Welcome to the TTRPGIoA, the TableTop RolePlaying Game Index of Acronyms!
This is a reference guide for those struggling with the Indie Tabletop scene's many acronyms, particularly those frequently used in the Exalted Funeral Discord server. Hit "Ctrl+F" or "⌘+F", and type in the acronym you're confused about, for a brief summary. I trawled back weeks to find the most frequently used acronyms.
Feel free to comment or message me to add new acronyms, and I'll do my best to keep up.
I'm here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHjSosN7RjBiqPSdtE_VtAw
I'm here on Discord: https://discord.gg/uAhsKJ
Have Fun!~
5TD - Five Torches Deep, an old school hack of 5th Edition D&D.
AFF - Advanced Fighting Fantasy.
APoF - A Pound of Flesh, a module for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror game.
AW - Apocalypse World, a post-apocalyptic game by Vincent and Meguey Baker. This game's engine started the popular trend of games "Powered by the Apocalypse".
B/X - Basic D&D and its derivatives.
BFiS - Blood Floats in Space, a Mothership setting by Chance Phillips.
BLB - Best Left Buried, a system and adventure product line by SoulMuppet Publishing.
BoH - Bundle of Holding, a website for purchasing digital bundles of product lines, at a limited time discount.
BtW - Beyond the Wall, a low-prep game about kids from a small fantasy town near a fantastical forest. Also, more frequently, the phrase "by the way".
BW/BWHQ - Burning Wheel HeadQuarters, the company behind the Burning Wheel RPG and others.
CoC - Call of Cthulhu, a horror system.
CR - Critical Role, a widely known 'actual play' game of D&D 5e.
CT - Classic Traveler, the first edition of the Traveler RPG published in the 70's and 80's.
D&D - Dungeons & Dragons.
DC - Difficulty Class, a mechanic found in some games.
DCC - Dungeon Crawl Classics, a gonzo fantasy system.
DCO - Deep Carbon Observatory, a classic adventure module by Patrick Stuart.
DFD - Death Frost Doom, a classic adventure published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess.
DM - Dungeon Master, the person who runs the game, usually D&D.
DMG - Dungeon Master's Guide, a section in a book or standalone book that provides instructions for how to run a tabletop roleplaying game.
DND - Dungeons and Dragons.
DoaD - Dungeons on a Dime, a product line offering adventures for entry-level game masters.
DoB&S - Disciples of Bone & Shadow, a singleplayer game by Blackoath Entertainment.
DTRPG - DriveThru RPG, a popular webstore offering PDF and POD (Print-On-Demand) books.
DW - Dungeon World, a fantasy game system "powered by the apocalypse" (see PbtA).
EB - Electric Bastionland, a setting for Into the Odd, both written by Chris McDowall.
EF - Exalted Funeral, a publisher and distributor for Esoteric, RPG, and Heavy Metal books and paraphernalia.
FF - Fighting Fantasy, a roleplaying system.
FL - Fria Ligan, a Swedish game publisher.
FotFR - Fungi of the Far Realms, a book about mushrooms by Melsonian Arts Council.
GG - Goodman Games, an american publisher best known for DCC.
GLOG - Goblin Laws of Gaming, a rule set pioneered by Arnold K. of goblinpunch.blogspot.com.
GM - Game Master, a generic term for the person who officiates a tabletop game.
GU - Girl Underground, a PbtA game for telling stories like Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland or Spirited away, where the mutually tells the story of a curious girl in a fantastical world (see PbtA).
GURPS - Generic Universal Role-Playing System, a system famous for its many modules that purportedly allow you to play a game in any genre.
GW - Games Workshop, a British manufacturer of miniature wargames, most famous for Warhammer 40,000.
HC - Hardcover, a type of book.
HP - Hit Points or Health Points, a game mechanic measuring how many hits a character can take before unconsciousness or death.
ItO - Into the Odd, a rules-lite system by Chris McDowall.
