The TTRPG glossary - words for the table

Every hobby has its own language, and tabletop roleplaying has more than most. This glossary gathers the words you will meet on the shelves, in a rulebook, or around the table, and explains them in plain terms with an example where it helps. New to all this? You may want to read how to choose your first game first, and then use this page whenever a word trips you up.

A

Actual play
A recorded session of a roleplaying game, watched or listened to as entertainment. Actual play shows on video and podcast, such as those that made Daggerheart and Candela Obscura famous, have brought countless new players to the hobby.

Adventure (module)
A pre-written scenario a group can play, with a setting, characters and events prepared in advance. A boxed set often includes a starter adventure so you can play straight away.

B

BRP (Basic Roleplaying)
A rules system from the publisher Chaosium that resolves actions by rolling percentile dice against a skill. Call of Cthulhu is built on BRP, with its own added rules for sanity.

C

Campaign
A series of connected sessions with the same characters, telling a longer story over weeks, months or years. The opposite of a one-shot, which is finished in a single evening.

Character sheet
The page that holds everything about your character: their abilities, skills, equipment and current state. You fill it in during character creation and update it as you play.

Check (roll)
The basic action of a roleplaying game: you roll dice to see whether your character succeeds at something uncertain. A game master might ask for a check to climb a wall, spot a lie or swing a sword.

Crunch
An informal word for how much rules detail a game has. A crunchy game like Dungeons & Dragons has many rules and options; a rules-light game like Mörk Borg has few.

D

d20, d6, and the dice
Dice are named by their number of sides, so a d20 has twenty and a d6 has six. Many games use a set of polyhedral dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20), while others use only ordinary six-siders.

Dice pool
A system where you roll a handful of dice at once and count the results, instead of rolling a single die. Blades in the Dark and many story games use dice pools.

Dungeon Master (DM)
The name for the game master in Dungeons & Dragons. See Game Master.

E

Encounter
A single scene in which something happens: a fight, a puzzle, a meeting with a stranger. A session is usually a string of encounters tied together by the story.

F

Fiction first
A design idea where what happens in the story decides which rules apply, rather than the other way around. Games like Mythic Bastionland and many indie titles lean fiction first, keeping rules out of the way until the story calls for them.

G

Game Master (GM)
The player who runs the game: describing the world, playing every character the others meet, and deciding what the rules ask for. Different games give this role different names, such as Dungeon Master, Keeper or Referee.

Gamebook
A book you read alone, choosing your path by turning to numbered paragraphs, sometimes with dice and a character. Early gamebooks like Buffalo Castle were among the first ways to roleplay without a group.

H

Hexcrawl
A way of exploring a map divided into hexagons, where each hex may hold a location, an encounter or nothing at all. It is a classic Old School format built around discovery and an open world; Mythic Bastionland uses one.

Hit points (HP)
A number showing how much harm a character or creature can take before they drop. It is one of the most universal mechanisms in the hobby, though many lighter games replace or shrink it.

I

Indie RPG
A roleplaying game made outside the large publishers, often by a small studio or a single designer. Indie games frequently experiment with mechanisms and story structures you will not find in mainstream titles.

Initiative
A system that decides the order in which players and enemies act during a fight. Some games roll for it, others fix it by a statistic or simply by who speaks first.

J

Journaling game
A game you play by writing, keeping a diary as your character while dice or cards prompt what happens next. Thousand Year Old Vampire is a well-known example, played alone with a notebook.

K

Keeper
The name for the game master in Call of Cthulhu, short for Keeper of Arcane Lore. See Game Master.

L

Lore
The background world, history and mythology of a game or setting. Lore gives players context for their adventures and something to build a character against.

M

Mechanic
A single rule or system that decides how something in the game works: how you make a check, how combat flows, how stress builds up. A game is, in a sense, a bundle of mechanics working together.

Megadungeon
An enormous underground complex of dozens or hundreds of rooms across many levels, meant to be explored over a whole campaign. It is a classic Old School format.

Metacurrency
A pool of points, held by the player rather than the character, that you spend to bend the rules or the story in your favour. Many modern games use one, such as tokens that let you reroll or add a detail to a scene.

N

NPC (non-player character)
Any character in the game not controlled by a player. The game master plays all the NPCs, from allies and shopkeepers to the villain.

O

One-shot
A complete game played and finished in a single session, with no continuation. It is an ideal way to try a new system or play with a shifting group.

Oracle
A tool, usually a set of tables and a die, that answers yes-or-no questions so you can play without a game master. Solo games rely on oracles to stand in for the person who would normally decide what happens.

OSR (Old School Renaissance / Revival)
A movement that returns to the style and rules of the earliest roleplaying games of the 1970s and 1980s: open worlds, deadly combat, improvisation and a game master with wide freedom. Well-known OSR titles include Mörk Borg, Old-School Essentials, Cairn and Shadowdark.

P

PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse)
A family of games built on the engine of Apocalypse World, where characters act through "moves" triggered by what they do in the story. It favours narrative flow over heavy rules and has shaped a large branch of modern design.

PC (player character)
The character a player controls, as opposed to the NPCs run by the game master.

Pointcrawl
A way of exploring where locations are joined by set routes on a map, looser than a hexcrawl but still giving structure to a journey.

Q

Quickstart
A free or cheap introductory version of a game, with simplified rules, ready-made characters and a short adventure. It is an ideal way to try a system before buying the full book.

R

Referee
An older name for the game master, inherited from wargaming, still used by some Old School games. See Game Master.

Rules-light / rules-heavy
Terms for how much rule detail a game carries. A rules-light game keeps things simple and fast; a rules-heavy game offers depth and tactical choice. Neither is better, they simply ask different things of you.

S

Sandbox
A style of play where the world is open and the group decides where to go, rather than following a fixed plot. The game master prepares places and situations, and the players choose their own path.

Sanity
A rule that tracks a character's mental state, which can fall as they encounter horrors. Call of Cthulhu made it famous: knowledge and terror erode the mind, so surviving means more than staying alive.

Session
A single sitting of play, usually an evening. A campaign is many sessions; a one-shot is just one.

Session zero
A meeting before play begins where the group agrees on the setting, tone, boundaries and expectations. It is where a table decides together what kind of story it wants to tell.

Setting
The world a game takes place in, with its geography, history and mood. Some games come with a rich setting; others hand you the tools to build your own.

Solo RPG
A roleplaying game designed to be played alone, usually with an oracle or a journal in place of a group. Solo and journaling games are a fast-growing branch of the hobby.

Sourcebook
A book that expands a game with extra setting, rules or options, on top of the core rulebook. A campaign might use several sourcebooks over its life.

Stat (attribute)
A number describing a basic quality of a character, such as strength or wits, used when you make a check. Different games use different names and lists; Mythic Bastionland, for instance, uses Vigour, Clarity and Spirit.

T

TPK (total party kill)
The moment when every player character dies at once. In deadly Old School and horror games it is a real risk, and sometimes a grim badge of honour.

TTRPG (tabletop roleplaying game)
A game in which players describe the actions of characters in a shared imagined world, guided by rules and usually a game master. Everything on this page is, in the end, in service of that.

W

Wretched & Alone
A family of solo games built on a shared engine, using a deck of cards and a tumbling block tower to tell a story of survival against the odds. The Wretched started it, and dozens of games have followed.