Much like our first installment of the Gamer Glossary – this will be a brief overview of overarching terms for those looking to get into tabletop role playing games. While each RPG will have its own specific terms – this list will cover terms that are used across multiple games.
A prominent RPG podcast
For a solid look at role playing as a hobby in general, we highly recommend you check out Fear the Boot’s seven episode series they put together on introducing new people to the tabletop role playing hobby. We would do one ourselves, but these guys did such a good job of it already, there’s really no point in reinventing the wheel.
You can also check out Saving the Game on our podcasts page
Before we get started with the rest of the definitions:
Role Playing Game (RPG): a game in which the players take on the role of characters within a given setting. Players establish the skills, natural abilities, and decisions to develop how their character affects and is affected by the narrative. Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.
***
Adventure: A single story arch made up of various encounters using the same characters. The players will start with a specific goal and will press forward towards that goal
Alignment: Used in many games, alignment often involves some variation of “Good,” “Neutral,” and “Evil.” This is not necessarily related to moral choices so much as the character’s penchant to make decisions for the benefit of others (good) or for their own benefit (evil)
Buff / Debuff: Buffs are a generic term for items, actions, skills that provide a boost to a character’s abilities – such as a set of thieves tools provide a “buff” to the character’s lock-picking skill. Debuffs are often applied to enemies, and decreases their abilities to help the players defeat them.
Campaign: A series of adventures strung together using the same set of characters. There is usually an overarching narrative/objective that runs through all of the adventures in order to tie them together into one story.
Class: The character’s job. Class will have a broad range of options depending on what the setting of the game is. Some examples would include a cleric in a fantasy game, a soldier for a modern game, or a starship pilot for a sci-fi game
Core Book(s): Game systems often involve a number of books that provide useful information to help players and GMs make their game what they want it to be. Core Book(s) refer to those books that contain all of the basic setting and rules information to play the game as intended. Some systems have the basics contained in one book, like the Pathfinder Core Rulebook, while others have multiple books, like Dungeons and Dragons core set (Players Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual)
Critical Success / Failure: In any game that has failure and success states, there is usually something built into the mechanic where the success is super effective (regardless of the character stats) or an incredible failure (regardless of character stats).
Dice and their use: Different games will use dice differently – but their primary role is 
that of a randomizing agent that helps determine the success or failure of a specific action. Dice notations often read something like 1D20. What this means is that the number on the left of the D is the number of dice to roll, while the number to the right of the D represents the number of sides the die should have. In the previous example – this would mean one twenty sided die would be rolled. A full set of “gaming dice” includes dice with 4,6,8,10,12, and 20 sides with one die added for handling percentages (used only in certain games)
Dungeon Crawl: If a game is referred to as a dungeon crawl, the game’s focus is not about the inward struggles of the characters or their inter-relationships. The focus in these games are about running head long into danger, defeating the foes, and moving on to the next challenge.
Dungeon Master (DM) / Game Master (GM): There are more terms for this role, but these are the most generic. The GM is the person who is responsible for everyone and everything that is not controlled by the characters. The GM a combination of rules referee and storyteller.
Encounter: A situation that the characters have to deal with. Encounters can be story based (you have to convince the mayor to let you into the city vaults), combat (there’s a of orcs that attacked the town and you have to kill them), or puzzle (you are in a room with four statues. The door in front of you is locked.)
Fate Points: Fate points got their name from the Fate game system. These will have different names depending on the game you play. Some examples are bennies, action points, hero points, etc. These are points that are given to the player in order to break the rules or to provide special bonuses. While it is up to the GM’s discretion, they are often used to reroll bad dice or bring up an automatic success.
Experience Points: The number of points awarded for completing certain tasks or defeating enemies. These points are used to determine when a character can go up in levels and/or learn new skills.
Group Template: Featured in episode two of the Fear the Boot podcast, the group template is a way to formally approach the question “When the adventure is over, would these people have any reason to stay together?” It is a tool designed to help bring depth to character interactions by creating meaningful relationships between them.
In Character / Out of Character: There are a lot of interactions that happen at a gaming table, so sometimes it is important to distinguish whether what you just said is meant to be taken as the character saying it (IC) or whether you as the player are saying it (OOC). The level of IC vs. OOC talk at the table is often determined by the group playing.
Initiative: The order in which players and enemies move often determined by a combination of dice rolling and character statistics.
Level: The measurement of power for a character or enemy. For instance, a level 2 character should have no problem with a level 1 monster. However, if a level 15 dragon were to appear, it might be best to run.
Metagaming: When the player chooses to have the character do or say something based on knowledge that the player has while the character could not possibly know. An example would be saying your character refuses to drink at the king’s table because a DIFFERENT player discovered it was poisoned when the character wasn’t there.
Minions: Enemies designed to be quickly defeated by the players. They are used by GMs to help the players feel powerful or to distract them from the main enemy in order to make the encounter more difficult.
Min/Max: Min/Maxing is a focus on the math of a game system. Min/Maxers are players that are not concerned with what statistic will reflect who their character is. They are focused on determining which statistics will give them the most favorable outcomes most often.
Module: An adventure where all encounters, NPCs, items, and story has been published by a third party. Most game systems have these available to some degree.
Party: The group of adventurers that set off to achieve the goal. In short – the party is the collection of all the players’ characters. Parties come in all shapes, sizes, and styles, but one thing is considered universally true in gaming. Never split the party.
PC vs. NPC: PC is short for Player Character. They are the characters controlled directly by those playing the game. NPC stands for Non-Player Character, and represents all the other characters present in the story controlled by the GM.
Race: Mostly present in fantasy and sci-fi games, race is the character’s ethnic background. The most common fantasy races are Humans, Elves, Dwarves, etc.
Save: Some games allow you to do what is called a “save” or a “saving throw.” The effect of a successful save depends on the game system – but it can generally be understood as avoiding an unfavorable situation either in part or in whole.
Setting: The people, places, and things that make up the world in which the game happens.
Stats and Stat Modifiers: The values given to represent the character’s skills and abilities. Stat modifiers are bonuses added to certain skill checks based on the characters statistics.
Skill Check: What is required to perform certain actions. For example: if your character wants to push a boulder on the head of an unsuspecting enemy below, the GM may ask you to do a strength check.
Story Game: A game where the focus is placed more on the characters’ development and interactions with the world around them rather than combat. This sort of game can often go entire game sessions without seeing a single goblin being slain.