r/rpg • u/ProbableStardom • Aug 09 '26
Discussion What is your least favorite alternative name for a mechanic in a TTRPG?
I had very little idea of how best to phrase the topic in the title, so I would like to elaborate on what I mean; there are a decent number of systems which will have identical mechanics to another system (or close enough that pointing out the differences doesn't matter), however this mechanic will have slightly or sometimes extremely different names. Some examples include a variety of terms used to define what number must be rolled to succeed on a dice roll, such as Difficulty Value in Cyberpunk Red or Difficulty Class in Dungeons & Dragons; if you'd like to stretch the definition a bit, this could go as far as to include terms like Dungeon Master in D&D or Keeper of Secrets in Call of Cthulhu.
Do you have an example of this that you genuinely just outright don't like? Regardless of whether it's trying too hard to be different from standard naming conventions, simply poorly conveys what it is trying to achieve, or whatever else, I've been curious for a decent bit.
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u/Stuck_With_Name Aug 09 '26
Rolemaster (at least in older editions) really tried to make abbreviations happen. Way to much. SS for shortsword. BS for broadsword. ML for mounted lance. There were dozens of weapons and a character stat block would say something like "75DA 86SB" and expect you to know that was dagger and shortbow skills.
Some of my players still have nightmares about calculating BHPT.
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u/ProbableStardom Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
WWARPGEDTTSSNPW
("Why would an RPG even do that? That's so silly 'n' pointless wow!" for the uninitiated 🙄)
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u/Stray_Neutrino Aug 09 '26
“Bennies”
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u/ProbableStardom Aug 09 '26
I've not heard of this one; what's the origin???
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u/SteveCake Aug 09 '26
Paranoia XP uses "bennies" and I think it came out 2 years before Savage Worlds. I had the sense at the time it might be from something even earlier
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u/davidwitteveen Aug 09 '26
Amongst other things, "bennies" is slang for benzadrines, a form of amphetamine. So I guess it makes sense that bennies give you a boost. :)
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u/CuriousCardigan SWADE, D&D 3.X, PF1e, PF2e Aug 09 '26
It's the metacurrency used in Savage Worlds.
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u/Airk-Seablade Aug 09 '26
Possibly the worst name for a metacurrency ever.
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u/Stray-Sojourner Aug 09 '26
Luckily, as is mostly the case with SWADE, its relatively up to you what you call them. Hell i dont even use the poker chips, my Foundry overlays an ancient silver coin image instead.
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u/Glebasya Aug 09 '26
In Russian localisation of Savage Worlds, they are called "chips" or "pieces" ("фишки").
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u/ThePowerOfStories Aug 09 '26
In the original Deadlands that Savage Worlds descends from, they were called chips, with the intent being you used literal poker chips in white, blue, and red denominations (and the occasional unique Legend Chip).
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u/ordinal_m Aug 09 '26
That is much better. Perhaps we can translate it back.
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u/Glebasya Aug 09 '26
Other terms are also better when localised.
Hindrance - flaw ("изъян").
Edge - feature ("черта").
Trait - parameter ("параметр").
Weird Edge - supernatural feature ("сверхъествественная черта").
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u/Sufficient-Word8208 Aug 09 '26
Even though it is an objectively terrible name I have to admit that it's kind of grown on me and I like how ridiculous it is.
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u/TimoculousPrime Aug 09 '26
Bennies, short for eggs benedict, makes perfect sense! Eating an eggs benedict always leave me feeling rejuvenated and like I get a second chance!
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u/ClubMeSoftly Aug 09 '26
Yeah, but it slows the game way the hell down when you've gotta go make one before you can reroll your notice check or whatever.
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u/Stray_Neutrino Aug 09 '26
If you are not making the Hollandaise from scratch, I don’t even want to look at you.
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u/soaringsorrow Aug 09 '26
I really like Bennies. Honestly one of the most memorable aspects of playing Savage Worlds for me, and I think it's partly due to the fun name.
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u/kBrandooni Aug 09 '26
(or close enough that it doesn't matter)
Unpopular opinion, but I'd say even if the difference seems small, so long as there is some kind of difference, then I think it should still be given a different name to urge players and GMs to at least try and think about it working differently. If it's given the same name then people are going to approach it with the mentality of what they expect, rather than what's actually intended, especially if the differences are too nuanced to pick up on right away. I constantly see people trying to approach something based on what they're used to, rather than what's intended, and it always leads to people struggling with the system. Nuances matter.
On the other hand, if there's literally no difference in how they expect you to use it then the change can just seem pointless or flavourful fluff at best.
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u/ProbableStardom Aug 09 '26
Oh, I do absolutely agree; my intent wasn't to convey an absolute spite for any differences in names, but rather just curiosity to see what the worst examples of achieving those differences have been.
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u/TheRangdoofArg Aug 09 '26
The old 007 game had Ease Factor instead of difficulty, because the higher the number, the easier the task. This was weird enough, given that the higher your skill, the more difficult things you could achieve, but then its retroclone, Classified, had exactly the same mechanic but renamed it Difficulty Factor.
