Quote from: Tod13;1082875Which is another thing: don't change established terms. If you have AC or HP, call them that. No need to come up with a new confusing term.

And explain the use of whatever term you use, as some do have several meanings. AC and HP may not, but still always, if it is an abbreviation, explain it.

Quote from: Tod13;1082875Which is another thing: don't change established terms. If you have AC or HP, call them that. No need to come up with a new confusing term.

Yes! Nothing worse than having to read a passage in a book, then mentally have to translate it into my own lingo. Some games feel to me like a guy was sitting there with a thesaurus saying, "hmmm, what's another word for Strength? Intelligence? Wisdom? Constitution? Dexterity? Charisma?" And then at the end  he acts like Might, Intellect, Insight, Endurance, Agility, Personality makes his a "new" game.

It gets even worse with story style games. "If I can activate my push in order to enhance my momentum, then my action can be distributed among the party in the form of colored stones which can be used to alleviate stress or determine level of ... " um, is this even English?

Quote from: Tod13;1082875Which is another thing: don't change established terms. If you have AC or HP, call them that. No need to come up with a new confusing term.

Agreed. The main exception to this as far as my stuff goes is that I call skills abilities.

One of the things I emphasize is that any character can attempt any ability without penalty. Just some characters are better than others at certain abilities.

Whereas if I called it skills players would assume they could not use it unless they had a bonus in it.

I did it this was it was more in keeping with the spirit of OD&D then a traditional skill system.

Yes, and this is as true. If it is not as usual, do not use that same old term.

Quote from: finarvyn;1082887It gets even worse with story style games. "If I can activate my push in order to enhance my momentum, then my action can be distributed among the party in the form of colored stones which can be used to alleviate stress or determine level of ... " um, is this even English?

They ain't got nothing on Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth.  You don't create a character who studies a school of magic and casts spells.  Oh, no!  You define an Origin, then create a Persona who uses the Origin to invoke Paradigms.  And that's just the one bit of Aria's terminology that was coherent enough for me to still remember it a couple decades later.  There's far worse to be seen if you can get your hands on a copy and dare to open it.

Quote from: finarvyn;1082887Yes! Nothing worse than having to read a passage in a book, then mentally have to translate it into my own lingo. Some games feel to me like a guy was sitting there with a thesaurus saying, "hmmm, what's another word for Strength? Intelligence? Wisdom? Constitution? Dexterity? Charisma?" And then at the end  he acts like Might, Intellect, Insight, Endurance, Agility, Personality makes his a "new" game.

I have some sympathy with this kind of thing, but only up to a point.  I believe strongly that a game should name the thing what it is--or at least as reasonably close as possible within the confines of how imprecise language can be.  At the same time, you want terms that create some spark in the readers.

As an example, renaming Strength to Might is going against the tide maybe too much.  Combining Constitution and Strength into a new score, and then renaming it something like Might makes sense to me.  It calls out the differences.  

Though I'm also hampered by the desire to use English words with more Germanic or Norse roots, instead of Norman-French or Latin roots, as more appropriate for the kind of game I want to make.  The competing interests mean that something gets shorted.

But yes, taking the same mechanics and then simply renaming everything is the worst kind of design laziness, and the worst of both worlds.