Gaming Terms: Slang or Definitive?

[Joe]

It has occurred to me that I am guilty of picking up terms and using them prior to really finding out what they mean.
Old school for me may mean bee bop music, AD&D, black and white gangster movies, and classic Disney. For someone younger it may mean Dr. Dre, 2E, anime, and smurfs, and for the whipper snappers it may mean Tool, 3.x, Mtv and Toy Story.

I also understand that there may not be a definitive meaning to some common terms but I at least wish to know what they mean to you as a gamer before I go around mis-communicating with poor use of expressions.

Here are a list of words or expressions.
Please define them as you understand them.

• Old school:
• Retro:
• Clone:
• Simulacra:
• Indie:
• Sand Box:
• Fluff:
• Flamewars:
• Edition Wars:

That’s all off the top of my head. Please feel free to explain these and more you wish to include.

[Rikitiki]

• Old school:
the one before high-school

• Retro:
what Scooby Do says when there's trouble

• Clone:
Clone:

• Simulacra:
Deja same

• Indie:
Dr. Henry Jones Jr's "short name"

• Sand Box:
what I have to clean for my cats every day

• Fluff:
what I clean out of the dryer vent

• Flamewars:
what someone with no sense of humor will do to me for this

• Edition Wars:
finger-pointing while yelling: "Bad-wrong-fun!"

[Fiffergrund]

It has occurred to me that I am guilty of picking up terms and using them prior to really finding out what they mean.
Old school for me may mean bee bop music, AD&D, black and white gangster movies, and classic Disney. For someone younger it may mean Dr. Dre, 2E, anime, and smurfs, and for the whipper snappers it may mean Tool, 3.x, Mtv and Toy Story.

I also understand that there may not be a definitive meaning to some common terms but I at least wish to know what they mean to you as a gamer before I go around mis-communicating with poor use of expressions.

Here are a list of words or expressions.
Please define them as you understand them.

• Old school:
• Retro:
• Clone:
• Simulacra:
• Indie:
• Sand Box:
• Fluff:
• Flamewars:
• Edition Wars:

That’s all off the top of my head. Please feel free to explain these and more you wish to include.

Fun!

Old School: Gaming characterized by styles of play common to the early days of the hobby, I'd say 1970-1984 or thereabouts.
Retro: A new product that attempts to emulate a style of play from an earlier time in the hobby.
Clone: A product that duplicates the rules structure of a prior product while using new explanatory text.
Simulacra: A product that replicates the feel and style of play of a prior product without necessarily recreating the rules structure.
Indie: Anything not published by Hasbro/WoTC.
Sand Box: A style of gaming whereby a game master establishes a few geographic and cultural setting characteristics and lets the players completely dictate the direction of the campaign. The opposite of plot-driven.
Fluff: explanatory text designed to give flavor or depth to raw numeric statistics or game mechanics. It could include background setting material, character backgrounds, histories of magic items, etc.
Flamewars: Online discussions that devolve into a series of back and forth personal attacks.
Edition wars: Flamewars that revolve around zealous advocacy and/or defense of the game system/edition of a person's choice.

[nwelte1]

• Old school: A great movie. Frank the Tank!

• Retro: Granny panties (cant beat Rikitiki's response)

• Clone: Dolly the sheep

• Simulacra: The product of a spell on page 105 4th printing.

• Indie: Dr. Henry Jones Jr's dog's name (see Last Crusade)

• Sand Box: What my children play in

• Fluff: What my grandma called pink or green whip cream looking desert.

• Flamewars: Fencing with burning smoores (boy scout memories)

• Edition Wars: There is only one true game.

Had to try... Rikitiki's responses were great though.

[serleran]

Please define them as you understand them.

• Old school:
• Retro:
• Clone:
• Simulacra:
• Indie:
• Sand Box:
• Fluff:
• Flamewars:
• Edition Wars:

Old School: in terms of game play, it is a style which encourages the players to rely on careful adjudication by the Judge/Master who must utilize their own experience and sense of "fairness" as the rules are open to intrepretation and are more "careless" than "careful," many times appearing contradictory or ambiguous. It is heavily influenced by traditional fantasy and takes a deep adherence to the concept of archetypes. Modules tend to be "open plot" in that there is none.

