Toons, Faceroll, and Other Gamer Jargon

[SleepyShadow]

Perhaps it is my age catching up to me, or perhaps I just need to read up on gamer lingo more thoroughly, but I am often confused by much of what my players say. Here are a few examples of what I mean:


Toon: A character, whether it is in use or barely past the concept stage. I vaguely remember asking something about this word use before, which is the only reason I was able to understand what was being talked about.

O.P.: Overpowered in some way. I was in the dark about this until one of my players introduced me to online gaming.

Faceroll: I ... honestly have no idea what this means. The only thing I have to go off of is that the druid is apparently one of these.

Leeroy Jenkins: Often shouted during a charge attack


Do your players, your DM, or even you use strange lingo or game terminology around the RPG table? What does it mean?

[Righteous Doggy]

You call entirely guessed and random inputs a faceroll, becuase you get a similar result from placing your face on the keyboard and rolling it all around. It infers a lack of skill or attempt at skill.

Leeroy Jenkins was a character from a WoW video. He ran into a dragon hatchery and got his whole team killed, so someone who Leeroy's is someone who charges blindly into danger(usually suicidally and in a way that endangers others). Its actually kinda old, and some people have a tendancy to overuse it.

Eh, jargon will pop up everyonce in a while in anything. don't be afraid to ask what things mean with your group, helps you know whats going on after all! I usually play with younger players or on mmos, its a nonstop stream of acronym, meme, and slang.

[Hyudra]

Toon first came up in World of Warcraft, first, and I think it was some reference to how cartoony the characters looked, but it has spread everywhere since, even when the characters are most definitely not cartoony. It's the most irritating word, on so many levels.

Faceroll refers to video games where a given character is so easy to play that you can roll your face (thus the term) against the keyboard and still win.

Leeroy Jenkins is another World of Warcraft term. It stems from a famous video that had a character by that same name. It was something of a commentary on how the game had been reduced to numbers & minutiae (spending 15-30 minutes calculating whether they could do enough damage for the next fights, how to organize in the next fight), with the titular character interrupting said discussion to suicidally charge headlong into a notoriously difficult encounter, drawing the attention ('aggro') of dozens of enemies.

I think you may need to play less with WoW players.

[Cespenar]

If I'm not mistaken, besides "OP", they are all MMO jargon. Ideally, a specific jargon shouldn't be used outside their core area out of consideration (what's that, now?), but... meh. It's teh interwebz.

[Vitruviansquid]

I first heard "toons" in Everquest to refer to characters, as in "your cartoon" as opposed to a comment about how characters look cartoony.

[Righteous Doggy]

If I'm not mistaken, besides "OP", they are all MMO jargon. Ideally, a specific jargon shouldn't be used outside their core area out of consideration (what's that, now?), but... meh. It's teh interwebz.

I use them everywhere I see fit, mwahaha~ I call it a reroll when you make a new toon regardless of where I am, and every character is a toon to me! maybe I'm just crazy though.

[SleepyShadow]

I think you may need to play less with WoW players.

It's worse. They play League of Legends. A great game, I enjoy playing it, but for the love of Pelor I'd like to keep it separate from the game table.


"So is it a mook with a spear or are we fighting Xin Zhao?"

"The baddie is getting away! Karthus ult now!"

"Why can't more bards be mute?"

<insert any action> "Better nerf Irelia."


My players make me weep sometimes

[Hiro Protagonest]

JadePhoenix hates the word "toon" with a passion, and frankly, I've got to agree with her on this one. It resonates with MMOs, where characters are a set of stats, maybe some personality, and no backstory.

[Vitruviansquid]

Beats yelling "DOUBLE DAMAGE!" when you get buffed.

(I kid. Dota 2's a fine game)

[Hyudra]

It's worse. They play League of Legends. A great game, I enjoy playing it, but for the love of Pelor I'd like to keep it separate from the game table.


"So is it a mook with a spear or are we fighting Xin Zhao?"

