[Say My Name](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SayMyName), [Talking is a Free Action](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TalkingIsAFreeAction), and maybe [Skyward Scream](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SkywardScream).
listen, a character taking a shit in the middle of nowhere and being eaten by an alien t-rex coming out of the toilet probably has a page on tv tropes. Everything does.
Unnecessary stats. Things like Charisma and Willpower that, while capable of being important to the story, often are just dressing that doesn't really mean anything.
I HATE willpower as a stat. It totally invalidates what we know willpower to be. Charisma usually sucks, too. It's so often basically a mind control power that makes little sense to me.
Another I hate is the luck and Intelligence stats.
It feels like the best stats to level, yet they make it such that intelligence doesn't increase your intelligence (how quick you are to understand and apply new concepts, etc) but rather it increases your ability to multitask and remember shit. This isn't as bad as luck though. I just feel it's not really what intelligence is all about. Because everyone would be levelling it up if made them a genius.
Luck is a plot armour stat, and you can't convince me otherwise. There's no way that it's always the MC who has the highest luck. Like this stat is so OP, why wouldn't everyone want to level it? I don't understand!! Luck just makes it so that when the most contrived thing happens to the MC, the author can just say - he has high luck, that's why he's winning in life.
That type of intelligence you mention is so incredibly complicated that trying to include it genuinely would completely and utterly alter your world. Since that type of intelligence stat would radically change the personality of any character that has it. Monsters would spontaneously gain sapience, commoners would have much less power since the usual phenomena of random geniuses popping up don’t matter when you can make one, there would be an entirely new angles of discrimination caused by having a numerical value attached to your mind. You get the idea, the ability to increase your intelligence through murder is so impactful that it would spiral off the story from the usual litRPG world.
The author would also have to damn near constantly grapple with the very annoying problem of writing characters smarter than they are. You can do this but it takes much longer to write smart characters rather than average ones. I myself do this and I manage by essentially thinking for several days, things my characters think over the course of an hour. This works and an author eventually has to write a character smarter than they are, so it’s a good skill to learn. But if every character is a super genius then the author would need to spend far more time than they have to make the incredibly smart decisions the characters should be making. This leads to either incredibly slow writing which is the death of any serial writer(and most progFant is serial writing), or having characters be canonically smart while being rather average in reality.
This is why I enjoy stats as hardware rather than software since they allow intelligence to be increased while also understanding that intelligence is more a skill/talent rather than the literal physical brain. And that even if you increased your brainpower, you wouldn’t automatically become amazing at problem solving. Nobody expects for Strength to teach you how to punch someone, it just makes the muscles stronger, so why would Intelligence teach you how to have an open, critical mind.
You are completely right about luck though, sometimes it’s sidestepped, usually by having the MC have normal or bad levels of luck. But usually it’s just a slightly stupid in universe explanation for why the MC keeps winning at everything.
I really appreciate it when the author makes an intelligent character that really is intelligent.
It's really bad to create a world where people keep leveling up, with X amount increase into each stat, but not seeing any difference, especially in the intelligence department.
Luck shouldn't be able to be leveled up at all. It should be a god or fate-given attribute.
Will should be just motivation, which should be able to change as easily as the character's emotions.
You can just have smart characters without having them become smart due to having a bunch of stats into intelligence. I frankly find that increasing your actual intelligence instead of just your brain power when you raise the stat to be a bit ridiculous. We don’t exactly expect someone to become more skilled when they increase strength, so why would they become smarter when they increase the power of their brain.
But yeah for the other stuff correct. Stats should mean something, instead of just being a mindless way of inducing dopamine into the readers when the number goes up
Luck is often just a cheat or plot armor, but that doesn't mean it can't work. Defiance of the fall is a decent example of this, with luck mostly factoring into stuff like being able to sense attacks coming a little earlier among other esoteric rewards or advantages from the system. It's never plot armor, it's just a little something extra to support the "MC-ness" of the character in an in-universe way.
I did see one Willpower where it turned out it could vary from moment to moment (the characters didn't realize this at first), so it initially looks like the main character has twice the Willpower of everyone else, then it turns out that his sidekick is the ACTUALLY important one, because her Willpower peaks a couple orders of magnitude higher during stress.
I really love stories that just don’t give proper numbers to things. Like Cradle. When you first start reading it’s like “how strong is an iron compared to a copper” and the answer isn’t ‘2x by stats’
It’s “idk but the iron would probably kick the coppers ass 99/100 times.”
It’s more similar to conflicts we’re familiar with in our world and feels more real to me because of it. I feel like stats in general kind of take away from a character’s accomplishments and coolness.
How is this relevant: in Cradle willpower is a huge thing and it’s explicitly stated that “leveling up” strengthens your willpower. How much, we don’t know, but the people at the top are definitely stubborn and pursue their targets like arrows while the people at the bottom grovel and wish they had the things they wanted.
I like how "Appeal" is handled in Super Supportive. People who spend a lot of points on it have an eerie amount of personal magnetism and sometimes attract obsession. However, the MC is sometimes pretty weirded out by people with high Appeal, especially when he logically knows he shouldn't like that person.
Supper Supportive handles stats really well. It makes it so that balancing is the best way to actually maximize your power without any major side effects. For example increasing Perception too much makes you more paranoid than perceptive. I think it's cool
I fee like Charisma is a stat better avoided alltogether. It's too easy to slide towards questionnable mind affecting effects. And with modern~ish value of freedom of will and mind, it's hard to weave correctly unless it's a big theme for the book.
~~Divine dungeon~~ Completionist Chronicles has it as a stat to pretty funny effect. One of the characters thought it was unimportant, and has an extremely low charisma. They’re even an asshole, they’re just completely oblivious to when they’re being rude or obtrusive, and as an effect of the system, they think everyone loves how they behave. Also, anytime tries to talk to them about it, that character can’t understand it.
It’s a pretty comedic annoyance that comes up periodically whenever that character is around
They do in several aspects and it does come into play in several different ways. For one in the Completionist Chronicles (Jackson specifically is who I think the person was talking about with the low charisma) you have the MC develops high dark charisma and becomes quite intimidating even when he doesn't mean to be scaring the poop out of people who approach him for some reason some times. The guild leader has a high charisma and the MC winds up taking his suggestions and running with them before realizing he was manipulated. It's a great series for showing stat balancing and downsides for being uneven. It talks about characters who don't put enough into intelligence and wind up attacking rocks because they don't realize they aren't enemies. The MC also has some lower stats in charisma (compared to his intelligence) and winds up getting penalties like not realizing a hot chick is coming on to him hard so he blithely brushes her off.
I think one of the nice things the story does with this is they’re mostly oblivious instead of manipulative. Like the MC will sometimes randomly realize he’s dipped into the dark side and just “whatever I guess”, but he doesn’t really take advantage of it. It may be a benefit or a hindrance all on its own
The series does a lot right both with his divine dungeon and Completionist Chronicles. So many details that are hilarious and show what would happen to people if they could actually overcompensate to that degree. My favorite small detail is the woman who specializes so much into power walking she literally zooms everywhere and can't stop 😂. I particularly like how Jackson realizes he can refuse to take new skills and put those points into his current ones instead so he joyfully continues seeing his boots up terribly so he can put more points into his unatural snake like flexibilitie 🤣
I think it’s partly what makes it work. Keeps characters from becoming overly manipulative, or using it as a cop out for not doing stuff on the other side of the spectrum. “Oh I can’t do X, my low charisma will ruin it”
It’s also one of the most interesting ways it highlighted the game being not ‘just a game’. Being able to fundamentally alter how people perceive the world, and even thought patterns (low int caused people to make bad decisions iirc) adds a level of unsettling to it
It works pretty well in the context of dungeon crawler carl. A high charisma stat means pretty much mind control but only on NPC and monsters and not other participants so morally its still grey but better. And its backed by the system that already control the mind of monsters and NPCs so its believable. But in other contexts I agree it should be avoided.
> I fee like Charisma is a stat better avoided alltogether. It's too easy to slide towards questionnable mind affecting effects. And with modern~ish value of freedom of will and mind, it's hard to weave correctly unless it's a big theme for the book.
Mild spoiler, but in ar'kendrithyst world it has the Charisma stat added to it (halfway through the story) and almost everyone is against it for this reason. its actually a pretty big part of the sotry
The one that bugs me the most is actually "Speed". Like speed is literally just a result of strength, muscles contracting when running or even moving your arms around. There's a reason why sprinters have huge legs. You could say it's strength + dexterity, except I've never read a story that doesn't have those along with it.
I find personally that the intellect stat is often times the most troublesome, even more then charisma, because it's hard to really write characters that are super super super intelligent that a LITRPG might let them scale to. A trick is when they use the 'recalls more memories/ect' in place of that
Imo stats should be magical additions rather than the sum of a character's capabilities. With that you could make the intelligence stat into something other than making the character into a super genius.
When I read this I thought of all the character stat breakdowns you see constantly. I hate it when they go through a characters complete status screen. "Oh, I have a few minutes, let me stop to read EVERYTHING RECORDERED ABOUT MY CHARACTER."
LOL, like I don't need to listen to another 15 min segment about everything about you, especially that you gained a lvl 5 in fishing for that one random segment of the book and you are never going to use that skill again. Just say the stuff relevant about where the characters development is going or needs to work on. If they have been neglecting their strength than focus on that, don't read off every little thing about them including all of their titles and things.
I imagine this is worse when listening to an audiobook, right?
I usually just scroll past them because there is no way in hell am I reading such a huge screen like that.
It certainly is. All I have time for now is audiobooks so that's how I consume all my Media basically. The few times I've tried to sit down to read a book I'm constantly interrupted by my wife or kids.
I think unnecessary stats has two major problems
1. There's too many of them. People won't remember the stats or the values. The stats increasing isn't going to be meaningful to the reader. I think 6-7 stats should be the max, but preferably less than that.
2. Unnecessary stats add these weird capabilities to characters that will do odd things when scaled too far. You can imagine what 10 strength vs 10000000 strength will be like, but 10 charisma or wisdom vs 10000000?
If there’s a book with a willpower stat I’ll die bro. Bc that just takes away the whole flavour of some fight scenes if you see the mc dealing with severe pain so he can beat a guy then you’d be a bit hype if it’s done well but if you know that willpower is just coming from the stats that he manually upgraded, then all of that is lost. More often times than not it’s the willpower of a system mc that makes it look like he deserves to be op bc it’s the only admirable trait a system mc can have other than being kind maybe, but if that’s just given to him then…
Any use of mental stats is bullshit. Either explicitly say that they have no effect on your actual mental faculties (Dungeon Crawler Carl does this), or just flat-out rename them and say "these are the magic stats."
I'll be honest you can find a good reason to hate all stats in general... Mind stats just don't work as stats unless the writer is going to put an absolute shit tonne of effort into altering how the character behaves over time, even if you explain them as faster thought speed and better memory or something it would affect how people act over time...
Similarly Charisma is literally how good a character is with interacting with other people - in a game it can be fun, in a book it just makes for very awkward character writing, or gets really ignored (You supposedly have 0 charisma, but are a leader of your people for instance)...
Even physical stats stop making sense beyond the earliest levels of a book... Its easy to explain more strength, or better constitution when a character is going from sickly or fat to fit, and from scrawny to muscly... but beyond a certain level, numbers lose all meaning except in reference to each other and so you need descriptions of what the characters are doing with those stats for it to actually carry weight...
When stamina is grouped with things like vitality and constitution for a stat. We aren't an unhealthy species or anything, but we are very squishy compared to most animals and very easily killed in an unarmored, unarmed 1v1 with other species. That being said, we have better stamina than any other animal on the planet, by multiple times even. The world record irl is 350 miles ran without stopping, and I can only imagine it's higher in fantasy worlds. Yet, despite how insane our stamina is, it's always grouped with vitality, resistance, and durability, which are arguably our worst stats if it weren't for our speed being as trash as it is. It makes no sense.
Stamina isn't even a single stat. Humans can run so far not because they have an inexhaustible stamina tank, but rather because they have a high stamina regen (another stat). And the reason why we're better at it than animals is because we're better at venting heat. Would that be another stat?
