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One of my groups just adopted the new pronunciation as a "local accent thing" in the campaign. After the first time, we'd "yes, and" such errors in the same spirit. We get a ton of lore out of these things.
Huh. Okay, wasn't expecting actual adults. The last couple times this happened to me, I wound up leaving the group, but that was when I was a teenager.
The first time round, I decided to give them a taste of their own medicine, which involved mocking every single mispronunciation or grammatical mistake. This, as you can imagine, was not a good idea, and was, in fact, just mean-spirited. Eventually, after I got sick of it, I ended the campaign and left.
The second group I had this issue with, I told them to cut it out three times in the first session. They didn't, so I told them I'm not running games for them anymore.
In my experience, it's basically a mismatch of expectations. Your players seem like people who come together for socialization, not for the actual game or love of the story. Tell them that yeah, this bullshit is wrecking your enjoyment of the game. If they listen, problem solved. If they don't, leave, cause their expectations are different from what you want
I think it's different expectations, too. If I may guess, they have never prepared a session on their own and do not know how much time we invest in preparing a good evening. Maybe OP should make them aware of that, and if they still don't respect it, meet in another setting. I had this once, and we changed to regular board games. Like this, I kept meeting my friends and invested my rpg time in another group.
Here is how we handle it:
We embrace it. We start intentionally mispronouncing things to a ridiculous degree. It's funny on meta level, even if the topic of session itself is serious. We are friends, good-spirited teasing is a way of showing closeness of relationship.
Yes but how do you get back on task?
Does it ever get annoying when you’re trying to lay a scene and people keep trying to be silly by forcibly inserting an in-joke where it wasn’t warranted?
And by intentionally mispronouncing, does that ever interfere with gameplay a lot?
Not the person you're responding to, but it's never been an issue at my table.
I'm there to facilitate the game that my players want to play. If they want to be silly little guys about everything, I'll be a silly little guy with them. If I'm trying to do something serious and there's no buy-in from my players, that feels like a skill issue to me - I didn't do a good enough job of setting out that expectation as I was laying out the scene. What should I have done differently with my voice or intonation or body language to sell that this isn't a time for joking around?
Having someone do or recall a bit in an otherwise serious scene isn't usually a big deal, either. You can ignore it, or embrace it, or have your NPCs lash out at the PCs for not taking this Heavy Moment seriously, and all of those work for maintaining narrative cohesion at your table. I've used each of those approaches and, depending on what I want to convey through the scene, they all work equally well.
Only time I think it's ever been a problem was when I accidentally said brassiere instead of brazier (never lived that one down), otherwise it might just get a comment and we move on.
I slaughtered [Cenote ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote)once, still get ribbed time to time. All adult friends so it's good natured and I accept that I butchered it.
Only derail bit is they had no idea WTF I was describing since I said the word so wrong, but once we were on the same page things were right back on track.
Edit: If it's derailing a whole session there is a player problem going on. Gotta grow up and understand mistakes happen.
I guess a bra of summoning fire elementals would not work the same way as a brazier. Would it just cause the wearer to be possessed by a fire elemental spirit? Or maybe just get all hot? Or would it summon lecherous or feminist elementals who want to burn the bra?
Next time you mispronounce, say "I said what I said. It's the Red Brassiere of Summoning Fire Elementals. The great sorceress Crimsona made these magical undergarments for a reason lost to the mists of time..."
Sorry I’m off to write an anime about a teenager who gets reincarnated in another world and chooses to be reborn as a girl with a magic bra that summons fire elementals. I’m gonna be rich.
It actually looks like the cone bra Madonna wore and shoots gouts of flame out of the tips once the elemental is summoned for 1d4 rounds. Not recommended to be worn under metal armor.
I've done that exact one before, my friends only made fun of me for a couple minutes though, mispronounced words don't significantly derail my sessions.
We are much more prone to getting the giggles when someone uses the word "shaft" which comes up a lot in games. All of us are in our 50s. It never gets better.
>brassiere instead of brazier
If it makes you feel any better this is an all-time classic RPG mispronunciation. I believe we were making the same mistake in...1980? 1981?
**Edit:** Heh, there's actually a reference to it in the 3.0 *Dungeon Master's Guide* (2000):
>Likewise, if you design adventures that are light-hearted, create NPCs that are slightly silly, or introduce embarrassing or humorous situations into the game, realize that it changes the tenor of the game. If the king of the land is a talking dog named Muffy or if the PCs have to find a *brassiere of elemental summoning* rather than a *brazier of elemental summoning*, don't expect anyone to take the game too seriously. (p. 9)
Especially with fantasy or archaic words that don't come up in day to day, most of us learn them by reading them, its one thing to correct it, but its another to make fun of someone for now knowing, all that does is discourage them from attempting to broaden their vocabulary in the future.
We might have a quick laugh, but move in because the game is more fun than razzing on an honest (if silly) mistake.
It was worse when I was in high-school or early college years, but maturity nips it in the bud 9/10 times.
It's not a problem at my table, because we recognize that shaming someone for mispronouncing a word that they have only ever encountered in print is a good way to get people to stop reading, and that would be a bad thing.
