Tired of not knowing what all your nerd friends are saying? Look no further than this handy, dandy reference guide! I compile a list of terms and acronyms that I have come across throughout my time as an RPG player.
You ever find it where you are online reading about your favorite game, or you're talking shop with a friend or someone at the LGS (HAHA AN EXAMPLE!), and they throw out a term like Gish or CoDzilla. You find yourself lost, but maybe too embarrassed to ask. You laugh and pretend like you know what they're talking about. You know exactly what I'm talking about?
Well sure, you could take to Google to find all your answers as they crop up, but I'm here to try and save you a few clicks and having to wonder for I give you a reference of terms I have run into in my time. Feel free to skip around to find whatever your looking for, or just show your friend who just got into the game and keeps asking about different acronyms, terms, or words that get thrown around..
Without any further ado, let's get into this.
The Basics
Here we touch on some of the absolute basic terms. You probably know most of these from just your average browsing. This is for the novice gamer who want's to be on the up-n-up on the terms before entering forums or browsing the interwebs. Most of the basics are acronyms and are self explanatory.
RPG: Roleplaying Game
TT: Tabletop
DnD/D&D: Dungeons and Dragons of course.
PC: Player Character
DM/GM: Dungeon Master / Game Master
NPC: Non-player Character
HP: Hit Points
AC: Armor Class
Party: The group you are adventuring with. This often is in reference to the other players at the table.
DC: Difficulty Check
PHB: Player's Handbook
DMG: Dungeon Master's Guide
MM: Monster Manuel
VGtM: Volo's Guide to Monsters. Probably more commonly referred to Volo's.
XGTE: Xanithar's Guide to Everything. May also be affectionately be referred to as Xani's.
MToF: Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes
Crit: Critical Hit/Success
Archetype or Kit: This term is sometimes thrown around for the subclass options in 5E. They were called kits in older editions. Archetype is the name of subclasses for a few of the classes in 5E and often gets thrown around with the others.
Build / Character Build: The way a player may try to set-up or put together their player character in advance. This tends to take a focus on Race, Class, and features.
Module: A pre-made adventure created by the creator of the game system or a third party. Examples include the classic Temple of Elemental Evil, Tomb of Annihilation, and Waterdeep: Dragonheist
Acronyms
Here is a handy list of acronyms I often come across in my browsing that you may wish to know. They're often used to help keep character count down on platforms such as Twitter and to help you get your point across quicker. Others are acronyms used to shorten longer terms that someone may get sick of spelling out.
PNP: Pen and Paper, though we here at Kobold Stew highly recommend playing with pencil.
'Number'E: Used to abbreviate editions. For example, 1E, 2E, 3E, 4E, 5E.
TPK: Total Party Kill. When the whole party dies to an encounter or in-game event. Not a good time, but can makes for good stories. Many people like to blame the DM, but it is usually no one in particulars fault.
DPR: Damage Per Round. Video gamers may refer to this as DPS (Damage Per Second) as that is the relative equivalent in Dungeons and Dragons. DPR is the average amount of damage your character may deal in a round of combat.
THAC0: An old school term from ye ol' days of 2nd Edition that stands for 'To Hit Armor Class 0.' Back in the day you wanted to have a lower armor class, and determining if you hit something used tables and wonky algorithms. It is often brought up to highlight the positive side of simplicity in 5th Edition. THAC0 is whack-o.
MAD/MASD/MASS: Multiple Ability score Dependency / Multiple Ability Score Dependency / Multiple Ability Score Syndrome. These are often used to describe a character build that requires a player to have higher Ability Scores in multiple areas to be effective. In 5E, this usually refers to multiclass builds that rely on three or more ability scores and often comes up when building characters who are multiclassing.
AoE: Area of Effect is used to refer to spells and abilities that deal damage in an area rather than to a single target. The classic example is the fireball spell.
BBEG: Big Bad Evil Guy/Girl. Used to refer to the main villain of a campaign or story arc. Sauron of Lord of the Rings and Voldemort of Harry Potter are examples of BBEGs.
RAW/BTB: Rules as Written or By the Book. This refers to playing any tapletop RPG by the rules as they are written in the books and avoiding homebrew.
LARP: Live Action Roleplaying.
DMPC: Dungeon Master Player Character. A combination of DM and PC respectively. When the DM implants a character of their own into the party. This often looked down upon and not recommended as abusing a DMPC often leads to many problems at a table.
OOC: Out of Context: I've seen it referring to lines said during DnD out of context, such as making a movie reference or saying something outside of your characters. I've also seen it used to comedic effect where someone posts a sound bite or single line from a session without any context. The latter is the one I have been encountering more lately.
PBP: Play by Post. A style of roleplaying where individuals roleplay in the medium of a forum, chatroom, or server. People post what their characters do and others build off of a scenario with their characters.
PVP: Player vs Player. When a player character attacks or takes an action against another character that would negatively affect that character. It is often frowned upon at tables.
Terms
Sometimes, wonky terms get thrown around. This handy, dandy list is here to help define some of them that I have come across. These terms are often used to provide a shorter way of saying something or to describe different things that people come across in discussing the game. I tried to make it organized to some degree, but I don't want to promise anything.
Homebrew: Any sort of content in a game that is not in the rule books, but rather added by players or other creators to either change current rules or add to the game. This can vary from simply adding a race or class to changing the way certain things are ruled.
3.75: An endearing way to refer to the Pathfinder rules system. This is due to the fact that Pathfinder is based off of the ruleset of 3.5, and when Wizards went to make 4th Edition, Paizo picked up where they left off and built on 3.5.
Feat Tax: Used in reference to character builds to refer to a feat that the character should probably (must) take to be effective. For example, many Gish characters often may want to greatly consider grabbing the War Caster feat.
