Every hobby develops its own slang, and role playing is no different. In the 30+ years since the creation of Dungeons & Dragons an impressive vocabulary has developed to confuse and bewilder newcomers to role playing games, as well as anyone stuck at a dinner table with a group of gamers. And everything becomes much more confusing with every role playing game having its own unique vocabulary.
So without further ado, the role playing glossary:
Role Playing Slang
Gamer - a person who plays role playing games
Gaming - playing a role playing game
Game Master (GM) - the person who designs the game, plot, story and world (also Dungeon Master [DM])
Player - a person playing a role playing game
Session - an evening or afternoon spent gaming
Campaign - a series of game sessions that all follow a single story
Munchies - the snacks necessary to any session to keep the gamers blood sugar up
d20 - the original rule system developed for Dungeons and Dragons, or an updated version of the system; this system uses a twenty sided dice
d(number) - way of referring to dice, many role playing games use unusual dice, such as 4, 8, 10 or 20 sided, a d10 is a ten sided dice
In Game - anything that happens with in the game: character actions, time periods in the story
Out of Game - anything in a session that happens between players and is not part of the game
System - the specific rule set that is used to run a game, common systems include d20, White Wolf's Storytelling System, and effects based systems such as BESM.
Role Playing Terms for Character Building
Character - the imaginary person that a player pretends to be during a role playing game, the protagonists or leading roles of the game
Character Gen - short for character generation, building a character according to the rules of the game (also genning a character)
Traits - ways a character is described on paper including health levels, skills, etc.
Character Sheet - the paper, generally a pre-formatted design, that character's traits are written on
Rolling up a Character - specific to d20 games, using dice to gen a character with random trait
Min/Maxing (derogatory)-twisting the rules to build a character that is amazing in combat but can't do anything else, in order to be 'better' then other characters
Rule Systems in Role Playing Games
Mechanics - rules that govern character building, dice rolling, and combat
Non Player Character (NPC) - any character run by the GM, the supporting cast and extras, as well as antagonists
Levels - in some systems: character ranks, characters start at level 1, and go up in levels through gaining experience points; characters get new abilities or increased traits when the go up in levels
Leveling Up - going up in level
Experience Points (XP)- credit for overcoming challenges in game, good role playing, or anything else that impresses the GM, some systems require a certain number of experience points to level up, other systems allow players to buy new traits directly with XP.
Die Roll (noun) - the dice or combination of die that a player rolls to find out if their character can do something
Combat - any time characters get into a fight, normally a physical fight, but occasionally a mental or magical battle
Combat Round - the basic time period of a combat, in general each character gets to act once per round; a round will usually take less then 10 seconds of in game time
Jessica Burde - Jessica Burde is a freelance writer living in Pennsylvania, USA. Jessica has been writing and loved writing for as long as she can ...