ItW&W - Into the Wyrd & Wild, a wilderness horror setting and rulebook Charles B. F. Avery.
KS - Kickstarter, a platform for funding a variety of products.
LARP - Live Action RolePlay. Look it up.
LCC - Low Country Crawl, a setting by Technical Grimoire Games (no relation to DCC/MCC).
LL - Labyrinth Lord, a fantasy game system. Also the name of the officiator (see: GM).
LotFP - Lamentations of the Flame Princess, a game publisher that's had its fair share of controversies.
M&M - Marvels & Malisons, a spellbook published by Lost Pages. Also Miseries & Misfortunes, a Burning Wheel product published by Luke Crane (of Burning Wheel).
MAC - The Melsonian Arts Council, the UK based publisher of the Troika! a Science Fantasy RPG, and a variety of adventures and products.
MB - MÖRK BORG, an avante garde-ly presented doom-metal RPG published by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell.
MBC - MÖRK BORG CULT, the initiative to gather and publish fan-created content for MÖRK BORG.
MCC - Mutant Crawl Classics, a science-fiction game by Goodman Games.
MERP - Middle Earth RolePlaying, a licensed Lord of the Rings game from the 1990's.
MIR - Magical Industrial Revolution, a setting written by Skerples and published by Exalted Funeral.
MM - Monster Manual, a section or type of book that contains descriptions and often stats for foes, for use in games.
MoSh - Mothership, a sci-fi horror roleplaying system and its accompanying adventure product line.
MotBM - Maze of the Blue Medusa, an adventure written by Patrick Stuart, with art and additional writing by some other person, I'm sure.
MP - Mystic Punks, a single-player roleplaying game.
MRC - The MoonRat Conspiracy, a famous freelance indie RPG production team, available to do layout, editing, and writing. Consists of Jarrett Crader, Fiona Geist, Christian Kessler, Vi Huntsman, Dave Wilkey, Corey Brin, and Jared Sinclair. Yes, I'm biased.
MtG - Magic the Gathering, a collectible competitive card game owned by Wizards of the Coast and therefore the Hasbro Corporation.
NK - Noble Knight games, a distributor of Out of Print books famous for jacking up the price on rare books.
NPC - Non-Player Character, a person in an RPG controlled by the game master, not a player.
NTMO/NTMtO - Never Tell Me the Odds, a "space scoundrel" game about risking it all, by David Somerville.
OGL - Open Gaming License, a public license from a company for open creation of writings compatible with their system. Frequently referring to the Wizards of the Coast license.
OM - Omnimyth, a Character- and World-focused RPG.
OOP - Out of Print, a book that is no longer going to be printed, and can only be obtained secondhand.
OSE - Old School Essentials, a game system based on basic D&D.
OSR - Old School Revival/Revolution, a school of thought that...like...it's complex, look it up.
PBP - Play-by-Post, a style of playing an RPG over a text chat system such as Discord. Less frequently, literally play-by-POST, where you play through the post.
PbtA - Powered by the Apocalypse, a roleplaying system developed by Meguey and Vincent Baker for the Apocalypse World RPG, and used in a wide variety of RPGs written and published by others.
PC - Player Character, the character a player controls in a game.
PF - Pathfinder, a well-known fantasy roleplaying game, currently with 2 editions.
PHB - Players Handbook, a section or standalone book that provides information on character creation and how to be a player in a game.
POD - Print on Demand, a lower-quality style of printing in which a distributor only prints a book when it is ordered. This style of printing has allowed many more people to print and produce physical books than ever before.
QB - Questing Beast, a YouTuber who reviews books with his hands. Less frequently, Questing Beast or Beast Glatisant, a monster from Arthurian legend.
RPG - Roleplaying Game, one of a variety of games played at a table, usually with others, usually with dice.
SBH - Super Blood Harvest, the individual zines or collected 3 adventures written and illustrated by Dirk Leichty.