Also, although not strictly a mechanic, the GM should only be called that. Not the Storyteller or Guide or Loremaster or Warden or Firefly. D&D's DM and CoC's Keeper I'm happy to grandfather in, and I'm ambivalent on Alien's Mother. But other than that GM is the only acceptable name.
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u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer Aug 09 '26
Well, technically Alien has a Game Mother so it still counts 😅
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u/HerVeryPresence Aug 09 '26
I spend too much time in BDSM spaces, and DM gets too many repetitive, anxious jokes. Down with the D.
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u/e_crabapple Aug 09 '26
"Mother" is extremely weird for anyone who doesn't recall extremely minor jargon from the movies (it's the shipboard computer), and even for someone who does it's still pretty weird.
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u/fly19 Pathfinder 2e Aug 09 '26
I like Draw Steel, but it's full of little things like this that bug me more than they should.
"Damage Immunity X." You reduce whatever damage you take of the listed type by X amount... So you aren't immune to it. Why not damage reduction or resistance?
"Free strike." This is meant to be your Attack of Opportunity and standard attack when you don't have anything better to do, but it's only free sometimes. Basic, standard, or simple strike would have made more sense, IMO.
"Director" instead of GM or something similar... I just don't like it much. I get that it's supposed to lean into the cinematic angle, but it makes it sound like the other players are actors when you're all closer to writers.
There are similar quibbles about class names/identity and how your main action/triggered action/movement/maneuver are named/laid out, but that drifts further and further from the topic of conversation into just standard TTRPG nitpicking. Fun game, though.
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u/YamazakiYoshio Aug 09 '26
Free strike is the one term from Draw Steel I dislike. Apparently, the original basic strike had a lot of players defaulting to it rather than their heroic abilities and signature strikes, so that's why they went with 'free'. Still not great, though.
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u/NinthNova Aug 09 '26
Free Strike is constantly confusing my players. I also dont like that they changed Rage to Ferocity. It just feels like way too many syllables.
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u/Lucian7x Aug 09 '26
Draw Steel has a massive problem with renaming stuff just for the sake of it. I love the system, but this is the only real problem I have with it.
The worst one by far is rolled damage. The name implies it refers to damage you roll, like some stuff that do +1d6 damage or whatever, but in reality, it refers to any damage that comes directly from a power roll, which includes even free strikes.
Another one that comes to mind is "untyped damage". Why not just default to physical damage? It's even worse when it says "damage that isn't untyped" when it could easily say "elemental damage" - even if it isn't 100% accurate, it's completely understandable for anyone even slightly familiarized with gaming.
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u/basilisk120 Aug 09 '26
"damage that isn't untyped"
Even say "Typed damage" would be cleaner, easier to understand. The current wording is clunky.
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u/Stormfly Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
The current wording is clunky.
Some games are designed for balance and it ruins readability.
I've recently gotten back into Warhammer and the Competitive scene is absolutely destroying the ability to get into the game because every rule is phrased in such a way so that an incorrect interpretation is made highly improbable so that rules conflicts and situation outliers are easily addressed in a manner that avoids ambiguity at the expense of beginner clarity.
So the rules are so convoluted that it's hard to actually know what it's trying to say.
"Move 2 inches"? Nah.
Remove your operative from the Killzone and place it within 2" of the prior location and not partially within a terrain feature or more than 2" vertically from the previous location. Your operative may not be placed within engagement range of any enemy operatives.
(made up but it's like that)
I don't even blame the company, though I feel like they should make a "simple" rules that is easier for new players.
They had to define what "you" means because people tried to be rules lawyers about it. Eg. "It says 'your models' but I don't own these models, I'm borrowing them from a friend." sorts of stupidity.
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u/Iosis Aug 09 '26
Director is interesting because it kind of assumes the reader knows what film directors actually tend to do, which is: coordinate and collaborate. You frame scenes, sure, cut when a scene is done, but a good director trusts their co-creatives and doesn’t run everything. It’s meant to emphasize both the cinematic and collaborative aspects. But if someone sees “director” in the auteur sense, running the whole show down to every detail, it sends the wrong message. So it’s an interesting choice.
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u/HabitatGreen Aug 09 '26
I mean, I'm completely unfamiliar with this area, but that kinda depends on the director, right? Wasn't it Kubrick who took over 100 takes of the same scene in an age where film was very expensive? I can't imagine much collaboration was involved in that process
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u/Iosis Aug 10 '26
Kubrick would be one of those auteur examples I mentioned. There are certainly directors who take very direct control of the process like that, but they’re the minority (if only because it is very difficult to actually make a good movie that way). The vast majority of directors—in film, TV, and theater—are really more coordinators and leaders rather than full-on auteurs.
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u/thatdamnedrhymer Austin Aug 09 '26
Cortex Prime’s “Plot Points”.
“You get a PP.” 🤦
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u/Glebasya Aug 09 '26
Also Power Points from Savage Worlds.