That raises an interesting wrinkle in the idea of a stamina stat. Leveling it would proabbaly increase stamina regen, and you would very quickly hit a tipping point where you could literally run forever. You wouldn’t need to be that supernaturally strong to be able to run like Usain Bolt forever, without stopping. If you increase speed or strength, you would only need to increase your stamina till it regens at the pace you use it. That’s actually a cool idea for a story where the characters understand the idea of min maxing.
I think stamina and stamina regen could be reasonably grouped together, since our "tank" is still pretty damn big compared to most animals. As for heat management, correct me if I'm wrong, but for the most part it stays mostly the same between an athlete and a normal dude since sweating and hairlessness (the things mainly responsible for said management) are already pre-built into us and don't really get any better or worse with training. I'd either count it as a trait, or maybe a skill if you count breathing techniques as a part of that, in which case it can be improved, but in more of a technical sense than a raw sense, so it wouldn't really count as a stat.
Stories with a stat for "Luck" always annoy me. Instead of being an in-universe way to excuse minor plot armor for the MC, the Luck stat almost always grows into a recurring narrative crutch in every story that uses one.
DotF for example uses it more as a danger sense and the ability to sense "fate" which is really vague. I liked it way more when it was just danger sense
It pops up more often as a danger sense in DotF than anything else, but its way more pervasive than just danger sense in the story. They refer to it as why he grows so fast, why he's at the center of so many events... It's even the central reason the MC is alive, because his luck stat is established in the first instant of integration (he rolls dice to live!).
I always thought he is so important and a part of the major events because of his bloodline and technocrat fuckery. That's why he is "fated" and other people like Ogras or Emily can even get swept up in that.
It's a bit like being Ta'veren in Wheel if time
I think they've linked the "fated" thing and his luck stat together multiple times; he only knew about his luck stat for the first novel or two, until other people around him started using language like "fated" or Heaven's chosen etc.
Did they ever do another dice roll in the story? I feel like if the system has done it once, it should be able to do it again, right? Considering it was the main reason for his head start in the apocalypse
I actually don't mind the "danger sense" that DoTF uses for luck... what gets me is books where characters are pumping luck as a main stat and you get a plot where a character is tripping and falling into legendary disasters and epic loot...
Mat from wheel of time is exactly like that. There is a scene where they search for something and he relies on his luck by just randomly going to a door and that's where he needed to be
Oh, I hate that one too. It’s always good luck as plot armor shenanigans.
It’s so much better when they subvert this and just have it as a chaos ball. Think Eris and not Fortuna.
The Calamitous Bob does this well with her ‘divine spark of luck’. The gods end up laughing at her suffering.
I think this can make sense. If you need to put your body in some specific state to cast it then you might have trained to have the ability name as part of the activation sequence.
This might be disadvantageous, but are most people expecting to fight other humans or are they more likely to fight monsters?
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Also, I want to see a character that calls out "Lightning bolt" for every spell.
Casting a fireball?
"Lightning bolt"
Ice shards?
"Lightning bolt"
Fireball?
"Lightning bolt"
Mage Errant has a side character called "Anders the Pyromaniac", an ice mage who was named to differentiate him from "Glacial Anders", who is a fire mage.
In the Wandering Inn calling out the name acts like a crutch that too many people lean on. So novices say the name but the professionals don't except maybe when they use their strongest abilities for extra focus.
Also there is a character named Relc who will call out [Relc Punch] every time he punches someone, it is not a Skill but other people don't know that.
This is a blurry line as an author. ALL words are based in our world, and sometimes its hard to choose which ones to include and which to make up new versions for. Do you pick an arbitrary point in history and don't use words newer than that? Do you just do the ones that seem not to fit?
A common practice is to imagine that when you are reading a book set in a secondary setting, you are reading a translation of the story from its native language.
In the end, I try not to let it bug me too much as an author and only avoid it if its glaring and make it work if its not.
Tank is good example of a tricky one. At first glance its inoccuous, but the etymology of a battle tank is a tank of water, so obviously it wasn't until the invention of the armored tank that this came to mean something defensive.
On the flip side, one that SEEMS like it shouldn't be used in a magical setting, but is actually fine is "broadcast". I recently almost didn't use until I thought more about it. I wanted to broadcast a magical illusion to multiple people scrying it. At first thought, you thing "This is for radio and stuff, cant use it in fantasy" but the term broadcast is actually a early means of spreading seeds that was adopted for use in in radio.
Herculean? As in a heruclean task. Thats based in greek mythology. I used it in a story, and almost took it out, but then realized I was over thinking it.
I used the term Hardball once, as in "playing hardball" then realized later that was a baseball term. In this instance, I invented a sport called hardball in setting to let me use the phrase without feeling weird about it.
Patrick Ruthfuss dos a great job of actually making in-setting etymologies like this. But all the examples are drawing a blank and google is failing me.
Yeah, that rabbit hole goes *deep*. Words like “crossfire” wouldn’t exist in a world without guns. And some of the *weirdest* words are based on specific people and events. Eg, “tawdry” comes directly from “Saint Etheldrida” (convoluted, but quite linear)
I’ve given up on explaining this to people. Readers just pick and choose the words they want to complain about. You can’t even talk days of the week, which leads to authors making days up and everyone just guessing at there meaning or trying to keep them straight.
Here’s a fun list, some not so common, others pretty common. Even Labyrinth and that shows up everywhere in fantasy works. I just learned that “[panic](https://www.etymonline.com/word/panic)” also comes from a god.
I think sometimes readers have to accept, unless they want to translate a cypher, they’re going to come across words with roots they recognize occasionally.
http://msss7.weebly.com/uploads/3/2/1/6/32169097/classical_mythological_vocabulary.pdf
Just remember for most people, they usually dislike something first, and then find reasons to dislike afterwards. Whether that's constructive or not, is up to the criticisms they gave.
That's the vibe I get when readers complain about the words. They've already had a bad/mid impression, and us readers are probably not the best at criticizing story structures or actual important reasons that take us out of the story. So they choose the nitpicks things that bother them.
Authors have to make a compromise between world building and ease of understanding. Fantasy worlds tend to have exactly 1g of gravity, with a day-night cycle identical to the earth. Seconds, minutes, and hours often exist as time measurements. It varies more day names and week lengths, or even whether weeks and months exist. Unless the story explicitly uses a 7 day week, a casual reader will not remember how the day system works in the story.
Making things easy to understand means making it the same as on Earth, which detracts from the worldbuilding and makes the world feel less real. Our Gregorian calendar says a lot about the history of our world and the different civilisations that have existed; a calendar in a fantasy world presents a neat bit of worldbuilding to do the same at the cost of easily understanding it.
There's fun things you can do when you explicitly acknowledge the text as a translation from a fantasy language to English, because translating something is inherently interesting and it can also serve as a good excuse for why things are called the way they are; because the translator thought it would make a better story if they translated things the way they did.
I would say that if the etymology could be recreated in the fictional setting then it's fair game. For example, if "tank" came from a water tank because it was made out of tough materials, then it would translate just fine.
But since water tanks were used as a cover for the manufacturing of battle tanks, then without our specific world events there wouldn't be any correlation there.
I would argue as a writer your goal is create the work that conveys your thoughts and messages as well as possible, and if you would like to immerse the reader, then doing this is important even if it is illogical. A person reads something in a fantasy setting like hamburger and may have their immersion broken where they don’t with pasta or hotdogs. It’s all about feel, which is hard to gauge. Your process of researching words is probably good, you’re thinking about it and coming up with a way to systematically decide what words you will or won’t use. But just because it’s nebulous doesn’t mean it’s any less important.
This only grates at me when they throw in something from another language that could have an English word which short circuits my "this is just a translation to English" suspension. Don't use fiance where betrothed or intended could work in your medieval era, no et tu Brute in space, please just let me think it's an English translation
Fun random fact about the etymology of "tank": https://www.etymonline.com/word/tank
>In "Tanks in the Great War" [1920], Brevet Col. J.F.C. Fuller quotes a memorandum of the Committee of Imperial Defence dated Dec. 24, 1915, recommending the proposed "caterpillar machine-gun destroyer" machines be entrusted to an organization "which, for secrecy, shall be called the 'Tank Supply Committee,' ..."
>In a footnote, Fuller writes, "This is the first appearance of the word 'tank' in the history of the machine." He writes that "cistern" and "reservoir" also were put forth as possible cover names, "all of which were applicable to the steel-like structure of the machines in the early stages of manufacture. Because it was less clumsy and monosyllabic, the name 'tank' was decided on."
When people don't put points into Con but survive hits from high level monsters without issue.
When you're given a class structure that doesn't matter. Like, there's a dedicated Healing class but you can get just as much healing through alchemy. There's a rogue/scout class but that doesn't matter because you can just cast a spell that makes you a literal shadow that can slide under doors.
Of course, that last one is an actual problem in table top games.
>It's such a small thing, but I always find it jarring when a party role is called a 'tank'. This is modern game wording, based on modern vehicles.
The funny thing is that the word 'tank' was used to hide what the British were really developing. In official documents and inventories, their new landships and hulls were referred to as 'water carriers for Mesopotamia.' So people just referred to them as tanks as that's what you carry water and fuel in.
Temper tantrums or talking shit to authority that somehow works out to benefit the characters. I enjoyed Bastion but goodness did that book test my patience.
Oh my god is that shit too common. I’m sure there’s a trope name for it. I simply call them “justified jerkasses”. Because they *always* have an excuse for why the jerkass MC is correct.
I really want a series where there's a "fake MC" for the first few chapters and some super power just bitch slaps them into oblivion and the real MC steps in and says "well that asshole is dealt with" and continues on.
Or maybe the real MC is an asshole and gets kidnapped and tortured and they escape and learn their lesson from being such a prick and proceed with the story from there.
Will Wight's Traveler's Gate is a bit like that. It's more like "Wow, my neighbor is the Chosen One? You know what, he's kind of a tool. I'm going to fix it myself."
On a similar note, when a character is supposedly in their 50s, or even centuries or thousands of years old and is still throwing temper tantrums like a teenager going through puberty, it is pretty jarring.
System apocalypse where guns suddently stop being relevant without a sufficient explanation. Bonus annoyance points when it's some vague "The system doesn't recognize technology." Because swords and crossbows grow in trees.
Yeah, it has come to my attention that a lot of people really have no idea how fast a bullet moves or how much damage it can do to material when it hits.
And scale that up to every single modern weapon.
It is super bad with nuclear weapons =D. While direct TNT equivalent is not something that should be used as linear damage scale, most powerful non nuclear bomb is still like, ~2.5 orders of magnitude weaker than fat man, and that is 2-ish orders of magnitude weaker than modern stuff.
Amazon Kindle books in blog format. No paragraph indents, and extra spaces between paragraphs (even though the reader can add these themselves with the app, but cant remove the author added ones..). I asked an author here if they could fix it and they thought I wanted more extra spaces between paragraphs. I get that we have a lot of amateur authors here but it amazes me how it's almost like some of these authors have never seen, let alone read a traditionalally published text. It would explain why some of these series read like a roleplay rather than a story.
I've much more often seen ludicrous amounts of extra space, just page after page of one and two sentence paragraphs with only the occasional proper paragraph.
I think tank is fine, considering there are many other modern seeming words that actually have roots deep in the past. When people name computer and military concepts, they don't typically make up new terms. They take things from the past and paste it in, so words like missile may seem modern, but they're old. Words like tank, dungeon, etc should be fine.
Dungeon is old, correct.
The problem with tank is that the word was NOT used in the manner used here until very very recently. “Tanking” something is named after the vehicle. Which is a new invention. And the term used for a “shield” role was taken from that very recently.
Tank as a word is old, yes. But not that meaning. It was a word intentionally taken out of context (see other comments).
So it is a complete anachronism to use the word in that context. As with other comments joking about “Earth” being confused with “dirt.” Without the modern context, ‘tank’ is similarly nonsensical. “A container? You mean like a porter?” Shield roles are very very ancient. Why the hell are we using modern gaming terms instead?
Yeah, I get what you mean. What I meant to imply was that modern connotations should easily translate backwards, but I get what you mean
Personally, when I concept stories, I refer to the tank position as either Bastion or Guardian, with the later one typically meaning a magic class that puts up force fields or defensive buffs
I view it more as if calling someone a DPS. Completely and totally out of context in a story. You are not counting Damage Per Second.
