New In-Game Slang Based On Your Games

[Twowolves]

"Tiny Trap"-any trap that is painfully obvious, such as a huge gem on a pedestal or a glowing rune on a door.

In an old 1st ed campaign I played in, one of the DM's former players was a big fellow nicknamed "Tiny", who would fall for the traps that no one else would, thus "a trap only Tiny would fall for".

"Death Trail"-actively looking for wandering monsters, often with disastrous results.

Again, in that old 1st ed campaign, the DM had a rather inflexible set of wandering monster tables he'd use for overland travel. If you were trying to get someplace, he might have you just "encounter" something he rolled that was well beyond your means to deal with (such as an army marching past, or a dragon flying high overhead, or Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer) by just seeing it from a distance, or having a non-combat meeting. On the other hand, if you were just bored, or needed just a dozen or so more xp to level, you went out looking for trouble on the "death trail", and what he rolled, you got, often with dire consequences.

We did indeed meet, from a distance, the Death Dealer on just one such trip, which is where the name originated I believe.

Twowolves Howling

 

[Rel]

Wasn't knocking it -- I've just never seen it. I heard both good and bad things about it, so I passed in the theater and haven't yet rented it.

I know, I was just giving you a hard time. I've seen it and frankly thought it seemed silly and overproduced. But it WOULD have made a good d20 Modern adventure. I think that jonrog's writing here would have made a better story than The Core, but that's just MHO.

 

[Geoff Watson]

"Accountant": something that is really, really dangerous.
From when a halfling accountant slaughtered half a dozen epic level characters.

Geoff.

 

[drnuncheon]

"The Kraydn Effect" - named after my PC on an online game. Whenever I was running, the die-rolling program hated the players with a passion, but it wouldn't happen when anyone else was in the DM chair. Now, whenever a roll is botched on an online game, the Kraydn Effect is blamed.

J

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

"No, no, Good Dwarf."

The full saying, usually abbreviated to the above, is "No, no, Good Dwarf. Let me check for traps / go ahead."

My first game with a new group (I'd played with some of the members before, but never the DM or many of the others), our group was descending into a Temple to a Demon God, sunk into a swamp millenia ago by a force of lizarmen druids and shamans.

The temple, of course, belonged to Belial, the SerpentKing, General of Hell, yadda yadda, who had held the lizardmen in thrall for millenia before that. It had recently reawakened, and had begun "calling" to the lizardmen.

So in we go, and after a 200' descent down a vertical hole, we found ourselves outside of what used to be the gatehouse. I, a Water Genasi-variant Wizard, looked around at out party of half-elven Ranger / Barbarians, dwarven Fighters, dwarven Fighter / Barbarians, and a human Monk and realized that, not only was I the only one with any skill in Search, I was also the only one who had an Int bonus!

So, we're about to walk up to the front door when I put my arm out, and say, "Wait, dwarf. Let me check that door for traps."

So, the wizard strides forward, intently studying the door, and ...

Falls into the pit trap 10' in front of the door.

Over the next several sessions, the hyper-intelligent wizard managed to find roughly 2/3rds of all the traps in the place - and almost always by running into them head-first!

So now, our group has a tendency to utter, "No, no, Good Dwarf ..." whenever someone's about to do something stupid.

 

[Jdvn1]

"Rogue in a Bag." Handy item we almost decided to invent.
Our Rogue once decided he wasn't useful in a combat. I don't remember the specifics of the combat, but he decided to bypass the whole thing and go for the treasure while the rest of the party fought. Unluckily for him, the GM has planned for there to be a huge monster hiding inside the pile of gold. Chomp, chomp, dead Rogue. Well, the party eventually finishes off the first battle and then finishes off the next battle. Then they see the remains of the Rogue and think, "Wait, this guy bailed on us. What we should do is keep a _piece_ of the Rogue in a bag. Then, whenever there are traps or something dangerous that he's good at, we'll pull him out, Ressurect him, have him do what we need to do, then kill him again and put a piece of him in the bag."

 

[kenobi65]

"Rogue in a Bag."

Oooh, that reminded me of another old chestnut.

"Cleric in a Can." Way back in the 1E days, we played EGG's "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" module. One of the goodies we found in that module was a collection of canisters of aerosol antiseptic spray, each application of which was even better than a Potion of Healing. We came up with that nickname in a heartbeat.

 

[Aeric]

"Buying apples in the marketplace." Refers to any mundane activity which would normally be glossed over, but is instead roleplayed out, much to the chagrin of the rest of the party that isn't involved.

Origin: Our DM at the time liked to roleplay our haggling with NPC merchants for our equipment, even when we just wanted to buy mundane things off the rack for list cost. There was a player in the group whose idea of roleplaying was to go to the marketplace and buy all kinds of random, mundane stuff (like apples), which in turn caused her to haggle with the NPCs.... We spent an entire week in town once because of this nonsense, while the Lich King and his undead army ran rampant in our absence.

"Magical duel." A bogus explanation for something, given when the person is caught off guard and doesn't actually have an explanation.

Origin: Same campaign as above. Our party was stopping for the night, and as we were setting up camp, the DM casually mentioned that we tied our horses reins to some nearby cactii. Having otherwise been travelling in a temperate area, and there having been no mention whatsoever about moving into a desert area, we asked him what cactii were doing in the region. He got that deer-in-the-headlights look and after a second explained that there had been a magical duel in the region some years back and that magic had caused the change in the region.

 

[kenobi65]

"F.M." Short for "f***in' magic." Stock answer for, "how did he do that / how did that happen / where did that come from," when the real answer is, "because the DM says so, and he doesn't necessarily follow the same rules the players have to."

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

"treat him like Phil" or "change his name to Phil" is to maliciously kill an NPC, especially out of sheer spite. From my Planescape/Star*Drive crossover. Based on several of my players' hatred for a gentleman of our acquiantance by that name. (For fully justified reasons that I wish not to discuss.) The PCs had lured a NPC on their ship to use as a hostage, and had been joking about Phil earlier, so they asked him what his name was, and I decided to play with them.

The Aleer gunslinger shot him in the back of the head on the spot.

"f&*ing reprogram!", accompanied by beating their head with the heel of their hand. Immediately following the above incident, as told to the Aleer gunslinger by another PC. Used whenever someone does something that is at once both detrimental to the party's plans and gratuitously homicidal. Happens enough to make me worry about my group.

"We're lost, and hungry!" Used to mock me whenever something I throw into the game at random just doesn't make sense. Years ago, I was running a simple dungeon crawl, and the PCs took over an hour to get about 20' from the front door in a straight line. I got bored, and some of them were bored, so I gave them a random encounter-- a Githzerai and a Mul, who asked for help because they were lost and hungry.