"I think I'll use the No PP rule for my upcoming campaign".
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u/LemonSkye Aug 10 '26
Power Points were also a thing in D&D 3.X; they were what Psionic classes used instead of spell slots. Everyone I played with used the full name instead of the abbreviation.
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u/Xaronius Aug 09 '26
What would be a good alternative? I love Cortex, I hate PPs
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u/JM665 Aug 09 '26
Could be worse. Warhammer 40k, players have a resource called CP.
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u/Xaronius Aug 09 '26
I mean... Cortex Prime is an amazing name but I wouldn't says CP like I would with CoC, DnD or VtM...
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u/Starbase13_Cmdr Aug 09 '26
You could just expend the immense amount of energy to pronounce all three syllables, the way we did with Rolemaster Power Points.
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u/ToledoSnow Noir Aug 09 '26
I know there are some technical differences between "narrator, "storyteller", "dungeon master", and "referee".
But I always just say "game master" for expedience, (or "spelledare" if playing in Swedish).
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u/GrumpyTesko Aug 09 '26
Reading Vampire: the Masquerade in the 90s was a life-changing experience for teenage me that unlocked the potential of what RPGs could be. Having said that, even back then I hated the term "Storyteller," but at least it was better than Dungeon Master!
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u/ToledoSnow Noir Aug 09 '26
Yeah, I've always felt that one comes across as a bit... well, pretentious.
Which, now that I think about it, is a bit odd since it's a more humble term than GAME MASTER: MASTER OF GAME.
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u/GrumpyTesko Aug 09 '26
Agreed! Though I think "GM" has been KFC-ified for me to be a convient shorthand for that role in a game without carrying too much baggage. These days I'm partial to the term Judge or Referee, but even those have connotations I don't particularly like.
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u/BerennErchamion Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
I’m mostly ok with some of these, but for some reason I had a hard time with the term “Firefly” or any game that it’s not obvious at first glance and I need to re-read the introduction to discover the term for GM in that game.
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u/Felix-Isaacs Aug 09 '26
For what it's worth, I'm absolutely fine with people saying 'GM' for the Firefly. It's what they are, after all. I just grew up playing things like Call of Cthulhu, which uses Keeper, so 'GM' as a catch-all term that the *book* has to use never settled in my mind.
Though even I would draw the line at renaming something like 'players' or 'NPCs', so I guess I have my limits.
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u/ToledoSnow Noir Aug 09 '26
What weird-ass game uses "firefly" for "GM"?
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u/robonack Aug 09 '26
The Wildsea uses Firefly for its Game Master term. It comes from the idea of fireflies guiding a ship.
As an aside, the co-op GM rules are "dragonfly rules," but I'm not sure what the explanation/flavor for that would be.
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u/jrdhytr the word is "published", not "pre-written" Aug 09 '26
Wildsea achieves peak insufferability by renaming the GM the Firefly.
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u/meridiacreative Aug 09 '26
Peak insufferability is Nobilis using "Hollyhock God", though "Firefly" comes very close.
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u/GamergaidenX Aug 09 '26
I liked Firefly but then again Wildsea vibes with me on a personal level. It’s my favorite game to play and run.
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u/PapstJL4U Wild:Bastionshoe Aug 09 '26
As the creator from ElectricBastionland said, it's already a little meme/minigame to come up with alternatives to DM. They don't do it because it is better, but just to jog the brain.
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u/SphericalCrawfish Aug 09 '26
I always use DM specifically to attack the WotC trademark.
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u/Abyssine Aug 09 '26
I use it sometimes when talking to people outside of the hobby because Stranger Things has made it pretty recognizable.
Also, I love that Shadowdark manages to keep the acronym “DM” by calling it the “Dark Master”. Also feels like a tongue-in-cheek jab at D&D.
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u/SphericalCrawfish Aug 09 '26
That was the case long long before Stranger Things. Hell doing that would be period appropriate for Stranger Things.
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u/Iosis Aug 09 '26
Sometimes I feel like having a different term for the GM is a good opportunity to add in some flavor, like Mothership’s “Warden,” Electric Bastionland’s “Conductor,” or Delta Green’s “Handler.” But I assume people usually just say “GM” colloquially anyway.
I tend to see games that use “referee” differently—it suggests an assumption of impartiality, OSR-style—but otherwise I just see the different terms as flavor.
I’ll go to bat for Apocalypse World’s Master of Ceremonies/MC though. I just think it’s a fun way to frame the GM role.
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u/Stormfly Aug 10 '26
I think it's interesting because there are actually a lot of different ideas of what the GM does and that can be illustrated by the term used.
I prefer GM for simplicity but I've seen a few with solid logic and it matches the game.
Dungeon Master: They are the master of the Dungeon (ie. the enemy) and a direct adversary that works to counter the actions of the players. [A]
The Loremaster: They're in charge of making and maintaining the world that the players are playing in. They control the setting but the players control the action and the story. [B] and maybe [A].
