Editing RPG Lexica:YZ9 (section)

==Numbers & Symbols==

;101, the: Slang for the basic information about some subject of interest.  Usually used to refer to imparting this information to another: "I'll give him the 101 on the Agency while we're staying here in the safe house."  From the traditional course number for introductory courses in American colleges and high schools (from "MemoryBeast", on the RPGnet Fora). It is not a reference to George Orwell's book ''1984'', where 101 was the room prisoners were exiled to in order to face "the most horrible thing in the world."  Sometimes called "'''the 411'''" (411 in American phone systems is the three-digit "x11" code for Directory Assistance, also called "Information"; other x11 codes include 511 for traffic assistance and of course 911 for emergency services).


;20-4 theory:  "RPGs are twenty minutes of fun packed into four hours."  A statement from prominent D&D designer Mike Mearl's blog which sparked a great deal of discussion across the online gaming community, much of it outraged, but subject to some sympathy from a surprising number of players. The sentiment expressed is that traditional tabletop role-playing has a very inefficient fun-to-work ratio, especially when compared to more modern entertainments like digital gaming.


;404: Brain not found.  A player (more rarely, a GM) caught daydreaming at an inopportune moment.  Derived from the HTTP error code returned when one attempts to load a web page which is not present on a given server.


;80-20 rule:  The top 20% of people (by whatever measure) get 80% of the goodness.  An observable trend in many real-life situations.  In an RPG context the 80:20 rule is usually cited as the reason for avoiding basing anything on a player's real-life skill level in a game that is distributed across a large number of people (as in a tournament or online RPG) since it will quickly become the case that anyone outside the top 20% of skill will be completely dominated and have no motivation to continue participating.


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[[Category:Terminology]]