Gamer Jargon

[W E Ray]

FOR YOUR EDIFICATION, EDUCATION AND ENJOYMENT:

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Fluff All the “flavor,” atmosphere and background story for characters, NPCs, the setting, etc.; characterization, personality, tone. (Often called “ROLEplaying”)

Crunch All the rules and design mechanics of the actual game. (Often called “ROLLplaying”)

Broken When one PC is designed considerably stronger than all the others &/or has magical items &/or Boons that make it much stronger – or when some PCs in a group are broken and some are not. This can occur because elements of the rules are not intended to be used certain ways but can be, or if the element was just poorly designed by the publishers. (If all PCs are “equally Broken” a DM may consider the game Broken (PCs are stronger than monsters of appropriate CR) but the DM always has the prerogative to use stronger CR monsters, thus unbreaking the game.)

Powergamer A Player who builds a PC trying desperately to make it as powerful as possible. Used as a pejorative when pointing out unrealistic decisions, such as stupidly high STR & CON and stupidly low INT & CHA – basing a PC not on any type of Fluff but only with regard to Crunch.

Munchkin An extreme Powergamer who wants to be more powerful than all the other PCs and monsters (Breaking the game), so much so that he or she will also cheat during character creation & dice rolling and lie to the DM (and other Players) about rules adjudication. Munchkins will often get upset when their PCs do poorly, impeding game play.

Rules Lawyer A Player who does everything possible to play RAW, “Rules as Written,” correcting other Players and the DM immediately, whether it helps or hurts the PCs’ situation. Rules Lawyers may often give other Players AND the DM advice during combat based on RAW to make both PCs and monsters as optimized as possible. Used pejoratively when Rules Lawyering slows the game down to nothing for the minutia of a single, unimportant or obscure rule, ruining the fun and flow of the game.

Grognard A Player who has been playing since at least the 1980s in First Edition and fondly recalls and recounts memories from this past. Used as a pejorative when making fun of older people or when older gamers opine 1E as better than the current game design. (Some may consider Players who started in the 90’s w/ 2nd Ed as potential Grognards – but as a Grognard myself, I cannot accept you as a fellow if you only started in the 90’s – which is a classic, textbook Grognaridan attitude.)

Railroading When a DM forces the Players down a single path or plot-line, not allowing them to choose to take different actions than the DM planned for (thus taking the game “off the rails”). Often this happens when a DM’s adventure is based on a favorite novel or movie – the DM having a strict idea on what Shall happen/ what the PCs Shall do.

Sandbox (Opposite of Railroading) When a DM has no set plot and only a setting, allowing PCs to choose whatever they want (go north or south, build a fort or pillage a village, etc.). Like a sandbox that a child enters and has the freedom to “play” whatever & however he wants, a Sandbox Campaign allows the Players nearly complete freedom to choose what they do, without any expectations.

Turtling When a DM presents several encounters to the PCs that they cannot hope to defeat and thus the Players become afraid of everything the DM presents them – like turtles in their shells, PCs mistrust every encounter and gameplay stalls.

Metagame When any Player (DM or Player) uses out-of-gamestory reasoning to make a decision. These infinite possibilities include a Player positing that the collapsing-ceiling trap must have a solution because “The DM would not put it in the dungeon without a solution, or, we can't go down those stairs yet because the monsters in the lower levels will be stronger than those on the first” Thus using “Metagame” reasoning to make a decision.
Metagame reasoning often breaks verisimilitude and should be considered with care.
Situations where Metagaming is important – if not essential – (just as infinite) include a Player creating a Fluff reason his Lawful Good PC will adventure with the CN Cleric and the NE Rogue for Metagame purposes – if the LG PC can’t come up with a reason (whether it makes much sense or not) then the game itself can be ruined.
Sometimes we must use Metagame reasoning to explain why the Wizard isn’t with the group for the next few encounters – because the Player couldn’t make it to game-night.
Also, the DM must almost always design encounters (and the whole campaign) with Metagame reasoning – making sure the PCs have a chance to win, making sure the PC-builds can be sometimes useful & sometimes useless (the Rogue’s Sneak Attack works to perfection sometimes; sometimes is useless,... the Witch’s Hex,... the Paladin’s backstory & Fluff, etc.) The DM must Metagame to make sure the game flows smoothly and everyone is enjoying it, regardless of verisimilitude.

Gish Any PC who is equal parts melee combatant and spell caster. In Pathfinder the Magus is the textbook Gish; Eldritch Knight and some other Class builds are Gish as well. “Gish” was coined in 1981 when the Fiend Folio introduced a monster called Githyanki whose society had a class that were equal Fighter-Magic Users; those Githyanki were called “Gish.”

Campaign A long series of thematically related adventures.

Adventure A single plot or scenario for the PCs.

