New In-Game Slang Based On Your Games

[Gnarlo]

"Ewwww....Rolled a six"

Comes from the original Car Wars rules, where a roll of 6 on a handling roll meant that your car had rolled over and was on fire. Used in game and in RL whenever something really bad happens.

"I lick my sword!"

My players were in the Sunless Citadel and found the fountain that spit out one dose of a Flame Breath (?) potion. At the same time, one of them opened the door in the room and released the skeletons from their crypts. As combat ensued, the player at the fountain had no time to try to determine what the substance was so he scooped some up and between combat rounds tried different things: flinging it at the skeletons, rubbing it on his hands, dipping his sword in it, etc. Finally he ran out of ideas and said "I lick my sword", thus discovering it was (obviously) a potion. It's used now to describe when someone is attempting every solution to a problem except the obvious one.

"Boromir's in trouble!"

During one game a player leaned over the table to move his mini and inadvertently let out a long, low toot. There was total silence for a few seconds, then one player exclaimed "The Horn of Gondor! Boromir's in trouble!" After we had all recovered, "Boromir's in trouble!" has become the phrase for when someone is getting up to visit the bathroom.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

Lantern Juggling: used to describe a situation when a character invents an elaborate action to perform a relatively simple task and fails--yet still keeps some face...well, a little.

Derived from a particulary imaginative monk who decided to jump 15' down onto a 1'' chain, then run across the chain that was hovering over a deep chasm, and jump 15' up to the other ledge--while holding a lantern. He made all of his checks save the last jump. Plastering himself against the far chasm wall he slid back down--managing to land back on the dangerously swaying chain--put the lantern handle in his mouth and climb up the wall. The next time he used the bridge.

Red Dragon Inn: there is always one inn of this name, in every town, village, and city in the world of my GM. No character is allowed to perceive this astounding coincidence, yet all players realize and understand that it is in fact a chain of businesses run out of Baator and licenced by the Fiends that live there. The licencing fees are outrageous.

 

[Gundark]

We have a couple slangs we like to use at our gaming table.

1. Actual 20--said when a player rolls a 20
origin: we had a player who was new to the game and I think she miss understood what we were saying when we rolled a 20(which was "natural 20"). When she'd say "actual 20" we would say, "really! An actual 20?" She didn't find that funny. Now we use it all the time when someone rolls a 20.

2. "My character would have done that!"--said when we forget to say our character is doing a certain action or carrying a certain item...that turns out to be crucial.
origin: same player as above never really plans out well what her characters are doing or carrying. When her lack of planning(telling the DM what she is doing or carrying) gets her in trouble she tries to say, "My character would have done that/carried that!!!" It worked when she was new but now she has been playing for awhile...too bad!! Now other members of the group try it.

3. "You snaked my kill!"--someone already mentioned this one but we have our own version. It's when one of us comes close to killing a monster and someone else comes in and takes the last few hit points.

4. "We have clearance"--said when someone can't think of what to say to an NPC--yes this is from Star Wars but it's funny at the time.
origin: like I said this is from Star Wars and we had a player with the mind affect power. when using it he could never think of what to say except this one phrase(over and over and over again), "We have clearance!"

5. "I attack!"--we say this in memory of one guy we used to game with. He was the most silent person we had ever met. In the course of the gaming session he would barely say a word except in combat when he would say this one phrase, "I attack".

6. "The Carter effect"--said when someone drops their dice on the floor while trying to roll.
origin: the same player from 1 and 2 is constantly dropping her dice on the floor while rolling. Sometimes when she is rolling it doesn't even contact the table but flies in the air in any random direction then lands on the floor. Also known as "pulling a Carter". This player does this at least 10 times a gaming session.

7. "The Golf Bag effect"--said when a character is carrying a bunch of items way past their carring capacity.
origin: the player from #4 in our Star Wars D20 game would collect blaster rifles from dead storm troopers. One day after being disarmed he said, "I'll just grab my other blaster rifle." To which the DM looked at him puzzled, "How many blaster rifles are you carrying?" To which the player responded, "oh, about 10 of them." The DM choked on his drink then said, "What,...are you carrying them all in a golf bag?" Hence the above phrase. We realize others have come up with this phrase as well but we invented our phrase independent of anyone else.

 

[Teflon Billy]

"Boromir's in trouble!".

LOL

 

[Steel_Wind]

This is a great thread. Keep em coming. Here's a few more:

"Happy Singing Peasants": Used by a player to signify that a spot check or perception check roll is a complete and utter failure.

Origin: In a Rolemaster campaign, the party was riding up to the keep of a BBEG. The villagers working the land nearby were oppressed, in that dressed-poorly-miserable-moaning-dirty-and-starving kind of way.

The party's perception rolls (this is Rolemaster) go something like:

Vidor: uhmmm 25?
GM: 25? Really?
Vidor: <sheepishly> I rolled down.
DM: Ok. You see the usual peasants, working the fields if a little unenthusiastically.
Jason: <rolling> Doh! I rolled down too. <pauses> Uhmm. minus 62?
GM: Man. <sideways glance> Ooookay. Happy peasants! The peasants are salt-of-the-earth types, toiling away, working hard and clearly well cared for.
Mark: <rolling> Roll down. No!. 98!!....99!! 65!!! Minus...220 something
GM: <pauses incredulously>
Jason: Happy Singing Peasants!!

