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View Full Version : Gamer Humor Terms that entered your gaming lexicon



DrewID
2016-09-16, 09:50 PM
OK, role-playing games have their own odd terms, some of which stay in use forever (Armor Class) and some of which are gone but not forgotten (THAC0). But individual campaigns develop their own odd terms that persist over the years, sometimes after their origins are lost to the mists of history. This is your opportunity to share the amusing stories behind the terms unique to your own campaigns.

Two to kick things off:

Fantasy home brew campaign, very loosely based on AD&D1, and I was rolling up the contents of a treasure hoard. For reasons I no longer recall, i had determined on the fly that there was going to be a magic item, but I had no idea what it would be, and had no tables at hand. So I said to the players "Finally, you see a small blue cube, one inch on a side, and as soon as I determine what it is it will turn into one." While one player heard only the first half and began trying to figure out what kind of magic item a 1" blue cube could be (his most entertaining idea was "Maybe it's a magic ice cube, that constantly is melting but never gets any smaller"), another player recognized it for what it was: a marker (something given as a place holder for something of value, for which it can be later redeemed). So he wrote down on the treasure list "Blue Magic ... Marker". To this day, when we don't know what something is, it's a blue magic marker.

Science fiction home brew, in a campaign heavy with weird science and super-science elements. We are running into a bunch of what is probably precursor technology, but we are looting it from ancient catacombs with a heavy Egyptian riff. In addition to all the stuff we think we understand, there is a sphere. It's about 3" in diameter, appears to be of great importance to the bad guys, and we have NO idea what it is or what it's for, merely that they want it, so we feel compelled to keep it from them at all costs. The GM had a name for it, which we may or may not have know, but to this day (based on a flippant description by my character), it is remembered as The Bocce Ball of Set.

Share your own pointless stories.

DrewID

Tiktik Ironclaw
2016-09-17, 07:34 PM
Last year, in a group of six (including the DM) where the only experienced players were myself and a good friend of mine, the friend that nobody likes played a rather obnoxious and trigger-happy warforged barbarian or fighter that was made on a whim by my D&D-savvy friend, and it was called Clank. Because this same player tries to just reuse Clank or a character that behaves just like the warforged, we tend to refer to his characters as Flank (fleshy-Clank) and regard any poorly-characterized beatsticks as Clanks.

Additionally, our first-time DM for whatever reason heard "robot" and envisioned G1 Grimlock (not even sure if he's a TF fan, either). So during a situation where we were in some kind of bind, he uttered the helpful advice of "Use your tail!" We tend to shout that at any game where two or more of us are playing and the party is in trouble, whether anyone has a tail or not.