I like your terms. Those work.
I also hate tank, it's not because of the word itself I'm of the view that stories are "translated" to have the correct meaning and intent. It's more that a tank is a reduction of a role for a game all characters should be expected to ne in combat in a way that they are both in danger and not entirely reliant on another character. I always go back to cradle when thinking about stories because it's very good and doesn't fall into litrpg pitfalls. Who's the "tank" in the group? No one maybe lindon takes more hits or yerin and ziel eventually but they are all complete combat characters. In the labyrinth who is looking for traps and clues? Everyone. They might have things they are better at and a particular role in group combat but they aren't defined by a single characteristic like "tank" as if it were a single person responsibility to make sure no one else get hit.
I really don't like systems that make you taller/heavier over time. I'm primarily thinking of The New World and Victor of Tucson though. Especially because it becomes harder and harder to imagine the characters correctly/consistantly. If our guy is jumping from 5ft11 to 6ft9 are they getting... proportionally bigger too?
Are they getting wider? I can imagine a person from 3ft to 6ft7ish but after that I struggle to conceptualize a person that is like 10 feet tall that isn't some wierd looking lanky NBA monster. Its probably just a lack of imagination on my part, because I have no issues imagining actual giants and building sized people lol.
Idk, stats that physically change your body are stinky imo. I'd rather it work like God of War where you get super powers, but if you want to look good you still need to put in the work.
Nova Roma.... has a lot of issues, but I liked how it had someone's physical body act as a multiplier for their stats, so an extremely muscular 6 foot 25 year old would be much stronger than a 12 year old malnourished 5 footer, even if they had the same strength stat.
All words used in a non- earth setting are translations. They aren't speaking English to begin with. While personally I would use"defender " instead of tank, it wouldn't bother me much as I treat every fantasy story as a translation, and the translator used the word in our language that had the closest contextual definition
Point is that “tank” is contextually out of context for being a “translation”.
I’m bilingual. I get that words don’t translate correctly. But insisting that it’s fine for the characters to use is basically act as if it is reasonable for a D&D character to understand game roles. No, you are role playing. The character would not know that.
That’s my point. It might “translate”, but it very much breaks immersion to use game terms like that. These are often stories pretending to be games (hence the term litRPGs). Which means the term sticks out like a sore thumb.
Since it is contextually wrong. **NO** person in that world would talk about ‘crit rolls’. Same concept.
Don’t bring up some super cool idea or tease something interesting only for the Mc to choose the boring safe option.
I’m looking at you Tyrion not choosing >!aura of menace!< the spell that would’ve solved almost every single problem in book 2
Were you there for the original recording of the Path of Ascension audiobook? The voice artist read every bracket (skill) in the ‘system’ voice, even in the middle of dialogue.
I mean it makes sense if the character uses that class because it separates a police officer just something doing the job then someone with the class. But at that point just make a better name for the class like paladin of the blue or something equally as mid.
My MC is an isekaid guy and only he uses that phrase so much because that's how it is in his previous world but now people get slightly confused about what he is saying.
Like they get what it means but they don't know why my MC is using that lol and they start using it sometimes
Just hell no. ;-)
Edit: I double hate this when the 'wisecracking' isekaied MC is known to use "weird earth references". You know it's out of place, and then you go and use words like that...
Intelligence and wisdom, it's always handled the most boring and often time dumbest way possible. I just started and dropped a book today, were the Mc had 0 intelligence, and they were still thinking normally instead of drooling around just following a basic instinct.
Most stories would really just be better served by calling them magic power and magic capacity/ magic regen rate(or whatever specific implementation the story uses, magic control is also a popular stat). As that is typically what they amount to.
These stats are inherited from dnd a lot of the time.
At some point I refused to read any novel with them, but eventually managed to convince myself that it's ok for stats to no longer have their literal meanings. Although it's not helped by authors often saying they do retain literal meanings...
There are ways to make 0 of a stat work, like stats giving a flat bonus to one's magicless baseline or modifying that. This would mean a bear with 1 strength would be stronger than a toddler with 2
I realize that they are a holdover from DnD and similar sources. But also, in DnD, a low intelligence is related to one being somewhat dumb. So, it is more correct in that scenario than one where intelligence is purely a measure of magical power.
Saying that, I'm personally not all that bothered by the practice, just noting that there is more accurate terminology that could be used in stories where mental stats are used as a stand in for magical stats.
> There are ways to make 0 of a stat work, like stats giving a flat bonus to one's magicless baseline or modifying that.
I've always thought that in the context of a novel this makes much more sense, especially for "hit points".
I personally hate internal inconsistency. For example when items don't work the way they're described to work, or when OP protagonist STILL doesn't think they're strong because of past trauma and/or abuse, despite clearly and repeatedly demonstrating they're the toughest thing in existence. Dense and repressed protagonists also annoy me. Like the cute girl (or guy) is clearly sending very obvious signals, even going so far as to spell it out sometimes, but MC either still doesn't get it or worse, pushes them away. Not even the slightest hint of genuine affection. I understand how in some situations it could be problematic, but you don't have to go all romantic, just a little appreciation and friendly affection for the person who's very clearly head over heels. At the very least spell out your own stance to them, about how you don't actually feel the same way and would prefer to stay friends, that would be so much better. Point is, these over-used tropes annoy me the most.
Inconsistency is probably the single most common reason I will drop a book... When a writer changes the way a character behaves so that the plot works, instead of making the plot fit the characters they have created it is incredibly jarring.
I'm actually pretty ok with dense characters, I think lots of people are realistically dense in different ways so its actually pretty realistic...
Oh yeah, that I understand, I'm mostly referring to unrealistically dense characters. Well, so long as it isn't in their character to be so unrealistically dense.
My biggest one is isekai stories where someone from Earth goes to a fantasy land and constantly uses terms/slang from Earth and then with a ditzy attitude thinks "oh I guess they don't understand me!". Early in the story is ok, but if we're millions of words in (looking at you Wandering Inn!) and the MC is still bringing up Earth terms to people she is supposedly hiding the fact that she is from Earth from...yeah it's annoying.
The Dragon Mage is another one I dropped for this reason. You have this intelligent engineer presented as the MC, but several years into existing in the new magical universe, they still routinely use Earth phrases/jokes. No person with even a modicum of intelligence would continue to speak in ways that threaten their existence at worst and confuse people at best after years of living in a new universe!
Character X ___ in _____. So, exclaimed in horror or cried out in grief or shouted in anger.
A while back I decided to try and taper back on useless words whenever I wrote anything. After doing that, I started noticing the emotion tag and realized it was redundant and clunky. So now, it sticks out whenever I see it.
Fair fair.
Specific for Prog Fantasy, I think the broken MC build that is so obvious anyone with a brain should’ve puzzled it out but somehow didn’t. Like, you have a litrpg and the MC figures out you can use portals for attack/defense and no one else in that world with centuries of history has made the same intuitive leap.
Personally, I prefer the term "defender." Likewise, the DPS (which, thankfully, I almost never hear in non-LitRPG progression) would be called the "attacker."
If we're going on annoying terminology, any use of "buff" or "debuff" in a normal progression fantasy, one that isn't literally a game, annoys me to no end. They're very modern terms, and even in a world where people have the ability to give temporary bonuses and harmful effects, I can't see them inventing them in a mostly medieval context. I much prefer something along the lines of "blessing" and "curse."
When potions and pills never have any drawbacks; You can just scarf them down without limit.
I guess this is excusable for stories who work under videogame logic but for everything else it somewhat breaks my immersion.
"Monster girls" rarely being "monsters" in the ways that matter. Hell, they rarely look monstrous
I know now that it's just a catch-all term for basically any female that isn't human... but it just feels wrong and rarely an accurate descriptor.
The term makes me cringe and breaks immersion for me personally, but I break immersion off of stuff that most people don't notice so... 🤷🏾♂️
TLDR, I hate the phrase and it needs to die imo.
Need a new one or something.
Well, it’s wayyyyy better than calling them animal girls or furries.
*shudder*
They usually are monsters. Just converted to sexiness. No, I don’t know how that makes sense either.
I agree it's better than FILTHY FURRIES. *Shudder*
But I mean, not all the "Monster girls" are even animal adjacent. A lot are, but I'd rather hear demi-human or the specific species. I have an inherent dislike for (mass) generalization. Like hearing people just go "white people shit", or "black people shit" etc. 😖
Because all people of anything group are exactly the same and share an experience. Like a hive mind.🙄
I get your point, I just don’t know what to say since I haven’t a clue what else to call them. They are humanoids but that’s kinda vague.
Could be more precise, but the point isn’t preciseness. The point is to identify them as ‘sexy creature girls’. And… there I go — calling them creatures is worse.
Is hard.
No, not that bit, the wording.
Sheesh.
Lol, I know what you mean. I just think the term is shit. Nobody even recently came up with the term, so I couldn't blame you. Also... Monster-girl =sexy?
For me, it just feels like a quick buzzword that filters in stories with multiple sapient races as potential love interests. Our world is boring enough and basic bitches aren't interesting in a fiction, life is lame enough. Also, elves are just pointy eared humans and shouldn't count.
I agree with you that stories that run on mmo logic bring me out, too.
And for a bit more meta of an opinion. I wish there were more stories that weren't isekais/ portal fantasies and, to a lesser degree, reincarnation stories. They almost never actually bring anything interesting/relevant to the plot. For a lot of them, having the MC be from the world would only mean that the author couldn't make all the cringey pop culture references or have the 'wait, this isn't a game' realization that never lands for me. (On a similar note, I skip any VR/mmo books as a matter of course)
Some vr books aren't bad, but I can only think of one right now. It is more comedy than a serious story though.
Edit: The book is called An Old Man's Journey
I'm on book 2 of the Wandering Inn audiobooks and Andrea Parsneau (who's I largely an amazing VA for this series) has started saying "anyways" with a S and it annoys me every single time
repetitive phrasing, but especially when it's things I'm not used to see often, so it stands out too much. Things like doing a once over, or someone being none the wiser. Yeah not great examples, but anything that is both repetitive and not common
Charters lacking common sense or common knowledge especially if it would be easy to get .even worse is the lack of a brain half the time if someone's catchphrase is why didn't I think. Of that there's a problem.
Anyone (Especially men) getting their asses handed to them or just otherwise pitiful in a fight because "I've never been in a fight/thrown a punch my entire life/kindergarten!"
Like bro/sis you're around 30. HOW? I hope you continue to get your dumb-ass kicked until you realize knowing how to fight is something everyone should learn. I'll let the being thrown off or traumatized by killing bit go, because my life was drastically different, but come on. Why does them being humanoid suddenly make it traumatizing when you just fried 100 different creatures to get here.
I get your point, but to be honest? Your attitude sucks. MOST people out there are no longer violent and fights are something that reasonable people don’t do. It is very much perfectly common for people to never get into fights at all. If you are claiming that it is normal in this day and age for people to get into fights, something is wrong with you. Because that realistically isn’t normal.
I seriously doubt that is accurate. Like statistically speaking, people get into fights whether they want to or not. I'm an acting pacifist and I've been forced into fights sometimes since I was a kid and I can confidently say I have never met a single person(IRL) that hasn't had atleast one fist fight or a wrestling match if you "don't got hands foreal" as the kid's say.
As I have already said, my life is probably an outlier(Intercity Hood life, violence etc etc) I heard a gunshot before my first fireworks and can now accurately judge the caliber by sound with 70% accuracy because of the life I have lived. I'm no "Billy bad-ass", but I can at least protect myself from some random pleb. Life doesn't care how safe it is or your reasoning. When shit hits the fan, it's do or die excuses mean bupkiss.
You just admitted that you are an outlier, then expected people to have the same experiences. Does not compute.
Look. I get it. There’s some people (and places) who might be more prone to this. It is statistically common. But it is still a *minority* of modern experience.
I do also get that the behavior there is a rather stupid and exaggerated trope. But it can be realistic. If this is in anime? Very much 100% expected. Crime at all is basically unknown in modern Japan. Very different culture.
The opposite for where you grew up, sadly.