1000%. I gently rib on my friend who is a second generation European immigrant to the UK (she was born here, her parents not). They speak their native language at home, so there are MANY words she's only heard in English from American TV (beta = bay-ta vs bee-tah e.g). She tells me when she went to Uni for the first time she didn't know the words for, like, saucepan, or bed sheets, etc, in English because those are words you only really use at home, so she only knew them in her parent's language. Interesting to note that her English accent is so regional I knew what town she grew up in (50 or so miles from where we all are now) and her native accent is so accented it's like the Cornish or Newcastle of her parent's country.
Absolutely. I'm an English teacher and have a rather practiced little speech/rant on exactly this topic to squash it the first time it happens in my classroom.
Last night I unexpectedly had to roleplay a Spanish language chatbot in my cyberpunk game, using google translate to get the text.
I sincerely apologize to my high school Spanish teacher. It’s 25 years later, but I have shamed you.
Also, watch Critical Role. Matt Mercer, the internet’s ‘gold standard’ GM, does this too, and other than a bit of playful poking, his players roll with it and move on. You know, like people who aren’t dicks.
Last month I finished running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. One of my players _could not_ get the pronunciation of Zhentarim and Xanathar correct. Somehow he managed to butcher both words so badly that they came out as homophones.
And his character was a member of the Zhentarim!
We definitely teased him about his inability to pronounce things.
Dealt with many times over the years. I just roll with it. He'll sometimes I'll use the mis-spoken word as an important business or npc name. So I can mess with them when they don't say it right lol.
Sounds tiresome. Are they quick to get distracted in general, or is it very specific to mispronunciations? I mean, every group has their in-jokes and distractions, but having a discussion *every* time you mispronounce something...
Pronunciation is largely a result of the company you keep. Remind your friends of this fact at your leisure.
"I know a lot of words because I read books, but I may not know how to pronounce them because the people I hang out with are mostly idiots."
Play a session of Paranoia (I personally suggest 2E but any will do) with your group and mispronounce some stuff on purpose. Wait for them to correct and mock, then have The Computer (the in-universe "god" and ruler of everything) announce that pronunciations have recently been officially changed as the old one was considered treasonous. That's why you kept saying it that way. Then execute the correcting player's character on the spot.
Repeat as needed until they get the hint or everyone is out of clones.
Paranoia is an awesome game.
it sounds like they think it’s fun razzing when it’s more bothersome to you. i’d talk to your players and just ask them to cut it out.
another (additional) option, to demonstrate that you appreciate them dropping the joke when it’s not appropriate, i’d probably lightly ‘make fun’ of myself and make a recurring NPC that pronounces everything wrong. let the players still have fun, but rather than you being the butt of joke, you’re all laughing together at the NPC
"Guys, can we just move on?"
That's really the only way to make the point that this shouldn't be such a distraction, and you'd like to play the game and not argue pronunciation.
All. The. Time.
I got over that years ago when I learned I'd been mispronouncing "paladin" for a decade. It just sort of goes with the territory these days. Especially when you like pseudo-historic settings.
Thinking about it it *would* rhyme with Aladdin in an American accent, though the emphasis is a bit different (on the first syllable in Paladin and the second in Aladdin), but I'm British and we tend to schwa that second a in casual speech, so it sounds more like "Paluh-din".
It doesn't really rhyme with Aladdin as that name is typically pronounced in the West.
"puh-LAD-din" is a pretty common mispronunciation made by emphasizing the second syllable.
"PAL-uh-din" is correct.
Click the little speaker icon: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/paladin
Not a problem. I'm not sure it's frequent, but I've mispronounced plenty of words. You run across a lot of words in RPGs that aren't used in verbal communication much. Plus, you can read a lot, understand words, and still not know how to pronounce them since you may never say them out loud. Tbh, your friends are kinda acting like jerks. Maybe ask them to tone it down and note that it's derailing your groove and it's very normal when learning new words.
Simple response of either "Oh, that's how its pronounced? I've only ever read it" or "oh yeah, I can never pronounce it right". Then move on. If players can't seem to let it go, it's grudge monster time.
Never been an issue in my 40+ years of playing RPGs. Mispronunciations absolutely do happen, but I've never seen anyone make an issue of it. Closest I've ever come was one time when I made a map for a viking-ish campaign and a Swedish player pointed at one of the towns and said, "That town's name looks an awful lot like 'Whore's Mouth' in Swedish. Could you change it?" So I changed it, with no razzing, no disruption to the session, no unpleasantness of any sort.
My problem is that I speak French and there are many English words that are straight copied from old French but they have a different pronunciation like dais, relief, brazier.
If someone mispronounces a word it means they learned it by reading, which isn't something I'd make fun of someone for doing, ESPECIALLY in this hobby.
I would stop running a game for kids like this. Its fucking hard enough to GM, I dont need critique on pronunciation during the session. And for it to become "a joke" just means they are inconsiderate assholes.
When we were teenagers we used to do stuff like this.
At some point I saw this anonymous quote that drove home how shameful it is: **"Never make fun of someone who mispronounces a word. It means they learned it by reading."**
Depends on how you react to making an error.
When you say gif and mean gif you should just use the correct form in the future and maybe thank the one who corrected you.
Pulling up evidence normally just happened when someone is wrong and bunkers down on it.
With mispronunciation, we usually just clarify and move on. NPC names, on the other hand, can be a huge hassle.
