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<blockquote data-quote="CandyLaser" data-source="post: 8180464" data-attributes="member: 7029413">Apparently my old account is gone, or more likely I just forgot its login information. In any case, I did want to&nbsp; comment on this bit of folk etymology. The oldest known use of biannual is in the sense of 'twice a year.' 'Once every other year' is biennial. What's more, even if 'biannual' had changed its meaning over time, characterizing it as corruption is mistaken, as it offers up a moral connotation to a perfectly ordinary and unproblematic linguistic process. Words change meaning over time in living languages; it's just what happens, and privileging older uses which have fallen out of favor over contemporary conventions is bad practice if you want to be understood. And if you're going to do it, it behooves you to get your facts right. This is obviously not the main thrust of the argument, but this sort of quasi-prescriptivist pedantry irritates me.Along those lines, though, I also wanted to call attention to this claim from lewpuls:The notion that games require opposition is, I think, false. There are, of course, cooperative games (like Pandemic), but those do feature opposition - it's just not from any of the other players. And there are RPGs that do away with the semi-adversarial GM-player relation, such as GMless games like Fiasco and Ironsworn. These games also often feature opposition, though it may or may not be from other players. But then there are noncompetitive games such as the Ungame, which lack opposition entirely. I'd put RPGs like The Skeletons in this category, as well as solo RPGs like The Thousand-Year-Old Vampire and Artefact.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="CandyLaser, post: 8180464, member: 7029413"] Apparently my old account is gone, or more likely I just forgot its login information. In any case, I did want to comment on this bit of folk etymology. The oldest known use of biannual is in the sense of 'twice a year.' 'Once every other year' is biennial. What's more, even if 'biannual' had changed its meaning over time, characterizing it as [I]corruption [/I]is mistaken, as it offers up a moral connotation to a perfectly ordinary and unproblematic linguistic process. Words change meaning over time in living languages; it's just what happens, and privileging older uses which have fallen out of favor over contemporary conventions is bad practice if you want to be understood. And if you're going to do it, it behooves you to get your facts right. This is obviously not the main thrust of the argument, but this sort of quasi-prescriptivist pedantry irritates me. Along those lines, though, I also wanted to call attention to this claim from lewpuls: The notion that games require opposition is, I think, false. There are, of course, cooperative games (like Pandemic), but those do feature opposition - it's just not from any of the other players. And there are RPGs that do away with the semi-adversarial GM-player relation, such as GMless games like Fiasco and Ironsworn. These games also often feature opposition, though it may or may not be from other players. But then there are noncompetitive games such as the Ungame, which lack opposition entirely. I'd put RPGs like The Skeletons in this category, as well as solo RPGs like The Thousand-Year-Old Vampire and Artefact. [/QUOTE]

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