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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tarchon" data-source="post: 2100283" data-attributes="member: 5990">I don't see how anybody could resist translating it as "Pflumpf."To me most of the monster names are fairly neutral, though I grew up with many of them. A couple tend to sound a little silly if you aren't already familiar with modern horror/fantasy jargon, like using the word "skeleton" to describe an animated skeleton is a bit goofy. The coinage of "polymorph" for shape-shifting has always bothered me too, since we have a half dozen other perfectly good terms for it already, and "polymorph" had a couple unrelated technical meanings beforehand. And "doppleganger" and "kobold" are big WTFs but I'm sure they stand out to Germans already.Several common D&D terms are almost never used in modern English outside of D&D and RPGs like dweomer, lich, halfling, cantrip, and orison.Actually, a lot of non-gamers find the words "gamer" and sometimes the use of "game" as a verb strange, but that's changed a lot as "gaming" has been reintroduced by gambling interests as a subtle euphemism for "gambling.""Warlock" was already well established as the male equivalent for a witch in common use before fantasy literature became popular, and "disintegrate" is commonly used as well."Flay" in "mind flayer" is only rarely used in contemporary English, and I'd bet many people who play D&D have no idea what it really means (abhäuten). I'm not entirely sure the guy who invented the monster name knew what it meant, come to think of it.</blockquote>

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