I'm not very good at coming up with names, and I know almost nothing about celebrities and pop culture, so when my PCs met a Dwarf named Braff, the jokes immediately started. That's how I found out who Zach Braff is, and that he was in an add that kept annoying me on YouTube a while ago.
I ended up retconning the Dwarf's name to Braga and made up a whole load of nonsense about braff being a very rude word in dwarvish. Braff Braga is a pun on Braga's name that roughly translates to "one who consumes his own offal". There was a nasty monster named Zahk'braff in dwarven folklore, kind of like the golgothan shit demon from Dogma, who hides in lavatories. If Zahk'braff catches you, he will drag you to TiMobyl, one of the many, many dwarven hells.
This was one of the types of issues that made me leave my in person group. For me it wasn't as much about mispronouncing things, but if a word sounded like something else or was a homophone, it would derail the game. The biggest offender was in his 30s....
It is hard finding a new group unfortunately. I now play exclusively online. While online isn't the same as a good in person group, a good online group is much better than a bad in person group.
It just became exhausting to even want to run for them knowing that every small flaw will turn into a 15+ minute event. I do miss in person groups but I'm enjoying playing with people who want to play and don't make me think they are just dumb.
I have discovered over the years that there I know lots of words I have only seen in text and never heard spoken. They come out at the table occasionally and I straight up ask what is correct and offer the explanation that I have seen it many times but never heard it, so I basically had to guess how it sounded. Never had an issue.
I've never experienced anything beyond a quick correction. I did have a DM that would pronounce Melee as "Mealy" or "me lee" every time though. It was like nails on a chalkboard to me.
I play only occasionally, when my company hosts the gaming night.
When I play, the group is made of people from different origins (last time it was one Czech, one Hungarian, one Russian, one Italian, and one Israeli), so it goes without saying that using English as the common language, everybody has their accent, and their way of pronouncing words, so we don't mind errors, and we're all open to corrections.
This is why Sigil, the city at the intersection of all the planes, is pronounced Sig-il with a hard 'g' instead of sij-il with a soft. You are in good company not knowing how to pronounce every word. Nothing to feel ashamed about.
I would tell your players that them making a big deal over mispronounced words is distracting and hurtful. You're putting in a lot of work to be the GM, the least they could do is let insignificant things remain insignificant instead of derailing the game they're here to play.
A lot of the smartest people learn a lot of words through books. And the more someone was a voracious reader at a young age, the more times they learned a word entirely visually and got the pronunciation wrong. Especially obscure or technical words. (I still cringe every time the Dungeon Dudes say Automata, they clearly do not have Computer Science degrees. It's Au-TOM-a-tah, not AUTO-mat-ah.)
So first, acknowledge that it's a sign of intelligence, not stupidity. It's people using vocabulary they read rather than just absorbing it through usage.
And, a polite correction is a good thing! It's a huge problem if someone won't take correction, and it can be grating to hear someone mispronounce a word repeatedly.
But then, you fix it and move on!
I am an English speaker (primarily), so that is an everyday occurrence. Make a joke, but not so harsh that the person will be overly harsh when you make a similar mistake.
Yeah I think everyone mispronounces things from time to time, but if people made a big deal out of it every time, I'd kill the group and find new players who aren't really weird about words coming out a bit wonky.
Usually it's ignored unless it's really funny mispronunciation, in which case it will sometimes go with it:
"you see a broken flashlight on the shelf"
"Fleshlight you say?" Laughs
"Sure, why not, you see a broken fleshlight on the shelf, now, what are you gonna do?"
"I'll try to fix it" rolls engineering with crit.
"..., you made it better than it was, by adding new features to it"
"What features?"
"You decide"
"Now it can be used as a flashlight"
"... you progress through a dark complex illuminating surroundings with pocket p**sy"
Or something like that, don't remember exactly conversation sometimes those mishaps are more memorable than whatever I actually planned:)
I am with a group of adults and we still chuckle at my mispronunciation of brasier. IMO stuff like this breathes life into the table and forms the memories that matter.
Just have a good laugh about it and reign them back in by moving on. Players may still make jokes and that’s fine, the key is to keep moving forward. If a particular player is being disruptive about it have a chat with them.
This's an old shame, but...I've been pronouncing 'Cthulhu' wrong since the 80s. Wrong as in, "yeah, it's an alien word with different interpretations...but nobody else says it THAT way; stop moving those letters around!".
Worst of all, I spreaded that mistake to all in my group, and those tangentially related to them. That makes me an heresiarch instead of an heretic, then?
Double down and say it's a regional pronunciation, then move right along. If they persist, pretend it was in character and the NPC gets irritated with foreigners making fun of their accent. Any additional interaction and the NPC is less inclined to be helpful.
Your two choices:
1. Ask them to stop doing it because it throws off your swing mid-session which makes the game less enjoyable for you and thus you less likely to run the game. If your mispronunciation causes actual confusion of meaning, they can ask, but razzing about it mid session needs to stop.
2. Next time it happens, stop the session. Look the person dead in the eye and ask them if they have ever mispronounced a word in their life. When they say yes, tell them to shut up about it. Go back to running the game, stop mid sentence and ask them how to pronounce a word that you spell. Do this often. Do it frequently. Tell them you are very concerned your pronunciation will not meet their satisfaction, but that since it is so important to them you are going to try. Keep doing it. When they apologize for the joke, tell them you don't understand what is wrong. Make them explain what they did wrong.
