[Heretic] Avoiding the OMGWTFBBQ!!?!?!?!!! disease

[raithe]

Sydney
I will check those out as soon as possible. I would more than welcome a balance between the two styles. As a counterpoint, most of the gamers I have met would gladly backstab an in character friend for more dice on the next roll. Anytime it comes down to story or numbers, the numbers almost always win.

Callan
No need to be diplomatic. I am not the sort who is easily ruffled. I do not explore everything to the furthest reaches,
no. This is impossible. However I do believe in being thorough about anything I undertake or participate in. My point is
that society today is much more specialized than it once was. There is almost too much to absorb just in day to day
life. The resultant trend has been that people have ceased to be concerned about many things they would have only a
few decades ago. It was considered normal at that if one owned a car, one knew how to to basic repairs to it. The same was true for any technical item. There were certain responsibilities that went with owning it. Now most people
cannot change their own oil, maintenance their computers, and so forth. Moreover they have no desire to know. Myself
whenever I become involved in or with anything new I try my best to learn as much as possible about it. I can tell you
how to gut and rebuild all windows variants before XP. Is it because I like them? No. I do use them however and
therefore deem it necessary to learn a certain amount about them. Do I desire to know every aspect of each thing
I encounter in life, Yes. Is that possible, No. I merely do the best I can. I understand your thinking and in a way you
are correct. I am disturbed by the tossing out of proper speech as a whole. The more we streamline speech, the
more depth it loses. Danny mentioned the term LASER earlier. True it is easier to spit out than Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, but by the same token how many people do you think know that is what it means? In shortening it we have gained ease of speech but lost a ready access to understanding the logic behind it.
My viewpoint is one which is doomed to defeat, for humans nearly always take the path of least resistance. I realize this but I cannot help but feel we are losing something as a culture in the process.

I will happily post in the actual play forum as soon as I get this project finished enough to playtest. The outline, most
of the system, and the backstory are complete. All that remains is putting it into a coherent form for playtesting. I have decided to use a few of the suggestions in this thread and some ideas of my own for naming conventions. Hopefully they will combine to minimize the problem. I feel it does not merit much further thought as beyond that, it is futile. I only wanted to minimize the encouragement of what I have seen in my groups to be disruptive.

[Sydney Freedberg]

most of the gamers I have met would gladly backstab an in character friend for more dice on the next roll. Anytime it comes down to story or numbers, the numbers almost always win.

Question: How do you determine who's an "in-character friend"? Several possibilities suggest themselves:
1) GM introduces NPC and says to player, "this NPC, s/he's from your old village back in the home country, you grew up together s/he's your friend." Player is afraid to argue with GM openly but quietly dislikes the NPC, and probably resents the GM imposing the NPC on him/her, and thus betrays/abandons this imposed "friend" at first opportunity.
2) Players get together either to start a new campaign or to replace dead/retired PCs. Everyone says, "these characters we've just made up, they're all friends, that's why they're adventuring together" -- but no one puts much effort into making a character the other players like, so while the fictional characters are friends, the real people playing don't care about each others' PCs nearly as much as they do about rewards like treasure or XPs; thus players have their characters backstab their "friends" for little cause.
3) Players are all balls-to-the-walls competitors and happy about it. They see their characters as tools for competition, not tools for storytelling, so screwing each other over is part of the fun.

[Arpie]

Conversely: Why should the players know the thing's name? Even the D&D manuals usually instruct you "don't say 'it's a bugbear,' describe it instead." And that's in a setting where lots of people have studied the monster books (in fact, I begged my parents for, and got, all the Monster Manuals years before I ever played a game of D&D). Even if you're using an established setting, you can invent new nasties to surprise your players, and part of that can be not giving them a name. Then watch the players try to refer to the Thing; they'll do the work of inventing alternative titles for you.

I think that UNKNOWN ARMIES does a great job with this, although it has a lexicon of terms, the flavor text often goes out of its way to suggest alternate terminology.

Unfortunately, since this is accomplished through casual re-naming of game elements, it rather makes the opposite point. Language is subsumed into the subculture of the game and "eyeball munchers" become much more terrifying because, even though you "own it" by naming it, the players have instilled their own sense of what's scary or dangerous or threatening or even interesting about the creature/magic spell/event/motif into the name.

