Steve Kenson Ronin Round Table: Gamers' Cant

[SassyRonin]

http://greenronin.com/2012/06/gamers_cant.php

Every gaming group has its own phrases with special meaning around the gaming table. At Green Ronin HQ, we have the "Jess Special," which is when you draw two facedown cards in Ticket to Ride, and "Mississippi Tim," an NPC invented from whole cloth during play when we needed someone to watch a wagon for us.

What are some of your gaming group's inside jokes and sayings?

[Pramas]

A few from my groups over the years:

"Throwing the captain overboard" is that moment when a player completely derails the adventure.

"Pulling a Rick" is cancelling gaming at the last minute.

"I'm a Fixer!" refers to characters with shady professions announcing to all and sundry that are criminals.

"Chaotic Good for Me" was what we decided the alignment of our CG wizard actually was after one too many acts of selfish dickery.

[Fildrigar]

My friends from High School and I called Gamer's Cant that delicate conversational dance you do with coworkers/other people that you meet trying to see if they are gamers. This was in the 80s, in small town Washington. Geeks didn't get the respect then that they generally do now.

[Fildrigar]

"Pulling a Dunlap" involves being wrenched away from gaming by a non-understanding significant other. ( And slowly moved further and further away geographically from your friends.

[AlbinoHero]

"We're being set up" - From an ill fated Tomb of Horrors game. It's said every time something too good to be true happens that everyone suspects a trap, but set it off anyways.

"Forget the monkey!" - When a player attempting to stay in character is trying to describe something without making a pop culture reference.

[sloblock]

"We're being set up" - From an ill fated Tomb of Horrors game. It's said every time something too good to be true happens that everyone suspects a trap, but set it off anyways.

Ours is very similar "These stairs are perfectly safe" - from a dungeon crawl when one of the players critically failed a trap check and then set it off. This gets used for almost any failed check

[Pramas]

"We're being set up" - From an ill fated Tomb of Horrors game. It's said every time something too good to be true happens that everyone suspects a trap, but set it off anyways.

Ours is very similar "These stairs are perfectly safe" - from a dungeon crawl when one of the players critically failed a trap check and then set it off. This gets used for almost any failed check

Mine was, "I think I died in this room." We were playing X2 Castle Amber in college, which I had played part of many years before but I didn't remember much about it. After saying this, naturally I almost died again.

[wryfool]

After years of playing 3.x D&D with it's variety of stackable bonuses, we have taken to referring to bonuses as "puffins" (like the penguin). It came from a conversation where a character rolled quite a bit short of the difficulty, but had so many bonuses that we weren't sure how close he was. We started asking him if he'd remembered all his bonuses: for morale, enhancement, class, racial, feat, etc. Then one of the players sarcastically said, "Did you remember your puffin bonus?"

Later, one of the players created a bard named Puffin.

[trystero]

"Plan B" is shorthand in my group for "kill everyone and then sort it out."

It came out of a session in which the party, wandering through the wastes, stumbled upon a merchant caravan being attacked by marauding nomad riders. I had carefully plotted-out notes for what to do if the party sided with the merchants, and more carefully plotted-out notes for what do to if the party sided with the nomads: as an inevitable result, therefore, some PCs took the merchants' side and started attacking marauders, while others took the marauders' side and started attacking merchants.

Eventually two of the PCs fighting on opposite sides met up in mid-battle, and had this epic conversation:

PC 1: "Well, we've got these nomad bastards on the run! That'll teach them to attack a caravan!"

PC 2: "Wait...I've been attacking the caravan!"

PC 1 and PC 2: *stare blankly at one another*

Their solution? "Plan B."

[trystero]

We also have "Does a '2' hit?" and "Does a '3' save?", both said in mournful voices whenever our worst die-roller attempts a d20-based attack roll or defense/saving roll. Back when we first played with him, he had entire sessions where he genuinely couldn't roll above a 3 while I (the GM) was steadily rolling 15-20 results: I remain amazed (but glad) that he stuck the game out.

"Pank" is our verb for bailing out on a game at the last second (or even later), as in "Oh, we're playing something else tonight because Mike panked." I've no idea what it means.

And after one game where an NPC wizard, after spectacularly failing a spellcasting roll, shouted "BLAST!" in my best orotund upper-class-English tones, that term (in that accent) is frequently used to announce any spell-related mishap.