"Kick him in": Used by a Player/DM to signify that a contemplated action is a chaotic, horrendously unwise act likely to result with disastrous consequences.

Origin: The player John Maclean-Foreman (now a game designer at Lionhead Studios) let loose this gem upon our group back-in-the-day. JMF was once playing this good aligned elven Ranger in a Rolemaster campaign. He was bearing a +25 light lean, Holy, intelligent broadsword which could shoot a holy firebolt, three times a day. It was a fearsome weapon in the cause of good.

Cut to the chase: John and the party are in some dungeon/ruin where we've been meeting lots of bad guys. We enter into this room with a great large hole in the floor. An NPC adventurer in armor is on his knees near the edge of this hole, shouting down to someone below:

GM: <shouting down>: "Harry. Harry! Are you ok?"
*ominous growls emanate from the pit*
GM: <shouting down> "Ohmigod. Harry. Are you ok? Move over..."
*a great roaring can be heard from below*
GM: <shouting down, excitedly> "Oh gods!! It's coming Harry! Play dead Harry, play dead!"
At this point the party has walked up behind the adventurer shouting down to Harry
*screams now can be heard from the pit*
JMF: What's he doing. Has he even noticed us?
GM: No, he's on his knees with his back turned to you on the edge of the pit, fumbling with a rope.
JMF: "Kick him in."
GM: <stares incredulously for a moment> Alright. You kick him in.
All other players' heads swivel and look at JMF; everyone is stunned at this.
*more screams from below as he falls then guttaral noises and intense screaming echoes up from the hole*
JMF: <laughing> "He was probably evil..."
GM: <closing his book> So you kill Doric and let Harry die...What's your DB? Nah... never mind - its point blank from surprise.
JMF: <confused> DB, uhmmm from who?
GM: <rolls the dice, in the open> (in Rolemaster, this is A Very Bad Thing)
GM: The light laen sword, realizing you are in fact, a chaotic *psychopath* BLASTS you. 25and a D class fire. Your leg is in ruins, stunned for 6 rnds, -75, bleeding at 8 per/rnd and you...

That was the end of JMF's ranger, an elf of questionable alignment and even more questionable judgment.

"Nice Day isn't it": Used by a player/DM to note that a player or NPC has just said something during a conversation that is era inappropriate or metagaming that he could not possibly have known and would never have said. By saying "nice day isn't it", the statment is deemed not to have happened and you were instead discussing the weather.

Context:

Player 1: <looking at a sword over the mantle>"A fine sword that is."
GM <as inkeeper>: "Aye I got it back at the Battle of Oerlund. The old king, he gave it to me after the battle. It's elven I think. Glows, and it's still fearsomely sharp."
Player 1: +1 Sword?
GM: +2 actually. "Nice day isn't it?"
Player 1: "Indeed it is m'lord, a fine day."


Origin: I don't know. The core of our gaming circle has been playing with one another for 26 years+ now and I don't remember how this one started. But it's been around since as early as I can remember, late 70's at least.

"You killed it, you keep it": Not so much slang, as a ceremonial phrase. Said by a player to a DM after his character has been slain. For full effect, you are supposed to crumple up the character sheet and throw it at the DM - with sneering contempt.

Origin: A sad but true story. Waaaaay-Back-in-the-day, 24 years ago, the player, Brian Black, was playing this Noldor Elf in a middle earth campaign. A fire occurred near Bree and the party had to escpape from the burning building. A ridiculously easy saving throw vs. death was forced upon the party members. Everyone one of them made it - except Brian...

DM: "A 2?? Oooook".
BB: "FUDGE!! FUDGE!!" (well, not exactly fudge, but, you know...)
DM: "Alright...the saving throw indicates you are in some trouble. Make another save vs. paralyzation. Save or die."
<Brian rolls as everyone gets up and rubber necks to watch this die roll. BB had a legendary reputation for outrageously fudging die rolls. But this time, 7 other players were there to witness it.>
*1*
DM: "oooh".
*silence fills the room*
DM:"Uhmm. You're dead."
BB: <ranting and raving now> "FUDGE, FUDGE. FUDGE!!!!!"
* BB balls up character sheets, whips it at DM's head* "You killed it. YOU KEEP IT!

Ever since that time, death at the hands of the DM must be met with this ceremonial sneering declaration.

 

[SpringPlum]

Our most-used is "Ghetto-Beta-Eight." From our space opera.

It's a rundown space station that everyone knows someone who has seen it and lived to tell about the experience but no one has actually been there.

One of our PCs made up the name on the spot and it just stuck.

 

[skippy_the_witch]

"Lose a charge from your axe" -- the GMs response to a player who is being a smart ass.