"The baddie is getting away! Karthus ult now!"

"Why can't more bards be mute?"

<insert any action> "Better nerf Irelia."


My players make me weep sometimes

That's really, really depressing.

[Ravens_cry]

And so it comes full circle. Certain jargon from table-top gaming has come into even non-role play games, like hit points for example.
I dislike the word 'toon' for a player character, it sounds like you are not taking your character seriously, that it's just an 'alt'.
That may not be the intent, but that is the impression I get.

[oxybe]

no better or worse then the incessant monty python quotes of yore.

if tabletop games remain wholly secular, i'm pretty sure we'd see it die within a generation of gamers or two.

then again, if it remained secular by choice i don't think i'd feel bad to see it die.

this whole aversion to anything that's not self-referential is what's aggravating me. i want to see the hobby evolve but so many people in it seem genuinely afraid of the hobby growing.

i guess it's model trains for us all.

[Ravens_cry]

As I said on the "OMG TV TROPES RUINED FOREVAR, EVAR!" thread, many fans, especially the most vocal ones, tend to be adverse to change.
Also, the Internet, thanks to its ability bring people together with similar interests, allows these people to find each other and reinforce these feelings.

[SleepyShadow]

I don't hate that my players use internet references/memes/whatever. Sometimes it's genuinely funny. Change is good, as is Monty Python.

I don't expect the gaming to be secular, but I wish I understood more of what they were saying.

I dislike the word 'toon' for a player character, it sounds like you are not taking your character seriously, that it's just an 'alt'

I agree with this wholeheartedly.

[KillianHawkeye]

Yeah, one of the players in my group uses the word "toon" and it drives me crazy. Not that our games are srs bsns or anything, I just could never relate to my character if I considered it a cartoon. When I think of a cartoon, I don't think of anime, I think of Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse.

[Ravens_cry]

I don't expect the gaming to be secular, but I wish I understood more of what they were saying.

To be fair, this hobby is full of its own jargon.

[Righteous Doggy]

srs bsns is slang too... You see lots of troper speak on the forum too. Everyone has it! You can always ask people to cut down on things if you have a really super big issue and think they overuse. Just don't bash it, its a part of our dialec, culture, identity and the like... can you dig it? :P

[SiuiS]

JadePhoenix hates the word "toon" with a passion, and frankly, I've got to agree with her on this one. It resonates with MMOs, where characters are a set of stats, maybe some personality, and no backstory.

You missed that these characters are actually represented by a cartoon sprite.

It's akin to calling every character ever a sheet, because the fame I started with had character sheets instead of sprites or miniatures.

...

I'm going to do this every time I play with folks who say toon.

[Ravens_cry]

That could . . .easily be misconstrued.

[SleepyShadow]

To be fair, this hobby is full of its own jargon.

Absolutely, but at least I understand that jargon

srs bsns is slang too... You see lots of troper speak on the forum too. Everyone has it! You can always ask people to cut down on things if you have a really super big issue and think they overuse. Just don't bash it, its a part of our dialec, culture, identity and the like... can you dig it? :P

Slang is fine, and I really try hard not to bash it. There is a point that it becomes too much.

To get back to the original thought behind this thread, what unusual slang permeates some other Playgrounders' games?

[Crow]

Not really gaming-related, but I am going to tell a little story about how these things get started.

For a while, I was on a team whose job it was to break into high-security facilities in order to test their physical security. Oftentimes, we would attack their search/access facilities, as these were usually the most vulnerable spots on the perimeter.

So all of these places have handicap access, and some of the handicap doors have plexiglass windows large enough to step through easily, if you break the plexiglass.

We soon discovered that you could fire a few shots into the plexiglass, and with a running start, burst through the door. This was great, because then you wouldn't have to explosively breach the door!

So one day, we were planning a mission, and the team leader mentioned using this tactic to breach a door, at which point, one of the team members out of the blue, goes "Oh Yeeeeah!". We all laughed like hell.