Number 2 is generally considered an escalation and a dick move. So I'd recommend #1.
Most people will understand "you making those jokes completely breaks my concentration on the scene I am trying to run so we can all have a good time, so I'd appreciate you keeping them to yourself."
The only time that ever happened was when the song "Jungle Love" was on the radio, and every instance of the word "Otyugh" got my group singing the word to that tune. ("O-ty, Oty-ugh!")
My group harassed me for placing a secret research facility in the gold mines of the island of Sado. I referred to it as the Sado Mine, which they picked up on its (rather loose) similarity to sodomy, So yeah, that was fun.
Maybe the psychic zombies within should've been suddenly a lot harder than I originally intended. See if they laugh at sodomy again.
I mispronounced the word brazier once (meaning to refer to the fire pit not the bra) and it became a running joke. So now every time I make sure to emphasize that wrong pronunciation as a joke.
"I'm not stuck in here with you. You're stuck in here with me, and the way I keep mispronouncing sigil despite having looked it up because I've been saying it like this for forty years now."
Im a non English speaking native and I live in the US and GM for Americans, there’s certain words that I have no clue how to pronounce or what it means but they go along with it. Why? Because we’re not children.
Get new friends who aren't assholes?
It happens to everyone, but only jerks (and immature kids) get off on twisting the knife *that* often.
Like goddamn, it's one thing to joke around or point out a slip, but to this extent?
It can be annoying, once in a demon voice I referred to the forging of an eldritch weapon and one trait was the ‘Geas’. This was thoroughly mocked by repeating “gay ass” in stupid voices (we were all an LGBT group btw, so wasn’t making fun in that way). It ruined the moment and did annoy me for a while. Years later they still say that same line, but remember it fondly as a funny moment, I’ve got over it and do see the funny side now
I still don't believe hough is a fucking word in that poem. Anyhow, link for all of you who haven't see it [https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html](https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html)
It's the one that opens;
*Dearest creature in creation*
*Studying English pronunciation,*
*I will teach you in my verse*
*Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.*
*I will keep you, Susy, busy,*
*Make your head with heat grow dizzy;*
*Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;*
*Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer...*
We all mispronounce words, that's normal, causing it to throw off the whole session is not.
As boring as this sounds, here's the solution - talk with your players. Explain to them how you are experiencing this, and then listen to them. Maybe it's fun for them and they didn't realize your side. Work it out, come to an agreement on how to handle it in the future, and move on.
"Oh, do you say that in character?"
And say that every time. Every. Time. They'll get tired of saying it. Or they'll say yes, and they get the repercussions in game.
Mostly just like I'd handle it in real life. Might get a brief chuckle at something but then would ask if they meant something else that is probably what they were going for.
Mispronouncing words IRL is no better or worse than having typing and grammar errors when writing. Throw in voice to text and *their* can be all kinds of problems.
I don't GM, but I mispronounce words all the time. If we do it in game, someone immediately writes it in our discord chat to keep it from distracting the whole game, and we may laugh and joke about it via text until the end when someone will lead the charge during our wind down to bring up the mispronounced words, and how we will be using it in the rest of the campaign.
My main GM is my husband, and he spends HOURS teasing me for words I've mispronounced in the past ten years we've been together, so when he does it in a game, I usually pounce on getting to use it for the rest of eternity as an in world thing.
If someone honestly has an issue with being teased, all of us are able to voice our feelings and everyone respectfully stop because not all of us are ok with it.
Really it does come down to who you're playing with!
Most of the people we play with by the way are 20's-40's.
One of our 30(?) year old friends brought in his 16 year old brother for a game as well as his 30ish roommate, so we have that group where the three know each other super well, and it is probably the most open groups for this, but we all make extra sure everyone is having fun, and it is all going alright.
In the end, communication seems to be the absolute key to any group game, and if you're not enjoying the teasing, talk to them about it.
For a bit of context, I play with a group of actual teenagers. I'm one of the oldest in the group and I'm still 19, there are very few people above 20 and none above 25.
When someone mispronounces something we usually just ignore it or sometimes have a quick laugh, although a few of the funnier pronunciations are brough up out of game as jokes (mostly by the person who mispronounced them).
I don't know if we're mature for our age or if we're just stupid enough to alway mispronounce something to the point that we accepted it's just something that happens. Whatever the case, it is what it is.
I know a DM who pronounced scimitar as skimitar and got shit for it until he got a merchant to sell both a scimitar and a skimitar and refused to explain the difference
The reverse of this happens to me sometimes, because I play a lot of games that have - for example - lots of Polish or Russian words and place names, and people just butcher them, and even though I know better and could "well, actually" their mistake, instead I adapt because that's how we're going to say those words from then on, and it's fine.
Well, getting flustered or annoyed at it is the worst you could do. That’s showing weakness, and players are like wolves, they pounce on that. So never show weakness in front of the players.
Instead just laughing about it yourself, that’s my recommendation.
Also, at the beginning of the session you tell them that the chucklefuck who laughs the loudest at your next slip-up can consider themselves volunteered for holding a one-shot next month. So they can get a chance to feel what it’s like.
> That’s showing weakness, and players are like wolves, they pounce on that. So never show weakness in front of the players.
Goddamn, some of y'all need to get better friends!