Origin: In my Technomagic game, the dwarven paladin has a lightning blaster built into her battleaxe. She had just shot somebody, and I reminded her to make sure to take a charge from her axe. Another player said something smart, so I turned to him and said "take a charge off your axe." From that point on, when ever a player says something silly or starts making too many off game comments, they have to take a charge from their axe, which becomes funny since NONE of the other players have an axe. When they reach 12 charges, on the thirteenth, something funny and sometimes even potentially dangerous happens (slipping on a banana peel sort of thing). The last game, the gnoll soul knife (who should go ahead and get himself an axe, he has lost so many charges) has a living illusion spell latch on to him and make him look like a corpse collector that the rest of the party is looking for. So he is currently running away from the rest of the party (who ALL failed their saves), who are trying to destroy him. I eagerly await this weeks game to see what sort of hijuinks will ensue, especially since the gnoll is running straight to the trading town.

skippy
The GM of the Cursed Earth Campaign

 

[Ambrus]

"Mule Shopping" -- To spend an inordinate amount of time role-playing campaign downtime.

Origin: From an all-dwarf PC campaign I played in years ago in which the party spent three entire sessions in a small town role-playing the buying of supplies. The shopping trip culminated in a determined effort by the PCs to find and buy the stoutest, strongest and best trained pack mules that money could buy. Our dwarves didn't really know anything about animals, so we proceeded with a series of odd questions to ask the owners and some peculiar but creative ways to test our potential mules. The DM started to play along and soon a fierce rivalry had developed between the mule owners in town who were determined to prove that their mules were the best. Once we had chosen and bought our new super-mules, it occurred to our pragmatic party members that our mules were in danger of soon falling prey to a random encounter once we left town. Our solution to this potential problem lead the party into another intense round of mule shopping as we began the search for my next entry:


"The Decoy Mule" -- Anything used to distract enemies

Origin: Just as we had insisted on only buying the best mules possible, so were our dwarves now determined to find and buy the worst possible mule. By that point however, all the proud mule owners in town were unwilling to admit that they had ANY bad mules. But our stubborn dwarves persevered for another session and a half and eventually found our "decoy mule"; a buck toothed, crossed eyed, decrepit old nag of a mule to which we tied a bright orange blanket and prodded forward ahead of the party and our super-mules as we left finally left town. Our plan proved to be sensible when the decoy mule fulfilled it's duty and nobly sacrificed its life when a wandering monster attacked it first. Unfortunately our super-mules were likewise lost shortly thereafter when the entire party fell into a deep sinkhole.


"The adventurer look" -- The uncanny ability possessed by all PCs to silently communicate any amount of complex information to fellow PCs with but a meaningful look.

Origin: This one goes way back for our group. Years ago we had a player who was a notorious metagamer. He'd always be saying things to other players which oftentimes his character wouldn't be able to realistically communicate because he was absent/unconscious/dead. When it was first used the PCs were confronted with an NPC ally of theirs that was acting a little odd. This PC fearing that the NPC was charmed / an impostor / a dopelganger and potentially quite dangerous, turned to the other players in the middle of the encounter and began relaying his suspicions as well as his battle plan to subdue the NPC quickly. When I, as DM, cut him off to remind him that the NPC was standing right in front of him and to ask him how he was going to relay his plans without the NPC being aware of them the player simply explained "Oh! I give them all the adventurer look." Nowadays, we really mime giving each other "the look", which is to stare wide eyed at someone while lowering the head but raising the eyebrows. It usually means something akin to "something is wrong or something bad is about to happen, get ready to back me up when I act". We all also agree that PCs only gain the ability to successfully use the adventurer look upon reaching 7th level. If anyone of lower level tries to give or interpret the adventurer look we usually just make up a random bits of nonsense as the inaccurate interpretation of the message trying to be conveyed such as: "What? Timmy is trapped in the well? The chicken rides the bus at midnight?"


"Perfectly Normal Creature/Object" -- A term used to denote a creature/object that is anything but.

Origin: Years ago, we played with a really bad DM who described a scene as such: "You're all walking along the quiet dirt road passing by some fields with a few perfectly normal creatures." The "perfectly normal creatures" turned out to be a pair of great wyrm red dragons who attacked us by surprise once we'd indicated that our PCs were going to continue along and ignore the "perfectly normal creatures". That's when we learned that what this DM thought of as perfectly normal, such as dragons and tarrasques, didn't quite match up with our expectations of what was perfectly normal.


"Is it COMPLETELY black?" -- A question invariably asked when a DM describes anything as being of the color black.

Origin: The DM mentioned above had a series of extremely powerful magic items in his campaign which were described as "the completely black sword" or the "completely black armor" used by his favorite unimaginative darth-vaderesque NPC. Since we don't play with this DM anymore we use this question as a good natured joke.

 

[Rel]

I think the best part about this thread is that I can absolutely see our group having adopted any of these given the origins in question.

 

[Elemental]

"Pretty Butterfly" or "Malfean Butterfly"

Shorthand for failing a perception-based test. Came from a game of Exalted I ran, where the whole party would quite routinely botch low-dificulty Awareness rolls to notice a troop of cavalry coming down the road or something. I couldn't be bothered coming up with elaborate results to follow the botch, so I just said they noticed a pretty butterfly. Eventually, it was theorised that this butterfly was a low-ranking demon tasked with distracting our heroes at critical moments, and it sort of stuck.