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Words to remove from my game lexicon

Over the years as I have talked to people about the game, I have noticed that some words seem to turn some gamers off. These are words like "plausible," "verisimilitude," or "rational." Now I know that these words don't represent bad things, but people tend to think of them as words that take the joy or fun out of fantasy gaming. I am learning -- slowly and lately -- to purge these words from my "elevator speech" about the game and instead use the words "immersive," and "internally consistent." I am convinced that on a concept-level, despite the play-style, I deliver a better game. However, the way that I talk about it comes across as erudite, academic, reserved, and detached. It will help when I can start getting some good test-play sessions recorded and up on YouTube so that people can experience the speed, immersion, and immediacy of the game.

What other words that I use to describe the game should I consider dropping?

Should I hide my pillars somewhere in the back drawer and market the differentiators as :

Natural, Easy, Fast, and Immersive?

I'll care that these words are derivatives or corollaries to my pillars but no-one else will.

2 comments

2 Comments

Paul Daulby

May 16, 2020

Like "plausible" I'd leave out anything that refers to a part of the rules being realistic or common sense.

If the rule does feel realistic people should innately understand that and it will feel nice.

But if you say a rule is realistic, people will pick it apart and (consciously or unconsciously) think of parts of it that aren't realistic or common sense.

That on top of people perceive things differently, and describing something as realistic is forcing an opinion where it doesnt need to be.

Rich Mayo

May 16, 2020

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Replying to

That makes sense to me. I have had to excise large amounts of "explainer" from the rule book. I made a section at the back on the "theory of role-playing," just to appease my own need, but perhaps this type of space is a better... for the lack of a better word, "forum" for such thoughts. So, if I skip over trying to give prospective gamers an opinion-based reason like "realistic," to invest their effort and money into my paradigm, which of the following things are the hook that baits the fish: Fast, Translatable, Reversible, Extensible, and Customizable? Are those sufficient to pique interest? There have been fifty years of role-playing developments and people fiddling with mechanics. Now, 95% of the time the new systems are just a variation on some other system, but that 5% of new stuff that comes out fills the book-shelves with almost every conceivable way of using dice to resolve an action. So can I sell on dice mechanics? I like that my dice mechanisms are cleaner, faster, and don't require lots of addition so that they play fast at the table; they also return a probability distribution centred on the score they are standing in for, making them reversible and allow them to become static; but, they are not paradigm-altering. My bonus/penalty system already made its way into DnD as their advantage mechanic, some ten years after I'd been telling people about it on the internet. Now, applying it to a d20 is a very different beast than when it turns a 2d8 into a best 2 of 3d8, or a 2d6 into a worst 2 of 3d6. Unfortunately, I can't sell that as anything new. I may have been ten years ahead of them but nobody was listening. So, while I like my dice mechanics, I'm not sure they should cause somebody to jump up from their chair and run down to their local game store to buy a copy (even what that is possible.)

The new wrinkle -- the thing that no other game on the market has -- is the action engine that is used by the moderator to accurately, quickly, and easily manage actors of different speeds. Most other games use turns, and games that don't, like Hero System with phases within turns, have such problematic discrepancies in speed that it is unbalancing. The average speed of a character in Hero system is 3, and an increase to 4 actions a turn is significantly unbalancing. This would be exactly like giving a Pathfinder 2e character four actions instead of three. In hero System, you can make a low powered character with speeds of 9 -- imagine 9 actions a turn in Pathfinder 2e. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, DnD lair actions! Even something as moderately non-debatable as fast can get side-tracked. I can model the game side-by-side with almost any other role-playing game and show where there is less addition at the table. I can show why giving a player a smaller chunk of action on their TEMPO and bouncing the action between actors leads to a drastically faster action experience. However, there is nothing faster than the d20 skill check to "search a room" or "bribe a guard." I discourage these type of rolls in my system. And, while the system can do the exact same thing with a single-star task roll, it is actually slower because the player would likely be rolling two or more dice and adding them. The task system is akin to 3rd Editions Skill challenges, but just so much better, allowing players to engage in capers with phases, challenges, and obstacles. Tasks allow the GM to frame the action by a chunk of time, a physical region, or set of goals. So, my claim of faster isn't completely unassailable. There are times when I give the GM tools and systems to deliberately slow things down for inspection.

My elevator speech needs work. It is on the one hand too woefully short: Fast, Simple, Translatable, Reversible, Expandible, and Customizable; and on the other hand incomprehensible to most when I start diving into the specifics of why. So, to anyone out there, "what are the best words?" is this a good elevator speech? "We have created a breathlessly fast role-playing experience that combines the narrative freedom and focus of early RPG classics with a tight and modern design: flexible, with optional rule modules to suit your group and setting. "