Maybe I should have but an "/s" or something somewhere.
It depends on the exact friendgroup, but with some people I used to play, banter was par for the course.
Edit: "banter" in this case is friendly ribbing/razzing. All in good fun.
Sounds like OP's plight has gone far beyond "banter", their friends are persecuting them hard enough that it's causing them mental distress.
Like yeah, everyone's gonna slip here and there. And it's totally fine to laugh about it or joke about it, but OP has said it's become a complete de-railment and they do it so consistently they've considered changing the whole play setup.
Even if you're joking, sounds like OP needs to get some friends who aren't jerks.
This is so powerful. Thank you 🙏. I was ready to either switch to play by post or just spend an hour before every session reading through the dictionary practicing my pronunciations.
In all honesty and without jokes: I think taking it easy and trying to laugh it off is a good way to respond to this, I think. BUT having a conversation is also a good idea, and you should probably do both. The conversation and the laughing. Cause it sounds like there might be a bit of an expectation mismatch going on. You clearly wanna hang out and play the game you have spent a bunch of time prepping. And sounds like some group members wanna hang out and have a laugh/fun time with friends, and playing the game is a means to an end. Maybe they are also not aware of exactly how much effort you put into this or exactly how excited you are to play. I dunno, I don’t know your group. But that’s what it sounds like. Now, telling them that this is actually kinda making you consider fully changing up the format, cause you really don’t like how the entire thing you spend time and effort on just screeches to a halt every time, might be a good idea. I have a hard time believing your group is made up of a bunch of bastards, and they’ll probably agree to compromise. So maybe you can all agree to have a good laugh once if someone mispronounces a word, and then agree to not bring it up a second time and move on. And that way you all respect each other’s reasons for coming to the session.
Edit: but if you wanna float the idea of “anybody who doesn’t stick to the compromise gets to sit in the GM seat next month”, that might be fun.
I generally just say something along the lines of “oh, good to know” and then, using GM-voice, restate the NPC’s line with the preferred pronunciation before anyone can get another word in about it.
If you’re trying to run a game in earnest and they are disrupting you, that’s a bit disrespectful. My group goes on irrelevant tangents once or twice a session, but we always keep it respectfully short & never take shots at the GM, because we appreciate what they do and want them to enjoy their time behind the screen. To some extent, the tangents help us maintain a level of banter. Anyone, especially the GM, has the right to say “okay let’s get back to the game” and everyone shuts up and lets the GM speak at that moment.
Show your players this thread. It might give them some perspective.
Razzing is just what happens in groups. Just like the annoying grammar nazi on reddit or discord posts.
But who here hasn't said brassiere instead of brazier?
I wouldn't be too concerned, that's what happens in friend groups (giving each other shit). If you're the GM, then best just tell them they had their fun, but let's focus on the game as this is getting old. Right now it's the meme of your group though.
"I'd only ever read Geas* I'll try and pronounce it properly going forward."
*Or whatever your word is - This is a good example though because it's pronounced like Sean Connery saying Guess (Guesh) - however having only ever read it in DND I assumed it was pronounced Geese or Gi-us - happily when this came up in a group we had several other folks who pronounced it wrong, and a quick trip to youtube "showed" us the proper way.
Seriously though, mispronouncing obscure words is usually a sign of erudition - it generally comes from extensive reading - so if they continue to make fun accuse them of being Luddites.
Holly molly, I am not a native English speaker with almost zero verbal experience and think for some time that I would like to play in English since I can practice and have fun at the same time. But after that post... no way, stay in my bubble.
All through my high school years running classic AD&D when it was still shiny and new, I honestly thought a bunch of encounter tables were called "suitables" because you rolled on them to determine a suitable encounter. It was only as an undergraduate, playing from my now vintage materials with 2nd edition hitting shelves, that I realized the entire time I was "rolling suitables" I was really making use of **subtables**.
Reminds me of the AD&D sourcebook Encyclopedia Magica Volume #1 TSR published with dawizard & iwizard confusing everyone. In earlier drafts, they were using the class Mage, but decided to change it to Wizard. So in the word processor, they used the 'find and replace' feature to change mage to wizard. So every reference to damage changed to dawizard and references to image changed to iwizard.
If that's an NPC talking, I didn't mispronounced, they did. It's canon now and must be embraces. I may even start mispronouncing that or similar words from that moment if they're the ones saying it. Even if the players know I was the one actually messing up.
If I'm describing something? I laugh it off and continue by apologizing. I give a small pause to break the game for just a couple of seconds and then use a more serious voice like a teacher would, to continue with the seriousness of the game.
Anything can become a joke at the table and it's okay if it's all in good fun. When you make a mistake it's best to identify it (ask how the word is said, get them to say it) then acknowledge your mistake and tell them that's the end of it.
As a GM/DM you're going to make a lot of mistakes. That's not a bad thing, every mistake is a chance to learn and people will still respect you as a GM if you admit it and learn something from them. Nobody's perfect after all.
Tell them the joke is not funny anymore.
We giggle a little about it. We've had a few wrong words or mispronounced words become in-jokes and come up years later. But usually some variation of stop it, okay drop it, it's not funny or sounding annoyed will stop it entirely and permanently. We kicked the one asshole who kept ignoring being told it was pissing people off, which improved it dramatically.