S&S - Sword & Sorcery, a romantic fantasy style of storytelling found across media.
SBtS - Seekers Beyond the Shroud, a modern occult fantasy singleplayer game written by Alex from Blackoath Entertainment.
SC - Softcover, a style of printing.
SEACAT - The mostly-finished ruleset written by Luka Rejec, found on wizardthieffighter.com, or in the back of the book, The Ultraviolet Grasslands.
SG - Sophisticated Games, previously the publishers of The One Ring RPG.
SR - Shadowrun, a futuristic urban science-fantasy RPG currently in its 6th Edition (though I hear 5th is better).
SRD - System Reference Document, an open source collection of rules and details for a game system. Frequently referring to the D&D 5e SRD.
SS&SS - Sharp Swords and Sinister Spells, a rules-lite sword and sorcery RPG.
ST - Saving Throw, a mechanic found in a variety of games.
SWN - Stars Without Number, a sci-fi game system.
SWORD DREAM - Second Wave of RPG Design also notated *DREAM, is a design school of thought that values inclusivity and innovation in design, among other things.
T&T - Tunnels and Trolls, a fantasy roleplaying game that's been around since the 70's.
TBH - The Black Hack, a "super-streamlined" fantasy game based on early editions of D&D.
TotM - Theater of the Mind, a style of playing RPGs that typically does not use maps, but allows players to envision the play space and its events in their mind.
TotSK - Tomb of the Serpent King, an introductory RPG dungeon written by Skerples.
TPK - Total Party Kill, when all the characters in a game die, conceptually ending the game. Also a zine.
TSR - Tactical Studies Rules, the self-publishing company for original D&D.
TTRPG - TableTop RolePlaying Game.
UVG - Ultraviolet Grasslands, an adventure setting written by Luka Rejec and published by Exalted Funeral.
VtM - Vampire the Masquerade, a modern-day vampire role-playing game known for its emphasis on role-play and faction play.
VTT - Virtual Tabletop, a computer program that allows for joint viewing of a game space, and rolling of dice.
W&W - Wonder & Wickedness, an OSR spellbook published by Lost Pages.
WCGCo - World Champ Game Co., the indie publishing imprint run by Adam Vass. Popular releases include Babes in the Wood, A Guide to Casting Phantoms in the Revolution and the recent Necronautilus.
WFRP - Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying, an old school miniature wargame. Famously ripped off by Zweihander.
WoD - World of Darkness, several supernatural horror games. OWoD may refer to Old World of Darkness, one of the earlier products in the product line (Not Monte Cook's World of Darkness). Less frequently, World of Dungeons, an un-hack of Apocalypse World.
WotC - Wizards of the Coast, the current publishers of Dungeons & Dragons, owned by the Hasbro corporation.
WotW -Weird of the Wode, Appalachian forest horror by SoulMuppet Publishing. Alternatively Weird on the Waves, a wave-crawl setting and toolkit by Kiel Chenier.
WTF - WizardThiefFighter Studios, the official name for Luka Rejec's writing. Also "What The Fuck", but hopefully you knew that.
WW - White Wolf Publishing, publishers of "Vampire: The Masquerade", now owned by Paradox Interactive following a scandal where ongoing human rights violations in Chechnya were narrativized for one of their adventures.
ZQ - Zine Quest, the annual Kickstarter event supporting the production of independent physical game products.
Damn, doing some work Vi! I would throw in "WoD" and "oWoD" as World of Darkness and Old World of Darkness, the overarching system / multiverse that Vampire and the related games are in / part of. I'm a little fuzzy but definitely if I saw WoD I'd think of vampires before I though of World of Dungeons.
ReplyDeleteAwesome work, this is an essential resource.
ReplyDeleteAwesome compilation! (it looks like "Girl Underground" fell off after GU, just FYI) :)
ReplyDeleteIn HC I would add "binding", like "a type of book binding".
ReplyDelete