I hate the usage of the word Gish. Somehow in the past decade Gish has become an acceptable in some of RPG land as a generic term for Fighter/Magic-User. How the heck did that happen?
Gish, is title for a specific type of Githyanki as presented in the original Fiend Folio. For the vast majority of D&D campaigns, there is no reason for this word to have leaked out into general use. I've probably used Githyanki a dozen or so times in the past few decades but they've never stopped to discuss how their forces are designated or identified and the PCs (and players) never bothered to ask.
How did this decidedly uncommon encounter type enter the lamestream of D&D fandom as a common term to define character types? And why?
Nothing screams heroic archetype like a fictional word for a subset of a rarely encountered monster from within a society decidedly separate from the traditional D&D societies...
Someone recently used that term in a comment on my blog and I had no idea what it meant. So thanks for complaining about it and in so doing educating me!
ReplyDeleteI think I saw this term used over on the wizards character optimization forum, in describing various character builds for d&d 3.X .
ReplyDeleteAnd it is in this context that I share the repulsion....
DeleteThe earliest I remember hearing it is around 2003 or so.
ReplyDeleteNever heard this before-now I have to roll up a F/MU named Annabeth,
ReplyDeleteI hate the term, too, though I've never heard anyone outside of hardcore 3e-related forums ever use it, so I suspect it's not very widespread.
ReplyDeleteI used to be a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan so the term has confused me for some time. As far as I know they named the Album "gish after a silent movie star, and not after Githyanki.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Smashing Pumpkins is the first thing that comes to mind for me too.
DeleteMust be an age thing, I think of the old time movie star myself
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DeleteIt sure didn't begin "I Love the useage of the word ...". There is also zero reason to mention there are still versions of D&D being published, I noticed in the past 30+ years, when I've been playing D&D and it's cousins. Enjoy the tea come on back when you don't feel like crabbing, unless you really like crabbing.
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DeleteNot going to argue about how I reply to a reply, this isn't a message board or a forum it's my blog.
ReplyDeleteSorry about the deletes dear readers, it seems a certain poster didn't want to read what I typed. So posts were gotten rid of. That person is free to reply to other post but... read the above.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard this either (until now) but I can't imagine using it. EVER. Too obscure a reference. "Swordmage" would be better and more descriptive. Some folks have adopted "toon" as a reference to a character as well. Guess that's from WoW? Kinda dumb. Toon IS a game, not a character IN a game. :)
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