Canon:RPG Terminology

Apple Stacking

• The social currency equivalent of Greyhawking. Essentially, a common phenomenon in social currency systems where you can perform small favors that add up to very, very big favors in return.

1. "I give the King an apple a day for a year, then ask for the kingdom."

Batman Wizard

• The other big factor that leads to Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards. The Batman Wizard is named for how a properly built wizard can have an answer to seemingly any problem and does it with enough power to invalidate the need of other party members due to the versatility and power of their spells. While the CoDzilla inspires jealousy because they can beat fighters at their own game, the Puppetmaster Buffer inspires jealousy because their buffs are so dominating that it invalidates the build choices of the fighters, the Batman Wizard inspires jealousy because they don't need fighters at all.
• The Batman suffix comes from a character in DC Comics whose combination of wealth, training, contacts, and especially his utility belt allow him to punch way above his expected weight class, making it impossible to actually beat him. Cheekily summarized with something like, 'If Batman has sufficient prep time, he can even beat Chuck Norris'.

Beer n' Pretzels Game

• Game style whereby rules are arbitrated looser to accommodate casual game play and game flow. Often accompanied by drinks and snacks.

BBEG

1. Big Bad Evil Guy
2. Big Bad Enemy Guy

BDF

• Big Dumb Fighter
• The name says it all. Stereotypically a character with very little depth who uses their brawn to solve as many problems as possible. They often do not scale well in part to their lack of depth. Although are often fun to play in low level campaigns and/or for beginners to the hobby.
• Also known as DMF and VAH

Captain Hobo

• A theoretical character in a system which generically surcharges game effects based on their utility and directs the player to fluff their effects post-hoc. He's used as a shorthand for the dangers of assigning weak fluff without regards to its relative in-game effect; Captain Hobo's super-speed is described as being the side-effect of 'too much energy drinks and vodka', his 12d6 attack (the max he's allowed to buy out of chargen) is a broken chair leg, his toughness is described as 'layered clothes from Goodwill with cardboard and tape', etc. A less extreme example would be someone playing a James Bond clone whose PP7 could do more damage than the mortar shots of Artillery Man or someone playing a Conan clone who could outwrestle someone's Superman clone.

Cherrypicking

• See Level Dipping

Closet Troll

• "Typically" a melee specialist who does massive damage when s/he/it can catch a target at close range.
• A troll out in the open is a reasonable challenge for a party of appropriate level(CR/etc) because they can move around and not be full attacked. But a troll in a tightly enclosed space (like a closet) is a nightmare.

CoDzilla (dnd-wiki explanation)

• A very powerful Cleric or Druid build; typically game breaking as levels accumulate.

1. • Named for how they can wield considerable magic power as well as having better combat skills and abilities than their pure "reality twisting" rivals. Better Base Attack Bonus and armor opportunities as well as shapeshifting and Natural Spell for druids.
   • 1d4chan explains it pretty well.

Diplomancer

• A character build in TTRPGs where someone's bonuses to a skill system is so high that they can get people to do anything they want, even outrageous requests such as convincing their blood oath enemy to sacrifice their kids and become your slave. Because diplomacy rules tend to get short shrift compared to other rules in the game, these kinds of characters often break these systems and force hastily forged Gentlemen's Agreements and Magic Tea Party sessions to blindsided groups.

DM (Dungeon Master)

• The judge, referee, story-teller, rules arbitrator.

DMF (Dumb Melee Fighter)

• See 'BDF'

Dumpster Diving

• The practice of picking and choosing favorable options across many optional rulebooks, often just snatching a single feat or spell from the entire book. While many tables deeply frown on this practice as a sign of powergaming, it isn't foolproof: a lot of unbalanced builds only rely on one or two books for their effectiveness.

ECL

• Effective Character Level

Gentlemen's Agreement

• "A player may allow his character to do whatever he wants so long as that action doesn't decrease the fun had by anyone else at the table."
• Agreement under which it is understood that everyone around the game table is gathered to have fun and actions must be carried out "in character" that maintain fun for all participants.
• Alternatively, a set of unspoken but unanimous house rules that cover a situation where doing otherwise would be so taboo that it needn't even brook discussion, i.e. allowing someone to use the Planar Shepherd PrC despite the DM giving blanket permission on WotC books.

