Not sounding like an AD&D game

[RandyEllefson]

I had a question for you guys. Someone told me a story of mine sounded to them like it was an AD&D game partly because I used the terms "magic user" and "adventurer". Now in this case the characters do go on a series of quests but the there are valid reasons for it, not just a gimic, and the book isn't actually based on gaming, so...

Are there expressions that you associate with gaming that an author should avoid? I always thought "mage" might be one because few of my non-fantasy friends understand what that means - one reason I use "magic user" a lot.

I can see "adventurer" making people think of gaming, too. That is more easily replaced.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Thanks.

 

[Aes]

Eew, I'd avoid "adventurer" and "magic user" like the plague. Additionally, you may want to consider not classing your characters, unless either their reputation or their devotion places them heavily in a specific category anyway.

Try referring to your characters in ways that describe them as a person, not a character class: "The mage raised his staff and began to whisper a mystical incantation" could be replaced with "The black-cowled figure (or any other means you can think of to identify this person) raised his staff and began to whisper a mystical incantation."

 

[Nik]

Tricky...

D'uh, between AD&D and rivals, LOTR, HarryPotter etc etc, most of the euphemisms have been used at least thrice...

IMHO, 'Magic User' is a no-no, except as an insult, like 'gun-slinger' or 'gunsel'.

Needs context. May pick up some 'Granny Witching' from your Aunt, a 'Wicked Ward' mark along with the Five Guidances in ChurchSchool after the weekly service, some incredibly boring rote from your elder brother's half-drunk Tutor etc etc... "And write twenty times, 'I must NOT forget the second cedilla on Parac@tcha.' "

Perhaps share meal and camp-fire with a Poor Monk, who draws out the symbols to Avert Gaze...

Sorry, RE, you may need to sit down with a Thesaurus and invent your own terminology, technology, ranks, systems etc

Perhaps if you researched alchemy etc, come at the terminology from a different direction ?? Run some of the 'magik' expressions through google languages into eg Esperanto or Parsi ??

IMHO, 'Adventurer' is usually a polite term for 'Trouble Magnet'. Any self-respecting community would run a self-appointed Adventurer out of town before Orcs (TM) or Ninjas (TM) arrive and cause a collateral massacre.

Give the poor sod a reason for being where and what he/she is: Grand Tour gone bad, ship-wreck, Remittance Man, irate kin, the wrong duel, framed for theft, un-wanted step-child, Luckless Heir, skipped bail, left a bad IOU etc etc...
He/she gotta keep movin' along, movin' along...

 

[RandyEllefson]

Hi Aes,

Good point about classing pople, though knight and priest are actual roles in life so those can stick. Rogue is definitely a gaming thing.

Wizards/sorcerors/mages/magic users are harder. Which do people associate with gaming and which is just a general expression that doesn't raise flags? To me they're all the same because I have no clue what came from where.

Now that I think of it though, "magic user" does sound like AD&D. I think I first started using that because my mother, for example, would balk at "mage". Maybe the only two universal ones are wizard and sorceror.

Cleric is also an AD&D term to me, since a clerk is not someone who does magic (or I guess magical healing) in any other context.

Hey Nik - funny you mention making up your own terms. I did much the same thing inventing a world for 10 years but probably over did it in general, so I decided to write something more "mainstream" to get my foot in the door with agents/publishers first, and have run into this little problem with terms.

 

[Urien]

Alternate classifictions for characters in AD&D

Pie-Flinger level 12 (able to throw fruit pie combinations)
Ant Wrangler level 10 (can make small bridges)
Plate Spinner level 14 (up to 30 plates, good for mesmerising rowdies whilst you make good your running away)
Telephone Cleaner level 20 (no nasty germs and can detect bad breath)

 

[Peter Graham]

Hello Randy,

Wizards/sorcerors/mages/magic users are harder. Which do people associate with gaming and which is just a general expression that doesn't raise flags?

"Magic user" is an awful word. I suspect it was invented by the gaming commmunity, because it doesn't exist in mythology or folklore. It sounds hideously modern and bland.

"Wizard" or "witch" are probably the most authentic. "Sorceror", "mage" and "magician" all sound like words borrowed from other languages in the relatively recent past. The latter two at least sound Greek - possibly from "magi"?

Cleric is also an AD&D term to me, since a clerk is not someone who does magic (or I guess magical healing) in any other context.

Cleric is fair enough - I believe that the phrase did exist for real in monastic times, but as you say it referred to what we now call a clerk. The warrior-priest doesn't have much of a historical parallel in Western history from what I can see, probably because of all this "love thy neighbour" stuff.

I believe that "Rogue" originated in "Tunnels and Trolls", a kind of cut-price British version of early D&D. It was nothing like as sophisticated or engaging as D&D, but it did have some really funny spell names - "Oh, There It Is!" being the name of a "find" spell and "TTFN" (Take That, You Fiend), for the magic missile.

Showing my age now.......

Peter

 

[Winter Lord]

If you really want to be academic, thaumaturge could be used in place of magic-user.

You could us the suffix -mancer, but it really deals with divination, but in some stories is has come to mean a user of magic. A nice latinate prefix is used for the type of -mancer they are, and what they use to a means of focus.

Here is a partial list:

Necromancer: Divination by calling up the dead, but has come to mean a person who uses death to power their magic.

Crystalomancer: Use of crystals, or crystal balls to divine information. (The images in a crystal ball)
Cartomancer: Use of cards
Biblomancer: Use of books, or the Bible

There are hundreds to different types, even sorcery originally was a type of divination.

Perhaps you could create a slang term for a magic-user, "Mancer", or "Thurge" come to mind.

On the adventurer, depends on the type of weapon they use. They could be a duelist, a sell sword, or anyone of a number of other names. Look beyond the European based names.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

My advice would be to read a lot of fantasy that isn't based on gaming, and then read some books on the history of magic and the history of ... well, whatever period you are taking your general inspiration from.

You will very quickly find out which terms were actually used and don't come with the automatic D&D label (like magic user).

And take a word like "adventurer." During some periods it was used to mean "con man" which is obviously the last thing a real con man would want anyone to know. And it would take a rather cocky individual to refer to himself as an adventurer in the other sense of the word.

You can also avoid comparisons with D&D type games by making sure that there are a lot of characters who don't fall into any of the gaming type classifications (whatever you decide to call them). You need people like farmers and shepherds and shoemakers who just get drawn into the action because they happen to be there at the crucial moment, not because it's their job to go looking for adventure. You need to have some characters who have actual normal productive lives -- which the events of the story interfere with, or draw them away from.

 

[Jarshen]

I don't do D&D but know some of the terms and strangely some are ok, some not.

Mage is fine, always sounds like a mixture of Mace and Magi, so some sort of eastern magician with battle magic.
Sorceror or Sorceress, to ensorcle confound, Circe etc, a specific kind of enchanter/tress or Siren
Druid works with the earth and nature ditto witch.
Shaman one who works through trance/drugs and animalistic magic.
Thaumaturge, wizard, always associate with alchemists, don't know why.
Prophet, Soothsayer, Divinator those who work with omens and portents.
And then there is a warlock with suggestions of evil.

Agree Magic user is bad, better to use a verb so someone who uses/wields/controls magic.

And adventurer does not work too 18th century.

Go with what Teresa suggests think of jobs people actually might have done, how they might have earnt money and the titles they would advertise themselves as see if it sounds true to you.

Nice question, had me thinking.