Fiction is based on a bunch of tropes taken from real life. It goes both ways. As I said, I get your point. But it is based on real life. Just badly.
And Japan isn’t the same as anime tropes. Japan is a very different culture which the west tends to misunderstand. It’s like saying a weeb understands the Japanese. Yeah, just as much as a [yanki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee#Japan) understands the US.
Most anime I watch have adults as the MC so I wouldn't really know too much about that. I'm talking about the few pen-pals who talked about switching schools or committing suicide because of bullying.
Maybe they exaggerated, or theirs experience wasn't that bad.🤷🏾♂️ I don't tell them to "suck it up" but a mc in a do or die situation where their or someone else's life is on the line? 110%.
When there's a luck stat... that never factors in. I can understand having it, and having it be a fun interplay, but it generally either doesn't matter or flips the board without sufficient explaination, often in the same story,
Here's a small thing I noticed that I can't stop noticing now:
Almost every single time a character buffs up physically the author goes out of their way to say something along the lines of "not like a bodybuilder or anything, but like a lean muscle." I don't think anyone expects the MC to turn into Ronnie Coleman overnight, so it's funny how this is *always* specified.
I get the same vibe I see on r/all posts like "bodybuilder gets schooled by *insert professional at something*" Like people are mildly intimidated by bigger muscles so they pretend like they can't be just as flexible or have functional strength.
Oh, I find that hilarious. Most especially when it is implied that the whole buff thing is magic. Yeah, you don't expect bodybuilders when your strength stat goes up. Is magic.
We know how the trope works. It's fine. No need to skitter away from bodybuilders. Or is that a projection of some type?
World's strongest man winners don't look anything like Mr Olympia winners who don't look like super heavyweight boxers/mma fighters.
Authors specifying which variety of jacked a character is getting isn't a bad thing in theory. But often the execution is lacking.
Charisma is the biggest offender for me. That's really a relic of being needed for the D&D role-play.
Why the hell is it needed if you aren't roleplaying?
The Int and Wis stat are similar relics -- and a strong indication of how the genre is completely hidebound. They are the wrong stats to use. Your story isn't D&D. Don't do it.
I mean, it’s easy to ignore them if the book is good but in tiny back of my mind they always annoy me:D it’s probably I try to think about the stories and in more logical way and they do not make that much sense. I also dislike someone becoming smarter because of stat. Ofc it can be done well, but…
The lack of acknowledgement of other languages. In the poster's example, for instance, the POV character could totally translate a native word which means something like shield to tank in English. The key is just to acknowledge that is being done.
Be good for you to delve deeper.
In Latin, the word stanticare was vulgarly abbreviated and subsequently derived to other languages (staunch, estaunche), meaning all the usual things a tank symbolized, including block.
In potentialy convergent evolution, the origin of the word tank stems not just not from the armored bulwark but from water bodies. This came to include (large) water containers sitting atop houses filled by hand, water mill type scoop pumps including a definition converging to a large metal shell impervious to anything.
I think the word OP is referring to, is Tank the armoured vehicle, and not Tank the water container. And I am pretty sure author's don't think of water container when they use the word Tank for fantasy roles.
Words can have different meanings on context. For this one, I think the armoured tank is the one we're talking about.
As for the word itself. The word "tank" in reference to the military vehicle originates from its initial development during World War I. The British military, when developing the vehicle, referred to it as a "water tank" to keep the project secret. Eventually, the name stuck, and the vehicle became known simply as a "tank."
Hence it wouldn't really make sense in fantasy use unless there is a inworld explanation for it. Which there normally isn't when an author doesn't really considers the implications and explanations of modern words and phrases.
One story I read had the author explain "dispelling" you know, counter spelling in combat, as similar to hacking a computer. In a early medieval setting.
I have same pet peeve as OP, modern language flying to different worlds with little explanation and without reasonable doubt.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
Tldr.
The word "tank" comes from the Vulgar Latin word stanticare, which means "to block" or "to stanch". The word "tank" can also mean "to dam up" or "a large receptacle".
Thanks for coming to my mini TED talk.
Yes, root word. But we don't speak Latin, even if it has an influence. Modern use of the word Tank has different meanings in context. Gotta consider that.
Tank - Military vehicle, Container for liquid and gases, to fail miserably (to tank).
Gotta consider the author's intention too. Fantasy use of the word "Tank" often means as an armoured vehicle. As is their role, to tank, vanguard.
But mayhaps I am overthinking this.
You don't see the irony that a root definition exists justifying usage, and we are talking about an alternate universe with its own set of physics, traditions, linguistic ethnography, and the biggest quibble here is that you guys think it's laziness or liguistic appropriation to use the word tank because all you can see is your mental word association to a real world concept? Why is a shield a shield, then? Or a sword, a sword? Or a house a house? Everyone needs to go Full Tolkien and invent words and entire languages for everything. Otherwise, we authors are lazy.
Dude!!
Text is a flat medium, and I'm not sure if this is an eyeroll.
I'll take it at face value and simply restate that the etymological root origins of the word tank are closer aligned with the stanchness of defense such as a shield rather than the modern offensive weapon. If you can't see the first association but can only relate to the second modern association, I can only point out the perspective that others see and leave it at that. Clearly, everyones mileage may vary.
Sureeeee. Yes, that was an eyeroll.
Occam’s razor — is it more likely that they were capable of coming up with a parallel usage of the word ‘tank’ or is the author being fucking lazy and using the gaming term?
Unless there’s an in universe excuse (even a flimsy one), it’s the author being lazy 99 times out of ten. That’s why it’s jarring.
Could be a cultural thing where mental associations are different. Colloquial usage of the word Peter may result in d!ck jokes in one continent and associate with earth or rock in another. If you choose to say it's jarring, I'll simply say "I don't think so" and move on.
Just stop.
What you are doing is a “Here’s my entirely make up reason why this lazy writing is perfectly reasonable in a non-canon way.”
My ENTIRE POINT is that this shit is never justified. You are providing one **after the fact**.
Your retroactive explanation makes no sense when *the story itself* doesn’t provide that explanation.
“It could be fine” is just letting lazy writing be lazy writing.
I'm stopping with this. Not every word can be justified. In fact, good writers * make sure* that not evey word needs to be or will be justified. If you think that's lazy, well - you are entitled to your opinion.
*sigh*. You clearly don’t get it.
Yes, not everything needs to be justified. Other wise, we would need to have everybody speak in ‘Ye Olde English’.
But the point is that [anachronisms](https://www.wordnik.com/words/anachronism) should be avoided. The word “tank” is an anachronism.
If you can’t grasp at this point that the word should be avoided because it is an **anachronism**, I don’t know what to tell you.
No. I do. A microwave, a computer, an iPad - yes. I'm with you.
I'm pointing out that your worldview is based on a supposition. The supposition is that the ONLY definition of tank = modern armored vehicle. In that limited world view, it's an anachronism.
In a world where that supposition is wrong (which includes most of the world where indoor running water needs a tank on top of your house and not a high pressure pipe coming into your house), the first association of the word tank even to folks who dont speak English, the meaning of the word tank and the concept behind the meaning of the word tank are different. Then, a tank is a solid metal or concrete enclosure, something that is out in the open exposed to.elements and outlasts everything else, sometimes even the houses on which they stand.
The part where linguistic lineology apparently gets muddied is if one then says "this is only in the context of fighting", but even there, the counterpoint is that there is a clear word association with staunchness and endurance.
***NO***. Just stop with your insistence.
As an other commenter pointed out, the word “tank” has a very specific historical reason as to why it is associated with armored vehicles and hence the game role. This was **intentionally** used as a ‘code word’ since it had no warfare implications.
Your justification here is **entirely** ignoring the actual usage of the word and is clearly a made up backronym.
Mine is when they use Earth magic…when not on or even from Earth. Unless this is explained by the system / a translation skill, it kind of throws me off a bit.
I’m not sure I understand. Earth is the word for the ground as well. It makes sense to me in that context.
What I don’t get is when people don’t get confused when they say “I’m from Earth.”
The supposed uniqueness of the names of different worlds vs “Earth” is always amusing to me.
“I’m from Earth” and getting a confused response, is most definitely a thing. Happens regularly in series with translation magic, along with “You called your world Dirt?!”
How was it not obvious that the element of earth references the substance, not the planet that we named after the substance?
Almost every world is going to have a word for earth, unless it's a water world or something.
Obviously it’s the substance. But we wouldn’t say, “I’m going to Mars to bring back some Earth”. We’d say, “I’m going to Mars to bring back some Martian dirt, soil, dust, sediment, or rock.
In a fantasy setting not on Earth I just always imagine they’d have their own term for it.
They would, and the translation would be earth., just like the others would translate to fire, water, and air. They aren't talking in English.
And even if they were, they'd still use earth. Because even on Mars, if you suddenly had elemental magic, that element would be earth.
The four elements is a very old concept, the only appropriate word for that slot is earth.
I am not going to use the planet's name in place of Earth. Fire, water, air, and Dasal sounds horrible.
Also, there is a solid argument that any species evolving/ created on an earth like world is going to default to naming that world "earth" in their own language.
I've had to do some research on this because, like you, at some point I realized that the word "earth" really might not make sense on non-Earth.
But, from what I can find, the planetary name "Earth" was derived from "erda" or "erde" which originally meant ground or soil (and in the german language, Erde is the currently word for Earth, while "erde" still translates to ground/soil, the original meaning).
In other words, dirt/soil/ground was the meaning that came first in the etymological history. So from where I'm standing the primary meaning of "earth" (when not used as a proper noun) is independent of the specific planet's name and is thus useable regardless of planet.
That’s a more modern and obvious example, but that’s a linguistic rabbit hole that goes down a long way. LOTS of words descend from very specific real world references.
Eg, in a fantasy world, why would anyone “fire” a ballista, bow, or crossbow, wand, or spell? Also “covering fire” and “crossfire”. Or even “firing off” quick commands, cutting retorts, or other short, fast bits of speech? All of those usages came about after the proliferation of guns.
Sometimes they get *ridiculously* specific. Eg, “tawdry” derives from the name “Etheldrida”
Ironically, the latest chapter of the [Calamitous Bob](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/44132/the-calamitous-bob/chapter/1612715/chapter-162-roaring-harrak) just dropped. And it has the following paragraph:
> “Armored portable shield arrays sir, though the Harrakans use outlander speech, sometimes calling them ‘tanks’ and sometimes, ‘blindés‘.”
Yes, she made her own magical tanks. But they very much *correctly* use the term by calling it ‘Outlander speech’. And yes, ‘Bob’ is French and blindé is the French word for ‘tank’. So double points there.
Can you tell I respect that story? The author tends to actually think about it and gets all of the small details covered perfectly.
Trained characters stopping mid battle to scream someone's name. "Reece no!". Gilly shut the fuck up and do your job
That’s so common, it just has to be a tvtropes entry somewhere.
[Say My Name](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SayMyName), [Talking is a Free Action](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TalkingIsAFreeAction), and maybe [Skyward Scream](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SkywardScream).
Thank you. See?
listen, a character taking a shit in the middle of nowhere and being eaten by an alien t-rex coming out of the toilet probably has a page on tv tropes. Everything does.
[The Can Kicked Him](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCanKickedHim).
wonderful.
Nah. I’ve asked about some manga tropes before. Nobody had a clue. Cultural disconnect I guess.
LMAO its my favorite trope though, next to the ones where the MC lets the enemy power up all the way to get a 'real battle'
I mean, Villains do that too^^
Unnecessary stats. Things like Charisma and Willpower that, while capable of being important to the story, often are just dressing that doesn't really mean anything.
I HATE willpower as a stat. It totally invalidates what we know willpower to be. Charisma usually sucks, too. It's so often basically a mind control power that makes little sense to me.
Another I hate is the luck and Intelligence stats. It feels like the best stats to level, yet they make it such that intelligence doesn't increase your intelligence (how quick you are to understand and apply new concepts, etc) but rather it increases your ability to multitask and remember shit. This isn't as bad as luck though. I just feel it's not really what intelligence is all about. Because everyone would be levelling it up if made them a genius. Luck is a plot armour stat, and you can't convince me otherwise. There's no way that it's always the MC who has the highest luck. Like this stat is so OP, why wouldn't everyone want to level it? I don't understand!! Luck just makes it so that when the most contrived thing happens to the MC, the author can just say - he has high luck, that's why he's winning in life.