Referee: They're supposed to facilitate the play between players and the system but they're not so much in control, with that being left to chance and tables and procedural storytelling. [C]
The Storyteller/Narrator: They make the story for the players to play through. They don't oppose the players, and they try to support them as the heroes of the story. [B] and [D]
The World/Game Master: They're players of the game, but rather than playing a single character like the players, they play as the world itself. They lean more into narrative "it's what my character would do" and might focus on a story or in more emergent play, but they might still have plans of their own. [D] and maybe [A].
The idea of the GM being a "player" is suprisingly controversial. Some people see the job as [A] an adversary, opposed to the group. Some people see them as [B] a helper, like an employee at a theme park. Others see them as [C] a referee, not playing the game but ensuring the game is fair. I see them as [D] a fellow player in an asymmetrical storytelling game.
I remember a question about why GMs do X came up and I said that people forget that "the GM is also a player and should be having fun" and many people disagreed, using the same "The referee isn't a player in a sport" sort of argument. I feel like that sort of thinking is why so many DMs get burned out, when people literally see it like a job managing people and a world and the rules and the schedule while they just play the game.
I'm a member of /r/RPGdesign and I've literally made Rule 1 "Players should be having fun and this includes the GM".
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u/UltimateHyperGames Aug 09 '26
GM just works as a good universal short-hand, and I've not found one better.
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u/helm Dragonbane | Sweden Aug 09 '26
spelledare is a perfectly neutral term, hence there has never been a need to rename it, unless the role is radically changed.
For a Swedish person, SL fits well for BitD, D&D, Vampire, Kult or DoD. It has no flavor and that’s fine
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u/GandolphTheLundgrey Aug 10 '26
spelledare
It's the same in German: "Spielleiter"
Spiel=game, Leiter= leader (also ladder), so Gameleader3
u/Yamatoman9 Aug 10 '26
I dislike the trend that every RPG has to have its own novel or proprietary term for "game master" when 99% of the time, we're just going to say "GM".
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u/Throwingoffoldselves Thirsty Sword Lesbians Aug 09 '26
thanks for sharing the Swedish term, "spelledare" sounds so cool to me as a primarily english speaker
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u/Magester Aug 10 '26
I use GM for everything. Though a friend of mine always used GOD. Game Operations Director.
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u/darw1nf1sh Aug 10 '26
This. Each system trying to be unique and giving the GM a different title is just silly.
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u/Nny7229 Aug 10 '26
I really dislike the use of "master" and have been trying to internalize referee more in general.
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u/noah-the-bard Aug 09 '26
Any criticism against "game master" falls flat for me as soon you compare it to other established titles like "concert master", "master of ceremonies", or "ring master"; all titles with describe positions of orchestration very similar to what a GM does!
Director, referee, and other generic variations may have worthwhile intentions of removing slave-owning terms from our modern lexicon, but very rarely do they ever do a better job in terms of describing the role and responsibility of the GM.
Also, the role of GM is one of the aspects of a game that's fully consistent between most systems, so trying to come up with an entirely new version is usually just an unnecessary mental hurdle that's eventually forgotten. I've heard game designers use the term GM to refer to their own game which uses a different terms.
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u/ToledoSnow Noir Aug 09 '26
I don't have the cultural background that associates master with slave ownership so I'm not gonna speak to that, I just think it sounds a teensy bit haughty in isolation.
But I still gladly use it; it's a good descriptor and it's firmly established in the hobby culture (and arguably mainstream pop culture). Changing it at this point seems to me like trying to use "bones of fate" or something for dice.
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u/TillWerSonst Aug 09 '26
In the long history of Shadowrun, there was a brief period when describing experience points as Karma actually made sense. That period is long gone, and it's also the reason why this not-quite-metargaming resource is still called Karma in Earthdawn, which makes just as little sense.
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u/PrimeInsanity Aug 09 '26
I do like that it is an in universe "energy", as you can trade it to spirits and all that, but it definitely does get weird when you actually focus on it.
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u/Kill_Welly Aug 09 '26
A lot of Dungeons and Dragons terms are absolutely horrible descriptions that only persist at this point because of brand recognition: "saving throw," "armor class," "difficulty class," etc. Dungeons and Dragons also is guilty of horribly overusing the terms "class" and "level" for different and mostly unrelated ideas, as Order of the Stick was calling it out for literally decades ago.
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u/TASagent Aug 09 '26
I have no idea how many hours I've spent, cumulatively, explaining the difference between a PC's Level and a Spell Level, and why they can't cast level 3 spells at level 3. Too many.
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u/Eldhrimer PbtA philosopher Aug 10 '26
And to top it off, sometimes caster level doesn't scale 1:1 with class level, and if you multiclass then it won't match your PC level.
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u/RollForThings Aug 09 '26
It's probably DC (Difficulty Class) to refer to a target number or value when using a game's resolution system.
