Acronyms

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This is a list of the acronyms that you may see on this blog:
  • 3LBBs: "Three Little Brown Books", synonymous with OD&D. The original 1974 version of Dungeons & Dragons was published in a box cointaining three brown booklets: "Volume 1: Men & Magic" (M&M), "Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure" (M&T), and "Volume 3: the Underworld and Wilderness Adventures" (U&WA).
  • AC: "Armor Class", the measure of a creature's defenses.
  • HD: "Hit Dice". HD are used to determine a creature's number of hit points (hp), as well as a general measure of how powerful a creature is.
  • hp: "hit points", a measure of how much damage a creature can take before being defeated.
  • M&M: "Men & Magic", volume 1 of the three booklets that composed the original D&D.
  • M&T: "Monsters & Treasure", volume 2 of the three booklets that composed the original D&D.
  • NPC: "Non-Player Character". A modern term, used to denote characters other than the players' main characters in the game. In OD&D, NPCs as a whole were generally referred to as "monsters".
  • OD&D: "Original Dungeons & Dragons", the first edition of the game by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, published in 1974. On this blog, OD&D refers to the original game, but not any of the supplements later published for the game. For more information, see Sources.
  • RPG: "Role-playing game", the first published example being OD&D. Notice that video game RPGs (while often excellent) are quite unlike the tabletop RPGs that originally inspired them.
  • U&WA: "the Underworld and Wilderness Adventures", volume 3 of the three booklets that composed the original D&D.
Apart from the acronyms above, if you are puzzled by a strange combination of numbers around the letter 'd' (such as "1d6", for example), check out Dice Notation.

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