Glass Cannon

• A Player Character build that emphasizes high damage output at the expense of survivability. Such builds usually involve ranged attacks rather than melee to offset their vulnerability.

GM (Game Master)

• See 'DM'

Greyhawking

• "Plunder everything that isn't nailed down. Then take everything that IS nailed down. THEN take the nails from the walls. Finally, take the walls." [1]
• Presumed to have started because RPGA started assuming players acquired all available treasure, so if you didn't take literally everything, you were behind the curve. [2]

Gygaxian

• A style of running games which encompasses one or more of the following:

1. The GM behaves in a somewhat to very adversarial manner to the PCs running the game.
2. The GM takes an authoritative, no-backtalk style and is authorized to use their position to enforce control of the game.
3. The GM is expected to liberally use Rules Zero mid-game with little discussion or justification to the players.
4. Players are expected to handle adversity, even if the outcome is unfair, arbitrary, or punitive with a minimum of fuss.
5. The campaign is very deadly, with TPKs caused by bad luck or poor player choices being readily handed out.

Judge (RPG)

• See 'DM'

Level Dipping

• Level dipping, or just Dipping, is an optimization technique where a player takes 1-2 levels in a class to gain its unique class features or abilities, then leaves the class.
• Level dipping is often frowned upon thanks to many people believing in the Stormwind Fallacy and suspicions of dumpster-diving.

Logistics and Dragons

• A style of gaming which focuses on large-scale economic, political and military management, especially when Murderhoboing is the default assumed style.

LWQW ( Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards)

• A phrase coined to quickly explain the problem between magic users and melee players.
• "Melee classes gain power at a linear rate as they level up. Magic users gain power quadratically as they level up."
• TVTropes.com explains with charts!

MC (Mister Cavern)

• See 'DM'
• Mister Cavern is loosely translated from the term used for DMs in the RPG Draci Doupe Plus. DD+ was first published in the Czech Republic during the days of the old Soviet Union. Adopted by The Gaming Den as an alternative to the Dungeon Master label.

Metagaming

• An action or actions made by the Player Character based on out-of-character knowledge.
• For example, a Player's Character uses fire to fight a troll even though the Character is ignorant of trolls, because the Player has knowledge of the troll's weakness to fire from previous gaming experience.
• While it is very difficult to not metagame to at least some small degree while playing an RPG, the act of metagaming is usually frowned upon.

MTP (Magical Tea Party)

• MTP for short. A term for describing the "make it up" advice in RPG texts when some event or action is not covered by the rules.
• Not inherently a derogatory comment, it is often used with a negative connotation due to MTP commonly being used in place of rules that are either bad, or incomplete enough, to be useless. MTP is in of itself necessary because no set of rules could cover all possible situations without becoming prohibitively wordy. MTP gets used derogatorily when it must be relied on for common use cases in a particular game.

Murderhobo

• An oft derogatory, sometimes affectionate term for Player Characters in D&D-style games. The term refers to the massive amount of violence a typical PC dishes out in the course of quest-solving and treasure accumulation (murder) and their itinerant lifestyle needed to find the maximum number of quest hooks (hobo).

Nova

• A Player Character build or style of play that focuses on dealing as much damage as possible in a single attack or round of attacks, often by using tricks to gain additional actions (known as 'breaking the action economy'). The act of doing so is referred to as "going nova."

NPC (Non-player Character)

• Characters played and controlled by an RPG campaign/game's DM.

Oberoni Fallacy

• Stating that there is nothing wrong with a game because Rule 0 exists. See this for a more detailed explanation.

Off the RNG

• When bonuses or negatives accrue to make it so that no number a character can roll will impact their success or failure.
• Related to RNG

One-Off

• A game designed to be played as a single adventure to completion in one game session rather than as a multi-session campaign. (Also referred to as a "One-Shot.")

OSR (Old School Renaissance)

• Also known as Old System Revival
• A "movement" or trend in creating new RPG systems / rule sets based off of older, or "original", published products from the past. Complete with sensibilities associated with them. See Gygaxian.
• e.g Original Dungeons and Dragons, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1e)

Padded Sumo

• The opposite of Rocket Launcher Tag. Where combat is grindingly slow and each attack is a tiny drop in a massive bucket.

