Does it bother anyone else when...

[Arlanthe]

people begin using computer game and online RPG terms in D&D and other PnP games?

I try to be sensitive to changing culture, and not be an old fuddy duddy, but when players refer to beneficial enchantments in D&D as "buffs" and fighters as "tanking" and people "getting aggro" and other such terms, I feel somewhat annoyed.

Even among fantasy RPGs, each system has its own acronyms, rules, and feel, and I wouldn't blend too much between any two systems. Individuality is what separates one game from another.

To me computer games are ultimately very restricted, and terms like 'tanking" descrive what the mechanics of, say, a warrior in World of Warcraft does, but in a PnP game would only serve to dictate a characters actins. I prefer my players not use these terms, as they bias characters (which are supposed to be role played anyway) toward behaving a in a certain expected manner.

Plus I always thought the term "buffs" just sounded stupid outside of an MMO. We have these terms in a chat buffer because as instant messaging has shown, via typing it is easier to use abbreviations and acronyms for things rather than always spell them out- especially in the heat of battle. I don't see any excuse for this when everyone is around a table- supposedly role playing.

[Maxymiuk]

The best (worst?) example of that I saw recently was someone complaining about "wife aggro." Funny, but not really conductive to the roleplaying experience.

You could always combat it through creative misunderstanding. Such as asking for a "buff" causes the addressed to produce a piece of cloth and polish the fighter's armor up a bit.

[Shazzbaa]

Ehh, I can understand not wanting such terms to be used in-character, but I don't understand the big deal about players using them outside of the game.

What else would you call "buffs?" What else would you call "tanking?" They're legitimate spells and a legitimate battle tactic. Why would giving it a name that didn't arise from an MMORPG make it any different? These are just terms that the players are familiar with, they don't force them to act a certain way. The only one I can even see being a problem is the one about "aggro," and if that's an issue, it only takes a few battles to demonstrate to the players that D&D doesn't work on an aggro system.

If your players are looking at the D&D world as an MMORPG, then that's not going to change just because you're using different words. The real problem is the way they're looking at it, not the words they're using.

The fact that "buffs" sounds silly to you is merely an issue of unfamiliarity, honestly. When I hear it, I instantly know what it means and it sounds natural. [And I'm not even a gamer!] In fact, in writing this post, I was trying to think of what sort of phrase you expected people to use, and I couldn't think of one. *shrugs* Just as another perspective. My mom thought the word "hoodie" sounded stupid for the longest time... but since I'd heard the word used a great deal more than I'd ever heard "hooded sweatshirt," it sounded fine to me. When I used the word, I wasn't trying to get on my mom's nerves, I wasn't trying to abbreviate the proper phrase, and I wasn't being too lazy to say "hooded sweatshirt," -- "Hoodie" was honestly the more natural word for me, the first word I thought of.

I suppose I could censor myself and replace "hoodie" with "hooded sweatshirt," when talking to my mom, but it wouldn't have made me think about it any differently.

[AmoDman]

Blah, who cares? It's a a two-way road. I'm sure there's terms they (and I) use in MMOs they picked up from D&D. Hell, me and my bud were just playin Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and even there we just by default kept calling our powers spells w/o thinking about it, focus - magic, and melee weak power strong characters - casters (among other things).

The only out of place term I saw there was "getting aggro," because in D&D the monsters don't have "aggro"...they do what they want. You could use it if you've properly pissed off a baddy onto yourself, but the only time I see it working similarly in D&D is with the Knight class.

[Raum]

people begin using computer game and online RPG terms in D&D and other PnP games?

Not really. Particularly since most of the terms used in computer games have a much longer history than computers. But even if they were created solely by gamers, a living language changes over time. It's actually amusing to read some older definitions.

I try to be sensitive to changing culture, and not be an old fuddy duddy, but when players refer to beneficial enchantments in D&D as "buffs" and fighters as "tanking" and people "getting aggro" and other such terms, I feel somewhat annoyed.

The term "buff" used as a verb meant to make something shiny long before gamers started using it to mean make an avatar better. The term "tanking" has also been around a while.

People are generalists and language isn't exact. We wouldn't have nearly as much fun with an exact language either...can you imagine life without double entendres? :)

[Dark]

I try to be sensitive to changing culture, and not be an old fuddy duddy, but when players refer to beneficial enchantments in D&D as "buffs" and fighters as "tanking" and people "getting aggro" and other such terms, I feel somewhat annoyed.

My group was talking about "tanking" way back in 1994 :) Are you sure about where those terms come from?

[Matthew]

I hate it. Meat Shields, Heal Bitch / Bot, Blaster.. I find these sorts of terms distracting to say the least. I try to never use them.

[ExHunterEmerald]

I used Meatshield (and Meatwall) long before I had even played an MMO. Probably before the terminology was widespread.