From that day onward, the tactic became known as "Kool-Aid manning". During a briefing, it became almost commonplace to hear something like the following:

"The team will enter the personnel access facility from the north entrance. They will neutralize all cameras and targets of opportunity, and then Kool-Aid Man through the handicap access door to gain access to the protected area..."

Imagine our surprise when we all leave the team and end up working in the industry, only to hear industry professionals with no direct ties to the team referring to Kool-aid manning!

So I guess the point is, these slang terms make sense, but most of the time you need to be "in the know" to get where they came from in the first place.

[Cespenar]

That was a cool story, and a nice example of how close a jargon is to an in-joke. It's fun when used around the people who you're sure to understand them, but you don't go and use them among everyone. It's the same. For example, I don't go to soccer fans and say "That Messi is so OP, man, the devs should really nerf him in the next patch!" and expect them to "get it".

[Dimers]

My gaming group's jargon includes "bad carpenters" as a reference to the Thieves' Guild ... because it's not stealing if the item is freely available, and it's freely available if it's not nailed down, and it's not nailed down if they can pry it up.

"Gib" is not widespread in the American vernacular but gets used a fair bit in tabletop games I've played.

[RedWarlock]

Toon first came up in World of Warcraft, first, and I think it was some reference to how cartoony the characters looked, but it has spread everywhere since, even when the characters are most definitely not cartoony. It's the most irritating word, on so many levels.

Actually, the oldest usage of Toon I know of dates back to Sierra's The Realm, one of the first MMO's (and I do mean one of the first, there's a difference of months, and it's hard to judge because I think the one that has the title was actually a public beta rather than true release), back when there was a fine line between MMO and graphical MUD. The graphics were specifically cartoony, cel-shaded 2D characters, so they were called Toons.

Look it up, it's still running, albiet under different owners. (I actually worked on it as an artist a few years ago.)

[valadil]

JadePhoenix hates the word "toon" with a passion, and frankly, I've got to agree with her on this one. It resonates with MMOs, where characters are a set of stats, maybe some personality, and no backstory.

Me too. I first heard it in DDO and assumed it was an MMO thing. My interpretation is that the toon is somehow less than a character. Like, it's your video game avatar who has stats and a sword and no personality. I made a point of not using it.

But it also made sense linguistically. Character was too long to say all the time. I feel like I could write out char and people would know what I meant (although C programmers would likely be confused...) but if I said char, it wouldn't make sense. I figured toon emerged as a monosyllabic replacement for character when microphones took hold in MMOs. Dude was too generic. Alt worked, but implied you were on an alternate character rather than your primary. I think I mostly used alt and main to refer to my DDO characters.

Anyway, I had hoped toon was just an MMO thing. That people call their tabletop characters toons saddens me greatly.

Imagine our surprise when we all leave the team and end up working in the industry, only to hear industry professionals with no direct ties to the team referring to Kool-aid manning!

Kool-aid man has become a verb in all the tabletop games I've been in in recent memory. I took no part in the verbing of Kool-aid man, but enjoyed watching it spring up independently like that.

[TuggyNE]

Me too. I first heard it in DDO and assumed it was an MMO thing. My interpretation is that the toon is somehow less than a character. Like, it's your video game avatar who has stats and a sword and no personality. I made a point of not using it.

But it also made sense linguistically. Character was too long to say all the time. I feel like I could write out char and people would know what I meant (although C programmers would likely be confused...) but if I said char, it wouldn't make sense. I figured toon emerged as a monosyllabic replacement for character when microphones took hold in MMOs. Dude was too generic. Alt worked, but implied you were on an alternate character rather than your primary. I think I mostly used alt and main to refer to my DDO characters.

Anyway, I had hoped toon was just an MMO thing. That people call their tabletop characters toons saddens me greatly.

I hate the term toon even in DDO. (I do use alt at times, but char is my current preference.)

In D&D? There's no need to be so terse, IMO.

