D&D General Jargon Revisited: Why Jargon is Often Bad for Discussing RPGs

[FrogReaver]

I diagree, and I'd like to give you a three point rebuttal....

I notice 1 sentence point gets a 2 sentence reply. A 2 sentence reply gets a 4. Anything more than gets a restatement amounting to I’m right and you are wrong.

 

[Pedantic]

There’s something about Internet discussion that makes it difficult to admit to being wrong or changing your mind. I can’t be the only one who’s had the other participants in the discussion take that as a signal to step up the attack. (See also: not every discussion is a damn debate.)

There's something I struggle with quite a lot in such discussions, where I find myself wanting to have a different, more interesting discussion that isn't possible. We get caught up on establishing/contrasting commonplace (very often specifically around jargon) and no one is willing to proceed until those questions are settled. The obvious workaround is to try and say "take X as given, or assume [insert contentious issue] is resolved thusly, and now consider what that means for Y" but that rarely works in this format.

Even if you can get the most involved parties to put aside their disagreement on your supporting premises, inevitably someone will show up who hasn't read the whole thread to say "in my game, we use [other commonplace that violates the premise] and the [issue you're actually trying to discuss] doesn't occur. Why don't you do that?"

 

[Willie the Duck]

Isn’t the problem here “pseudo-jargon”? In professional fields, jargon is precisely defined. Local variations are discussed and resolved early in discussions, and professionals recognize sub-field specific practices as a professional requirement.

I think with table-top RPGs we haven't yet defined a set of terms which properly are a jargon. We aspire to having a jargon, but aren’t there yet. One or a few persons inventing a vocabulary, while useful, is only just that, a private vocabulary. Only when the field accepts precise definitions for the terms, as a group activity, does the private vocabulary become a true jargon.

Well, one issue that TTRPGs have is that the portion of the gamer base that goes online and navel-gazes about the components and qualities of gameplay and game design is a small portion of the community. Also that those individuals aren't necessarily the great movers and shakers and communicators of the community.

Not that music theory professors or the like define the music industry either, but at some point the people who categorize things had enough cachet to define what the lines on the music stave correspond to and what allegro and chord and concerto mean (and music critics/reviewers and the like somehow collectively split out musical styles and genres to the point that musicians and music stores and the like started treating them as distinct).

RPGs run into a big confounding issue in that all this theory is playing against two big backdrops which can often overwhelm them: 1) D&D, and 2) people who pick up and play games however they like, completely regardless of the theory.

 

[Pedantic]

Player agency isn't being used as a term to demean any playstyle or to promote a particular game type or anything like that. It's being used to promote clarity and accuracy regarding whose agency is actually involved when playing a game: i.e., the player. It's an attempt to de-jargon the discussion.

It's not really up to the critic to determine whether their jargon is insulting, is it? I've had this exchange with a friend in person concerning a specific TTRPG:

Pedantic: "Yeah, you know I have opinions about TTRPGs, that's not really my kind of game."
Pedantic's Friend: "Oh, I really liked it, but I don't think it's really a game at all, so I can see why that wouldn't work for you."

There is an established, in-group meaning of "game" in that context that put us both on the same page, but would be wildly inappropriate to use in a general discussion thread here, and would, quite reasonably, be viewed as exclusionary and unreasonable by players of the specified game.

 

[Umbran]

As a general rule, when people are saying that they don't want to engage in the jargon, that's not an attack on everything you hold dear- it means that they usually can't get an entry point to the conversation because the terms are obfuscating what is being discussed. At that point, you can either argue about using jargon, or try and explain the concepts.

And, we can hook that to the next segment to note a common conversational dynamic:

You (generic) have a jargon, developed in criticism and used to promote a style of play, used in a conversation.
Someone new enters the discussion. You try to explain the concepts.
And the new person, not fully on board with the underlying criticism, disagrees with the jargon definitions, or finds notable gaps.
Now, you have a choice:

1. The jargon becomes gatekeeping ("Sorry, but this is what we mean, and that isn't up for debate. If you don't like it, you shouldn't take part in this discussion."), or
2. The discussion becomes focused on the jargon and the underlying criticism, rather than the intended point.

