It’s not too late to add more terms, if you’ve got jargon to share. Look for the full revision to be done in the next couple of days, and thank you for being so patient!

When it’s done, this glossary is going to be quite comprehensive.

“Four basic food groups” (thanks Walt C for reminding me of this) – Another term for covering the basics of a party: Tank (fighter/combat monster), healer (cleric/medic), brain (wizard/techie), and thief (they’re the same in all games).

Place Holder: A premade character (or one quickly rolled on the spot) given to a player after his own character just died in order to allow the player to play out the rest of the session. The Place Holder is replaced by a new character at the beginning of the next section.

Rewrite: A more severe form of Retcon, where clearly established elements are overtly changed (“I know you all got killed last week, but I’m rewriting the scene so that you negotiated rather than attacked”).

“Monty Hall (DM||Campaign)
A campaign- or DM-style of play where treasures exceeds action or XP advances characters too quickly. From the gameshow Let’s Make A Deal and its host, Monty Hall.

Rules Lawyer
A GM or player well versed in every rule, be they from core and/or supplement rulebooks, that [the rules] are always “on the table” in adjudicating game play. May result in an Emergency Break [sic]”

And from another comment thread here, “One True Way” (noted here so I can keep all the glossary candidates in one spot).

My wife and I are buying a house, so I didn’t get to the glossary this past weekend. I’m hoping to have a chance to do that in the next day or two. Stay tuned, and if you have any more glossary suggestions, don’t hesitate to add them here.

Shawn Says:
March 9th, 2007
Pure Roll, Raw Roll, or Unmodified Roll: The sum of the dice you rolled before any bonus or penalty was accounted for.

- convent – Ars Magica
- coterie – Vampire: The Masquerade (and probably sequels)
- team – Shadowrun

Power Gamer should probably list twink and munchkin as see also.

Rules Lawyer should probably list Power Gamer and perhaps Twink and Munchkin as see also.

Rule One – Alternate definition; I don’t know how widely spread it is: “Don’t wear your con badge outside of the convention.”

Caller: Title given to the player that communicates the rest of the PCs’ actions to the GM. In a sense the Caller’s word was the “final answer” to the GM. In practice, the Caller’s role quickly evolved into a party leader.

On a related note:

Party Leader: A PC designated by the rest of the party as their spokesman or final decision-maker. In D&D/AD&D games, this often went to a character of lawful good alignment (or whoever had the closest alignment to it). In other games, party leader would often go to the PC with the highest rank or status. (Note: many PC groups scoff at the notion of a party leader).

Balanced Party: A group of PCs that has all of the major roles (cleric, fighter, magic-user, thief) represented.

Covering the bases: Ensuring that a PC party is balanced by having at least one cleric, fighter, magic-user, and thief in the group (if the party was small, either multi-classing or NPCs would fill the missing roles).

Double-Oh: Gamer-speak for rolling a “100″ result on percentile dice.

Module: Archaic term for an Adventure.

Subclass: A specialized version of a major class that was often considered a substitute when covering the roles. (“We don’t need a fighter; we have a ranger!”).