Why Jargon is Bad, and Some Modern Resources for RPG Theory

[Umbran]

Significant explanation is often given. Extensively so. I know I have spilled a whole lot of virtual ink on this stuff in pretty much every thread I try to talk about this stuff. Others have spilled far more.

Sure. But in this context, knowing your audience includes knowing the medium. If you are sitting in a room with the same group of people for two hours, having a conversation everyone is focused upon, and only one or two people come in or out, you can probably get away with spilling that ink once. In the next discussion, if there are new people, you'll have to spill that ink again.

Now consider the message board medium - we have asynchronous communication among a varying group of dozens over the course of days during which your conversation is only one of dozens of things the person is paying attention to. That is a challenging place for jargon. There's enough distraction and turnover that you'll have to spill a lot of ink. It may well be more efficient to just use natural language, rather than explain jargon repeatedly.

I have to agree with Snarf - jargon is at its best and most useful when it is used among a group of people who all already have the same understanding of that jargon. When in mixed company, use of jargon is best considered not as a tool for the current discussion, but as developing a tool for later discussions.

It does not help that, around here, folks lead with the jargon, and then have to explain it. From an instructional standpoint, that's backwards - you don't want to start by confusing the student, because that makes the student defensive. A better mode of instruction would be to introduce the concept, establish that it is useful, get the student to agree to that utility, and only then apply the name.

Because remember - the jargon isn't actually the important bit. The concepts the jargon stands for are. They should be the focus, and you should be willing to abandon the jargon to get the concepts across, if that's what's needed.

 

[Charlaquin]

I find the terms to be as accurate as I need them to be. The jargon allows a shorthand for a discussion with other hobbyists. The jargon isn't scientific and wont be found in any graduate course. Most of the time I know what people are going for. If not, I just ask them but most of the time its a shortcut to getting into a discussion without having to explain yourself every single time.

But when multiple people in a discussion are all confidently using the same jargon term to mean different things, while assuming everyone else is using it to mean the same thing they are, productive conversation is nearly impossible.

 

[payn]

One thing I will say is that I believe we should treat this consistently. If we are going to call for less use of jargon that must apply just as much to things like "the story", adventure hook, world building, sandbox, "living breathing world" as it does to the jargon used to describe other sorts of play. If our lingua franca is built around exploratory play and storytelling than it becomes extremely difficult to discuss play that does not value them highly.

I think the key is in participation. If you are making a thread consider your audience. If you are posting in a thread consider its OP. For example, there are threads that talk about sandbox as a concept, and there are threads on doing it. If you dont think sandbox is even a thing, then by all means post away in the concept thread. Though, if folks are having a discussion about it as a given, probably not the right time and place to tell them they are wrong.

 

[Charlaquin]

One thing I will say is that I believe we should treat this consistently. If we are going to call for less use of jargon that must apply just as much to things like "the story", adventure hook, world building, sandbox, "living breathing world" as it does to the jargon used to describe other sorts of play. If our lingua franca is built around exploratory play and storytelling than it becomes extremely difficult to discuss play that does not value them highly.

Ironically, I don’t know what you mean by “exploratory play” or “storytelling” in this context.

 

[payn]

But when multiple people in a discussion are all confidently using the same jargon term to mean different things, while assuming everyone else is using it to mean the same thing they are, productive conversation is nearly impossible.

I find this to be an over exaggeration. I have productive conversations every single day. The only ones that get stuck in myriad of definitions are the ones that want to precisely define the term or argue over it on a conceptual level. Comes with the territory.

As in my posting above, I think the key is participating in good faith. If you can set aside any technical or pedantic arguments for the sake of conversation please do so. If you cant, save it for a conceptual topic thread.

 

[Charlaquin]

I find this to be an over exaggeration. I have productive conversations every single day.

With people who are unknowingly using the same jargon to mean different things? That seems unlikely to me.

The only ones that get stuck in myriad of definitions are the ones that want to precisely define the term or argue over it on a conceptual level. Comes with the territory.

I’m not talking about conversations getting stuck, I’m talking about misunderstanding, which is pretty much inevitable when we think we’re using a shared language but actually aren’t.

As in my posting above, I think the key is participating in good faith. If you can set aside any technical or pedantic arguments for the sake of conversation please do so. If you cant, save it for a conceptual topic thread.

I might not be parsing this correctly. Are you speaking generally, or are you directly telling me to save my concerns about misunderstood jargon causing confusion for another thread?

 

[niklinna]

One thing I will say is that I believe we should treat this consistently. If we are going to call for less use of jargon that must apply just as much to things like "the story", adventure hook, world building, sandbox, "living breathing world" as it does to the jargon used to describe other sorts of play. If our lingua franca is built around exploratory play and storytelling than it becomes extremely difficult to discuss play that does not value them highly.

Ironically, I don’t know what you mean by “exploratory play” or “storytelling” in this context.

Short of an explicit context, I don't know what any of those terms mean.

 

[payn]

With people who are unknowingly using the same jargon to mean different things? That seems unlikely to me.

