What Does it Mean?!
If you've ever watched other people play D&D, you've probably encountered some terms and phrases that made you scratch your head or pick up your phone to do some Googling. I've put together a list of terms and phrases that I didn't know the meaning of when starting to learn about Dungeons and Dragons that hopefully will clear up some of the confusing vernacular.
D20 or D(number): When a player rolls a die, they may refer to the die as a d20 or a d10, etc. All this means is that they are rolling a die with a certain number of sides. D&D is played with many types of dice, and it's easier to say "d6" than to say "6-sided die". When more than one of a type of die is rolled, it's common to shorten the phrasing to "2d10" rather than saying "two 10-sided die".
Critical: In video games, a critical hit is considered a hit that does above normal damage, or targets a weak point on an adversary. In D&D, a critical might refer to a critical success or a critical failure. These are generally achieved by rolling a d20 and landing on either a 20 or a 1. A 20 is considered a "Critical Hit" or a "Critical Success", and a 1 is usually a "Critical Miss" or a "Critical Fail". Both of these carry weight in D&D, whether for good or ill, so they're usually expressed with delight or dismay, depending on which side of the spectrum the die falls on.
Natural: Similar to a critical roll, a "natural 20" is simply a roll of a d20 that lands on a 20. Conversely, a "natural 1" is a d20 roll that lands on a 1. The word "natural" is only used to convey that the number stands alone with no modifier. In combat, a "Natural 20" is an automatic hit, whereas a "Natural 1" is an automatic miss.
Advantage/Disadvantage: When a player has advantage or disadvantage on a roll, it just means that they need to roll their d20 twice. If they have advantage, they take the higher of the two rolls. Disadvantage, conversely, means that they take the lower roll. Advantage and Disadvantage do not stack, so if two separate things give you advantage, you do not roll three times. Same with Disadvantage. Interestingly, Advantage and Disadvantage cancel each other out, so if you have both circumstances for a roll, you simply roll once as normal. Where this gets a bit confusing is when two circumstances give you Advantage, and one circumstance gives you Disadvantage. In these cases, in Fifth Edition D&D, they still cancel each other out. Advantage is Advantage, and Disadvantage is Disadvantage, flat out.
NPC: NPC stands for "Non-Player Character". These are usually voiced and controlled by the Dungeon Master, and can refer to merchants, blacksmiths, orc bandits, and demonic entities. Any entity that the players do not directly control falls into this category, and it is at the DM's discretion who controls them.
Session: A session of D&D is a single block of time spent playing the game. It could be two hours, four hours, or an entire day; there's no real definition of how long a session needs to be. If you're meeting at your buddy's house for a game of D&D, and spend three hours playing the game before getting drunk and playing Rocket League, you had a 3-hour session.
Campaign: In D&D, a Campaign is generally a serialized group of sessions that have an overarching storyline. Take any fantasy series as an example. "Lord of the Rings" is an example of a campaign. It spans multiple locations, a great deal of time, and involves many quests and subquests, but the overall mission is always the same.
This is not to say that a campaign needs a single overarching theme; there could be many intersecting plots in a campaign, and some could never end up being resolved, but the important part is that it remains part of the same story. You can even have multiple parties of adventurers taking part in the same campaign at different times in its progression.
Multiclassing: Multiclassing in D&D is when a player decides that, when their character levels up, instead of moving up another level in their original class, they want to gain a level in another class. For example, if you are playing as a Fighter, but want to learn some basic spells, you could get to level 4 as a Fighter, then the next time you level up, decide to gain one level in Wizard. Now you have access to the first-level Wizard abilities as well as your 4th-level Fighter abilities. It's slightly more complicated when it comes to spellcasting levels, but that is the basic idea.
Challenge Rating (CR): A Challenge Rating is a number assigned to enemies in Dungeons and Dragons to denote how difficult that enemy is for an assumed party of four adventurers. This is subjective and prone to error, however, as magical items, party composition and player skill are bigger factors than a monster's CR.
Roll Up...: In D&D and many other games where you create a character based on dice rolls, when you create a character, you are "rolling up" a character. To "roll up" a Rogue Paladin simply means to create that character using dice rolls.
Make a Skill Check: When playing D&D, many times the Dungeon Master will ask a player to make a certain skill "check". This means that the player rolls a d20 and adds their modifier for that particular skill. For example, if a character is trying to move a heavy boulder, they might need to make a Strength or Athletics check. They roll the d20 and add their Strength or Athletics modifier, whichever the DM calls for. Based on that roll, the DM will compare it to the difficulty level they have set for the task, and tell the player if they succeed or fail.
Save or Suck (a.k.a. Save or Die) Spells: Many spells in D&D automatically hit their target, but the target is granted a saving throw against the attack. In some of these cases, the result of a fail is an automatic death of the target. If the target saves, they live, but if they fail, they die. Hence the name "Save or Die", which has been altered recently to "Save or Suck".
Min/Max Player: When a player is focused on only choosing ability scores that make their character the strongest they can be, or only want to take spells that do the most damage, or attempt to make decisions that will put them in an advantageous situation, these are sometimes called min-maxers. The idea is that you want to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses, thus the terminology for the style of play.
Murderhobo: A murderhobo, or group of murderhobos, is a player or players that just want to go around killing everything. Many players in D&D and other sandbox-style RPGs take this approach at the beginning, and it can be a very fun style of play. Basically, everything is killable and it can be a blast running through a town blasting everything in sight with your magic and cleaving through town guards without a care! Beware, though, because your DM might have consequences for those actions planned well in advance. Murderhobo-ing is fun, but it can have its price.
Metagaming: Metagaming is when a player uses their knowledge outside of the game to influence their character's decisions in the game. For example, a first-level fighter probably wouldn't know that an Ogre is weak to fire, or that it can regenerate its health. If the player knows this, however, they might try to have their Fighter dip their blade in oil and light it on fire before fighting the Ogre. This is metagaming, and if the party and DM are okay with it, it's a perfectly fine way of playing. You can even justify it in-game by saying your Fighter was an avid reader and learned about monster weaknesses in some obscure text they found. Most DMs discourage metagaming, however, as it can lead to arguments about what a player knows versus what their character would/should know in the game.
Range: A character's range is simply how far away they can hit a target from. Many weapons have a range to them, such as longbows, crossbows, and javelins. Even swords have a thrown range to them, though you might take a penalty if you try it. Range can also refer to the radius around a creature in which they can hit a target. For example, an Ancient Red Dragon might have a 15-foot range for its melee attacks, simply due to its size. A human Monk, by contrast, only has a 5-foot melee range. Keep this in mind when you're fighting up close, as many ranged spells and weapons have disadvantage when they get into melee range with a target.
Plane: In Dungeons and Dragons, the word "plane" rarely refers to an aircraft. Instead, it will usually refer to the Planes of Existence, of which there are many in the official D&D universe. We exist on the Prime Material Plane, and there are Planes for each element, the Nine Hells, the Abyss, the Feywild, the Far Realm, and many more. If you want a mind-bending adventure, go Plane-hopping in your campaign!
Thanks for reading, everyone! I hope this list of terms and phrases was helpful to someone, or was at least fun to read. What are some of the phrases and/or terms in D&D that confused you at first? Are there any that still don't make a lot of sense to you? Let me know!