What Is a Campaign?

Before we answer the question, let's first consider the dictionary definitions beginning with Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary Eleventh Edition:

campaign

1 : a connected series of military operations forming a distinct phase of a war

2 : a connected series of operations designed to bring about a particular result <election ~>

The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary is in agreement:

campaign

1. Series of military operations in a definite theatre or with one objective or constituting the whole or a distinct part of the war.

2. Organized course of action, esp. in politics, as before an election.

Before we can connect the "campaign" as it is understood in role-playing games with its more formal definition, we must first look at how it entered the hobby via war games. Dungeons & Dragons, as is well known, emerged from the war game hobby in general and from the medieval miniatures war game Chainmail specifically.

The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide gives us this definition:

campaign

General term referring to one DM's adventures as a whole rather than individually. An ongoing series of games based upon a created milieu.

The D&D Basic Set (1980) defines it thusly:

campaign

A series of adventures taking place on the same fantasy world.

It ought to be clear that by any definition, a campaign is a series of activities comprising a greater whole. A single adventure does not a campaign make. Individual adventures can be likened to the chapters in a book — the campaign is the book itself.

I confess I've never been partial to "campaign" as a term to describe a series of adventures. The word is overtly military and suggests carefully planned strategy to achieve a specific objective, which I feel rarely describes the activities of player characters. I'd prefer to call it a "series of adventures" because that's what it is. Sometimes we, as human beings, are prone to classify and apply terminology to things that don't necessarily require either classification or unique (or not-so-unique) terms to be understood. I prefer clarity.

Although I'll admit "campaign" is slightly more succinct.

A Very Happy Unmodule to You!

Nowadays, it is not uncommon to hear someone refer to "sandbox," "hex crawl," or "point crawl" to refer to methods of player agency in determining where, when, and how a party adventures, but this jargon was unknown in my gaming circles in the 1980s. We didn't have terms or a precise methodology for the choices player characters were offered, but sometimes we were forced to create terms just to save the time it took to explain it. That is why I coined the term unmodule. It was inspired by that scene from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass wherein the Mad Hatter explains to Alice the concept of the unbirthday. If an unbirthday occurs on all the days of the year that is not your birthday, an unmodule is played whenever the players gather to play without a module. (For those who are unaware, a "module" is what TSR called their published adventures, and what many gamers called their own written adventures.) Typically, if my players finished a module that did not lead immediately into another (and especially if I needed more time to read or write the next one), I would declare the next session an unmodule and the player characters could pursue their own goals, which sometimes meant getting themselves into trouble. They could shop for equipment, meet with friends or professional contacts, plot acts of revenge, make a pilgrimage, consult an expert, get something repaired or specially made, go carousing, pick some pockets, enter competitions, pursue training, embark on a hunting expedition, do some herb gathering, or even go on a side quest. Nearly anything was a possibility, and I was obligated to wing it to the best of my ability. Unmodules were fun, and it ensured that player characters had a part in steering their own destiny.

unmodule

Any role-playing activity occurring outside the bounds of a module and primarily driven by the player characters' whims.

Meowing Magic-Users

I was recently reminded of my first exposure to a gamer colloquialism not used by anyone in my own gaming group.* I heard it in the 1980s when I was attending NOWSCon, a small gaming convention held by the Northern Ohio Wargaming Society. I was playing in the first round of an RPGA-sanctioned event, and the DM said something about a "mew." He mentioned it several times, which invariably left the players exchanging befuddled glances, until one of us asked, "What is a 'mew'?" He appeared to be quite shocked at the question and answered, "A mew! A magic-user of course!" At this the whole group said "Ohhh!" in unison, and I said, "Oh, you mean an 'm-u'" (which we always pronounced as two distinct letters: "M.U.") Normally, we just said "magic-user" — it never really seemed like the sort of word that needed to be abbreviated or initialized. If anything, we tended to favor longer, more flavorful descriptions. Each to his or her own, I guess.

[mew] or [myu]

A pronunciation of the abbreviation "m-u" for "magic-user" in earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons.

* My recollection was spurred by reading something in Google+ in which a magic-user was referred to as a "MOO." This is new to me and I don't know whether it is an acronym or yet another alternative pronunciation of "m-u."

[Edited from an article originally posted in Fudgery.net/fudgerylog.]

Back to the Module and Other Sayings

Gamers, like most hobbyists, have their own jargon. They also have their own colloquialisms. Most of the gamer colloquialisms with which I am familiar are related to Dungeons & Dragons, so instead of recording them in Creative Reckoning (where I am transferring most of my old Fudgerylog articles), I thought they would be more at home here in Applied Phantasticality.

In any event, some of the [Old School] gamer colloquialisms that spring to my mind are:

back to the module

A statement made by the DM or a player to signify an end to the players' out-of-character chit-chat and a resumption of active gaming, usually made emphatically: "Back to the module..."

In role-playing games other than Dungeons & Dragons usually rendered as back to the adventure, back to the scenario, or back to the story.

 

blown out of existence or B.O.E.

Eradicated beyond all hope of resurrection, as in, "Would you like to have your character blown out of existence?"; inspired by the sphere of annihilation described in the Dungeon Master's Guide of 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

[Edited from an article originally posted here in Fudgerylog.]