So, yeah, avoiding standard terminology and letting players develop their own jargon works - but it isn't "good English." In fact, it's kinda double plus un-good English.

[raithe]

Sydney
The phrase was meant both symbolically and literally. I did have a particular instance in mind of player killing a fellow player's
character. However I was mostly trying to express that most gamers I know put little to no value whatsoever on a fictional life.
Hence "is the issue worth killing someone over" never crosses their minds. Sorry for not clarifying, This why I choose not to post
often in forums. It seems very hard to make myself understood. Please bear with me.

[dunlaing]

A nitpick: a acronym is a word made from the first letters of a phrase.  Like LASER or MAFIA.

That's a myth. The term mafia in Italian means "boldness, bravado" and likely comes from Arabic mahya "aggressive boasting, bragging". There are a lot of terms that are reported as originating as acronyms that didn't originate that way at all. (e.g., For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge)

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Rattle off an inscenant bunch capital letters at them in quick succession and
They will simply stare blankly at you. There is good reason for this. None of what you just said ACTUALLY
means anything. It REFERS to something else which means something. Hence, the confusion.

I think you're a little off here -- in fact, many people have argued convincingly that all language works as you describe acronyms working.

What you do seem to be talking about is jargon; i.e. specialized terms for things. They stare blankly not because of some weird removal from The Meaning, but because they have no idea what the words being used mean. They stare in the same way someone from the 18th century might stare if we started telling them about our 'car' -- does this mean that car is somehow removed from actual meaning? Acronyms are just shorthand for longer words -- they're new vocabulary. If some gamer started talking to a non-gamer about 'black spiral dancers' do you really think they would understand them anymore than if they started talking about 'BSDs'? Both usages are incomprehensible to someone who doesn't know what the words mean.

This seems to be a problem with society at large. We have become interested only in the quick fix, instant
gratification way of understanding. We do not want to know or think about the whole aspect of anything.
We do not wish to contemplate the deeper philisophical meanings of everything.

This is... okay, suffice to say I think you're totally out to lunch, and your argument here is founded on an extremely naive view of how language works, some of which I referred to above. I'm trying not to throw the book at you, so I'll just move on to the question at hand.

What I would like from you is suggestions for making a game which does not easily lend itself to the sort
of babble which appears in the title of this post. Is that even possible? All thoughts are welcome.

Absolutely. Just think about why people actually abbreviate/create acronyms, and then do your best to avoid terms that require that sort of treatment. As someone has probably already pointed out, people do not create acronyms because of some sort of philosophical shallowness -- they do it because it's faster to say, and faster to write, and because this efficiency outweighs any loss of meaning in most circumstances. For example, using RPGs instead of 'roleplaying games' on the Forge is not going to cause a breakdown of communication, or any major loss of connotation.

So in short, develop roleplaying games whose terms are very short, simple, and -- if you like -- use words that already exist in everyday speech. (The danger of this last one is that you then have to deal with the entire history of that word, as it exists for every player, including any positive or negative connotations the word may have for them that you cannot possibly predict. Still, this should be workable.) Consider that nobody (that I know) abbreviates 'Strength' when playing D&D, whereas Dexterity is consistently abbreviated to 'Dex' in speech. 'Wisdom' escapes this treatment, and so do 'hit points' in most cases. This suggests you want your terms to mostly be under two syllables, as a default.

Another option is to create terminology and jargon that is so evocative and fun to say that people will prefer to use the full term rather than abbreviate. I know that personally I would much rather say "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" -- ideally in an exclamatory, pompous British accent -- than refer to the "LEG".

--

But you should also consider that maybe these trends are harmless. It's true that people refer to Black Spiral Dancers as 'BSDs' -- it's not true, however, that shortening or abbreviating the term somehow renders it impotent. 'BSD' can become a phrase of terror in its own right, whether or not anybody knows what it refers do (in fact, moreso if nobody knows what it refers to.) It seems to me that you are confusing several problems: one, that there is a lot of jargon in RPGs, which makes them awkward to talk about with non-gamers or with gamers unfamiliar with the specific RPG; two, that people don't like deep thinkin'; three, that stripping the 'colour' from game terminology often makes it less... colourful. I don't think these issues are as intertwined as you imagine; they can each be addressed individually, once you determine which is the main problem you want to deal with.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  I agree with Daniel! That is an excellant analysis of the issue.
  And Rathe, don't feel like your attempt to reach out to these boards was pointless. But do feel like you started a heated discussion about game design and gamer culture. If you liked this conversation, think of RPG design issues that are just as engaging, and if you didn't, stick to more mundane game design topics. Ultimately, I don't think anyone here did not get what you were saying or felt that your points were not valid. They may not agree with you, but that is different isn't it?
  Please don't hesitate to use this forum for what it was designed for, discussing your game design. You will find that the people here are vocal and helpful.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