PC (Player Character)

• The character, or characters, controlled directly by the players in an RPG campaign/game.

Phlebotinum

• Phlebotinum is the versatile substance that may be rubbed on almost anything to cause an effect needed by a plot. Examples include but are not limited to: nanotechnology, magic crystal emanations, pixie dust, a sonic screwdriver, vented drive plasma, and Green Rocks. [3]

Plot Armor

• Plot Armor is a character overcoming events that would be crippling or even lethal with an unconvincing or even no in-narrative justification; the implication is that the only reason why the character survived as long as they did is because they're required to by the plot. Plot Armor is when the survival is not adequately explained within the narrative -- Superman surviving getting shot in the eye with a shotgun at point-blank isn't Plot Armor, that's just him using his powers. Batman surviving getting shot in the eye at point-blank range with a shotgun is almost certainly Plot Armor. The term Plot Armor is generally used in a derogative fashion, though a lot of games have Plot Armor built into the rules and limited by some resource.

Powergaming

• Also referred to as Character Optimization, this refers to the practice of using a Player's extensive knowledge of an RPG system's rules in the most advantageous way possible to the Player, resulting in a more powerful than average Player Character. While not inherently good or bad, this can lead to friction between powergamers and more casual players due to the resulting disparity in power levels between PCs.
• When taken to extremes, powergaming is often referred to as 'Munchkining,' which carries a more negative connotation with most gamers.

Puppetmaster Buffer

• The third leg in the unholy trinity of Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards, the Puppetmaster Buffer is a character build that is so counterintuitively helpful that it invalidates the choices of the other characters at the table. The Puppetmaster Buffer hands out buffs to their party members so large that it makes the build choices of other characters meaningless; the difference between a lightly armored swashbuckler and a tanky, well-armored berserker becomes trivial when both are getting such enormous defensive buffs and offense multipliers that they'd only perform slightly better from a basket-weaving commoner, let alone each other.
• Puppetmaster Buffers tend to get overlooked in balance discussions because the damage they do to intraparty balance isn't as obvious as other casters; indeed, what makes them so hard to balance is that up to a certain threshold, they're the most popular member of the party. No one really objects to someone giving them an extra attack, but when they're giving you three to your original one attack that's when problems start. Even (especially even) the result is balanced or expected. While 3E D&D didn't really have a good Puppetmaster Buffer classes (CoDzilla and Batman Wizards were more dominating) they reared their ugly head in 4E D&D of all places with the balance-wrecking Warlord and Clerics.

Resource Management System

• A system for determining when players can use certain abilities that they theoretically have available to them. The broad categories are:

1. At-Will: There's no limitation on using this resource.
2. Spell Charge: This resource can only be used a finite number of times over a certain timeframe. The spell charges can be discrete like the spell slots of 3E D&D spellcasters or the Encounter/Daily powers of 4E D&D PCs and they can also be fungible like psionic points.
3. Cool-down and Warm-up: This resource requires players to wait a certain span of time before they can be used again. Cool-down generally allows the first use to be at-will, while warm-up requires even the first use to spend a certain amount of time doing something else.
4. Berserk Meter: This resource requires players to be lacking a certain amount of another resource before it can be used, typically health. For example, certain 4E D&D racial abilities that can only be used when the character had the Bloodied status effect.
5. Drain: This resource becomes less effective or even unusable depending on the state of another resource. For example, a Warlock can fire five magic missiles at full health, three at half health, and only one at quarter health. For extra drama, a lot of Drain resource management systems can deplete the resource that it's pegged to i.e. Shadowrun spells are most safely cast at full health but can also damage your health depending on how much power you put into them.
6. Random: The availability of this resource is randomly determined. 4E D&D monsters recharging certain powers on a d6 die roll or the Crusader randomly accessing a subset of their known maneuvers would be examples of a Random resource management system.

Retro-clone

• see OSR

RNG

• Random Number Generator. In Dungeons & Dragons, this most often refers to the range numbers fall within for dice rolls.

RLT (Rocket Launcher Tag)

• Refers to combat that is so offense-heavy that the first person to attack will likely immediately win.

Rule Zero

• The DM is the final arbiter in ruling mechanics decisions.

