New In-Game Slang Based On Your Games

[The_Universe]

We have a great deal of in-game slang, most of which merely replicates what's already been posted. But, this one's an original -

"Super-Zombie-Zap-Bolt"

Use: "I super-zombie-zap-bolt."

Meaning: To turn or rebuke undead.

Origin: The cleric in a particular game could not have remembered the standard 3E terms for actions and abilities if his life depended on it. He had briefly played 2e D&D, but we had just stopped playing D6 Star Wars after a 5 year run. Because of this, he could never remember the names for his abilities (though he was alright at remembering the related rules and effects).

So, as his character enters a town overrun by Zombie hordes and he prepares to turn undead, he sputters, "I...uh....super...zombie...zap....bolt!"

 

[Mystic_23]

We have a few of these:

"The Melissa Chart" This is the name of our "Critical Miss Chart". It was named for a girl we used to roleplay with who's "lucky d20" rolled ones a lot. Since she was the one who has used the chart the most, it has since been named for her.

"Brian Dead" This refers to the state when you're below 0 hit points but not quite at -10. This guy Brian that we used to roleplay with would always say "Great, I'm dead!" whenever a character would get below 0 hit points. We always had to explain to him that he wasn't quite dead yet.

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

"Plans" in our game tend to go wrong... or were inherently flawed from the very beginning... so, we eventually started to refer to the wrong-ness as "The Gong Show"...

From time to time, some one will just say "Gong" or "Oh god, someone get out the gong."

*shakes head* Nothing ever seem to go right.

 

[azmodean]

You hear birds chirping/@$@# birds!

Our DM had a habit of trying to "set the mood", but the only time he remembered to do it was right before a big encounter, so he'd describe this nice, sunny day with the birds all chirping and everything a peace... then the dragon shows up. After he had done this for a while, the entire party started equating birds with danger, hence the second quote.

They fell through a plot hole
This one is from a one-shot I ran once where the party was exploring a crypt under a graveyard. A player showed up late and then took a while to het her character ready. When she was ready I just said she was wandering around in a graveyard and the ground collapsed under her, causing her to fall into the crypt, in the room where the part was. Someone mentioned that she must have fallen through a plot hole (grave plot/continuity error), and now the phrase is used for the DM using a silly mechanic to get a character to catch up.
Also there is a person in our group who tells us a former DM had new characters fall from the sky, with falling damage.

rocks fall, you die
Said by the DM when a player won't stop arguing about something. I wasn't there for the origin.

Parn can take it
meaning: speaker is about to engage in "friendly fire"

origin:
My very first D&D character was a beefy (18/00 str, I rolled it natural, I swear) paladin based on the character Parn from record of lodoss war. The party acquired a rather reckless elven mage who had the habit of catching the party (especially Parn) in fireballs. Parn would be in hand-to-hand with the BBEG, the mage's turn would come up and she'd think for a bit, then say, "Parn can take it", at which point I'd go ahead and roll my save vs spell.

Grothunk
Meaning: To retcon a situation or take back an action; mulligan

Origin: Originally it was the name of a priest of chaos in a friend of mine's game, it became synonymous with chaotic behaviour, but eventually morphed to meaning taking back an action, I'm not sure why.

Summon Grothunk
The same priest of chaos had an (obviously) chaotic god, who granted the power to "summon Grothunk" to everyone in existence. Effect: Summons Grothunk to his current location. Dosn't really mean anything, but any time we couldn't think of something to do, we'd summon Grothunk.

DM "A flaming mountain is falling from the sky"
Player "Why is it flaming?"
DM "It'll do more damage that way"

 

[demiurge1138]

Actually, the "rocks fall, you die" is from a gaming-themed strip of the webcomic Something Positive. Unless, of course, it has arisen independantly (which is entirely possible).

Truck of DM Cheese -- Equivalent to "rocks fall, you die", this terrible truck is an implement of random death used to keep players in line.

Origin: Long ago, back before I was DMing, my DM would occasionally threaten us with the dreaded Truck of DM Cheese. It actually fell from the sky once, as an even more overt threat. Of course, we spent a half-hour investigating this marvelous invention (and stealing all the cheese), so we didn't exactly get back on track.

Ethereal Plane -- Where characters go when their players aren't at the game.

Origin: Once I was DMing, the girl playing the cleric only attended every other game or so, so I declared she was following the party in the Ethereal Plane (so she'd be back in the right place when she returned). The term stuck, and characters are said to "fall into the Ethereal Plane" whenever their players are absent.