It's time to moderate this thread.

Ice Cream Emperor, you are playing an internet/geek game which is called I know lots more about that. It isn't to be played here. If someone writes about X, and you happen to be knowledgeable about X, then do not lecture them about how wrong they are. If you look over your post, and see that you are not helping the other person, but rather demonstrating that they don't understand something that you do understand, then in Forge terms, your behavior is spamming. The right thing to do is to breathe heavily, not to post, and go do something else for a while.

Raithe, I'd like to clarify one of Callan's points. When he suggested posting in Actual Play, he wasn't talking only about playtesting your current game. Please post there about any of your role-playing experiences, whenever they might have been. This is probably the single most powerful way to generate insight and help for your current design.

This thread needs to return to its focus on the design of the game in question.

Best,
Ron

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Ice Cream Emperor, you are playing an internet/geek game which is called I know lots more about that. It isn't to be played here.

Fair enough. That's why I tried to veer back on topic with some constructive suggestions about building acronym-proof games.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello Daniel,

Now you're playing another game, unfortunately. This one's called I shall chat with the moderator, because this thread is about me. I'm coming down a little harder than I typically do for new posters. In hopes of a nicer interaction between us (i.e. me not moderating), please consider yourself invited to start a new thread about your play experiences in Actual Play.

All further posts here need to be specifically about Heretic.

Best,
Ron

[Bill Masek]

Jack,

I see two places in games where acronyms are used.  I believe that it is important to differentiate these two places.

The first is mechanics.  If you game has Story Points then people will probably call it SP.  If you have a Heroic Intervention Barometer people will call it a Hib.

The other is more story related material.  If you world has Black Spiral Dancers, Souldrinkers or Knights of the Sacred Fur and Thorn you might have people call them BSDs, Dinks or FurThs respectively.

I do not believe that the first set of acronyms will be a problem in your game.  Like you said in your first post, your problem is one of immersion.  Using acronyms adds elements from outside of the game into the game world, effectively breaking immersion.  Stats, however, lie outside of the game world.  Referring to stats will have an effect on immersion.  The more time put into referring to stats and analysing them the less immerse your game will feel.  But by reducing the length or complexity of the stat's names you reduce the amount of time spent on them thus actually improving the immersion in your game.

The second set of acronyms is more problematic.  It is hard to be engaged by the great war between the BSDs and the FurThs.  Likewise, its hard to be scared of a Dink.  Use of acronyms for in game names can make the world feel less real, cheaper or hollow.  This can damage, or even destroy immersion.

An elaborate name or title can add mystery or grandeur if used occasionally.  Constant use, on the other hand, cheepens it.  Black Spiral Dancer looses its impact the hundredth time you hear it.  Its also unrealistic.  People simply don't talk like that.  They never have and never will.  By constantly referring to in game elements by their proper names you can cause just as much damage to your games immersion as if you use acronyms.

I recommend giving each named feature in your game world with name longer then two or three syllables its own nickname.  Perhaps the Knights of Sacred Fur and Thorn are simply called the Thorn.  The Black Spiral Dancers can be referred to as the Dancers.  Most of the time NPCs will refer to the feature by its nickname.  ("The Dancers shall strike against the Thorn at midnight.")   Use the full name as a tool to add emphasis or mystery.  ("The Knights of Sacred Fur and Thorn shall never yield!")  This way you can actually improve your game's immersion by making your dialog more realistic while retaining power an elaborate title can invoke.

Merry Christmas!

Best,
        Bill

[raithe]

Bill,
Your post sums up the immersion side of the problem I seek to resolve nicely. I have indeed chosen to go with short names for mechanical terms and have multiple terms for the more "flowery" setting terms divided by region and so on.