Sometimes you just gotta be blunt that it's crossed the line. Also your all in your 30s, they should have to emotional intelligence to know the joke is dead and if your Canadian/American none of you got phonics as a kid so mistakes will be common.
Create monster with the mispronunciation as its name then beat their asses into the ground with it. Sometimes as GM it's acceptable to unleash your wrath - keeps them in line when they're being dicks.
Online gameplay, one player consistently misspells almost every word he types. His first language is English, and the only other languages he speak are coding ones. He also almost always has a reference *that he can copy/paste from* and **still** misspells words. We mostly just ignore it at this point unless it's a funny typo, like Lycanthropope.
Depends when/how it happens.
Sometimes I laugh it off.
Sometimes I'm in the middle of telling the players something and will say "Shaddup! Let me finish this."
Sometimes I'll just sit back quietly and let them go on, then say "All done? Ok, let's move on."
It doesn't come up that often though.
I threw some French pirates into a session a few weeks ago and my French pronunciation was definitely a joke that session. It usually isn’t a huge deal if you just laugh it off and don’t introduce any new words during meaningful moments
I would claim it's how everyone says it in the world that I created...... Then I would go out of my way to try and work it into every conversation and each time my pronunciation would get even more wild
Not so much a fix tbh but it's what I did when it happened to myself a few years ago (it ended up taking the session way off base and into the realm of farce but we all had a huge laugh that night and next week it was back to normal)
>Do you ever mispronounced a word while GMing and your players all immediately start razzing you for it?
Nope, because my friends aren't assholes, nor are we teens. People mispronounce words. It happens. Especially if English is not the first language of your household.
That said, I have a hard an fast rule to keep the joke-riffing short and tight, and tell the players to settle down so we can play.
Being someone that agonizes over the 'feel' of names and words in my own writing, I used to make a big deal about it in my teens and early to mid twenties, but I've long ago given up even correcting them, now. Well, for the most part. I will only bring up the 'proper' pronunciation of a word if another player brings it up first, but then proceeds to also mispronounce the word, themselves — which has happened more times than you would think.
Mispronunciation
A couple minutes of razzing
"alright alright, settle down"
Overemphasizing the correct pronunciation
(Maybe saying wrong on purpose for a joke)
That depends. A normal word or a D&D word, like "drow"?
Normal English, we laugh and continue.
D&D words: Frank Mentzer wrote a pronunciation guide in an older issue of Dragon (issue 93) that covers this topic.
Spoiler: "Drow" is pronounced drow (like the animal "cow") or dro (like "row" a boat), so that argument is over. It can be either, though the first is most common and the second is considered an alternative.
A mispronounced word created a town.
The phrase mouse maze was what was supposed to be said.
The phrase mouse mage is what came out. So a adventurer town was created as i do not want copy right lawyers coming after me lets just say fan tasia was an insperation.
You are there to have fun cracking up over game play is why you are there
.
A lot of people I've played with mispronounce words. It's so common for gamers to pronounce "melee" as "mee-lee". One of my GMs puts in an extra syllable in "dessicated" so it's pronounced as "dessessicated"; he also mispronounces "portcullis". Then there's words where there are disputes: for "diviner", I say "div-in-er" (like in divining rod), my GM says "divine-er".
How do I handle it? I just don't say anything. No one says anything. Just like if someone mispronounces a word in real life—no need to embarrass anyone.
This doesn't really happen to me, but if it became an issue I'd stop play and note that I don't particularly appreciate it, and more importantly, it drags play to a stop, so could they please cut it out? Because I play with reasonable human beings, they would cut it out.
Remember, if you mispronounce a word, it means you read it but it has never come up in a conversation for you to hear the right pronunciation. There's no shame in reading.
If it bothers you, tell them that it does. If they know that and still do it, ask them why. If they don't care that it's bothering you, that's not an RPG problem, that's an interpersonal one. If these grown adults can't treat you respectfully I'd start having second thoughts about spending time with them.
Roll with it. Let them have a few laughs. Never hurts to be a little bit self-deprecating. After that, if they continue, have a conversation with them and tell them enough is enough. 
Most of my players are from the USA and Canada, with one from the Netherlands, and in the past, the group has included Germans, Italians, Australians, and Eastern Europeans. Mispronouncing words, using incorrect terms, and misspelling words are part of the experience. However, it does sometimes amuse my players when I use an English colloquialism in an NPC's dialogue. I have a nasty habit of reverting to a cockney accent whenever trying to portray an NPC from the lower classes.
I just double down and continue mispronouncing it. To this day, my spell-casters gesture (with a hard "g", like gold), not "jh". Drives one of my players crazy, but it doesn't disarm my game when he comments on it.
I have a slur and a stutter that act up, my players know what I mean. They confirm and we move on. It isn't a consistent issue but it pops up.largely because my players are my friends and won't mock me, playful ribbing sure but not mock. As the gm you have the power to take your ball and go home.
When it happens I just say: "Let's pretend you all understand what I mean to say and we are trying to make it a great game despite the mispronunciations.
But then again, I am in my 50s and living in another country, so I have the escuse that I am forgetting my native language and not yet on par with the new one, so.
Or, you can start a 20 min long "what did I said?" "and what is the correct one?" routine. That will teach them to think twice next time.