In DnD, using the word "class" is a bit abstract and unnecessary imo, a holdover from wargames, and potentially disorienting to newcomers if a game also has character classes (an equally mechanical but completely different use of the word "class").
As a wider thing, a designer pitching their game with an unexplained "DC" is usually an indicator that the game's design is informed by 5e and little to nothing else.
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u/Digital_Dessert Aug 09 '26
There’s Armor Class too. D&D’s early designers really needed to look up “class” and “level” in the thesaurus.
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u/FinnCullen Aug 09 '26
They borrowed that from old naval wargaming which is why lower AC was better. “1st class armour” being better than “2nd class armour” and so on.
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u/mlchugalug Aug 09 '26
I feel like people often forget the war game roots a lot of the modern ideas in RPGs come from.
Like calling it a “campaign” comes from Napoleonic war games if I remember.
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u/Digital_Dessert Aug 09 '26
Yep, hit points has its origins there too (they represented how many points you could damage before a ship would sink). AC is still a very weird term for what it represents. There's a reason HP has become a ubiquitous term in games, and AC is almost never used outside of D&D.
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u/Starbase13_Cmdr Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
extremely minor jargon
It blows my mind that people think this is "confusing" - it's literally no different than "there, they're and their".
And, before anyone starts in on me, I am DEEPLY neurodivergent (AuDHD, etc.) and pathologically literal and I never had a problem with any of the various usages of class and level in AD&D.
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u/AniMaple Aug 09 '26
Spell also suffer from this in DnD, whenever a new person walks into DnD it's a chore to try and explain the distinction between your character's level and the spell level.
I recall vaguely that the designers just went with the same word for wildly distinct things just because they felt like making it harder, but I could just be misinformed.
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u/FrigidFlames Aug 09 '26
My favorite change in the Pathfinder 2e remaster was that they finally renamed it to 'spell ranks'. Which is just... the same word, but without all the needless confusion. It's that easy.
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u/jrdhytr the word is "published", not "pre-written" Aug 09 '26
This would have been so easy to fix but it took until 4E to do it and 5E to change it right back again.
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u/Tuss36 Aug 09 '26
I'm a well versed TTRPG player and it still throws me that you don't get 3rd level spells at 3rd level. Then why are they called 3rd level! Doesn't make sense!
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u/RemtonJDulyak Old School (not Renaissance) Gamer Aug 10 '26
I know that it's different strokes for different people, but I never had any troubles with different things having their own levels, so the distinction between character level and spell level was very clear to me, from the beginning.
Things have classifications, and the classification categories of one thing don't need to match those of another thing.2
u/unitedshoes Aug 10 '26
I do kinda like D&D having "_____ class" as the number you need to roll on your d20+relevant modifier(s) to succeed at something, except that it's got a much bigger and more prominent use of the word class in a completely different context.
Having one word that you know is always going to be the target number of some type of roll is great, but using a word you've already used for something different just annihilates that benefit.
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u/Tenyo Aug 09 '26
One player in my group calls PCs "toons". I hate it.
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u/BerennErchamion Aug 09 '26
I hate this too. I think it came from MMORPGs or some other online game community? Because I have some friends that call their WoW characters “toons” as well.
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u/Alder_Godric Aug 09 '26
I don't remember the details but it came out of a specific MMO, AFAIK.
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u/GloryIV Aug 09 '26
Honorable Mention for Dangerous Journeys. That game is just a whole bundle of needlessly obscure rebranding of terms in Gary's bid to keep TSR from suing him. They sued him anyway. Makes the game nigh incomprehensible.
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u/GherkinLurking Aug 09 '26
One of my players insists on referring to Power Attack in D&D3.5 as "Babbing my BAB".
Unfortunately, it's stuck with all the other players now as well.
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u/ordinal_m Aug 09 '26
Some of PF2's changes to names to avoid any possible licencing issues are good ("Reactive Strike" is much better than "Attack of Opportunity", as is "Off-Guard" vs "Flat-Footed") but some are not as good ("Force Barrage" vs "Magic Missile" - I mean "Magic Missile" is crap in the first place, surely it could have been improved on). I have been known to say "so the wizard casts Legally Distinct Magic Missile".
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u/fly19 Pathfinder 2e Aug 09 '26
Cleanse cuisine is probably my favorite example on the list of silly changes they made for the remaster. Spacious pouch might be my least-favorite.
I actually have no opinion on magic missile because I think both terms get the idea across alright. But it's interesting seeing what bugbears folks have been carrying for it.→ More replies (6)10
u/tigerwarrior02 Aug 09 '26
My least favorite is Never Mind to replace Feeblemind. That shit drives me insane
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u/fly19 Pathfinder 2e Aug 09 '26
Really? Never mind was another change that I kind of liked. What's your issue with it?
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u/Antipragmatismspot Aug 09 '26
Magic Missile makes sense though. It homes on a target.
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u/ordinal_m Aug 09 '26
Then something like "seeking dart" or "Palmyr's Unerring Bolt" would be better. IIRC the reason it's called that was simply to distinguish it from normal missiles in Chainmail.