Kool-aid man has become a verb in all the tabletop games I've been in in recent memory. I took no part in the verbing of Kool-aid man, but enjoyed watching it spring up independently like that.

Verbing weirds language.

[Mando Knight]

Leeroy Jenkins is another World of Warcraft term. It stems from a famous video that had a character by that same name. It was something of a commentary on how the game had been reduced to numbers & minutiae (spending 15-30 minutes calculating whether they could do enough damage for the next fights, how to organize in the next fight), with the titular character interrupting said discussion to suicidally charge headlong into a notoriously difficult encounter, drawing the attention ('aggro') of dozens of enemies.

Alright, chums, let's DO THIS!

LEEROOOY... JEEEEENKIIIINSSS! (Bonus for WoW players: cite all the errors... especially if you can do so using the version of the game as of the video's original publishing date)
At least I have chicken.

[Knaight]

Regarding Toon: There are a few places where I'm fine with it. For instance, if you are playing Toon, or Cthoonu, it makes perfect sense. The characters literally are cartoons, there is literal cartoon physics, and using Toon just fits in with the rest of the milieu (particularly with Cthoonu. When you have an actual skill called "Go postal with guns", it seems mild).

Regarding Faceroll: I actually hadn't heard that one at all, though there is someone on the forum who uses that as a user name. I immediately thought of them, due to literally never having heard it elsewhere.

As for overpowered, it's a useful term in game design. Having to say "this particular option exceeds all other options to the point of effectively being a non-option due to being mandatory, and as such should be reduced in power so that the actual number of options is closer to the theoretical number of options" every time it would otherwise be used is clunky.

Use of "Leeroy Jenkins" is also a new one to me, though I've seen the video and very occasional references to it.

[Slipperychicken]

I honestly don't have a problem with slang, jargon, etc, when used in an appropriate context. I see it as just more ways to express meaning, to convey your thoughts to a listener. Of course, any word/phrase has times when it is neither desirable or useful (or when another will do its job better) whether that word originated from Shakespeare or WoW.


Language is constantly in flux, so you might as well have fun with it.



Faceroll: Due to context, and its seeming interchangeability with "Steamroll" I always knew it meant "surpass/complete with ease", but didn't know its origin (literally rolling one's face on the keyboard, and still winning) until now.

[Some I've picked up personally]

CC: "Crowd Control" -hampering or manipulating opponents' actions. Synonymous with Battlefield Control (BFC). I befriended a LoL player and picked the term up about a month ago.

DPS: "Damage per Second" -refers to the quantity of damage a character deals in a small period of time, usually one second (in real time games) or one turn (in turn-based games). Also refers to characters whose job it is to deal large amounts of damage in short periods of time, since damage per second is their primary concern.

Burst/Nova: Verb; refers to dealing spectacular amounts of damage in a very short time, but then needing to replenish large amounts of mana (or other resources) or wait through an especially long "cooldown period" before attempting again.

Focus (Verb): In DnD, I use "focusing" to refer to singling out an opponent, and devoting the teams entire attention to disabling it as quickly as possible. For example DnD 3.5e encourages your team to focus enemy casters because they can make your life miserable with the right spells.

Leeroy: My friends and I use this one all the time, referring to when one character charges unwisely (almost suicidally) ahead into danger, without the group's aid, and generally without their consent. Often used in sentences like "He just pulled a Leeroy", or "He Leeroyed right into their base". Of course, it originates from a video of the same name (Leeroy Jenkins), whose titular character hastily charged ahead of his team, getting them all killed but not seeming to mind himself.

[Noedig]

My brother and several other people I play with use MMO language to describe party roles in every game we play.
Tank, DPS, Heals, CC, Focus Fire, and AoE all make regular appearances at the table. I can't begrudge them the use of the words though. As to other bits of jargon we sling around, well I honestly can't say we have any.

The closest thing we have is when we're playing D&D and the Wizard says 'I open it,' in response to everything the DM asks.