Concepts

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Gygaxian Concepts

As with many games, Gygaxia has a number of words and concepts which are specific to its setting. Most games distinguish between the sorts of words known to players and those known to characters; here, however, there are no such hard distinctions.

Religious Terms

Domain: The area of influence a deity has, or claims to have. For instance, one god might claim to have the domain of weather; another the domain of liverwurst. Deities claim domains in order to appeal to mortals and thus acquire their worship. Deities generally have powers corresponding to their domains, although not necessarily.

Slang and Colloquialisms

These are expressions characters sometimes use. Note that although some such expressions betray knowledge that of Gygaxia's nature as a roleplaying game, individuals who have no understanding of this still use them without a concept of from where they originated.

Be Out of Mana: Incapable of using a supernatural ability due to mental fatigue, lack of spell energy, having fallen out of favor with one’s deity, exhaustion, or some other reason.
Change the Oil: To have a feast. This expression originated among dwarven cultures which use gravy as a lubricant or fuel.
Duster: A sprite who sells her wings to be ground up into pixie dust.
First Level: Inexperienced, incompetent, pathetic or inadequate to the demands of gameality. As in the sentence, "that spell is so first level," or "your fighting technique is really first level."
Go Lancelot: To wig out and behave homicidally or violently, usually with insufficient provocation. The term is sometimes used more loosely to refer to excessive hostility or apparently arbitrary displays of anger.
Go up a Level: To appear suddenly to get a lot better at something. As in, “Holy crap! I think I just went up a level.”
Hit Points: Health. Having a lot of hit points generally means being healthy, especially with regard to being damage resistant; it may also mean refer to being in good shape. Describing someone as low on hit points usually means that she has been hurt or is in poor physical shape. The term may also be used more loosely to refer to attractiveness, with especially appealing individuals being high on hit points.
Take a 7/8th: To excrete solid waste, especially when attempting consciously to retain an eighth of the total fecal matter present in one's bowels for purposes of being able to evacuate it voluntarily at some future time.
Tinkerbelle: A sexually adventurous person, or one who appears to derive large amounts of pleasure from sex, particularly a sprite.
Paternoster: A prayer uttered to generate a spell.
Whammy: A spell designed to subdue or hamper someone. As in, “that twit put a whammy on me!”

Metaphysical Concepts

These are concepts that pertain to the metaphysical nature of gameality.

Breaking the Fourth Wall To reference or incorporate into the game some element from beyond the regular boundaries of the gaming universe.
Cobbler: The gamemaster, or she who defines the story apart from the actions of the player characters.
Cosmic Shift: A notable inconsistency or change in gameality, caused by such things as a change of Cobblers, an adjustment to the rules, or the revision of history. Perceptive characters might perceive a cosmic shift in a vague way, analogous to the way you might perceive an adjustment of the contrast or brightness knob on your television.
Dualist Metaphysics: Beyond the realm of matter lies the aether, the stuff of souls and minds.
Gameality: Reality, in the context of the gaming universe.
The Great Chain of Being: A hierarchy defining the relationships and allegedly objective values of things within Gygaxia.
Laws of Gameality: The laws of physics in Gygaxia are similar to those in reality, but with a few key exceptions.
Reality: Actual reality, outside the context of the gaming universe.
Mechanosphere: The realm between gameality and reality which defines the nature of the rules and translates the words of the players into a story.
Metamechanical: Mechanical reactions pertaining to the way a gaming system (i.e., Story Arc) functions, such as the die rolls powering gameality and the mechanosphere. Few people know what this word refers to, but the Meta-Oracles make extensive use of it.
Stifler: What Meta-Oracles sometimes call the Cobbler, particularly when perceiving her as especially restictive. Pronounced with a long 'i' (i.e. 'stifle-er.')