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

[Lanefan]

I notice 1 sentence point gets a 2 sentence reply. A 2 sentence reply gets a 4.

And at 8 it's well into the realm of bounded inaccuracy.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

That's part of the problem. People can and will take things, twist them to absurd extremes, and decide to be offended by them. There's nothing you can do about that. It'll happen regardless. Like "player skill." It's meant as "reference the player's skill to figure things out before referencing the character sheet for a skill to roll" and yet people find a way to twist that to somehow imply it means other kinds of styles don't involve player skill or skilled play.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

An OP can't boot people from a thread.

 

[J.Quondam]

An OP can't boot people from a thread.

Yes, I know. But anyone can report, and mods can step in. That's the point of a [+] thread, afaik.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

That's part of the problem. People can and will take things, twist them to absurd extremes, and decide to be offended by them. There's nothing you can do about that. It'll happen regardless. Like "player skill." It's meant as "reference the player's skill to figure things out before referencing the character sheet for a skill to roll" and yet people find a way to twist that to somehow imply it means other kinds of styles don't involve player skill or skilled play.

On that....

I think that there is a big difference between using a term to describe a game, or a playing style, in order to discuss it with other people ... as opposed to using the same term to compare games or playing styles.

And it's the second usage that causes the problems.

To use "skilled play," as an example- if you are talking with fellow OSR or OD&D enthusiasts, then you can use the term to talk about something you want from the game itself. You want "skilled play" as the preferred method of playing.

Where the trouble arises is when you using it as a comparator, because then you're saying that one game has more "skilled play" than another game. And while you might be correct in the narrow, technical "jargon" meaning of the word that is used in certain circles, you are certainly not going to get much traction by talking about which games require more "skilled play" (general meaning) than other games.

You can rinse and repeat with a lot of terms we see bandied about. Does anyone want to say they play a "low-trust" game? That their game has a lot of "mother may I?" That their game lacks "player agency?"

The reason people get offended is because, more often than not, there are conversations wherein people are trying to evangelize a certain game (or playing style) as superior to others through the use of jargon. And that's usually not helpful.

Again, we should be able to talk about how awesome our thing is, without denigrating something else. Which, to be fair, seems to be incredibly hard to do based on the evidence at hand.

 

[Willie the Duck]

That's part of the problem. People can and will take things, twist them to absurd extremes, and decide to be offended by them. There's nothing you can do about that. It'll happen regardless. Like "player skill." It's meant as "reference the player's skill to figure things out before referencing the character sheet for a skill to roll" and yet people find a way to twist that to somehow imply it means other kinds of styles don't involve player skill or skilled play.

It's not a reaction wholly without merit. Any number of political or social movements (modernists, post-modernist, objectivists, rationalists, monarchists, constitutionalist, freedom caucus) have given themselves such names at least in part because they fancied themselves more _____ than their opposition. Throw in just one cantankerous skilled-play aficionado referring to other play preferences as 'looking for buttons to press' or the like and boom, impression locked in.

 

[overgeeked]

On that....

I think that there is a big difference between using a term to describe a game, or a playing style, in order to discuss it with other people ... as opposed to using the same term to compare games or playing styles.

And it's the second usage that causes the problems.

To use "skilled play," as an example- if you are talking with fellow OSR or OD&D enthusiasts, then you can use the term to talk about something you want from the game itself. You want "skilled play" as the preferred method of playing.

Where the trouble arises is when you using it as a comparator, because then you're saying that one game has more "skilled play" than another game. And while you might be correct in the narrow, technical "jargon" meaning of the word that is used in certain circles, you are certainly not going to get much traction by talking about which games require more "skilled play" (general meaning) than other games.

You can rinse and repeat with a lot of terms we see bandied about. Does anyone want to say they play a "low-trust" game? That their game has a lot of "mother may I?" That their game lacks "player agency?"

The reason people get offended is because, more often than not, there are conversations wherein people are trying to evangelize a certain game (or playing style) as superior to others through the use of jargon. And that's usually not helpful.

Again, we should be able to talk about how awesome our thing is, without denigrating something else. Which, to be fair, seems to be incredibly hard to do based on the evidence at hand.

Perhaps preemptively labelling the opposite style would be beneficial. Because the opposite of “player skill” in this context is “character skill.” If people insist on saying “skilled play” when that’s not really what’s being talked about that will inevitably lead to the opposite being “unskilled play,” and at that point it’s practically an own goal.

People will get offended and take offense just because they can, regardless of whether they actually are or not. We shouldn’t pretend this is some closed community with 100% good-faith actors. Trolls exist and will troll. We can’t stop that and people learn to skirt the letter of the rules real fast. Any attempt to build consensus is doomed to fail on a public forum.

A lot of people are perfectly capable of talking up their cool thing without talking down someone else’s. Generally it’s the people in the second group taking offense and going on the attack that’s the problem.

“Man, I love old-school skilled play…”

“How dare you say new-school is unskilled play!”

“I love when I have agency as a player in game X…”

“How dare you say you lack agency in game Y!”

“I love chocolate ice cream.”

“How dare you say you hate strawberry ice cream.”

 

[overgeeked]

I mean. Look at linguistics and dictionaries. They’re descriptive rather than prescriptive. They describe how the language is actually used rather than prescribe how the language should be used. You will never get consensus on a single definition of a term. But you can build a list of terms and break out the various ways the term is used. Having something like that to point to might be useful. But at least it’s something that can be done. That might be enough to reduce arguments. If people are actually interested in understanding rather than just attacking each other.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

"Watsonian" and its associated jargon is actually less clear than explaining an idea in plain English. Its only value is in showing the poster is in the "club." It's incredibly off-putting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Since you have been promoting narrative-based playstyles (you're a fan; I don't blame you), and equating them with high-agency gaming, which by our understanding of the English language is hard to separate from good gaming, I think we're all in the same boat regarding jargon.