Ice Cream Emperor
Quote
"one, that there is a lot of jargon in RPGs, which makes them awkward to talk about with non-gamers or with gamers unfamiliar with the specific RPG; two, that people don't like deep thinkin'; three, that stripping the 'colour' from game terminology often makes it less... colourful. I don't think these issues are as intertwined as you imagine; they can each be addressed individually, once you determine which is the main problem you want to deal with."

Ah, but with my groups; maybe not anyone else's; with mine they ARE related. If they use a lot of jargon, they stop thinking deeply about the game and go on autopilot; nothing but numbers. When that happens the game gets a lot less dramatic and creative. But every time I have thrown a new, light system at them that they can just play and focus on their characters; they start actually being in character again. As soon as they can break it down to the core system, it goes right back number crunching. That is what I want to avoid by making the system transparent.
By the way they do abbreviate str said (S T R), wis (wiz) , hp (H P) in writing and speech. One of them said int as (i'nit) some time ago which is one of the things that spurred all this on. He kept going off about init this and init that and I could not understand what his initiative had to do with it. It was two sessions later when I finally understood he meant intelligence. This is someone I have known for years, and I cannot understand him because he keeps making up words. That is a problem.

The Pool was perfect for all these problems but lacked enough gamey elements to really grab my group. I had pinned my hopes on Black Wing (which is what led me to the pool actually) as a nice balance but it never seemed to to go past the few scant posts I have longingly tucked away on my hard drive. So I started to rebuild my system along the same lines. Black Wing was my inspiration, I have written other systems before but they didn't have what it had. That open Pool feel with the that old white box flair. Black Wing was so similar to my old Heretic project in some ways. That was what caught my eye. I was using fudge dice where James had the red/black die. I had already decided the game was going to be focused around Fate which was a base target like Doom. Moreover James had captured that gritty Conan feel in his comics and game, which was my inspiration for Heretic's previous incarnation. (though in my game your dead, more on that some other time.) What Black Wing showed me though was how to trim the fat from system so to speak. How to let go of pre-conceived skills and other system elements. To let the system flow from the story, yet still have that old gaming feel. What I especially liked was how James had used such basic terms to define the system and how well they fit his genre. It seemed to mold the system into the setting, without being to wordy or archaic like vampire. That was one of the first things I saw I needed to change, and is one of the things I am still struggling with.

Hopefully that helps to clear up exactly what I am going for and why. Also it should give a better overview of the game idea.

In truth I had meant to let this topic lie after my last post as I felt I had gathered most of the information I needed and all points of view had been expressed. Dindenver's post however made me want to clarify a few small points first.
Foremost is that I do not in any way feel that my posting was in vain, quite the contrary I found exactly what I was looking for; and would like to thank everyone for their suggestions.
Secondly, I knew quite well that this could likely become a point of debate which had firmly drawn lines. I am alright with that, and was never offended (nor surprised) by anyone's disagreement with my viewpoint. That is the nature of a discussion where both sides feel strongly about what is being discussed.
Lastly, I realize that my comments about futility earlier may have been taken as being negative toward the forum. Not at all. Futility was in regards to one man changing the evolution of language. However loopy the papers in that evil psychatrickerist's office may say I am; I know when not to charge the red dragon with a dagger.

Just wanted to make sure there were no hard feelings.
Jack.

[Steve Marsh (Ethesis)]

I recommend giving each named feature in your game world with name longer then two or three syllables its own nickname.  Perhaps the Knights of Sacred Fur and Thorn are simply called the Thorn.  The Black Spiral Dancers can be referred to as the Dancers.  Most of the time NPCs will refer to the feature by its nickname.  ("The Dancers shall strike against the Thorn at midnight.")   Use the full name as a tool to add emphasis or mystery.  ("The Knights of Sacred Fur and Thorn shall never yield!")  This way you can actually improve your game's immersion by making your dialog more realistic while retaining power an elaborate title can invoke.

That is the advice I would give.  What you want to do is channel and control the names, since you can't avoid them.

If you provide good short names, players won't find the ones you don't want, though some names are short enough to avoid that problem, and some names have an internal structure that interrupts it.  Or creates a similar name (e.g. Sahaguin).