[AmoDman]

I hate it. Meat Shields, Heal Bitch / Bot, Blaster.. I find these sorts of terms distracting to say the least. I try to never use them.

Distracting from what? When discussing mechanics, they're quick and to the point. It'd be rather odd for the rogue to yell over that the enemy mage is buffing IC, but I'd imagine most everyone realizes that already (and if they don't...well, they have other D&D issues that need worked on).

p.s. The three terms you mentioned I've heard rooted from D&D more than I'ver ever heard them in other rpg's...how often, for instance, in most MMOs do you have to make a distinction between evocation and transmutation mages? Not often, in my experience. Blaster's a decent summary of what your wizard's about when they're an evocation specialist.

[jjpickar]

This is what puzzles me, what in the nine hells is a munchkin? Your thoughts are appreciated.

[Douglas]

Wikipedia on Munchkins

[Matthew]

Distracting from what? When discussing mechanics, they're quick and to the point. It'd be rather odd for the rogue to yell over that the enemy mage is buffing IC, but I'd imagine most everyone realizes that already (and if they don't...well, they have other D&D issues that need worked on).

p.s. The three terms you mentioned I've heard rooted from D&D more than I'ver ever heard them in other rpg's...how often, for instance, in most MMOs do you have to make a distinction between evocation and transmutation mages? Not often, in my experience. Blaster's a decent summary of what your wizard's about when they're an evocation specialist.

From what they represent. In my head they just sound like nonesenses. I have never actually encountered characters who actually represent these functions. A Blaster is a Gun in Star Wars to me, a Meat Shield is a Shield made of Meat and a Healbot is some kind of Medical Robot (in my mind). It takes me a while to move from those images to what people are really talking about, so I find it distracting. Frankly, I don't really want to become familiar with the terms either.

[mikeejimbo]

I thought aggro was British slang, though I did read that in Wikipedia and I don't know how old it is.

And I would wager that "Meat Shield" originated in the army. The only reference to this I can find is Wiktionary saying that in Canada, it's slang for an Infantryman. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Military_slang

[Wehrkind]

Well Matthew, in your attempt to be provincial, you have defined the terms pretty well. Blasters blow things up. If you refer to a character as one, it means "He blows things up." A shield is something that you put in front of you to get hit instead of you. If it is another human, "meat" is a good description of it's make up. Your definition of "Heal Bot" is pretty exactly how most people define a class/character who only contributes healing.

So yea, you are familiar.


Edit: Yea, I picked up meat shield from war gaming, typically the largely worthless Russian infantry that was thrown in front of tanks to keep them alive. See "cannon fodder".

[Sir_Banjo]

What else would you call "buffs?" What else would you call "tanking?" They're legitimate spells and a legitimate battle tactic. Why would giving it a name that didn't arise from an MMORPG make it any different? .

Here, here. You'll excuse me if I can't be bothered with a more eloquent response.

[Frosty Flake]

It's kind of funny but... I've been using the terms Meat Sheild, Meat Puppet, Tank to describe characters for a long time... Sometimes in-character (My wizard referred to the paladin as a divine meat puppet). A few slang terms, OOC, are fine by me... though I dread the day that leet-speak takes over gaming circles and everyone starts "pwning teh boss" and then "T-P to base for wench-80085 celebrate woot!" (or whatever)

I thought aggro was British slang, though I did read that in Wikipedia and I don't know how old it is.

And I would wager that "Meat Shield" originated in the army. The only reference to this I can find is Wiktionary saying that in Canada, it's slang for an Infantryman. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Military_slang

Meat-shield may be a Canadian thing originally, I don't know... I know it was common enough here before all the on line hack and slash.

[Saithis Bladewing]

OOC-wise? Not in the slightest. It doesn't distract me from the roleplaying...in fact, almost nothing distracts me from the roleplaying. I can stay in-character and suspend disbelief better than anyone I know in real life. :P

IC-wise, it bothers me because its completely unrealistic and breaks character.

[PMDM]

It's a game that reflects life. Why should people suddenly ignore their other hobbies for this one?

[Scorpina]

The terms bug me, but I can't justify it at all. Well, I dislike 'Healbot/Healbitch etc' because I have a tendancy to play Clerics and a desire not to be one...

[JaronK]

I actually like using such terms in character. Soldiers in real life use such terms, calling people Jarheads or Sappers or whatever. Why shouldn't D&D characters use similar terms for things like Paladins and Clerics? Of course, I don't generally use the same terms, but sometimes it's appropriate. I don't use "tank" in character, because that word originates from the method of manufacture for creating those things... a method which would not exist in a fantasy setting. "Meat Shield" however seems fully appropriate. I also have characters with terms like "Boomer" (mage focused on fireballs) or "Bandage" (cleric focused on healing).