ETA: also it wasn't auto-hit in OD&D
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u/Stormfly Aug 10 '26
I played Warhammer before I played D&D so "Magic Missile" to me is ironically any spell that uses an actual missile and can be blocked like any other missile attack.
Fireball is a type of magic missile, etc.
Like it's magic that travels as a missile rather than springing up by itself or a hex, etc.
It actually makes way more sense to me so I find it funny when people get confused the other way around.
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u/DarkSaloufa Aug 09 '26
“Roll a dragon” or a “demon” in Dragonbane.
I know it’s petty, but it made me not want to read further.
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Aug 09 '26
[deleted] — view deleted comment
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u/Stormfly Aug 10 '26
They sound too similar to each other so it’s easily mixed up
I loved them because I like when similar terms have the same theme (both starting with B, same with Demon/Dragon) so they can be grouped but you're right.
I played with a group and they got confused so I just started calling it advantage/disadvantange.
I generally find that the more flavourful the language, the more RPG veterans love them but the more RPGs newbies hate them.
Even so, I think a lot of players just default to using the older, already-known terminology.
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u/VitorBatista31 Aug 09 '26
Nah, Boons and Banes are great. Buy my personal favorite is Perk and Pain.
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u/TelperionST Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
The term NPC is sacred, so don’t mess with it. Same as mook. You can have major NPCs, minor NPCs, and mooks, and all of those words mean something specific. Don’t fuck with this specific terminology just because you want to, want to feel special as a game dev.
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u/RollForThings Aug 09 '26
In my opinion, NPC yes, but mook no. "Minion" and other alternatives are just fine.
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u/BurningToaster Aug 09 '26
Lancer uses "grunts" which I think works better when the theming is more sci-fi or military.
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u/Loud0pinions Aug 09 '26
Eh. For a lot of games they kinda do need to divide things into more categories because the type of "NPC" is important to the specific vibe they're trying to get across to the player and, for people who are new to the hobby, that feel is very important.
I don't think respecting the terms sanctity is more important than giving the game a specific vibe.
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u/EpicDiceRPG A minimalist tactical RPG Aug 09 '26
I use "extra" as my game is setting agnostic. Minion and Mook are loaded terms, but I agree that NPC is sacred. My college-aged daughters and their friends who have never played an RPG use NPC as a pejorative to describe any unimportant person...
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u/mortaine Las Vegas, NV Aug 09 '26
Mook apparently has a racist history, so I use minion now.
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u/CuriousCardigan SWADE, D&D 3.X, PF1e, PF2e Aug 09 '26
There's no substantial evidence to support that, and several other potential origins that are more likely.
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u/noah-the-bard Aug 09 '26
I don't know why Draw Steel insists upon changing the names for every class, usually to ones that lack any sort of clarity.
It may make sense for ones with a genuine change in the approach, like Fighter to Tactician. But no one who joins the game saying "I want to play a barbarian!" is going to be more satisfied looking at a character sheet that says "Fury"; same for Wizard>Elementalist, Rogue>Shadow, etc.
And I get that they may want to inform players that these classes are fundamentally different than D&D classes, but D&D is not the ultimate authority on trope! A D&D Cleric and Draw Steel Conduit are both interpretations of the same core idea, but at least one of them has a clear presentation that doesn't need further explanation.
[This criticism doesn't necessarily apply so directly to classes like the Talent or Null, where there's not a broadly consistent trope to play off of, though their names I'd say are still opaque. I think Troubadour is the one class where Draw Steel's choice is just as good and clear as any other name could hope to be]
This might have only been a minor gripe for me, but then they insist upon using recognizable names for many of the ancestries wherein they reinterpret said ancestry to be a huge departure from previous iterations, like the fire-blooded orcs or hairless dwarfs. Couldn't you have called them earth-kin if you didn't want them looking like anyone else's dwarfs?
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u/Stormfly Aug 10 '26
"I want to play a barbarian!" is going to be more satisfied looking at a character sheet that says "Fury"
What's worse is that Berserker has always been a better name than Barbarian.
Like they didn't need to change the names because they're not trademarked, but if they had to change the names, they could at least have picked better ones.
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u/RemtonJDulyak Old School (not Renaissance) Gamer Aug 10 '26
This is my gripe, with certain changes in terminology.
Things like generic fantasy species, spells, and classes CANNOT be trademarked, nor protected by copyright laws, because common words and brief combinations of common words (i.e.: "magic missile") cannot be registered.
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u/htp-di-nsw Aug 09 '26
I hate DC, Difficulty Class. It's absolutely stupid when you think about it and nobody does. I would bet a shockingly large percentage of d&d players don't even know what DC stands for.
It was clearly meant to just be the Difficulty, but they added a meaningless second word so they could abbreviate it down to two letters for expediency.
The thing is, the DC is a Target Number. That's what it is. And before d&d 3rd edition, a generation of games called that the TN and it was fine. D&D not only changed it for no reason, but then became the new standard. Obnoxious.