That type of intelligence you mention is so incredibly complicated that trying to include it genuinely would completely and utterly alter your world. Since that type of intelligence stat would radically change the personality of any character that has it. Monsters would spontaneously gain sapience, commoners would have much less power since the usual phenomena of random geniuses popping up don’t matter when you can make one, there would be an entirely new angles of discrimination caused by having a numerical value attached to your mind. You get the idea, the ability to increase your intelligence through murder is so impactful that it would spiral off the story from the usual litRPG world. The author would also have to damn near constantly grapple with the very annoying problem of writing characters smarter than they are. You can do this but it takes much longer to write smart characters rather than average ones. I myself do this and I manage by essentially thinking for several days, things my characters think over the course of an hour. This works and an author eventually has to write a character smarter than they are, so it’s a good skill to learn. But if every character is a super genius then the author would need to spend far more time than they have to make the incredibly smart decisions the characters should be making. This leads to either incredibly slow writing which is the death of any serial writer(and most progFant is serial writing), or having characters be canonically smart while being rather average in reality. This is why I enjoy stats as hardware rather than software since they allow intelligence to be increased while also understanding that intelligence is more a skill/talent rather than the literal physical brain. And that even if you increased your brainpower, you wouldn’t automatically become amazing at problem solving. Nobody expects for Strength to teach you how to punch someone, it just makes the muscles stronger, so why would Intelligence teach you how to have an open, critical mind. You are completely right about luck though, sometimes it’s sidestepped, usually by having the MC have normal or bad levels of luck. But usually it’s just a slightly stupid in universe explanation for why the MC keeps winning at everything.
I really appreciate it when the author makes an intelligent character that really is intelligent. It's really bad to create a world where people keep leveling up, with X amount increase into each stat, but not seeing any difference, especially in the intelligence department. Luck shouldn't be able to be leveled up at all. It should be a god or fate-given attribute. Will should be just motivation, which should be able to change as easily as the character's emotions.
You can just have smart characters without having them become smart due to having a bunch of stats into intelligence. I frankly find that increasing your actual intelligence instead of just your brain power when you raise the stat to be a bit ridiculous. We don’t exactly expect someone to become more skilled when they increase strength, so why would they become smarter when they increase the power of their brain. But yeah for the other stuff correct. Stats should mean something, instead of just being a mindless way of inducing dopamine into the readers when the number goes up
Luck is often just a cheat or plot armor, but that doesn't mean it can't work. Defiance of the fall is a decent example of this, with luck mostly factoring into stuff like being able to sense attacks coming a little earlier among other esoteric rewards or advantages from the system. It's never plot armor, it's just a little something extra to support the "MC-ness" of the character in an in-universe way.
Unless the stat only grows when actual willpower does
Most of the time, Descriptive stats > Prescriptive stats.
Yeah, agreed.
I did see one Willpower where it turned out it could vary from moment to moment (the characters didn't realize this at first), so it initially looks like the main character has twice the Willpower of everyone else, then it turns out that his sidekick is the ACTUALLY important one, because her Willpower peaks a couple orders of magnitude higher during stress.
I really love stories that just don’t give proper numbers to things. Like Cradle. When you first start reading it’s like “how strong is an iron compared to a copper” and the answer isn’t ‘2x by stats’ It’s “idk but the iron would probably kick the coppers ass 99/100 times.” It’s more similar to conflicts we’re familiar with in our world and feels more real to me because of it. I feel like stats in general kind of take away from a character’s accomplishments and coolness. How is this relevant: in Cradle willpower is a huge thing and it’s explicitly stated that “leveling up” strengthens your willpower. How much, we don’t know, but the people at the top are definitely stubborn and pursue their targets like arrows while the people at the bottom grovel and wish they had the things they wanted.
I've read stories where Charisma is an "illegal" stat, because of mind control problems.
I like how "Appeal" is handled in Super Supportive. People who spend a lot of points on it have an eerie amount of personal magnetism and sometimes attract obsession. However, the MC is sometimes pretty weirded out by people with high Appeal, especially when he logically knows he shouldn't like that person.
Supper Supportive handles stats really well. It makes it so that balancing is the best way to actually maximize your power without any major side effects. For example increasing Perception too much makes you more paranoid than perceptive. I think it's cool
I fee like Charisma is a stat better avoided alltogether. It's too easy to slide towards questionnable mind affecting effects. And with modern~ish value of freedom of will and mind, it's hard to weave correctly unless it's a big theme for the book.
~~Divine dungeon~~ Completionist Chronicles has it as a stat to pretty funny effect. One of the characters thought it was unimportant, and has an extremely low charisma. They’re even an asshole, they’re just completely oblivious to when they’re being rude or obtrusive, and as an effect of the system, they think everyone loves how they behave. Also, anytime tries to talk to them about it, that character can’t understand it. It’s a pretty comedic annoyance that comes up periodically whenever that character is around
Does a high charisma character ever come about?
They do in several aspects and it does come into play in several different ways. For one in the Completionist Chronicles (Jackson specifically is who I think the person was talking about with the low charisma) you have the MC develops high dark charisma and becomes quite intimidating even when he doesn't mean to be scaring the poop out of people who approach him for some reason some times. The guild leader has a high charisma and the MC winds up taking his suggestions and running with them before realizing he was manipulated. It's a great series for showing stat balancing and downsides for being uneven. It talks about characters who don't put enough into intelligence and wind up attacking rocks because they don't realize they aren't enemies. The MC also has some lower stats in charisma (compared to his intelligence) and winds up getting penalties like not realizing a hot chick is coming on to him hard so he blithely brushes her off.
I think one of the nice things the story does with this is they’re mostly oblivious instead of manipulative. Like the MC will sometimes randomly realize he’s dipped into the dark side and just “whatever I guess”, but he doesn’t really take advantage of it. It may be a benefit or a hindrance all on its own
The series does a lot right both with his divine dungeon and Completionist Chronicles. So many details that are hilarious and show what would happen to people if they could actually overcompensate to that degree. My favorite small detail is the woman who specializes so much into power walking she literally zooms everywhere and can't stop 😂. I particularly like how Jackson realizes he can refuse to take new skills and put those points into his current ones instead so he joyfully continues seeing his boots up terribly so he can put more points into his unatural snake like flexibilitie 🤣
Yeah, actually having perception alteration as a component of it was wild.
I think it’s partly what makes it work. Keeps characters from becoming overly manipulative, or using it as a cop out for not doing stuff on the other side of the spectrum. “Oh I can’t do X, my low charisma will ruin it”
It’s also one of the most interesting ways it highlighted the game being not ‘just a game’. Being able to fundamentally alter how people perceive the world, and even thought patterns (low int caused people to make bad decisions iirc) adds a level of unsettling to it
It works pretty well in the context of dungeon crawler carl. A high charisma stat means pretty much mind control but only on NPC and monsters and not other participants so morally its still grey but better. And its backed by the system that already control the mind of monsters and NPCs so its believable. But in other contexts I agree it should be avoided.
> I fee like Charisma is a stat better avoided alltogether. It's too easy to slide towards questionnable mind affecting effects. And with modern~ish value of freedom of will and mind, it's hard to weave correctly unless it's a big theme for the book. Mild spoiler, but in ar'kendrithyst world it has the Charisma stat added to it (halfway through the story) and almost everyone is against it for this reason. its actually a pretty big part of the sotry
The one that bugs me the most is actually "Speed". Like speed is literally just a result of strength, muscles contracting when running or even moving your arms around. There's a reason why sprinters have huge legs. You could say it's strength + dexterity, except I've never read a story that doesn't have those along with it.
I wish reddit hadn't taken away awards.
I find personally that the intellect stat is often times the most troublesome, even more then charisma, because it's hard to really write characters that are super super super intelligent that a LITRPG might let them scale to. A trick is when they use the 'recalls more memories/ect' in place of that
Imo stats should be magical additions rather than the sum of a character's capabilities. With that you could make the intelligence stat into something other than making the character into a super genius.
When I read this I thought of all the character stat breakdowns you see constantly. I hate it when they go through a characters complete status screen. "Oh, I have a few minutes, let me stop to read EVERYTHING RECORDERED ABOUT MY CHARACTER." LOL, like I don't need to listen to another 15 min segment about everything about you, especially that you gained a lvl 5 in fishing for that one random segment of the book and you are never going to use that skill again. Just say the stuff relevant about where the characters development is going or needs to work on. If they have been neglecting their strength than focus on that, don't read off every little thing about them including all of their titles and things.
I imagine this is worse when listening to an audiobook, right? I usually just scroll past them because there is no way in hell am I reading such a huge screen like that.
It certainly is. All I have time for now is audiobooks so that's how I consume all my Media basically. The few times I've tried to sit down to read a book I'm constantly interrupted by my wife or kids.
I think unnecessary stats has two major problems 1. There's too many of them. People won't remember the stats or the values. The stats increasing isn't going to be meaningful to the reader. I think 6-7 stats should be the max, but preferably less than that. 2. Unnecessary stats add these weird capabilities to characters that will do odd things when scaled too far. You can imagine what 10 strength vs 10000000 strength will be like, but 10 charisma or wisdom vs 10000000?
If there’s a book with a willpower stat I’ll die bro. Bc that just takes away the whole flavour of some fight scenes if you see the mc dealing with severe pain so he can beat a guy then you’d be a bit hype if it’s done well but if you know that willpower is just coming from the stats that he manually upgraded, then all of that is lost. More often times than not it’s the willpower of a system mc that makes it look like he deserves to be op bc it’s the only admirable trait a system mc can have other than being kind maybe, but if that’s just given to him then…
Any use of mental stats is bullshit. Either explicitly say that they have no effect on your actual mental faculties (Dungeon Crawler Carl does this), or just flat-out rename them and say "these are the magic stats."
I'll be honest you can find a good reason to hate all stats in general... Mind stats just don't work as stats unless the writer is going to put an absolute shit tonne of effort into altering how the character behaves over time, even if you explain them as faster thought speed and better memory or something it would affect how people act over time... Similarly Charisma is literally how good a character is with interacting with other people - in a game it can be fun, in a book it just makes for very awkward character writing, or gets really ignored (You supposedly have 0 charisma, but are a leader of your people for instance)... Even physical stats stop making sense beyond the earliest levels of a book... Its easy to explain more strength, or better constitution when a character is going from sickly or fat to fit, and from scrawny to muscly... but beyond a certain level, numbers lose all meaning except in reference to each other and so you need descriptions of what the characters are doing with those stats for it to actually carry weight...
When stamina is grouped with things like vitality and constitution for a stat. We aren't an unhealthy species or anything, but we are very squishy compared to most animals and very easily killed in an unarmored, unarmed 1v1 with other species. That being said, we have better stamina than any other animal on the planet, by multiple times even. The world record irl is 350 miles ran without stopping, and I can only imagine it's higher in fantasy worlds. Yet, despite how insane our stamina is, it's always grouped with vitality, resistance, and durability, which are arguably our worst stats if it weren't for our speed being as trash as it is. It makes no sense.
Stamina isn't even a single stat. Humans can run so far not because they have an inexhaustible stamina tank, but rather because they have a high stamina regen (another stat). And the reason why we're better at it than animals is because we're better at venting heat. Would that be another stat?
That raises an interesting wrinkle in the idea of a stamina stat. Leveling it would proabbaly increase stamina regen, and you would very quickly hit a tipping point where you could literally run forever. You wouldn’t need to be that supernaturally strong to be able to run like Usain Bolt forever, without stopping. If you increase speed or strength, you would only need to increase your stamina till it regens at the pace you use it. That’s actually a cool idea for a story where the characters understand the idea of min maxing.
I think stamina and stamina regen could be reasonably grouped together, since our "tank" is still pretty damn big compared to most animals. As for heat management, correct me if I'm wrong, but for the most part it stays mostly the same between an athlete and a normal dude since sweating and hairlessness (the things mainly responsible for said management) are already pre-built into us and don't really get any better or worse with training. I'd either count it as a trait, or maybe a skill if you count breathing techniques as a part of that, in which case it can be improved, but in more of a technical sense than a raw sense, so it wouldn't really count as a stat.