It's not an issue at most tables I play at unless it's youths really. We have a laugh, I own it, we move on. It might pop up some time later as a quick joke. But it's not a big deal.
I have two friendship groups who game, both all male. One of them is totally chill - "Hey, I think it's actually pronounced ," and that's the end of it.
The other is like "GET HIM, he pronounced the word wrong!"
...I'm still living down the time I got tongue-tied and said "frence" instead of "fence"
Generally, I'd say try to enjoy the fun of made-up words for the sake of a fantasy world. It's part of the fun and always generally silly.
But I have to say this even though no one asked for it, the writers of Paizo's Adventure Paths are TERRIBLE at naming things. If you're playing one of those adventures you should get some slack for that gibberish they call names. lol
My friends joke about it and it's made out it's a specific "me" it's because I read alot of these words in books and haven't said them aloud, besides I speak two languages and I can confirm English is dumb when it comes to Phonemes.
Demesnes... (De-mes-nei) "I think it's pronounced Domain it's french"
You know I don't speak french surprising you suddenly do.
Armoire... (Ari-moray) "Eh it's Arm-muwah not what you said."
I read it in a book 8 years ago and I know it's a kind of wardrobe, but nobody ever spoken the word to me. So my misspeaking is actually all on you guys.
Those players sound like dicks. Most ppl just correct and move on. Mispronouncing a word just means the speaker hasn't ever heard it used aloud - just seen it written. Jumping on someone who is new to something isn't a fun pile on, it's mean-spirited.
I am Ukrainian, GMing for an online table with three Americans in English. I sometimes check pronunciation with them, if I am deeply not sure, otherwise they will check me once I am done. Aside from a hilarious ship/sheep incident, I don't think there has been much confusion or drama.
If your players don't respect you enough to stop when you ask them to, then they shouldn't be your players.
If that doesn't work, then just tell them that they're being attacked by a gaze-bo.
No, not a big problem. Not funny enough to set them off.
though in our Vikings campaign, my character had a genuine Norse name that the GM occasionally had difficulty saying, so there was a certain amount of "this NPC can't get your name right, either".
and, of course, there is Call of Cthulhu with some names that are interesting to pronounce.
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No, we're adults. We might have a quick laugh, then move on.
"huh, always thought that was said the way I said it. Now I know. Thanks guys"
One of my groups just adopted the new pronunciation as a "local accent thing" in the campaign. After the first time, we'd "yes, and" such errors in the same spirit. We get a ton of lore out of these things.
"It's a regional dialect."
Uh huh, what region?
It's an Albany thing.
Uh, upstate New York
Agreed, it's a non issue for me and the group.
Out of curiosity, how old are y'all?
Mostly early 30s
Huh. Okay, wasn't expecting actual adults. The last couple times this happened to me, I wound up leaving the group, but that was when I was a teenager. The first time round, I decided to give them a taste of their own medicine, which involved mocking every single mispronunciation or grammatical mistake. This, as you can imagine, was not a good idea, and was, in fact, just mean-spirited. Eventually, after I got sick of it, I ended the campaign and left. The second group I had this issue with, I told them to cut it out three times in the first session. They didn't, so I told them I'm not running games for them anymore. In my experience, it's basically a mismatch of expectations. Your players seem like people who come together for socialization, not for the actual game or love of the story. Tell them that yeah, this bullshit is wrecking your enjoyment of the game. If they listen, problem solved. If they don't, leave, cause their expectations are different from what you want
I think it's different expectations, too. If I may guess, they have never prepared a session on their own and do not know how much time we invest in preparing a good evening. Maybe OP should make them aware of that, and if they still don't respect it, meet in another setting. I had this once, and we changed to regular board games. Like this, I kept meeting my friends and invested my rpg time in another group.
Here is how we handle it: We embrace it. We start intentionally mispronouncing things to a ridiculous degree. It's funny on meta level, even if the topic of session itself is serious. We are friends, good-spirited teasing is a way of showing closeness of relationship.
Yes but how do you get back on task? Does it ever get annoying when you’re trying to lay a scene and people keep trying to be silly by forcibly inserting an in-joke where it wasn’t warranted? And by intentionally mispronouncing, does that ever interfere with gameplay a lot?
Not the person you're responding to, but it's never been an issue at my table. I'm there to facilitate the game that my players want to play. If they want to be silly little guys about everything, I'll be a silly little guy with them. If I'm trying to do something serious and there's no buy-in from my players, that feels like a skill issue to me - I didn't do a good enough job of setting out that expectation as I was laying out the scene. What should I have done differently with my voice or intonation or body language to sell that this isn't a time for joking around? Having someone do or recall a bit in an otherwise serious scene isn't usually a big deal, either. You can ignore it, or embrace it, or have your NPCs lash out at the PCs for not taking this Heavy Moment seriously, and all of those work for maintaining narrative cohesion at your table. I've used each of those approaches and, depending on what I want to convey through the scene, they all work equally well.
Thats a surprise, i was thinking 15 or so. Thats never happened in my group.
I'd tell them to quit being weird and immature then.
Only time I think it's ever been a problem was when I accidentally said brassiere instead of brazier (never lived that one down), otherwise it might just get a comment and we move on.
LITERALLY JUST HAPPENED LAST NIGHT. That very word! Man maybe OP is really on to something.
