Genre Language

Most TTRPGs fall into the genres of fantasy or sci-fi. There are plenty of great discussions on worldbuilding within these genres, but language used in game mechanics (names of character abilities, tools, and so on) helps ground a game in its chosen genre as well. Without even looking at any sort of “setting material” for the game, just the mechanics, genre should come through.

Sometimes, it’s easy to tell. If you’re tossing around words like “laser” or “warp” or “scanner,” it’s clearly sci-fi. If you’re using words like, “demon” or “spell” or “sorcerous,” it’s probably fantasy. Other times, it’s a bit harder. Sometimes, it’s not just a matter of a single word. Let’s say you’re working on a fantasy game and you want to discuss a magical ability that causes some kind of calamity utilizing the nature of very planes of existence themselves. You might call it:

An overload of the planar matrix

Cool, but I would argue that you ended up in sci-fi territory there.“Overload” is probably genre-neutral, with its first usage in English a very long time ago. However, if you want words to evoke the fantastic, they often should have a whimsical or perhaps even metaphorical feel. “Burden” or “overburden” sounds more fantasy simply because it’s more archaic. “Encumber” is good too. But “overload” works, as long as the rest of the phrase does.

“Planar” is a fantasy word, but really? It’s just barely fantasy. Sure, D&D has many different planes and the adjective form involved there is planar, so you have “interplanar travel” or “planar monsters” or whatnot. But can you imagine Gandalf saying that word? Maaaaybe, but it’s hard to be certain. Surely there are more fantastical ways of talking about the different layers of existence? (That’s rhetorical. There are.)

But finally, “matrix” is pretty solidly a sci-fi word, thanks to the Keanu Reeves films. It may sound like I’m being flippant, but I’m not. You have to think about how a word falls upon an audience, and while “matrix” is an old word with lots of non-sci-fi meanings, players are going to see that and think about Keanu dodging bullets. The feel of words changes over time, and we need to be cognizant of that.

Given all of that, the phrase leans heavily into science fiction. So what could we use instead? How about something along the lines of:

The thunder of the spheres

If we’re causing a calamity with our magic ability, “thunder” suggests an upheaval without literally tying it to weather. “Spheres” is a word that feels far more fantasy (again, because it is both archaic and metaphorical) and by making it plural we can imply that there are multiple spheres at work here.

If that’s strayed too far from our “planar matrix” concept, we could say:

The stress upon the ocean of worlds

or even

Taxing the concordance of the astral realms

There’s really no end to different options. English is great that way. Obviously, a thesaurus is your friend here, and a guide on archaic words is as helpful for fantasy as access to technical, scientific terminology is for science fiction.

More Signposts

As a general rule, putting two words together to make a single word, like “bladesmith,” “crownheart,” or “hinterlands” suggests fantasy. But it depends on the words you’re combining. Because of course, you’ve got “starship,” “datapad,” and “cryopod.”

But wait. That last one is really more of a prefix (cryo) and a word (pod) rather than two words. And that’s another sign of science fiction. A heavy use of prefixes and suffixes—especially ones that come from science—is absolutely a sci-fi thing. If you’re using words that contain any of the following prefixes or suffixes, you’re describing a science fiction element, not a fantasy one:

quantum-

cyber-

robo-

hyper-

multi-

nano-

-tron/tronic

-ium

-urgy

-ologist

-ium

If you don’t think suffixes or prefixes matter, consider the difference in “adamantium” (science fiction) and “adamantite” or even just “adamant” (fantasy). A small change alters the entire feel of the word.

Before you think this is getting easy, however, fantasy does have at least one idiosyncratic suffix too. And it gets used a lot.

-mancer/-mancy

So, in short, if it’s a compound word of two short words usually not seen together, use it in your fantasy game. And if it’s got a scientific (or scientific-sounding) prefix or suffix, it’s probably best used with science fiction.

Turning it On Its Head

Of course, you’re a creative, right? You don’t want to be bound by rules and tropes. You can, if you want, take this concept and do exactly the opposite from what I’ve suggested with very different results.

“Genetic wizardry” could be a synonym for genetic engineering in sci-fi, implying almost impossible feats of science.

“Data weald” in a sci-fi setting might be an unplumbed trove of information that can be gathered up and utilized somehow, with “weald” being an old word meaning forest or wild land.

The “dark extraterrestrial wind” might be a science fiction term for an alien invasion, even though “wind” in this usage feels more fantasy for its whimsical and/or metaphorical nature. But wind does imply movement in a single direction, and adding dark suggests it’s not a happy one.

So you can use metaphor and whimsy with sci-fi, but be aware that it’s going to feel a bit more fantastical. You’re taking some poetic liberties, not to change the whole mood, but just to make things more interesting.

However, it’s hard to go the other way. Fantasy words add a bit of poetry to science fiction if used carefully, deliberately, and sparingly. But sci-fi words usually spoil fantasy, or at the very least turn it into science fantasy.

Use Words Carefully

I have used science fiction words in fantasy myself many times in my career, and it always felt off. Extradimensional, electromagnetic, forcefield, molecular, singularity, telekinesis … and I’m sure many more. Plenty of this is the fault of D&D, if I’m being honest. D&D inserted all kinds of sci-fi terms into its fantasy. Since it’s been doing that for 50 years now, does that mean “polymorph,” “teleport,” and “symbiotic” are fantasy words now? I suppose that’s for each writer/designer to decide.

Regardless, I pay more attention to this kind of thing nowadays and I think it helps create what I want to create.