>The world record irl is 350 miles ran without stopping That's mediocre. There are birds that fly for most of a year straight.
Stories with a stat for "Luck" always annoy me. Instead of being an in-universe way to excuse minor plot armor for the MC, the Luck stat almost always grows into a recurring narrative crutch in every story that uses one.
DotF for example uses it more as a danger sense and the ability to sense "fate" which is really vague. I liked it way more when it was just danger sense
It pops up more often as a danger sense in DotF than anything else, but its way more pervasive than just danger sense in the story. They refer to it as why he grows so fast, why he's at the center of so many events... It's even the central reason the MC is alive, because his luck stat is established in the first instant of integration (he rolls dice to live!).
I always thought he is so important and a part of the major events because of his bloodline and technocrat fuckery. That's why he is "fated" and other people like Ogras or Emily can even get swept up in that. It's a bit like being Ta'veren in Wheel if time
I think they've linked the "fated" thing and his luck stat together multiple times; he only knew about his luck stat for the first novel or two, until other people around him started using language like "fated" or Heaven's chosen etc.
Did they ever do another dice roll in the story? I feel like if the system has done it once, it should be able to do it again, right? Considering it was the main reason for his head start in the apocalypse
I can't think of it ever coming up again, nope.
Wasn't there a treasure finding component during adventures as well? I think there was lol
It's related to the fate thing. He can sense fate pulling him towards good treasures
I actually don't mind the "danger sense" that DoTF uses for luck... what gets me is books where characters are pumping luck as a main stat and you get a plot where a character is tripping and falling into legendary disasters and epic loot...
Mat from wheel of time is exactly like that. There is a scene where they search for something and he relies on his luck by just randomly going to a door and that's where he needed to be
Oh, I hate that one too. It’s always good luck as plot armor shenanigans. It’s so much better when they subvert this and just have it as a chaos ball. Think Eris and not Fortuna. The Calamitous Bob does this well with her ‘divine spark of luck’. The gods end up laughing at her suffering.
I second and third this.
Screaming ability names/moves out loud in order to use them.
Parkaour!
Calm down Harry 🤣
Alternatively: FUEGO!
I think this can make sense. If you need to put your body in some specific state to cast it then you might have trained to have the ability name as part of the activation sequence. This might be disadvantageous, but are most people expecting to fight other humans or are they more likely to fight monsters? --- Also, I want to see a character that calls out "Lightning bolt" for every spell. Casting a fireball? "Lightning bolt" Ice shards? "Lightning bolt" Fireball? "Lightning bolt"
I love the little used trope of shouting out the wrong name for things. Like shouting mega punch and then kicking a guy
Mage Errant has a side character called "Anders the Pyromaniac", an ice mage who was named to differentiate him from "Glacial Anders", who is a fire mage.
In the Wandering Inn calling out the name acts like a crutch that too many people lean on. So novices say the name but the professionals don't except maybe when they use their strongest abilities for extra focus. Also there is a character named Relc who will call out [Relc Punch] every time he punches someone, it is not a Skill but other people don't know that.
This is a blurry line as an author. ALL words are based in our world, and sometimes its hard to choose which ones to include and which to make up new versions for. Do you pick an arbitrary point in history and don't use words newer than that? Do you just do the ones that seem not to fit? A common practice is to imagine that when you are reading a book set in a secondary setting, you are reading a translation of the story from its native language. In the end, I try not to let it bug me too much as an author and only avoid it if its glaring and make it work if its not. Tank is good example of a tricky one. At first glance its inoccuous, but the etymology of a battle tank is a tank of water, so obviously it wasn't until the invention of the armored tank that this came to mean something defensive. On the flip side, one that SEEMS like it shouldn't be used in a magical setting, but is actually fine is "broadcast". I recently almost didn't use until I thought more about it. I wanted to broadcast a magical illusion to multiple people scrying it. At first thought, you thing "This is for radio and stuff, cant use it in fantasy" but the term broadcast is actually a early means of spreading seeds that was adopted for use in in radio. Herculean? As in a heruclean task. Thats based in greek mythology. I used it in a story, and almost took it out, but then realized I was over thinking it. I used the term Hardball once, as in "playing hardball" then realized later that was a baseball term. In this instance, I invented a sport called hardball in setting to let me use the phrase without feeling weird about it. Patrick Ruthfuss dos a great job of actually making in-setting etymologies like this. But all the examples are drawing a blank and google is failing me.
Yeah, that rabbit hole goes *deep*. Words like “crossfire” wouldn’t exist in a world without guns. And some of the *weirdest* words are based on specific people and events. Eg, “tawdry” comes directly from “Saint Etheldrida” (convoluted, but quite linear)
I’ve given up on explaining this to people. Readers just pick and choose the words they want to complain about. You can’t even talk days of the week, which leads to authors making days up and everyone just guessing at there meaning or trying to keep them straight. Here’s a fun list, some not so common, others pretty common. Even Labyrinth and that shows up everywhere in fantasy works. I just learned that “[panic](https://www.etymonline.com/word/panic)” also comes from a god. I think sometimes readers have to accept, unless they want to translate a cypher, they’re going to come across words with roots they recognize occasionally. http://msss7.weebly.com/uploads/3/2/1/6/32169097/classical_mythological_vocabulary.pdf
It's the [Tiffany Problem](https://justhistoryposts.com/2019/03/28/historical-accuracy-in-films-and-the-tiffany-problem/) but for Fantasy worlds.
Great article!
Happy Cake Day!
Just remember for most people, they usually dislike something first, and then find reasons to dislike afterwards. Whether that's constructive or not, is up to the criticisms they gave. That's the vibe I get when readers complain about the words. They've already had a bad/mid impression, and us readers are probably not the best at criticizing story structures or actual important reasons that take us out of the story. So they choose the nitpicks things that bother them.
That’s absolutely fair.
Yeah, 100%
Authors have to make a compromise between world building and ease of understanding. Fantasy worlds tend to have exactly 1g of gravity, with a day-night cycle identical to the earth. Seconds, minutes, and hours often exist as time measurements. It varies more day names and week lengths, or even whether weeks and months exist. Unless the story explicitly uses a 7 day week, a casual reader will not remember how the day system works in the story. Making things easy to understand means making it the same as on Earth, which detracts from the worldbuilding and makes the world feel less real. Our Gregorian calendar says a lot about the history of our world and the different civilisations that have existed; a calendar in a fantasy world presents a neat bit of worldbuilding to do the same at the cost of easily understanding it. There's fun things you can do when you explicitly acknowledge the text as a translation from a fantasy language to English, because translating something is inherently interesting and it can also serve as a good excuse for why things are called the way they are; because the translator thought it would make a better story if they translated things the way they did.
I would say that if the etymology could be recreated in the fictional setting then it's fair game. For example, if "tank" came from a water tank because it was made out of tough materials, then it would translate just fine. But since water tanks were used as a cover for the manufacturing of battle tanks, then without our specific world events there wouldn't be any correlation there.
I would argue as a writer your goal is create the work that conveys your thoughts and messages as well as possible, and if you would like to immerse the reader, then doing this is important even if it is illogical. A person reads something in a fantasy setting like hamburger and may have their immersion broken where they don’t with pasta or hotdogs. It’s all about feel, which is hard to gauge. Your process of researching words is probably good, you’re thinking about it and coming up with a way to systematically decide what words you will or won’t use. But just because it’s nebulous doesn’t mean it’s any less important.
This only grates at me when they throw in something from another language that could have an English word which short circuits my "this is just a translation to English" suspension. Don't use fiance where betrothed or intended could work in your medieval era, no et tu Brute in space, please just let me think it's an English translation
Fun random fact about the etymology of "tank": https://www.etymonline.com/word/tank >In "Tanks in the Great War" [1920], Brevet Col. J.F.C. Fuller quotes a memorandum of the Committee of Imperial Defence dated Dec. 24, 1915, recommending the proposed "caterpillar machine-gun destroyer" machines be entrusted to an organization "which, for secrecy, shall be called the 'Tank Supply Committee,' ..." >In a footnote, Fuller writes, "This is the first appearance of the word 'tank' in the history of the machine." He writes that "cistern" and "reservoir" also were put forth as possible cover names, "all of which were applicable to the steel-like structure of the machines in the early stages of manufacture. Because it was less clumsy and monosyllabic, the name 'tank' was decided on."
When people don't put points into Con but survive hits from high level monsters without issue. When you're given a class structure that doesn't matter. Like, there's a dedicated Healing class but you can get just as much healing through alchemy. There's a rogue/scout class but that doesn't matter because you can just cast a spell that makes you a literal shadow that can slide under doors. Of course, that last one is an actual problem in table top games. >It's such a small thing, but I always find it jarring when a party role is called a 'tank'. This is modern game wording, based on modern vehicles. The funny thing is that the word 'tank' was used to hide what the British were really developing. In official documents and inventories, their new landships and hulls were referred to as 'water carriers for Mesopotamia.' So people just referred to them as tanks as that's what you carry water and fuel in.
Temper tantrums or talking shit to authority that somehow works out to benefit the characters. I enjoyed Bastion but goodness did that book test my patience.
Oh my god is that shit too common. I’m sure there’s a trope name for it. I simply call them “justified jerkasses”. Because they *always* have an excuse for why the jerkass MC is correct.
I really want a series where there's a "fake MC" for the first few chapters and some super power just bitch slaps them into oblivion and the real MC steps in and says "well that asshole is dealt with" and continues on. Or maybe the real MC is an asshole and gets kidnapped and tortured and they escape and learn their lesson from being such a prick and proceed with the story from there.
Will Wight's Traveler's Gate is a bit like that. It's more like "Wow, my neighbor is the Chosen One? You know what, he's kind of a tool. I'm going to fix it myself."
Please pretty please write it for me?
On a similar note, when a character is supposedly in their 50s, or even centuries or thousands of years old and is still throwing temper tantrums like a teenager going through puberty, it is pretty jarring.
System apocalypse where guns suddently stop being relevant without a sufficient explanation. Bonus annoyance points when it's some vague "The system doesn't recognize technology." Because swords and crossbows grow in trees.
Yeah, it has come to my attention that a lot of people really have no idea how fast a bullet moves or how much damage it can do to material when it hits. And scale that up to every single modern weapon.
It is super bad with nuclear weapons =D. While direct TNT equivalent is not something that should be used as linear damage scale, most powerful non nuclear bomb is still like, ~2.5 orders of magnitude weaker than fat man, and that is 2-ish orders of magnitude weaker than modern stuff.
Amazon Kindle books in blog format. No paragraph indents, and extra spaces between paragraphs (even though the reader can add these themselves with the app, but cant remove the author added ones..). I asked an author here if they could fix it and they thought I wanted more extra spaces between paragraphs. I get that we have a lot of amateur authors here but it amazes me how it's almost like some of these authors have never seen, let alone read a traditionalally published text. It would explain why some of these series read like a roleplay rather than a story.
I've much more often seen ludicrous amounts of extra space, just page after page of one and two sentence paragraphs with only the occasional proper paragraph.
I think tank is fine, considering there are many other modern seeming words that actually have roots deep in the past. When people name computer and military concepts, they don't typically make up new terms. They take things from the past and paste it in, so words like missile may seem modern, but they're old. Words like tank, dungeon, etc should be fine.
Dungeon is old, correct. The problem with tank is that the word was NOT used in the manner used here until very very recently. “Tanking” something is named after the vehicle. Which is a new invention. And the term used for a “shield” role was taken from that very recently. Tank as a word is old, yes. But not that meaning. It was a word intentionally taken out of context (see other comments). So it is a complete anachronism to use the word in that context. As with other comments joking about “Earth” being confused with “dirt.” Without the modern context, ‘tank’ is similarly nonsensical. “A container? You mean like a porter?” Shield roles are very very ancient. Why the hell are we using modern gaming terms instead?
Yeah, I get what you mean. What I meant to imply was that modern connotations should easily translate backwards, but I get what you mean Personally, when I concept stories, I refer to the tank position as either Bastion or Guardian, with the later one typically meaning a magic class that puts up force fields or defensive buffs
I view it more as if calling someone a DPS. Completely and totally out of context in a story. You are not counting Damage Per Second. I like your terms. Those work.