Rule Negative One

• Because the DM is the final arbiter in ruling mechanics decisions, there's no such thing as objective power or utility. Power and utility is determined by what will be allowed at a table. And because most players aren't mathematicians nor game theorists and thus use incorrigible criteria (i.e. does this sourcebook look cheaply made, I dislike noncasters getting access to superpowers), what's allowed at a table is ultimately tribal and arbitrary. An officially published overpowered class is more likely to be allowed than a underpowered homebrew class simply because the former is officially sanctionary. Or if there are two proposed builds are of equal power, the one that uses fewer books (munchkin dumpster diving trolls!) and more of professional-quality books is more likely to be included -- without any regard to power.
• Rule Negative One manifests itself in a number of arbitrary but familiar ways: don't bother analyzing books from third-party sources because they probably won't be allowed; wait until this expansion option gets published in an official book instead of using it straight out of the fanzines or playtest; try to keep your explanation of what your character does down to a minimum; if you have an unusual build be sure to pad your concept with unnecessary roleplaying filler you wouldn't have to do for less unusual builds to avoid an invocation of the Stormwind Fallacy and a subsequent ban, etc.

Rule Negative Two

• Because of Rule Negative One, when discussing rules and especially Character Optimization in general, if there are multiple ways to interpret a rule in absence of a specific GM a you should use the most Gygaxian (player-screwing) interpretation possible.
• The essence of Rule Negative Two is boiled down in this Pathfinder FAQ response: In general, use the (normal, lower) spell level or the (higher) spell slot level, whichever is more of a disadvantage for the caster.

Session

• A gameplay session.

SGT (Same Game Test)

• The Same Game Test, or SGT, is a balance guideline used to gauge the level of power a character class or option brings to the table. It is derived from the definitions and explanations of encounter challenges in the Dungeon Masters Guide and Monster Manual.

Story Teller (RPG)

• See 'DM'

Stormwind Fallacy

• In laymen's terms, using the statement "roleplaying, not rollplaying" is committing the Stormwind Fallacy (who says you can't do both?). See this for a more detailed explanation.

Stunlocking

• A term used to describe when a character can attack in such a way as to prevent his opponent from ever being able to take an action.
• Also known as 'Tekken Juggling'

Superman Diplomacy Test

• A stress test given for proposed TTRPG diplomacy systems, especially ones that have superpowered characters in it, to see if it can withstand certain edge cases. Failing them tends to indicate an underlying problem that will manifest in average-case scenarios.

1. Super Dickery: In many "social defense" systems, a powerful character is hard to diplomacize, which causes Superman to default to hostile or at least dickish to pretty much everyone.
2. No soup for Superman: Superman is an altruist who does not need your soup. A forward looking model shows that there is actually no benefit to you for giving Superman free soup, whether he just rescued your grandmother or not.
3. Die for the Superman: Individual uses of Superman's powers are worth more than most people. In an absolute value social credit system, Superman can ask people to die for him in exchange for favors that are completely trivial to him.
4. I'll trade you a paper airplane: Superman's powers don't take a lot of time or effort for him to use. So a relative effort social credit system would predict that you can get Superman to knock down a building in exchange for a paper airplane or a carrot.

TBT (The Bullet Test)

• Whether or not characters in a TTRPG are assumed to regularly survive, or be immune to, bullet wounds. Essentially being super-heroic in nature.

Tekken Juggling

• See 'Stunlocking'

TTRPG

• Tabletop RPG
• It all started with pencil and paper...

VAH (Vanilla Action Hero)

• A character common to action movies who has no reliable access to or unilateral control of phlebotinum and has to rely on plot armor and mundane (if preternatural) human abilities to accomplish things. VAHs are allowed to use their plot armor to bend probability--such as being shot at by twenty bad guys and having them all miss--but can't use it to do something that's impossible to a layman's WSoD--such as surviving a harpoon to the heart. Has a lot of overlap with Dumb Melee Fighter, but note that not all VAHs are DMFs; James Bond is a Vanilla Action Hero but not a DMF. Similarly, The Thing is a Dumb Melee Fighter but not a VAH.

WFM

• Weaboo Fightan Majick
• I'll add a description later

Wish Economy

• Referring to characters in Dungeons and Dragons who can have unlimited wishes and therefore only value things wishes cannot grant. ~deanrule87

See also

• A Player's Guide to Roles in the Party (3.5e Guide)