Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | Email | Youtube Music | RSS | How to Subscribe

Weird Terminology and Acronyms

Apophenia: the brain’s natural tendency to create patterns from inputs, whether there are intentional patterns there or not. Wikipedia has a whole lot more information!

Genre: one of those wide-open words folks can get lost in the weeds defining and defending. In this episode, we mean subject matter, theme, setting, and expectations. For example, the zombie survival genre as defined by work like The Walking Dead, The Last of Us, or 28 Days Later. There are dangerous beings that used to be living humans, those beings might not be the most dangerous thing about the world, the world order has collapsed after the arrival of these beings, and we expect our protagonists to be faced with high-stakes choices as they try to survive. In game talk, “genre” can mean a lot of other things as well!

Trope: A “rule” of a genre, a recognizable moment, theme, or other element. In the zombie survival genre, for example: roving gangs of survivors, living villains who are more dangerous than the zombies because of understandable motivations, hiding the fact that you’ve been bitten and endangering everyone around you. 

LARP: Live Action Role Play. Once again we direct you toward Wikipedia for more information. It’s an incredibly rich, complex body of work! IGRC is far more interested in the Nordic larp tradition than other forms. 

Flags: In rpg talk, signals between players pointing toward interests, preferences, or no-go areas. Choosing a warrior-type character might be a flag pointing toward an interest in violence and fighting, or it might be a flag pointing toward themes of regret and the cost of violence. Some games have explicit flags, such as stated goals or personality traits, while others offer only implicit flags, such as skill or class choices. Troy Costick has a nice blog entry about flags.

X-Card/Safety: You don’t know everything about everyone at the table, and sometimes subject matter or play style can be upsetting in a way the participants did not opt in for. John Stavropolous created the X-Card, one of the first explicit safety tools. The Indie Game Reading Club has also covered safety.

PbtA: Powered by the Apocalypse, the meta-platform pseudo-concept not-a-license game design framework that arose with the publication of Apocalypse World.

Distributed Authority/GMful: Both phrases point toward roleplaying games in which duties typically enshrined in a single player at the table are spread among multiple players. These games typically feel much different at the table because there isn’t a central authority (GM/DM/facilitator) with final say on all non-character matters.

Games and RPG products referred to in this episode. 

These are affiliate links to DriveThruRPG, where hopefully we can earn enough pennies to defray the cost of acquiring these games. The Indie Game Reading Club does not accept free or promotional copies of games!

• Dragon Town
• Birthright
• King Arthur Pendragon
• Dark Sun
• Ghosts of Saltmarsh
• Dragonlance
• Zombie World
• Desperation
• Noteboard
• Dragonbane
• Mutants & Masterminds
• Fiasco
• Call of Cthulhu
• Basic Role Playing (BRP)
• Dungeon World
• Apocalypse World
• Monsterhearts
• The Slow Knife — Project information
• For The Queen
• Dragon Braggin’
• The Quiet Year
• A Complicated Profession
• Trouble For Hire
• Stewpot
• Daggerheart
• After The War
• Songfall Survivors
• Breathless
• Substratum Protocol
• The Facility
• Invisible Sun
• Impulse Drive
• Coriolis: The Great Dark
• The Burning Wheel

Contact Us

As always: If you have questions, comments, ideas or complaints, email us at hello@indiegamereadingclub.com!