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

[Micah Sweet]

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.

TomB

The industry isn't a united body, let alone the fan base. Consensus isn't going to happen IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

You can't control who decides to post in a thread. Just because you want to discuss game theory with fellow OSR enthusiasts doesn't mean that fans of decidedly different games aren't going to jump in and start talking about games they prefer and how they apply to your topic. It's a public forum.

 

[Oofta]

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.

Except it's not a broadly known term. Many people (including myself) also don't see it as particularly useful, especially when you could describe it easily in different ways that would make sense to everyone. Without your definition, I would assume player agency meant the agency of people playing the game, not just a different expression of agency.

As a software developer, I've always kind of hated jargon. People (typically "industry leaders") have a tendency to make up new terminology to describe things that don't really need redefining. Makes them sound impressive to management but use of fancy words doesn't make someone better at their job. So I probably have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to jargon. But especially on this site where it's never really obvious when people are using specific jargon, or people expect every poster to have read some treatise on gaming published last century. I don't ever expect people to understand jargon, I don't think jargon for a site like this is particularly helpful and too often we argue about jargon and the impression specific terms leave.

I guess I just don't see any reason to use jargon in the vast majority of cases. Especially when you can just say what you mean in plain english.

 

[overgeeked]

I guess I just don't see any reason to use jargon in the vast majority of cases. Especially when you can just say what you mean in plain english.

That doesn’t remove the problem, only shift it slightly. Look at all the confusion surrounding 5E’s use of “natural language.” That’s plain English and yet people still have trouble parsing it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Except it's not a broadly known term. Many people (including myself) also don't see it as particularly useful, especially when you could describe it easily in different ways that would make sense to everyone. Without your definition, I would assume player agency meant the agency of people playing the game, not just a different expression of agency.

As a software developer, I've always kind of hated jargon. People (typically "industry leaders") have a tendency to make up new terminology to describe things that don't really need redefining. Makes them sound impressive to management but use of fancy words doesn't make someone better at their job. So I probably have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to jargon. But especially on this site where it's never really obvious when people are using specific jargon, or people expect every poster to have read some treatise on gaming published last century. I don't ever expect people to understand jargon, I don't think jargon for a site like this is particularly helpful and too often we argue about jargon and the impression specific terms leave.

I guess I just don't see any reason to use jargon in the vast majority of cases. Especially when you can just say what you mean in plain english.

I have to agree. Take the Forge for example. It introduced or popularized loads of jargon, and its followers often use said jargon and quotes from Ron Edwards and others in conversations with gamers of all stripes. But not only is not everyone familiar with the Forge, not everyone who is familiar likes it or its bias, so I'm not convinced calling it out is an unequivocal good.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Control the jargon, win the discussion

To a point. You can certainly turn a term into a tautology by use of definition. But sometimes it is, or at least appears to be, taking the high ground by proper use of semantic loading instead (i.e. claiming, either actively or by implication that only the styles/systems you use do X, where X is something that because of semantic association everyone is going to want ownership on, or the inverse).

On the other hand, trying to work out a mutually agreed-upon definition of what you're actually wanting to talk about can be difficult for those same semantic reasons; no one wants to let you narrow the definition to what you're interested in at all, and will fight to not let you.

TLDR: Communication is hard, even when everyone is feeling cooperative, and next to impossible when some of them aren't.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sometimes its not even a matter of being right or wrong, but merely of different opinion. Am I the only one interested in diversity of thought?

I suspect that few people are for its own sake, just when it is, in some fashion, "useful" to them (though what that can mean varies considerably).

 

[Oofta]

That doesn’t remove the problem, only shift it slightly. Look at all the confusion surrounding 5E’s use of “natural language.” That’s plain English and yet people still have trouble parsing it.

I'd rather have natural language than ill defined code words that can be easily understood as something not meant.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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?"

I'll admit I sometimes have real trouble engaging with discussions that use what feels like a strong counterfactual as its basis, because once that's sitting at the root of the discussion, it often produces a situation that feels sufficiently alien to me that its hard for me to extrapolate from.

On the other hand, when I hit that I either walk away, or say I disagree with the premise and walk away. I don't feel a need to hang around and try to poison the discussion or drag it away from what its clearly supposed to be about.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

The problem is, I suspect, that there's an implied value judgment in that term that people react negatively to if it looks like someone can claim the games they're running/playing are lacking in it to one degree or another. In theory it can be a neutral term--as I've noted, some people are perfectly happy to just look for their chalk lines--but that's not how its usually perceived.