Retro: an attempt to associate or reproduce the greatness that is actual old school.

Clone: a copy, with a few words changed or deleted to produce a retro edition of old school.

Simulacra: a fancier term for clone, to attempt to conceal or obfuscate the fact that nothing about it is original. Sometimes they have innovation (usually in the form of monsters and magic) and become indie.

Indie: a design principle on which rests the goal of discarding and ignoring every convention and tradition of the role-playing hobby. Many purposefully try to do something "new" with quite a lot being little more than vanity projects.

Sand Box: a micro setting with a few established particulars but no story; it simply is a place to explore.

Fluff: non-rules intended to explain the purpose or methods, such as why an elf can (or cannot) see in the dark.

Flame War: any online discussion which becomes an attack-defense regardless of what the topic was or becomes.

Edition War: a flame war about a game and which of its various version is "best."

I find most of these terms to be derogatory and hence I will respond to them in the same manner.

[alcyone]

Old School: Everything that happened before I was 12. For some reason, I have some reverence for the things made and decided in this time. Yes, I think it may be misplaced, but what can I do?
Retro: Everything that I actually played between 12 and 20 and no one is able to buy new in the present day.
Clone: A copy of the the things that are retro, sometimes imparting better organization, and possibly legal, though that is largely untested. Sometimes an improvement.
Simulacra: A simulacrum is practically the same as a clone but one or more basically accepted mechanics are altered in a way that makes them incompatible with accessories designated for the retro games.
Indie: Stuff that's unpopular or hard to sell.
Sand Box: A place to play that has lots of neat things to do in any order that you visit them, for player-driven reasons rather than story driven. Sometimes a sandbox contains smaller more traditional units of story, but they can be abandoned for other more interesting places. Lots of random encounters.
Fluff: Purple prose that accompanies crunch. Though it sounds counterintuitive, it's hard to separate it from the crunch it was written for. People often choose a game because of its crunch and its fluff, both together, inseparable. By itself, fluff is rule-independent and for some reason difficult to sell. At its best, fluff is inspiring to the DM and players, and at its worst, it's cloying and the last bastion of failed novelists.
Flamewars: This is an old internet term for people who are arguing passionately over something that not always but often is of little substance, and would barely cause a stir over lunch.
Edition Wars: Some people believe their opinions are important and if they don't give them, the world will stop. Apparently someone's opinion on What Game Is Best is crucial to the continued existence of humanity, and their inability to persuade you, the Last Wrong Person, is just too much for them to take. The Edition War is a more specific incidence of this general idea. More often than not it revolves around the different versions of TSR and WoTC's flagship game, but can happen to nearly any game that someone is still playing or seems to recall playing once.

[Traveller]

Here are a list of words or expressions.
Please define them as you understand them.

• Canonhawk: Any person or group of persons found on the Internet who believe that a game is only played properly if using all aspects of the default setting, unaltered or unadjusted by personal preference. Conversation with a canonhawk will devolve into a flame war if the poster replying to the canonhawk does not change their view to match the canonhawk's view. Similar to "Old School" except they focus on the setting rather than the rules.
• Clone: An exact copy of an object.
• Edition Wars: A Flame War that expands to include attacking the poster's edition preferences and actively trying to force the poster to change his view to match the attacker's by any means necessary, including but not limited to threats of physical violence.
• Flame Wars: Any discussion that degenerates into attacking the posters instead of their arguments.
• Fluff: Flavor text in a rule book.
• Indie: Independent publisher.
• Old school: Any person or group of persons found on the Internet who believe that a game is only played properly if using all aspects of the default rules, unaltered or unadjusted by personal preference. Conversation will devolve into a flame war if the poster replying to the person or group of persons does not change their view to match. Similar to "Canonhawk" except they focus on the rules rather than the setting.
• Retro: In the past.
• Sandbox: What I played in when I was in Kindegarten.
• Simulacrum (pl. Simulacra): Literally, something similar to the original. All so-called "Retroclones" are actually simulacrum games, because each of them has changed something from the original source, thus they are not exact copies as a clone would be.