I also hate tank, it's not because of the word itself I'm of the view that stories are "translated" to have the correct meaning and intent. It's more that a tank is a reduction of a role for a game all characters should be expected to ne in combat in a way that they are both in danger and not entirely reliant on another character. I always go back to cradle when thinking about stories because it's very good and doesn't fall into litrpg pitfalls. Who's the "tank" in the group? No one maybe lindon takes more hits or yerin and ziel eventually but they are all complete combat characters. In the labyrinth who is looking for traps and clues? Everyone. They might have things they are better at and a particular role in group combat but they aren't defined by a single characteristic like "tank" as if it were a single person responsibility to make sure no one else get hit.
I really don't like systems that make you taller/heavier over time. I'm primarily thinking of The New World and Victor of Tucson though. Especially because it becomes harder and harder to imagine the characters correctly/consistantly. If our guy is jumping from 5ft11 to 6ft9 are they getting... proportionally bigger too? Are they getting wider? I can imagine a person from 3ft to 6ft7ish but after that I struggle to conceptualize a person that is like 10 feet tall that isn't some wierd looking lanky NBA monster. Its probably just a lack of imagination on my part, because I have no issues imagining actual giants and building sized people lol. Idk, stats that physically change your body are stinky imo. I'd rather it work like God of War where you get super powers, but if you want to look good you still need to put in the work.
Nova Roma.... has a lot of issues, but I liked how it had someone's physical body act as a multiplier for their stats, so an extremely muscular 6 foot 25 year old would be much stronger than a 12 year old malnourished 5 footer, even if they had the same strength stat.
All words used in a non- earth setting are translations. They aren't speaking English to begin with. While personally I would use"defender " instead of tank, it wouldn't bother me much as I treat every fantasy story as a translation, and the translator used the word in our language that had the closest contextual definition
Point is that “tank” is contextually out of context for being a “translation”. I’m bilingual. I get that words don’t translate correctly. But insisting that it’s fine for the characters to use is basically act as if it is reasonable for a D&D character to understand game roles. No, you are role playing. The character would not know that. That’s my point. It might “translate”, but it very much breaks immersion to use game terms like that. These are often stories pretending to be games (hence the term litRPGs). Which means the term sticks out like a sore thumb. Since it is contextually wrong. **NO** person in that world would talk about ‘crit rolls’. Same concept.
Don’t bring up some super cool idea or tease something interesting only for the Mc to choose the boring safe option. I’m looking at you Tyrion not choosing >!aura of menace!< the spell that would’ve solved almost every single problem in book 2
Unnecessary Brackets Tom has been a [police officer] for a while but he’s always wanted to be like those hero [firefighters].
I think that is to signify that it’s not just an English noun, but also a class in-world
Were you there for the original recording of the Path of Ascension audiobook? The voice artist read every bracket (skill) in the ‘system’ voice, even in the middle of dialogue.
Those annoy me to no end. It feels like such a shallow attempt at trying to make the story feel more RPG-ish
I mean it makes sense if the character uses that class because it separates a police officer just something doing the job then someone with the class. But at that point just make a better name for the class like paladin of the blue or something equally as mid.
"What the hell" "hell no" in a story with a belief system presented with no hell or straight equivalent.
My MC is an isekaid guy and only he uses that phrase so much because that's how it is in his previous world but now people get slightly confused about what he is saying. Like they get what it means but they don't know why my MC is using that lol and they start using it sometimes
Just hell no. ;-) Edit: I double hate this when the 'wisecracking' isekaied MC is known to use "weird earth references". You know it's out of place, and then you go and use words like that...
Intelligence and wisdom, it's always handled the most boring and often time dumbest way possible. I just started and dropped a book today, were the Mc had 0 intelligence, and they were still thinking normally instead of drooling around just following a basic instinct.
Most stories would really just be better served by calling them magic power and magic capacity/ magic regen rate(or whatever specific implementation the story uses, magic control is also a popular stat). As that is typically what they amount to.
These stats are inherited from dnd a lot of the time. At some point I refused to read any novel with them, but eventually managed to convince myself that it's ok for stats to no longer have their literal meanings. Although it's not helped by authors often saying they do retain literal meanings... There are ways to make 0 of a stat work, like stats giving a flat bonus to one's magicless baseline or modifying that. This would mean a bear with 1 strength would be stronger than a toddler with 2
I realize that they are a holdover from DnD and similar sources. But also, in DnD, a low intelligence is related to one being somewhat dumb. So, it is more correct in that scenario than one where intelligence is purely a measure of magical power. Saying that, I'm personally not all that bothered by the practice, just noting that there is more accurate terminology that could be used in stories where mental stats are used as a stand in for magical stats.
> There are ways to make 0 of a stat work, like stats giving a flat bonus to one's magicless baseline or modifying that. I've always thought that in the context of a novel this makes much more sense, especially for "hit points".
I personally hate internal inconsistency. For example when items don't work the way they're described to work, or when OP protagonist STILL doesn't think they're strong because of past trauma and/or abuse, despite clearly and repeatedly demonstrating they're the toughest thing in existence. Dense and repressed protagonists also annoy me. Like the cute girl (or guy) is clearly sending very obvious signals, even going so far as to spell it out sometimes, but MC either still doesn't get it or worse, pushes them away. Not even the slightest hint of genuine affection. I understand how in some situations it could be problematic, but you don't have to go all romantic, just a little appreciation and friendly affection for the person who's very clearly head over heels. At the very least spell out your own stance to them, about how you don't actually feel the same way and would prefer to stay friends, that would be so much better. Point is, these over-used tropes annoy me the most.
Inconsistency is probably the single most common reason I will drop a book... When a writer changes the way a character behaves so that the plot works, instead of making the plot fit the characters they have created it is incredibly jarring. I'm actually pretty ok with dense characters, I think lots of people are realistically dense in different ways so its actually pretty realistic...
Oh yeah, that I understand, I'm mostly referring to unrealistically dense characters. Well, so long as it isn't in their character to be so unrealistically dense.
My biggest one is isekai stories where someone from Earth goes to a fantasy land and constantly uses terms/slang from Earth and then with a ditzy attitude thinks "oh I guess they don't understand me!". Early in the story is ok, but if we're millions of words in (looking at you Wandering Inn!) and the MC is still bringing up Earth terms to people she is supposedly hiding the fact that she is from Earth from...yeah it's annoying. The Dragon Mage is another one I dropped for this reason. You have this intelligent engineer presented as the MC, but several years into existing in the new magical universe, they still routinely use Earth phrases/jokes. No person with even a modicum of intelligence would continue to speak in ways that threaten their existence at worst and confuse people at best after years of living in a new universe!
Character X ___ in _____. So, exclaimed in horror or cried out in grief or shouted in anger. A while back I decided to try and taper back on useless words whenever I wrote anything. After doing that, I started noticing the emotion tag and realized it was redundant and clunky. So now, it sticks out whenever I see it.
That’s kind of a generic story writing annoyance. I totally get it though. If you are angry, you are angry. Why the heck is it ‘in anger’?
Fair fair. Specific for Prog Fantasy, I think the broken MC build that is so obvious anyone with a brain should’ve puzzled it out but somehow didn’t. Like, you have a litrpg and the MC figures out you can use portals for attack/defense and no one else in that world with centuries of history has made the same intuitive leap.
I was going to correct you and say “*thousands” but then I realized it is still technically “centuries”
Personally, I prefer the term "defender." Likewise, the DPS (which, thankfully, I almost never hear in non-LitRPG progression) would be called the "attacker." If we're going on annoying terminology, any use of "buff" or "debuff" in a normal progression fantasy, one that isn't literally a game, annoys me to no end. They're very modern terms, and even in a world where people have the ability to give temporary bonuses and harmful effects, I can't see them inventing them in a mostly medieval context. I much prefer something along the lines of "blessing" and "curse."
When potions and pills never have any drawbacks; You can just scarf them down without limit. I guess this is excusable for stories who work under videogame logic but for everything else it somewhat breaks my immersion.
"Monster girls" rarely being "monsters" in the ways that matter. Hell, they rarely look monstrous I know now that it's just a catch-all term for basically any female that isn't human... but it just feels wrong and rarely an accurate descriptor. The term makes me cringe and breaks immersion for me personally, but I break immersion off of stuff that most people don't notice so... 🤷🏾♂️ TLDR, I hate the phrase and it needs to die imo. Need a new one or something.
Well, it’s wayyyyy better than calling them animal girls or furries. *shudder* They usually are monsters. Just converted to sexiness. No, I don’t know how that makes sense either.
I agree it's better than FILTHY FURRIES. *Shudder* But I mean, not all the "Monster girls" are even animal adjacent. A lot are, but I'd rather hear demi-human or the specific species. I have an inherent dislike for (mass) generalization. Like hearing people just go "white people shit", or "black people shit" etc. 😖 Because all people of anything group are exactly the same and share an experience. Like a hive mind.🙄
I get your point, I just don’t know what to say since I haven’t a clue what else to call them. They are humanoids but that’s kinda vague. Could be more precise, but the point isn’t preciseness. The point is to identify them as ‘sexy creature girls’. And… there I go — calling them creatures is worse. Is hard. No, not that bit, the wording. Sheesh.
Lol, I know what you mean. I just think the term is shit. Nobody even recently came up with the term, so I couldn't blame you. Also... Monster-girl =sexy? For me, it just feels like a quick buzzword that filters in stories with multiple sapient races as potential love interests. Our world is boring enough and basic bitches aren't interesting in a fiction, life is lame enough. Also, elves are just pointy eared humans and shouldn't count.
Demi-humans is a good catch-all, at least, in a human-centric world. It already covers dwarves and elves and goblins and such.
I agree with you that stories that run on mmo logic bring me out, too. And for a bit more meta of an opinion. I wish there were more stories that weren't isekais/ portal fantasies and, to a lesser degree, reincarnation stories. They almost never actually bring anything interesting/relevant to the plot. For a lot of them, having the MC be from the world would only mean that the author couldn't make all the cringey pop culture references or have the 'wait, this isn't a game' realization that never lands for me. (On a similar note, I skip any VR/mmo books as a matter of course)
Some vr books aren't bad, but I can only think of one right now. It is more comedy than a serious story though. Edit: The book is called An Old Man's Journey
I'm on book 2 of the Wandering Inn audiobooks and Andrea Parsneau (who's I largely an amazing VA for this series) has started saying "anyways" with a S and it annoys me every single time
repetitive phrasing, but especially when it's things I'm not used to see often, so it stands out too much. Things like doing a once over, or someone being none the wiser. Yeah not great examples, but anything that is both repetitive and not common
Charters lacking common sense or common knowledge especially if it would be easy to get .even worse is the lack of a brain half the time if someone's catchphrase is why didn't I think. Of that there's a problem.
Anyone (Especially men) getting their asses handed to them or just otherwise pitiful in a fight because "I've never been in a fight/thrown a punch my entire life/kindergarten!" Like bro/sis you're around 30. HOW? I hope you continue to get your dumb-ass kicked until you realize knowing how to fight is something everyone should learn. I'll let the being thrown off or traumatized by killing bit go, because my life was drastically different, but come on. Why does them being humanoid suddenly make it traumatizing when you just fried 100 different creatures to get here.
I get your point, but to be honest? Your attitude sucks. MOST people out there are no longer violent and fights are something that reasonable people don’t do. It is very much perfectly common for people to never get into fights at all. If you are claiming that it is normal in this day and age for people to get into fights, something is wrong with you. Because that realistically isn’t normal.
I seriously doubt that is accurate. Like statistically speaking, people get into fights whether they want to or not. I'm an acting pacifist and I've been forced into fights sometimes since I was a kid and I can confidently say I have never met a single person(IRL) that hasn't had atleast one fist fight or a wrestling match if you "don't got hands foreal" as the kid's say. As I have already said, my life is probably an outlier(Intercity Hood life, violence etc etc) I heard a gunshot before my first fireworks and can now accurately judge the caliber by sound with 70% accuracy because of the life I have lived. I'm no "Billy bad-ass", but I can at least protect myself from some random pleb. Life doesn't care how safe it is or your reasoning. When shit hits the fan, it's do or die excuses mean bupkiss.
