Monday, August 9, 2010

Terminology

After the last post, I think we ought to give a rundown of the terminology we'll be using here for those who might not be familiar with it. You will be assimilated. It's pretty simple, since tabletop games are played with a few main tools and players.

Games and Developers
RPG - Roleplaying game. It's commonly associated with video games, even though tabletop totally came first, but can be applied to any game in which the player assumes a role other than themselves and makes decisions for them.
D&D/DnD - Dungeons and Dragons, a fantasy setting game. Players: Ravi and Indeah
Battletech (BT) - a futuristic giant robot game. Players: Indeah and hopefully Ravi soon. Assuming I ever finish making that character.
Wizards of the Coast (WotC) - developers (but not inventors) of D&D
White Wolf (WW) - a development company that makes games such as Mage, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Exalted. Many of their games are set in a gothic 19th century to modern setting, while some like Exalted are fantasy. Ravi has been known to play a game of Mage: The Awakening. Protip: all WW game titles are Noun: The Epithet.
#ed - Edition of the game. D&D has 4.5 editions. 3.5ed is what our game is run as, but WotC implemented 4ed in 2008.
Tabletop - a term for RPGs like DnD and Mage, generally on a table. Sometimes referred to within a group as dice or dicing. Dice or dicing = slang for playing
Campaign - A continuous game run by one or more GMs for several players. Basically, Campaign = Story/Game. It doesn't really matter how long it is.
Session - One day of gaming for a particular campaign.
One-Off or Once-Off - A campaign designed to last a single session.

Characters
DM - Dungeon Master, the person who runs the game and tells the story. Protip: this guy/chick is the campaign's god. Get used to it and be prepared to worship and/or offer sacrifices. Alternatively, find other experienced DMs to screw with the poor soul.
GM - Game Master, see above
PC - Player character, AKA you. Ravi and Indeah are player characters. You can consider PCs the main characters of the story
NPC - Non-player character, these are the people that the PCs interact with during the game. They're all controlled by the DM.
Encounter - Altercation, combat, brawl, duel, whatever you want to call it, it's a fight. Again, these are all controlled by the DM.

Tools and Other
d# - A die. # is equal to the number of sides the die has. You're probably familiar with the d6, a normal 1-6 die used in board games and gambling. In tabletop gaming, the standard dice set is d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20. There are also d30s and d100s, but they are less common. Pictured here are the common dice and a d100.

#d# - A roll of a certain number of dice. 2d6 is a normal roll in Monopoly of 2 6-sided dice.
And that should cover the basics! From here on out, I'll be your guide as far as lessons, tips and tricks go, while Ravi will be the one telling stories, and eventually, how to DM (hint hint wink wink darling sister).

Hint taken. =P Happy rolling? Happy Rolling

Edit: For simplicity's sake, we've decided to make this post a page on it's own. As new terms are brought up, we'll add them there for quicker reference.

1 comment:

  1. Hey, this is Shana. I loved reading this! Truly, I had never seen a D100 until just now. I didn't know they existed (we never had to use them), but they look quite huge! Majestic? Haha.
    I look forward to reading more posts!

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