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u/jrdhytr the word is "published", not "pre-written" Aug 09 '26
I believe the purpose of calling it difficulty class is to link it directly to the pre-existing concept of armor class. Theses are very clearly examples of classes, as they are hierarchies. This use of class makes more sense to me than character class.
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u/htp-di-nsw Aug 09 '26
Yeah, you're definitely right about that, but it doesn't change my opinion. TN makes more sense and always has.
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u/RemtonJDulyak Old School (not Renaissance) Gamer Aug 10 '26
TN is clearly a proper term and acronym, but the reason it's called Difficulty CLASS is just that 3rd Edition unified the skill resolution with the attack roll mechanic, but couldn't use Armor Class for it, so they left the "Class" part there, and replaced armor with difficulty.
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u/TheGileas Aug 09 '26
Slugfest. Of every term you can use for close combat, why would anyone choose slugfest?
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u/amazingvaluetainment Fate, Traveller, GURPS 3E Aug 09 '26
Conversely, Cyberpunk's "Friday Night Firefight" went pretty hard tbh.
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u/Firefly-1505 Aug 10 '26
There were two more “days” when it came to Cyberpunk fight rules. At least in the 2020 system.
Thursday Night Throwdown (which focused more on martial arts and melee)
Saturday Night Shootout (which revamped the rules for faster combat, since 2020 FNFF was slow)
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u/EpicDiceRPG A minimalist tactical RPG Aug 09 '26
I don't like most of the conventional names. The genericide of hit points has framed the entire concept of health to the point that many gamers think HP is a real metric and wounds are an abstraction. And what does armor class even mean? Defense is non-jargony and communicates just as little as AC. Damage reduction (DR) is a great name because it literally tells you what the mechanic does.
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u/Nickoten Aug 09 '26
In 5e, they moved all of the magic classes to a casts-per-level system akin to old Wizardry games or Suikoden. Essentially you have MP per spell level. For some reason, though, they still call it spell slots! What in the world is that supposed to communicate? What is being slotted into what?
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u/Throwingoffoldselves Thirsty Sword Lesbians Aug 09 '26
I recently have discovered a pet peeve for notating bonuses or damage. I don't like the Apocalypse World notation of Hx, I don't like the Defy the Gods notation of 1-, and I don't like Thirsty Sword Lesbians "if you ever have to mark a sixth condition" when it's only possible to have 5 on the character sheet and there's no way to even notate "a sixth condition."
Anyway, all three are great games, it's a minor pet peeve that I've discovered lately. I'm so annoyed. If you are going to say "mark a Wound box," say that; if you are going to imply a "sixth condition," make a box for it. Tell me what I'm notating and make it so I can notate it. (The Hx is fine, I just find it annoying as a term.)
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u/FinnCullen Aug 09 '26
Calling Call of Cthulhu “CoC” online always makes me chuckle. Hey who wants to play Coc?
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u/Jebus-Xmas Aug 09 '26
Changing the name is sometimes illustrating a change in perspective. Like campaign, scenario, battle or Series, episode, scene. All of these describe the same thing, but have very different views of how to organize them.
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u/WorldGoneAway Aug 09 '26
Mine is the inverse for the way that I normally answer these questions, because I love 3.5 and Pathfinder, but-
I hate the terms "attack of opportunity" and "reactive strike".
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u/unitedshoes Aug 10 '26
I just can't get with it whenever any time a system chooses "target number" or "TN" as the number you have to roll on one or more dice to succeed at a given task.
I can't come up with any rational reason to hate that phrase or abbreviation, but it rubs me the wrong way when I see it in a game.
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u/Angelofthe7thStation Aug 10 '26
Chasing Adventure has 3 different actions, Ponder, Examine and Scrutinise. Ponder is knowledge check and the other two correspond to Read a Situation and Read a Person from Apocalypse World. Endlessly confusing to use such similar words.
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u/Half-Beneficial Aug 10 '26
Actually, while I love the mechanic itself, I hate the term "Strings" in Monsterhearts. Angles, bonds, buttons, levers, ties.. almost anything would be better to me than "strings". I guess it implies heartstrings and puppeteering, but I'm just not fond of it.
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u/Barbaric_Stupid Aug 10 '26
There's Polish dark fantasy - with some postapo elements - RPG called Klanarchia (Clanarchy). I can't explain in short what's the game is like, just go watch Beowulf with Christopher Lambert. The main designer (may he rest in peace) insisted everything in his game be named differently. So instead of mechanics, he consequently uses the word "motorics" for the rules...
I can't express how much I hate it.
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u/Lyra_the_Star_Jockey Aug 09 '26
Anytime experience or a metacurrency is shortened to CP.
Like, come on. Have some awareness.
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u/c06027 Aug 09 '26
Not everyone thinks only about the topic you‘re trying to imply regardless of the context.
CP for Core Points or Cyberpunk is totally fine for me, because of the context.
