RPG Lexica:GHI

H

Hack and Slash: A style of gameplay wherein the main focus is combat. Attempting to talk or reason with an NPC in such a game, rather than just kill them, is most likely to result in confusion or mockery from the other players. A close relative of the Dungeon Crawl, and likewise most common in fantasy games.

Hitpoint gain problem: A modeling difficulty arising from the use of hit points. In many game systems, as a character improves in skill, they also gain hit points. This is intended to represent the dramatic phenomenon, seen in many fantasy films and stories, whereby more heroic characters are capable of sustaining greater amounts of damage without being visibly affected. However, systems using hit points do not distinguish between types of damage where drama would not apply, leading to the situation of highly skilled characters being able to throw themselves off 100-foot cliffs without being hurt, because they will still have plenty of hit points spare after losing those that represent the damage from the fall.

Holding Tank: The notional part of an RPG club where new players wait to become involved in games. Because most RPG players tend to enjoy long-term campaigns with a fixed group of a particular size, new arrivals to a club or other RPG playing venue can find themselves with no game to play in because all other players are already involved in long-term campaigns that were established before the new player arrived. The existence of the holding tank for RPGs, compared to other gaming hobbies such as miniatures or board gaming where it is not needed, is one of the reasons commonly referred to for the difficulty in recruiting new RPG players.

Horse Bombing: Abusing a magical or supernatural ability that creates objects, and is not intended to be used as an attack, by exploiting the offensive value of generally being able to create objects from thin air. Examples include using a spell intended to provide food and water for allies, to create water or food inside an enemy's brain case; or the example that defines the term: using a spell that summons a horse for the caster to ride by casting it several hundred feet above a stationary or unaware enemy so that the horse falls on them at high velocity.

"I'm going to get medieval on his ass": A quote from the movie Pulp Fiction that basically means the PCs are about to do something very violent, probably fatal, and definitely painful to whoever is referenced by 'his'. Often followed by another Pulp Fiction line: "Zed's dead, baby."

Impossible Thing Before Breakfast: For the GM to maintain complete authorial control of the story while the players at the same time retain complete protagonist control of their characters. That is, for both the players and GM to simultaneously run the game as exclusively "their" story. Although this paradox is often unintentionally presented as the ideal model for running RPGs, recent RPG theory states that it is impossible because it is contradictory, and attempts to achieve this unattainable situation have been responsible for a lot of failed role-playing. It's coinage as a term in RPG theory is by Ron Edwards - the phrase itself originated in Alice in Wonderland, where the Queen tells Alice that "sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Intelligence problem: The difficulty encountered in enabling Intelligence stats to work correctly in games which have them. The problem arises from the fact that Intelligence will affect the character's ability to choose what to do next. Since making these choices for their characters is the key means by which players are involved in the RPG, these choices must be left to the player; but if they are left to the player, the choice will be made based on the player's level of intelligence, not the character's.

Inverse Ninja Law: A paradox in games (usually with strong martial art themes) where a sole ninja can often be a dangerous show-stopping foe, but a group of ninjas can be mowed through with ease by a group of players. Thus, the Inverse Ninja Law: Sum Ninja Effectiveness = 1/Ninjas.

ISTxKO: Typically used in forum thread titles, an abbreviation for "I seek the x knowledge of", properly followed by the subject of inquiry. The variable x is the name of the forum, implying a request for the aid of the forum community as a whole. It seems to have originated on the RPGnet Tangency forum as "I seek the Tangency knowledge of" (later abbreviated "ISTTKO"), used by those seeking information on an obscure topic, often before even trying to Google for it. Replacing "Tangency" with a variable forum name came later; widely used on the RPGnet Open forum is ISTOKO (where x = Open, obviously). While this terminology originated on RPGnet, it is unknown to this contributor if its use has spread to other fora.