Misunderstanding the Culture

[WayneLigon]

It occurs to me that we've all known incidents where players - usually new ones, but certainly not limited to them alone - have had a misunderstanding where certain terms and concepts were concerned. We've heard a few, like the person who thinks a 'mace' is a chemical weapon dispenser and not a large flanged chunk of iron on a stick.

I was running a Mutants and Masterminds game this past fall and I noticed that a certain rather young player would get the funniest expression on his face when another guy stated 'I'm putting on my domino mask'. After the game, it came out that he thought the other hero was somehow disquising himself with a Domino's Pizza Delivery Guy Hat; he'd never heard of the term 'domino mask' (the small eyemask you usually see Robin wearing) before...

 

[Whisper72]

Well, during the very first few games of DnD (way back in a galazy far away), the first time the term magic missile came up, we (the players, all playing fighter types as the DM thought it best to start learning the games with 'simple' PC types and not immediately dive into the intricacies of spell choices etc.) were all horribly shaken as we envisaged some sort of magical tomahawk missile coming our way. Needless to say we were very surprised at the low damage we took......

 

[EricNoah]

Reminds me of the "gazeebo" story...

 

[drunkmoogle]

Reminds me of the "gazeebo" story...

It's not a story... it's a legend .

I too fell victim to the magic missle vision. And then it did 1d4 + 1. Not much more than a Shortsword. How utterly dissapointing.

 

[Rokonin]

I too fell victim to the magic missle vision. And then it did 1d4 + 1. Not much more than a Shortsword. How utterly dissapointing.

Same here

 

[Zappo]

I didn't: the official Italian translation, dardo incantato, is equivalent to "enchanted bolt", which is pretty reasonable. It was only after many years that I started reading English material and thinking "WTF? Magic Missile?".

 

[Wormwood]

Bastard Sword (Hey, I was in 6th grade---"bastard" wasn't exactly common parlance)

 

[Henry]

When I was first playing D&D (when I was 10 or so), I was hesistant to use the term "bastard sword" because that was, well, you know, a bad word. so I just called them Normal Swords instead, and just dropped the longsword, and used the Bastard in place of both.

I also had a player years ago who couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that a thief could be good - he tried to beat up, jail, or kill any thief who made themselves known in the party, and wondered why somebody would play a THIEF?!?!?!

 

[Bloodstone Press]

While teaching some friends to game when I was a kid, one of them was reading through the alignments section and looked at me and asked "What's Chartical?"

Me: "That's uh... chaotic..."

Later, another friend who was learning the game asked me "Can I be a Paddle-in?"

 

[dreaded_beast]

While teaching some friends to game when I was a kid, one of them was reading through the alignments section and looked at me and asked "What's Chartical?"

Me: "That's uh... chaotic..."

Later, another friend who was learning the game asked me "Can I be a Paddle-in?"

That reminds me of an old friend in intermediate/middle school that always wanted to pronounce DnD names "differently".

For instance, the book "The Curse of the Azure Bonds", he would pronounce "Azure":

ah-zoo-roo.

Unless, that is how you pronounce Azure?