, was the players' cue to each other that I was up to something sneaky. Usually, they were right.

 

[Drawmack]

Don't pull a ramrod - ramrod was a 2e dwarf fighter played by the biggest min/maxer I've ever met and with an int of 10 this guy would come up with the fabulous and detailed plans not letting anyone else talk and my with a rogue an an int of 18 couldn't get one of my plans across to the group. It's taken to mean someone who is into the game and doing things to overcome the immediate problem but not necessarily in character.

 

[Thresher]

I think the term "Scalvage" was coined upon finding a large amount of broken stuff that might be worth something, to someone, somewhere and we loot it.

Usually used in conjunction with broken spaceships and other vehicles and sometimes after someone fireballs/grenades a BBEG's opulent bedchamber...

 

[Dieter]

We have this running joke of things "appearing" to be in some sort of state. This status usually comes after a questionable die roll made for unlocking a door or find/removing a trap.

"You appear to have removed the trap."
"You appear to have unlocked the door."
"There appears to be no trap on the door."

After many of such comments, (mostly due to Monte Cook's overwhelming passion with all things locked/trapped in the Bane Warrens), everything just started appearing to us.

Someone would make the comment like

"It's dark in here. I think I'll light my lantern."

"You appear to have lit your lantern."

...and the hilarity and subsequent dice chucking ensued.

 

[Orryn Emrys]

I used to have a group who referred to the fastest speed at which a PC could flee from an untenable situation as his/her RLH Factor... y'know... "run like hell...."

 

[thundershot]

As a DM, I use appears and apparently a lot, now to the point where I do with mundane tasks. "Okay, I'm starting the campfire, and the others will check for wild animals at the camp."

"The fire appears to light."

My other favorite is menacingly. It started with monsters, but then one day...

"The door opens... menacingly."

And now it's used all the time. Unfortunately, they're so used to it, they don't get the point when something IS menacing.

The other one, which hasn't been used in a while, but was used again last night, originated when the characters were on a sentient ship in Spelljammer, and they were talking to it. The one player chimed in (and her character wasn't even there), and I replied, in the ship's soft voice "You're not here, bitch" without missing a beat. So now, whenever a player interrupts while their character isn't there, someone always says, "You're not here... bitch." Last night, the newest player had that happen to him, and Christy said it, and he looked at her. "Why'd you call me a bitch?!" We all got a chuckle out of it.



Chris

 

[Eye Tyrant]

"He's got diarreah" (sp?) Anyway, this is what my group says if, for some reason a player can't make a game and gives a lame excuse... Stems from a re-occuring excuse from another previous player who seemed to have this affliction every week until we figured he just wanted to play White Wolf instead.

"Hey, where's Steve?"

"Oh, he can't make it, he has diarreah again."

 

[Dieter]

"He's got diarreah" (sp?) Anyway, this is what my group says if, for some reason a player can't make a game and gives a lame excuse... Stems from a re-occuring excuse from another previous player who seemed to have this affliction every week until we figured he just wanted to play White Wolf instead.

"Hey, where's Steve?"

"Oh, he can't make it, he has diarreah again."

In college, the "not here" excuse usually was.

"Affairs of state take precedence over affairs of state."

 

[Rel]

We have "The 18 Degrees of Russ".

One of the guys in our gaming group is named Russ. He has a habit of mangling information to an astounding degree such that when his character gets a piece of info from the GM and he relates it to the rest of the party, it has little resemblance to what was initially told to him.

One of the other players identified this issue by saying: "You know that Telephone game where there's like 20 people sitting in a circle and the first person whispers something to the person on their right and it goes around the circle until the 20th person whispers it back to the guy who started it and it's nothing like what he originally said? Russ is those 18 other people who mangle the message."