CoDZilla: Cleric or Druid + Zilla. A call back to days of 3.5, when druids and clerics were perhaps the best classes to play. They could do anything, and oftentimes they overshadowed their fellow party members. The reason Concentration is a mechanic in 5E.
Squishy: Used to describe characters with low health and perhaps low armor.
Beefy: Used to describe characters with a high hit-point count.
Tank: Used to classify characters and/or classes whose purpose is to serve as a front-line combatant and protect the characters with less hit points, such as casters or rogues. Tanks are often identified by having large amounts of hit points and a high armor class. Also called meat shields. They often engage in melee combat.
Caster: Any character that can cast spells or focuses on casting spells. Sometimes will be given a prefix of 'full, 'half,' or 'third' to determine the level of focus on casting. Example: A wizard is a full caster. A paladin is a half caster. An eldritch knight fighter is a third caster.
Glass Cannon: A character or character build that can deal high amounts of damage, but they often have low health and are easy to down
Diplomancer: A character that will try and talk their way out of any situation before resorting to combat. They often have high Charisma scores and invest their skills in social tools.
Gish: Used to refer to a character that is both parts competent caster and competent combatant. A warrior mage. The name comes from an old Githyanki character class that was essentially a fighter/mage. The caster component of a gish is often from an arcane casting class/spell book rather than the divine (clerics and druids), and the idea is to have the character balance between both warrior and mage rather than leaning heavily toward one or the other. The God-Blade build post I made is an example of a Gish.
Nuker: A character or build that uses a large amount of AoE effects to deal damage to large amounts of enemies at once to easily wipe the battlefield of weak enemies and minions.
Skill Monkey: A character/class that focuses on utilizing skill proficiencies more than other characters/classes. They often have better bonuses to skill checks and more skills they are proficient. The bard is a classic example of a skill monkey.
Fluff vs. Crunch: Describes the difference between narrative and flavor parts of the game and the mechanical parts of the game. Fluff = flavor. Crunch = mechanics.
Nova Damage: Dealing a large amount of damage in a singe turn and/or with a single attack. A paladin's divine smite is a good example of nova damage.
Reflex/Fortitude/Will Save: Words that basically equate to Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom saving throws respectively. In older editions, you calculated what your modifier to saving throws regarding these respective saves. 5E simplified it them to just be the saving throws tied to those Ability Scores. As a Dungeon Master, having played older editions, I will often say Reflex, Fortitude, and Will saves with the intention of meaning Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom saving throws. I know other DMs who have played in other editions who do the same.
Save vs Suck: A check that if failed will either leave a character debilitated for most of combat/the encounter or outright dead.
'Alignment' Stupid/Stupid 'Alignment': Playing an alignment type to the point where your
character makes bad decisions or doesn't jive well with the party. Examples you might see are Lawful Stupid, where someone follows the letter of the law NO MATTER WHAT! Chaotic Stupid is someone who is lolrandom and does dumb stuff randomly and uses it as an excuse to roleplay as a jerk. Stupid Evil refers to characters that are EEEEEEEEEEEEVIL and will screw over the party any chance they get.
Munchkin: A player who abuses the mechanics and rules to make an overpowered character, often to the chagrin of others at the table. See also powergamer.
Min/Max: Optimizing your character so they are effective in game. This may sometimes be frowned upon people who prioritize roleplaying over the mechanics of the game.
Mook: Any basic baddy, minion, or monster that is often easy to take down and accompanies a boss or better monster.
Meat Grinder: A campaign, rule-set, or system based on the idea of making the game difficult and/or gritty. Death is often common in these games and you can expect to keep track of survival items such as rations and equipment.
Nat #: The number you roll on your dice without adding your modifiers. Most commonly used to refer to natural 20, for scoring a critical hit. Typically, this is used for d20 rolls.
Rules Lawyer: A player at a table who will argue with the DM about rules. It will also be used as a verb to refer to arguing with the DM about the rules. They often do this at the expense of precious game time and the other players' fun.
Mary Sue: A character that is often deemed boring due to a lack of flaws; is an idealized character that is often 'more special' than everyone else's. They are often seen as wish fulfillment. The term was born out of fan fiction where similar characters can be produced.
Splat Book: A supplemental book to a rules system that usually adds more player customization options and content. DnD 5E has Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Elemental Evil Companion, Volo's Guide to Monsters, Xanithar's Guide to Everything, Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, Wayfinders Guide to Eberron, and the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. The next one being released is the Ravnica book.
Tucker's Kobolds: References an old story from a Dragon Magazine where someone recounted a terrifying encounter as a mid level party. In this encounter, the DM threw regular CR 1/4 kobolds at the party that had the time to prepare for them and absolutely decimates them. This is often used as an example to refer to how monsters that are below the party's character level can still make for challenging encounters with good encounter design.
Henderson Scale: References an old online story about how someone used a character named Old Man Henderson to derail a Call of Cthulu campaign due to animosity toward the GM. The community came up with the Henderson Scale to determine just how bad a player's actions derailed a game.
Rule of Cool: Invoked by some DMs to hand-wave rules for the sake of allowing something exciting narratively to happen or to allow a character to do something that is subjectively cool in game that would otherwise not be allowed or limited due to the rules as written.
Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: Often thrown around as a joke, this is used in reference to DMs who are very frustrated with their player group or player's characters. The idea is that they throw their hands up, say "f*** it," and proclaim that rocks fall out of the sky and that everyone is dead.
There you have it! A sort of glossary so you can recall these terms should you see them get thrown around or for you to throw around yourself. I hope this was helpful, and if you already know them... Oh well? Are there any I missed? Any you have come across? Comment and let me know!
As Always,
Happy Gaming,
Puddins.