The Language of Gaming
I'm horrible with languages. I don't think it's to the point of having Xenoglossophobia, but I really struggled with foreign language classes in high school and college.

And yet, I speak the language of gaming without even thinking about it. If someone says, "I confirmed my threat and maxed my 1d10+4, putting him past -10", I know instantly that the person is a) playing a d20 game, b) did at least 28 points of damage, and c) killed his foe instantly. With a bit more information, I'd visualize it in my head - though some of the ickier parts would be edited out, of course. Most characters end up killing enough foes in a single game session to be wading in blood, but the players would be on the floor puking if they saw a fraction of that violence in real life.

Anyway, the point is that a non-gamer listening to a gamer is like someone trying to listen to a foreign language...or at least a heavily-accented version of their language. I visited Australia once in my teens - the people of Western Australia theoretically speak English, but there was no way I was going to understand what they were saying.

That's why gamers have to police themselves a bit, when talking around non-gamers. Aside from the current national paranoia that may get you pegged as a terrorist (don't ever talk about Shadowrun adventures in public - ever), gamerspeak can end up driving away the novice gamer. Where a group of experienced HERO gamers can automatically convert "you're hit in location 13 for 28 STUN and 8 BODY against your normal PD" into "you were just kneed in the groin, hard", players new to the system need a little extra help.

For that matter, it never hurts to add a bit of flavor text, even if everyone knows the system well enough to visualize what's happened on their own. You can leave it out if everyone is proficient with the system and trying to get through an encounter quickly. At a minimum, though, the most dramatic parts of an encounter should be described without the game terminology. If you've been gaming a long time, especially in "crunchy" systems like D&D and HERO, the vivid descriptions tend to fall by the wayside. Every so often, you have to take a look at what you're doing in the game and make a conscious effort to set the gamerspeak aside.
- posted by Fedifensor @ Wednesday, May 26, 2004