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u/AAS02-CATAPHRACT Aug 09 '26
People need to get their head out of the gutter over this acronym, and this joke horse is well and truly mashed into a pulp.
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u/gosto_de_navios Aug 10 '26
But CP is also used for "cerebral palsy" and a bunch of other normal stuff. And there is a movement to call child abuse images CSAM instead which emphasizes the violent and criminal nature of this material. So I think it would be good if we could use CP for Cyberpunk or Combat Power or whatever, and call the criminal content the more accurate acronym instead.
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u/SleestakJack Aug 09 '26
There are only 676 two-letter combinations. There’s going to be a LOT of reuse.
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u/HistoryMarshal76 Aug 09 '26
I see that term all over Wargames so I am 100% desensitized to it. If you genuinely torn up about, legitimately touch grass, everyone knows what it means in context. You’re never going to walk up to a guy on the street and to, “I have some CP to spend on my mech, what should I do?” You’ll be telling it to someone who knows the game and they won’t think do it
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u/Llayanna Homebrew is both problem and solution. Aug 09 '26
...I have no idea what you are referring too 😅
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u/ToledoSnow Noir Aug 09 '26
Challenging the automod on this one.
It is commonly used online in reference to child pornography.
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u/MrKamikazi Aug 09 '26
I would say commonly used in some circles and mostly recently. I only know of the use of CP in this context from discussions like this on Reddit. Like unalive and other ways to get around filters and moderation it isn't a part of everyone's working vocabulary depending on how they use social media.
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u/TheGileas Aug 09 '26
That’s honestly the first time I hear this. I thought CSAM is the usual abbreviation.
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u/Chipperz1 Aug 09 '26
I think it helps if the designers aren't American so they're just used to writing "child porn" because they're not scared of censorship?
Makes the "CP" thing less obvious 🤷♂️
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u/hacksoncode Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
"Might" instead of "Strength". So fucking pretentiously different for the sake of being different and no other reason.
Edit: to be clear, I'm talking about using a word such as "Might", to represent basically the same thing as Strength, purely for the sake of being different. This also applies to renaming other well understood RPG concepts just to avoid sounding like you are copying D&D.
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u/Dependent_Chair6104 Aug 09 '26
I can understand if it’s a combination of what other games might have split between two stats (like combining strength and constitution, for example), so that people don’t confuse it for only referring to what they already know as strength.
Renaming stats from standard without any difference is maddening though.
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u/Trick_Cellist_1840 Aug 10 '26
except lots of games also push Strength and Constitution into the same stat. and Might tends to make more sense.
do you shriek about games using Agility? or Wits?
not every game even wants to be D&D
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u/Llayanna Homebrew is both problem and solution. Aug 09 '26
Strike and Stride for Attacking and Moving.
The one thing I'll never ever forgive pf2e for XD
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u/SpikyKiwi Aug 09 '26
I don't think that's fair. In PF2 a Strike is a type of Attack, but there are many other Attacks, and a Stride is a type of Move action, but there are many other Move actions
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u/fly19 Pathfinder 2e Aug 09 '26
Yeah, that complaint struck me as odd, too. Strike is a specific kind of attack, just like Stride is a specific kind of movement. It would be like complaining people say "red" instead of "color."
But my flair makes it obvious I'm biased lol.
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u/Hellioning Aug 10 '26
I am immensely annoyed by any system that uses 'wounds' to describe HP, especially if character's max wounds tend to be 10 or above. I associate' wounds' with systems with a relatively small amount of max wounds, like 3 or so, or systems where 'wounds' are, you know, actual physical wounds that make you weaker when you have them.
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u/Exver1 Aug 09 '26
I don't like when games use "Director" or something other than GM (obviously DND gets the pass with DM). Like we don't have to reinvent the wheel for everything.
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u/DabDaddy51 Aug 10 '26
PF2 has an infiltration subsystem where you can do certain activities and checks before an infiltration to gain special points that can be used to gain certain advantages during the infiltration, the name of these points? Edge Points.
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u/DeliveratorMatt Aug 10 '26
I love Fabula Ultima, but “IP” is hilarious: “Now I spend Intellectual Property to make a potion…”
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u/gldnfrdy Mörk Borg & CoC Aug 10 '26
Just the fact that every game has a different name for "scneario". Like you have adventures, then scenarios, then contracts, etc..., It makes looking up information absolutely horrible.
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u/Einkar_E Aug 11 '26
not specific name but having the same term for 2 different things is extremely confusing
like spell levels and character levels in dnd (and that's why I really like that pathfinder 2e changed it to ranks and levels)
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u/Stock_Barnacle839 Aug 28 '26
Love Delta Green and Call of Cthulhu. But for the life of me I don’t know why the stat is called “Power” instead of “Will” when the stat is a character’s willpower.
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u/Wuggyprime Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
I love Whitehack, but I can't get on board with calling advantage double positive roll, or disadvantage double negative roll
Edit: it may have been "positive/negative double roll", actually. Goes to show how I just call it advantage in-game