JaronK

[oriong]

Almost all the terms mentioned here don't originate from MMORPGs, they were first used in Pen and Paper RPGs, it's just MMORPGs are of course more popular and terms like this get thrown around a lot more because there is no perceived need to talk 'in character'

[Frosty Flake]

Plus I always thought the term "buffs" just sounded stupid outside of an MMO. We have these terms in a chat buffer because as instant messaging has shown, via typing it is easier to use abbreviations and acronyms for things rather than always spell them out- especially in the heat of battle. I don't see any excuse for this when everyone is around a table- supposedly role playing.

You know, on second thought, maybe this sort of thing IS appropriate in-character... Think about it from an in-character perspective. Realistically, if you want to convey something to a party member during whirling combat, you would want to fit the greatest amount of accurate and precise information with the least amount of syllables. “Father Archibald, can you not aide poor Sir Roderick the Gallant with some of your Palor-given powers of healing? I fear this vile animated plant will overcome him, and send him to the grave!” is pretty absurd compared to “Archie, Heal Tank!” (OK, maybe not “Tank”... I like Meat, it's a good one-syllable code-name,:P) Maybe the party would make up their own short terms for objects, tactics, etc.. but it would be essentially the same.

In fact, MMO speak might be especially appropriate for a modern or cyberpunk game that had magic in it... maybe the Urban arcana characters play WoW in their free time, so they all speak like that when they fight the radical hobgoblin eco-terrorists?

[Jestir256]

I feel that the intrusion of MMO lexicon into tabeltop RPG's actually represents a disturbing trend; unfortunately it's a trend that Wizards promoted with the release of D&D 3.0. More and more of the new players I meat think that D&D is just a computer game without the computer. Their first consideration for how "good" their character is is how effective they are in combat, they have no idea what I mean when I talk about metagame logic (the fact that we even NEED such a term is disturbing; it represents an even more dismaying trend), and the absolute limit to their roleplaying is coming up with their character's name.

There's an entire school of linguistics that believes that our culture is determined by the evolution of our language, rather than our language by our culture. If it can be true of a parent culture, it surely could be true of subcultures within it, and if that's the case, PnP is already dying.

[DeathQuaker]

Almost all the terms mentioned here don't originate from MMORPGs, they were first used in Pen and Paper RPGs

Yep. In fact, I'm feeling like the MMORPGers are stealing from me and getting all the credit. I've never played an MMORPG in my life and I've talked about "tanking" and "buffing" for years, having picked up the terms from other PnP gamers. Some of them have played MMORPGs, yes, but were PnP gaming and using those terms before the string of letters "MMORPG" had any meaning.

More like, PnP gamers are bringing their old terminology online and seeing it used more frequently. It's the prevalence of gaming tradition growing.

[Fizban]

I'd take that even further: with the advent of MMO's, there's a lot more people thinking like this than those that play tabletop RPG's. Practically everyone plays WoW now (an exaggeration I know, but it's scary sometimes), and most of them think WoW is the base of everything else. I'll see them applying WoW logic and garbled leet-speak to any RPG, any video game period, practically anything that has ever been associated with nerds ever. It's really annoying having to explain to someone that some term or idea that thought was so cool and new has been around for years, originated with the DnD they so despise, and means something completely different.

Edit: Gah, deathquaker simued me, took my post a little out of context.

[AmoDman]

Their first consideration for how "good" their character is is how effective they are in combat

That's shocking. *Gazes at legions of human history and tendencies and multitudes of threads on combat mechanics/CoDZilla & balance* /sarcasm off (< First MMO originating term in this thread).

[Raum]

Tis kind of amusing...term X was either originally PnP and you like or it was originally MMO and you detest it. Or maybe vice-versa. :)

Thing is, most of the terms referred to originated long before either MMOs or any PnP RPG.

Language is a living, changing concept. Terms used for one meaning will change over time...or even just from one location to another.

[the_tick_rules]

well i try to keep them to a moderate level. we've had to put the smack down on one guy who tries to talk leet.

[Thomas]

Most of the suspect terminology is definitely tabletop slang, originally. The only bits that I heard first in MUDs and then MMORPGs (Ultima Online) are "tank" and "tanking" (maybe "buff," too). In fact, considering that tabletop was around first (what do we count as the "first" MMORPG, anyway? The first Neverwinter Nights? Ultima Online? MUDs?), it's just natural that the terminology originated from tabletop gamers.

[JadedDM]

I can tolerate some of them, as long as they are used in an OOC context. I'll slap any player who says "tank" or "buff" IC with a nice XP penalty. Although that's never really happened before.

There are some terms I just can't stand, though; namely 'mobs' and 'aggro.' Those terms just have no place in tabletop gaming.