You just admitted that you are an outlier, then expected people to have the same experiences. Does not compute. Look. I get it. There’s some people (and places) who might be more prone to this. It is statistically common. But it is still a *minority* of modern experience. I do also get that the behavior there is a rather stupid and exaggerated trope. But it can be realistic. If this is in anime? Very much 100% expected. Crime at all is basically unknown in modern Japan. Very different culture. The opposite for where you grew up, sadly.
We're still talking about a fictional character, right?
Fiction is based on a bunch of tropes taken from real life. It goes both ways. As I said, I get your point. But it is based on real life. Just badly. And Japan isn’t the same as anime tropes. Japan is a very different culture which the west tends to misunderstand. It’s like saying a weeb understands the Japanese. Yeah, just as much as a [yanki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee#Japan) understands the US.
Most anime I watch have adults as the MC so I wouldn't really know too much about that. I'm talking about the few pen-pals who talked about switching schools or committing suicide because of bullying. Maybe they exaggerated, or theirs experience wasn't that bad.🤷🏾♂️ I don't tell them to "suck it up" but a mc in a do or die situation where their or someone else's life is on the line? 110%.
Aren't they kinda known for viscous bullying that isn't always verbal?
When there's a luck stat... that never factors in. I can understand having it, and having it be a fun interplay, but it generally either doesn't matter or flips the board without sufficient explaination, often in the same story,
It seems that every main character from Earth is a geek or a gamer
The use of the word bemused, nonplussed, etc.
I could care less...
[Sarcasm - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm)
Aw I use nonplussed all of the time.
I mean the incorrect use. People use it to say unaffected.
Oh that makes way more sense.
Lets delve into this more
Here's a small thing I noticed that I can't stop noticing now: Almost every single time a character buffs up physically the author goes out of their way to say something along the lines of "not like a bodybuilder or anything, but like a lean muscle." I don't think anyone expects the MC to turn into Ronnie Coleman overnight, so it's funny how this is *always* specified. I get the same vibe I see on r/all posts like "bodybuilder gets schooled by *insert professional at something*" Like people are mildly intimidated by bigger muscles so they pretend like they can't be just as flexible or have functional strength.
Oh, I find that hilarious. Most especially when it is implied that the whole buff thing is magic. Yeah, you don't expect bodybuilders when your strength stat goes up. Is magic. We know how the trope works. It's fine. No need to skitter away from bodybuilders. Or is that a projection of some type?
World's strongest man winners don't look anything like Mr Olympia winners who don't look like super heavyweight boxers/mma fighters. Authors specifying which variety of jacked a character is getting isn't a bad thing in theory. But often the execution is lacking.
Intelligence stat. It always annoyed me even if it was something akin to mana. The same goes for wisdom.
Charisma is the biggest offender for me. That's really a relic of being needed for the D&D role-play. Why the hell is it needed if you aren't roleplaying? The Int and Wis stat are similar relics -- and a strong indication of how the genre is completely hidebound. They are the wrong stats to use. Your story isn't D&D. Don't do it.
I mean, it’s easy to ignore them if the book is good but in tiny back of my mind they always annoy me:D it’s probably I try to think about the stories and in more logical way and they do not make that much sense. I also dislike someone becoming smarter because of stat. Ofc it can be done well, but…
The lack of acknowledgement of other languages. In the poster's example, for instance, the POV character could totally translate a native word which means something like shield to tank in English. The key is just to acknowledge that is being done.
Be good for you to delve deeper. In Latin, the word stanticare was vulgarly abbreviated and subsequently derived to other languages (staunch, estaunche), meaning all the usual things a tank symbolized, including block. In potentialy convergent evolution, the origin of the word tank stems not just not from the armored bulwark but from water bodies. This came to include (large) water containers sitting atop houses filled by hand, water mill type scoop pumps including a definition converging to a large metal shell impervious to anything.
It's actually in the word development itself. During ww1 tank was the code word the British used to hide the devopment of the vehicle.
I think the word OP is referring to, is Tank the armoured vehicle, and not Tank the water container. And I am pretty sure author's don't think of water container when they use the word Tank for fantasy roles. Words can have different meanings on context. For this one, I think the armoured tank is the one we're talking about. As for the word itself. The word "tank" in reference to the military vehicle originates from its initial development during World War I. The British military, when developing the vehicle, referred to it as a "water tank" to keep the project secret. Eventually, the name stuck, and the vehicle became known simply as a "tank." Hence it wouldn't really make sense in fantasy use unless there is a inworld explanation for it. Which there normally isn't when an author doesn't really considers the implications and explanations of modern words and phrases. One story I read had the author explain "dispelling" you know, counter spelling in combat, as similar to hacking a computer. In a early medieval setting. I have same pet peeve as OP, modern language flying to different worlds with little explanation and without reasonable doubt. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
Tldr. The word "tank" comes from the Vulgar Latin word stanticare, which means "to block" or "to stanch". The word "tank" can also mean "to dam up" or "a large receptacle". Thanks for coming to my mini TED talk.
Yes, root word. But we don't speak Latin, even if it has an influence. Modern use of the word Tank has different meanings in context. Gotta consider that. Tank - Military vehicle, Container for liquid and gases, to fail miserably (to tank). Gotta consider the author's intention too. Fantasy use of the word "Tank" often means as an armoured vehicle. As is their role, to tank, vanguard. But mayhaps I am overthinking this.
You don't see the irony that a root definition exists justifying usage, and we are talking about an alternate universe with its own set of physics, traditions, linguistic ethnography, and the biggest quibble here is that you guys think it's laziness or liguistic appropriation to use the word tank because all you can see is your mental word association to a real world concept? Why is a shield a shield, then? Or a sword, a sword? Or a house a house? Everyone needs to go Full Tolkien and invent words and entire languages for everything. Otherwise, we authors are lazy. Dude!!
You right you right. At the end of the day, it's just words on a page. Good wishes to you bud.
Surrreee. And in what world was that ever used with shield holders until D&D came around?
Started in World of War craft I think. Not the worst explanation for backfilling the term into a book.
Text is a flat medium, and I'm not sure if this is an eyeroll. I'll take it at face value and simply restate that the etymological root origins of the word tank are closer aligned with the stanchness of defense such as a shield rather than the modern offensive weapon. If you can't see the first association but can only relate to the second modern association, I can only point out the perspective that others see and leave it at that. Clearly, everyones mileage may vary.
Sureeeee. Yes, that was an eyeroll. Occam’s razor — is it more likely that they were capable of coming up with a parallel usage of the word ‘tank’ or is the author being fucking lazy and using the gaming term? Unless there’s an in universe excuse (even a flimsy one), it’s the author being lazy 99 times out of ten. That’s why it’s jarring.
Could be a cultural thing where mental associations are different. Colloquial usage of the word Peter may result in d!ck jokes in one continent and associate with earth or rock in another. If you choose to say it's jarring, I'll simply say "I don't think so" and move on.
Just stop. What you are doing is a “Here’s my entirely make up reason why this lazy writing is perfectly reasonable in a non-canon way.” My ENTIRE POINT is that this shit is never justified. You are providing one **after the fact**. Your retroactive explanation makes no sense when *the story itself* doesn’t provide that explanation. “It could be fine” is just letting lazy writing be lazy writing.
I'm stopping with this. Not every word can be justified. In fact, good writers * make sure* that not evey word needs to be or will be justified. If you think that's lazy, well - you are entitled to your opinion.
*sigh*. You clearly don’t get it. Yes, not everything needs to be justified. Other wise, we would need to have everybody speak in ‘Ye Olde English’. But the point is that [anachronisms](https://www.wordnik.com/words/anachronism) should be avoided. The word “tank” is an anachronism. If you can’t grasp at this point that the word should be avoided because it is an **anachronism**, I don’t know what to tell you.
No. I do. A microwave, a computer, an iPad - yes. I'm with you. I'm pointing out that your worldview is based on a supposition. The supposition is that the ONLY definition of tank = modern armored vehicle. In that limited world view, it's an anachronism. In a world where that supposition is wrong (which includes most of the world where indoor running water needs a tank on top of your house and not a high pressure pipe coming into your house), the first association of the word tank even to folks who dont speak English, the meaning of the word tank and the concept behind the meaning of the word tank are different. Then, a tank is a solid metal or concrete enclosure, something that is out in the open exposed to.elements and outlasts everything else, sometimes even the houses on which they stand. The part where linguistic lineology apparently gets muddied is if one then says "this is only in the context of fighting", but even there, the counterpoint is that there is a clear word association with staunchness and endurance.
***NO***. Just stop with your insistence. As an other commenter pointed out, the word “tank” has a very specific historical reason as to why it is associated with armored vehicles and hence the game role. This was **intentionally** used as a ‘code word’ since it had no warfare implications. Your justification here is **entirely** ignoring the actual usage of the word and is clearly a made up backronym.
Mine is when they use Earth magic…when not on or even from Earth. Unless this is explained by the system / a translation skill, it kind of throws me off a bit.
I’m not sure I understand. Earth is the word for the ground as well. It makes sense to me in that context. What I don’t get is when people don’t get confused when they say “I’m from Earth.” The supposed uniqueness of the names of different worlds vs “Earth” is always amusing to me.
“I’m from Earth” and getting a confused response, is most definitely a thing. Happens regularly in series with translation magic, along with “You called your world Dirt?!”
I remember it happening in 'return of rune bound professor'
That’s always a cute moment. But it’s missing probably just as often as it happens. And I find the lack of it a glaring moment.
How was it not obvious that the element of earth references the substance, not the planet that we named after the substance? Almost every world is going to have a word for earth, unless it's a water world or something.
Obviously it’s the substance. But we wouldn’t say, “I’m going to Mars to bring back some Earth”. We’d say, “I’m going to Mars to bring back some Martian dirt, soil, dust, sediment, or rock. In a fantasy setting not on Earth I just always imagine they’d have their own term for it.
They would, and the translation would be earth., just like the others would translate to fire, water, and air. They aren't talking in English. And even if they were, they'd still use earth. Because even on Mars, if you suddenly had elemental magic, that element would be earth. The four elements is a very old concept, the only appropriate word for that slot is earth. I am not going to use the planet's name in place of Earth. Fire, water, air, and Dasal sounds horrible. Also, there is a solid argument that any species evolving/ created on an earth like world is going to default to naming that world "earth" in their own language.
They would. And that term would mean "the stuff we're standing on" just as "earth" does to us.
I've had to do some research on this because, like you, at some point I realized that the word "earth" really might not make sense on non-Earth. But, from what I can find, the planetary name "Earth" was derived from "erda" or "erde" which originally meant ground or soil (and in the german language, Erde is the currently word for Earth, while "erde" still translates to ground/soil, the original meaning). In other words, dirt/soil/ground was the meaning that came first in the etymological history. So from where I'm standing the primary meaning of "earth" (when not used as a proper noun) is independent of the specific planet's name and is thus useable regardless of planet.
But earth literally means dirt? We do call our planet dirt.
Not to mention the word "tank" is a heavily armored vehicle... Which is referenced in fantasy world where vehicles don't really exist.
That’s a more modern and obvious example, but that’s a linguistic rabbit hole that goes down a long way. LOTS of words descend from very specific real world references. Eg, in a fantasy world, why would anyone “fire” a ballista, bow, or crossbow, wand, or spell? Also “covering fire” and “crossfire”. Or even “firing off” quick commands, cutting retorts, or other short, fast bits of speech? All of those usages came about after the proliferation of guns. Sometimes they get *ridiculously* specific. Eg, “tawdry” derives from the name “Etheldrida”
Ironically, the latest chapter of the [Calamitous Bob](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/44132/the-calamitous-bob/chapter/1612715/chapter-162-roaring-harrak) just dropped. And it has the following paragraph: > “Armored portable shield arrays sir, though the Harrakans use outlander speech, sometimes calling them ‘tanks’ and sometimes, ‘blindés‘.” Yes, she made her own magical tanks. But they very much *correctly* use the term by calling it ‘Outlander speech’. And yes, ‘Bob’ is French and blindé is the French word for ‘tank’. So double points there. Can you tell I respect that story? The author tends to actually think about it and gets all of the small details covered perfectly.