Module The 1st Ed. name for short adventures that Paizo (because they're Grognards) initially used for the single adventures line of products (as opposed to "Adventure Path" which is their line of Campaigns).

[Adamantine Dragon]

Each of these probably has a dozen threads already covering them, but this is a nice start for a single place to pull them together. I'd add a few:

Edition Wars - Bloody battles over which game system among the many versions of D&D (including Pathfinder) is best, or even playable or not.

Roleplaying - Adopting the personality, motivations and backstory of a character as a basis for making decisions in game. In some cases, with some players, this involves adopting mannerisms and/or accents, but that is not required. Roleplaying is frequently depicted as the antithesis of "roll playing" (see below) although this is not entirely accurate.

Roll playing - Making in game decisions based primarily on the optimal mechanical effect with little or no regard to the character's personality, motivation or backstory. This is frequently contrasted with "roleplaying" as described above.

Optimizer - A player who may or may not develop compelling character descriptions but who does create characters who excel in one or more areas based on understanding of and execution of the games' rules system. Frequently confused with "power gamer".

GM Fiat - A description of the in game invocation of "Rule Zero" which states that the GM is the final arbiter of game rules implementation and game world interaction with the characters in the party. The classic example of GM Fiat is "rocks fall, everyone dies" but GM fiat can be subtle as well. The defining aspect of GM Fiat is that a decision is made that is supportable by no other means than "The GM decided to do it this way."

[Calybos1]

Here's some more you might like, played strictly for humor:

Pathfinder Lexicon

[Tacticslion]

Dot: a minor post in the Paizo.com forum threads (and perhaps some other forums), usually consisting of the word "dot" or the "." symbol or something similar. The purpose is to keep track of a thread as it updates, as it has a small, literal "dot" on the right side of a thread's title after you've posted within that thread. An example of this is the post you're reading.

EDIT: on forums, if, after you hit the "Submit Post" (or similar) button, you realize you need to change something, you use the "Edit" option near the top of your post. It is considered courteous to note what you edited, either by putting "EDIT" in front of the part edited, or by putting "EDIT:" followed by a brief description of what you changed. In the Paizo forums you can edit for up to an hour after posting initially. Example: this segment of this post.

[Flamewar]

Involving at least 2 people in a thread arguing usually oversuch things as rule/alignment interpretations, rogues, monks and summoners. These threads have the unique ability to summon Chris Lambertz.

[Matt Thomason]

Developer Someone with zero understanding of the needs of gamers, who enjoys creating gamebreaking material that nobody even wanted in the first place.

Gamer Someone that takes the hard work of developers and tries to use it in ways it wasn't designed for, then complains that it is broken.

Forumgoer A Gamer that enjoys focusing on the "complaining" part of the game, rather than actually picking up the book and playing it.

Publisher A company that hires Developers to fill pages with random words and numbers in an attempt to increase book size and weight to astronomical proportions, presumably as some kind of experiment to find the necessary size of a book in order to generate its own gravitational field.

Bookcase An item of furniture that works like an inverse TARDIS - however large it appears on the outside, there's never enough space on the inside.

[W E Ray]

Tucker's Kobolds The greatest low-level monster to throw at your PCs even when they're higher level because the little nasties (created by the eponymous DM) were played correctly, hiding in impossible-to-reach places, setting traps, using terrain, etc.

Angry Mothers From Heck People, including other gamers (see the talented John Simcoe) who attack, with varying vehemence, gaming that appears to take a turn to the diabolic or mature-audiences-only arena: magazine covers with scantily clad vixens or devils, adventures inspired by The Book of Vile Darkness, um, Monte Cook's Book of Vile Darkness, etc. The Angry Mothers from Heck are the ones who got D&D to take out "Devils" and "Demons" from 2E. And they're the ones who did things like sue TSR for facilitating crimes by inspiring kids to be evil.

Gazebo See "Funniest D&D story ever." (The DM says there's a gazebo on the hill; the Players don't know what a gazebo is.... "It's a gazebo." ... "What is it doing"? ... "It's a gazebo." ... "Should we roll initiative?" ... "It's a GAZEBO." ... "Arghhh, run away, run away.")

Devil LAWFUL Evil Outsider from Hell who HATES Demons. (Called "Baatezu" in the 90s cuz of Angry Mothers from Heck.)

Demon STUPID Evil Outsider from The Abyss who HATES Devils. (Called "Tanarri" in the 90s cuz of Angry Mothers from Heck.)

[ngc7293]

I didn't even KNOW there was a name for someone who had been gaming since the 80's. I remember selling my 1st Ed hard cover books at CMU (foolish mortal!) and later regretted it. I still have the even older stuff that came that for some reason I hole punched and put into a binder. I hear lots of people say they still have their boxed sets, but I don't know what happened to those boxes. A Grognard, eh? Interesting...