Demiurge out.

 

[Wendigo]

"It floats and it glows" - A useless magic item acquired with considerable difficulty.

Origin - In a Runequest campaign we had one adventure were we made a difficult overland journey and came across an item in a cave - a large sphere that was floating and glowing. Other clues suggested the sphere was ancient and from a time when the swamp we were in was more navigable and part of a now-lost trading empire. Unable to determine the sphere's use we dragged this obviously powerful artifact back to Pavis and, at significant expense, had it analyzed. It turned out to have two magic properties 1) it floated and 2) it glowed. The GM then let on that it was a simple navigation buoy. The value of the item was less then what we had spent to have it analyzed.

Now whenever we come across a useless magic item it is always described as "it floats and it glows'.

 

[Richards]

Term: "Doing the Safety Dance."

Meaning: Condemned to one of the Lower Planes.

Explanation: The party I DM for found themselves in a TPK situation, in an adventure where the souls of the recently-dead were being sucked into the Abyss. My players use Lego people as their PC miniatures, so when they "woke up dead" in the Abyss (with no memories as to their previous lives), I positioned their PCs' figurines with one arm up and one arm down, and with their legs far enough apart that when I wiggled the kitchen table they kind of rocked back and forth. At this point I started singing "The Safety Dance." I told them that they were being forced by demons to do the Safety Dance for all eternity, unless they wanted to start doing some missions for Orcus himself. Given the choice of furthering Orcus' plans on Oerth or spending eternity doing the Safety Dance, they unanimously signed on to Orcus' team. Now, whenever a particularly evil enemy is killed in the campaign, at least one of my players comments that he's "off to do the Safety Dance," or "I hope he knows the Safety Dance."

Further Explanation For Those Who Aren't Familiar With The Safety Dance: "The Safety Dance" was an inexplicably popular song in the 1980s by a group called Men Without Hats. It had an odd video with a dwarf/midget dancing around, and the "Safety Dance" itself seemed to be forming the letter "S" with your hands.

Johnathan

 

[Jeff Wilder]

"Knowledge (fringe systems)" -- Fringe systems is a sub-category of the Knowledge skill in Star Wars D20. During a game which took place about 75% in the fringe itself, my PC (with a good score in the skill) was never called upon to use it. Frustrated, everytime the GM started asking for a Knowledge roll (but never fringe systems), I'd say, "I have Knowledge (fringe systems)!"

Somehow it morphed so that now the whole group uses it to mean, "No, we don't have that stupid esoteric Knowledge skill ... we have the ultimate Knowledge skill, and it should cover everything!" This even in D&D and other games where the skill doesn't exist, and even outside the game context, in place of a blank stare when someone says something completely incomprehensible. (That happens a lot in my group of friends ... )

"Gimli on Legolas" -- One of our female players used to constantly opine about man-on-man pairings she wanted to see. (Always fictional characters ... I think the concept is called "slash.") To get her to shut up, everytime she steered the conversation toward that area, we'd say, "Gimli on Legolas." She's extremely Dwarfist, so she'd shudder and shut up. Having trained her, now we just say it in any vaguely disturbing situation (or even just for fun, to watch her reaction).

 

[Al'Kelhar]

"Pulling a Darboz" - I used to have a wizard character who, when things turned ugly in battle, would quickly assess the party's health, and then, if tactically appropriate (or if he believed so, anyway ) he would yell "Screw it" to warn the party what was coming, and then start casting area damage effects - with everyone including himself in range, if necessary, to hit the bads.

I play the trigger-happy wizard in the current D&D campaign, and usually just ask the rhetorical "you guys have good Reflex saves, right?".

Tweet bl***y tweet!
Use: The sound which is made by any creature which appears harmless but is actually about as nasty and tough as can be imagined.

Origin: Not entirely sure, but probably something to do with one of the PCs polymorphing a dragon into a small bird. Now every harmless-looking creature the PCs come across is alleged to sound like an ogre on steroids.

This is not the [creature/object] you are looking for
Use:

Town guard: "Say, aren't you the quys who burnt down the inn the other night?"
PCs: Passing hand in front of guard's face"We are not the people you are looking for."

Origin: Duh!

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[Khayman]

"Give yourself a chip."

Countless years of playing Deadlands has caused us to reward roleplaying in other games with poker chips (worth a certain set XP value), flinging them around like deadly missiles. Someone has a bright idea, they get a chip.

Usually we players say this to the DM when they do something, just to be annoying.