Correct, well, in degrees. I mean, if you are saying somebody is saying toaster to mean a werewolf, then yeah that super confusing. I find folks might say lycan instead of werewolf and I get were they are going. If I'm not 100% with them, a simple clarifying question straightens it out.

I’m not talking about conversations getting stuck, I’m talking about misunderstanding, which is pretty much inevitable when we think we’re using a shared language but actually aren’t.

Happens all the time, even right now. You clear it up through discussion.

I might not be parsing this correctly, are you speaking generally, or are you directly telling me to save my concerns about misunderstood jargon causing confusion for another thread?

I was speaking generally, not specifically about this thread. This is the right place to discuss this.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But when multiple people in a discussion are all confidently using the same jargon term to mean different things, while assuming everyone else is using it to mean the same thing they are, productive conversation is nearly impossible.

Right. And with GNS I feel that the original twenty-year-old meaning of the terms and layman understanding of them has become so far divergent, that the terminology is a hindrance. Like I said in the another thread, according to Forge, if I care about games having a coherent satisfying narrative, that actually is simulationism, not narrativism! But I'd wager that a most people who are merely vaguely familiar with these terms would (sensibly) associate it with narrativism, which they actually understand to be roughly the same thing than dramatism in the (even older) GDS model.
And who is to say the they're even wrong to do so, language evolves and words mean what people understand them to mean.

 

[Manbearcat]

I agree that jargon can represent a barrier to entry. However, what sometimes this point sidesteps how much of a barrier jargon actually represents. A lot of jargon is gradually absorbed through participation in a subculture or field over time. But there are often resources out there, especially in this day and age, where people can use their Google-Fu to find out what the jargon means. It's not like you need a law degree to look up and understand what a "hexcrawl game" is.

Outside of this small bubble of a hobby, there is a tremendous amount of jargon floating around in the field of video games, jargon used to describe different genres of games, jargon used within game-specific communities (e.g., Call of Duty, etc.), jargon used with types of games (e.g., MOBA: Jungler, Bruiser, Carry, etc.), broader gaming communities (e.g., Speed Runners, eSports, etc.), or within game design communities (e.g., clipping, FPS, bots, Easter Egg, Whales, etc.), or the entire market (e.g., DLC, Pay-to-Win, microtransactions, etc.).

As you say, a lot of this was born within the hobby rather than on an academic level. But that is often the way of things: Hobbyists -> Hobby Companies -> Hobby Academics. Hobbyists are processing and discussing trends in the hobby with far greater alacrity and dispersion than academics. So over against what some have said about jargon, I don't think that jargon represents Ivory Tower thinking. IME, it's often hobbyists grappling with discussions in the hobby and its various subcultures.

Jargon is a part of education and community-engagement. It can be off-putting if you have little interest in it at a certain level, but as you learn and engage these communities more and more, you learn the jargon, whether conscientiously or not.

I started climbing 2.75 years ago because (a) I have to shelf my basketball activities due to needing ankle reconstruction surgery so I'm hoping it will fill that niche I'm losing (its a huge thing for me losing something that has been so important to my life and well-being) and (b) hopes that it will help strengthen both of my shoulders so I can continue BJJ (which, along with a baseball career, ruined both of my rotator cuffs).

I went in knowing absolute_nothing_about climbing. Nothing. Zero. Zilch.

There is a gigantically dizzying array of essential jargon for learning climbing, bettering your climbing, and engaging with the climbing community locally and at large.

In two months time of straddling general-to-aggressive exposure (to the climbing itself, to the learning process, and the community), I'd uploaded nearly all of it so now my until-recently-climbing-derp-brain can think and perceive and talk like a functional climber.

Two months time. Within that time I went from looking at a wall as a complete and utter novice to looking at the wall through the lens of someone equipped to critically conceive obstacle dynamics and map a route and use all of that newly-gained jargon as a weapon to shorthand/hack the process of understanding what I'm doing + employing my understanding +getting better at both. And the same goes for having functional conversations with climbers in the community. There was a ton of "I don't understand what that means" and "no clue what you just said" in the beginning...but eventually I got there.

I suffer horrific Insomnia (like Fight Club type "copy of a copy of a copy" insomnia).

I'm in the throes of dealing with CTE because of dozens of major concussions in my life (including 3 blackouts).

And there is other stuff that I won't go into.

I am a seriously_diminished_person cognitively from where I was even 5 years ago (and well more than 10 years ago).

Yet somehow, despite being extremely diminished + not a particularly smart person to begin with (I'm not even close to the outer tail of the intelligence distribution for humanity), I'm able to onboard complex jargon from a novice state within 2 months time and use that jargon/critical lens to serious advantage in both employing it physically and socially (which becomes a positive feedback loop between the two). I'm sorry, I cannot get onboard with this "war against jargon" I keep seeing. No. I will not get on board...because its not true that it is all gatekeeping (or even approaching it) by narcissistic Ivory Tower Cabals hell bent on "keeping the casual done" or elevating themselves. It can be very very useful toward skill-acquisition and x-hacks in whatever endeavor its oriented to.

Sometimes...maybe more than sometimes...it helps humble...rather broken people hack their way to some level of proficiency in a thing (with aspirations toward more than proficiency).