When I got into gaming in the 80s, my other gaming friends and I used to say "shotgun game" when we got together and had no plans and decided to play some D&D. "I'll run a shotgun game" was a common phrase. It just meant you were going to run something on the fly, zero prep or low prep.
Comes from the idea of a shotgun wedding, where a guy knocks up a girl and then her father forces him to marry her, at the point of a gun. The idea, I think, is that since you are typically the DM, you're kind of forced into the arrangement when you friends wanted to game all of a sudden.
I've fished around online for this phrase and I can't find where it is in use in this context. If anyone knows otherwise, has used it themselves in the past, or understands where it came from, comment and let me know. I'm just curious about it.
Is this hyper local RPG lingo? Maybe just my gaming friends invented it. I don't know. I picked it up from them, though. I didn't originate the phrase. I believe one of my original DMs got it from some older kids who taught him how to play D&D in the early 80s.
I started playing D&D in 1980 in Rye, Colorado. We never used or heard the phrase "shotgun game".
ReplyDeleteI was "there" in the late 70s and early 80s, and I never heard the phrase. Then again, I was in Omaha, NE at the time, so . . .
ReplyDeleteWe didn't have this phrase, but I used to refer to running "unmodules." An unmodule occurs when there is no prewritten adventure and the players just decide what they want to do (usually in a town or city) and the GM deals with it on the fly, creating NPCs, locations, and situations as needed with little or no preparation. My group would often do this when we were in the mood to game but didn't have an adventure ready, or as an interlude between adventures where player characters could pursue side goals.
ReplyDeleteHah! "Unmodule" is definitely a hyper-local and specific term. I would say you need to push it in the culture, but since module hasn't been the preferred term in decades I doubt you'll get traction. But I support the campaign.
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ReplyDeleteI think you're on your own with the shotgun game term. We always called it a one-shot if we were throwing something together on the fly just for one night.
ReplyDeleteOne-shot was also used a lot. I had a thought that maybe one-shot and shotgun were related in our local vernacular. Like some meant to say one-shot but was thinking about a shotgun wedding and maybe they mixed it up. Or they made the joke and it stuck. I really have no idea. I think it would forensically impossible to solve if it is really just limited to my gaming friend circles of that time.
DeleteDelta Green has "shotgun scenarios". Seems similar?
ReplyDeleteSimilar, but the timing is way off. I don't think it's related. I picked up this phrase around 1984-1986 and I don't think Delta Green appeared until mid 90s. They didn't start publishing shotgun scenarios under that title until the 2010s, I think.
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