This will often arise because people who have taken on the desire to speak as "technical experts" are having a technical discussion in a public space. Most of the time, this is something technical experts avoid. Technical discussions typically happen in spaces devoted to them, which these open forums generally aren't.

C. The Texas Two Step; Conflating Natural Language And Jargon
...

This problem of conflation of jargon with natural language occurs repeatedly in conversations here, because there are all hobbyist-created terms. And because of this conflation, one of the recurring issues I see is what I call the "Texas Two Step."

I think I mentioned in a previous conversation - Snarf raises a good point here. I just wanted to note that in rhetoric this is sometimes referred to as the more prosaic, "Equivocation" - using a term with more than one meaning without being clear about which meaning is intended at a given time. Eliding from one to the other can generate fallacious arguments.

One way to avoid this is to make sure your jargon term is differentiated from natural language. Instead of referring to "skilled play", for example, you can refer to "Gygaxian skilled play," and remove the ambiguity, while opening up the jargon to other forms of skilled play.

 

[Umbran]

There’s something about Internet discussion that makes it difficult to admit to being wrong or changing your mind.

Yes. The dynamics of that are, I think, at least partially known, but would be a hefty digression of topic.

Am I the only one interested in diversity of thought?

Yes.

 

[Aldarc]

It's not really up to the critic to determine whether their jargon is insulting, is it? I've had this exchange with a friend in person concerning a specific TTRPG:

Pedantic: "Yeah, you know I have opinions about TTRPGs, that's not really my kind of game."
Pedantic's Friend: "Oh, I really liked it, but I don't think it's really a game at all, so I can see why that wouldn't work for you."

There is an established, in-group meaning of "game" in that context that put us both on the same page, but would be wildly inappropriate to use in a general discussion thread here, and would, quite reasonably, be viewed as exclusionary and unreasonable by players of the specified game.

But this is my point! The use of "player agency" as a term is not about excluding or gatekeeping the hobby, but, rather, about removing the gates so that the field can include all TTRPGs. I will fully admit that it's difficult to me be sympathetic to people who feel insulted by terms that are intended to promote anti-gatekeeping inclusivity and NoOneTrueWayism rather than the reverse.

 

[J.Quondam]

There's something I struggle with quite a lot in such discussions, where I find myself wanting to have a different, more interesting discussion that isn't possible. We get caught up on establishing/contrasting commonplace (very often specifically around jargon) and no one is willing to proceed until those questions are settled. The obvious workaround is to try and say "take X as given, or assume [insert contentious issue] is resolved thusly, and now consider what that means for Y" but that rarely works in this format.

Even if you can get the most involved parties to put aside their disagreement on your supporting premises, inevitably someone will show up who hasn't read the whole thread to say "in my game, we use [other commonplace that violates the premise] and the [issue you're actually trying to discuss] doesn't occur. Why don't you do that?"

Personally, i think this is the perfect use case for [+] threads. State the base assumptions up front in the OP, and ask that everyone participating hew to those definitions, etc, for the purposes of that thread. If someone devolves into arguing about the definitions, refer them back to OP and remind them it's a plus-thread. Then politely boot them if they refuse to fall in line.

 

[billd91]

Isn’t the problem here “pseudo-jargon”? In professional fields, jargon is precisely defined. Local variations are discussed and resolved early in discussions, and professionals recognize sub-field specific practices as a professional requirement.

Depends on the field. It can take years to settle on certain kinds of big-ticket jargon (terrorism, identity, fascism, socialism, etc) because nobody exactly agrees on how to define them.

 

[Yora]

Eh. It is my observation (for whatever that is worth) that the term is generally being put forward by people who are particularly interested in games that are asserted to focus on, or enhance, player agency, and is often brought forth to criticize games that have agency elsewhere. So, there does seem to be an agenda back there.

The agenda is player agency!