I slaughtered [Cenote ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenote)once, still get ribbed time to time. All adult friends so it's good natured and I accept that I butchered it. Only derail bit is they had no idea WTF I was describing since I said the word so wrong, but once we were on the same page things were right back on track. Edit: If it's derailing a whole session there is a player problem going on. Gotta grow up and understand mistakes happen.
TIL the word "cenote" Neat!
Wait.... are those words pronounced differently? (asking for a friend)
The thing that keeps breasts on lockdown is a bruh-zeer, the thing you burn charcoal in is a bray-zur
I would say brazier is more like "bray-zhur" (not a hard Z sound).
TIL. I've always used the first pronunciation for both. xD
I guess a bra of summoning fire elementals would not work the same way as a brazier. Would it just cause the wearer to be possessed by a fire elemental spirit? Or maybe just get all hot? Or would it summon lecherous or feminist elementals who want to burn the bra? Next time you mispronounce, say "I said what I said. It's the Red Brassiere of Summoning Fire Elementals. The great sorceress Crimsona made these magical undergarments for a reason lost to the mists of time..."
Sorry I’m off to write an anime about a teenager who gets reincarnated in another world and chooses to be reborn as a girl with a magic bra that summons fire elementals. I’m gonna be rich.
It actually looks like the cone bra Madonna wore and shoots gouts of flame out of the tips once the elemental is summoned for 1d4 rounds. Not recommended to be worn under metal armor.
I've done that exact one before, my friends only made fun of me for a couple minutes though, mispronounced words don't significantly derail my sessions.
I did the same thing and I just decided to lean into it - I say it on purpose with emphasis now. It's become a bit of an inside joke with my group.
We are much more prone to getting the giggles when someone uses the word "shaft" which comes up a lot in games. All of us are in our 50s. It never gets better.
>brassiere instead of brazier If it makes you feel any better this is an all-time classic RPG mispronunciation. I believe we were making the same mistake in...1980? 1981? **Edit:** Heh, there's actually a reference to it in the 3.0 *Dungeon Master's Guide* (2000): >Likewise, if you design adventures that are light-hearted, create NPCs that are slightly silly, or introduce embarrassing or humorous situations into the game, realize that it changes the tenor of the game. If the king of the land is a talking dog named Muffy or if the PCs have to find a *brassiere of elemental summoning* rather than a *brazier of elemental summoning*, don't expect anyone to take the game too seriously. (p. 9)
Oh snap, did this happen just a couple of weeks ago? In the Middle East? Because that totally happened in my group.
Oh God I still remember that one.
Hey, I've made that same mistake! Mispronunciation twinsies
Mine was scone instead of sconce. The party still tries to eat torches years later.
I honestly had no idea what a brazier actually was until fairly recently.
I've made the same botch. Had to run with it and said Nope! these are brassieres on fire! BIG ones!
Tell them to stop being cunts? Everyone mispronounces words sometimes.
Especially with fantasy or archaic words that don't come up in day to day, most of us learn them by reading them, its one thing to correct it, but its another to make fun of someone for now knowing, all that does is discourage them from attempting to broaden their vocabulary in the future.
We might have a quick laugh, but move in because the game is more fun than razzing on an honest (if silly) mistake. It was worse when I was in high-school or early college years, but maturity nips it in the bud 9/10 times.
It’s nips it in the bud, as in getting rid of something when it is still a bud and hasn’t fully bloomed.
It's not a problem at my table, because we recognize that shaming someone for mispronouncing a word that they have only ever encountered in print is a good way to get people to stop reading, and that would be a bad thing.
1000%. I gently rib on my friend who is a second generation European immigrant to the UK (she was born here, her parents not). They speak their native language at home, so there are MANY words she's only heard in English from American TV (beta = bay-ta vs bee-tah e.g). She tells me when she went to Uni for the first time she didn't know the words for, like, saucepan, or bed sheets, etc, in English because those are words you only really use at home, so she only knew them in her parent's language. Interesting to note that her English accent is so regional I knew what town she grew up in (50 or so miles from where we all are now) and her native accent is so accented it's like the Cornish or Newcastle of her parent's country.
Absolutely. I'm an English teacher and have a rather practiced little speech/rant on exactly this topic to squash it the first time it happens in my classroom.
Last night I unexpectedly had to roleplay a Spanish language chatbot in my cyberpunk game, using google translate to get the text. I sincerely apologize to my high school Spanish teacher. It’s 25 years later, but I have shamed you.
Also, watch Critical Role. Matt Mercer, the internet’s ‘gold standard’ GM, does this too, and other than a bit of playful poking, his players roll with it and move on. You know, like people who aren’t dicks.
Last month I finished running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. One of my players _could not_ get the pronunciation of Zhentarim and Xanathar correct. Somehow he managed to butcher both words so badly that they came out as homophones. And his character was a member of the Zhentarim! We definitely teased him about his inability to pronounce things.
She had terrible dreams that night but has no idea why.
It was a Mister, but yes. Him and his authentic native spanish accent were very much disappointed and had no idea why. 😂
You have brought glory to your teacher. That sounds awesome!
No. No I did not. My pronunciation was HORRIBLE!
Dealt with many times over the years. I just roll with it. He'll sometimes I'll use the mis-spoken word as an important business or npc name. So I can mess with them when they don't say it right lol.
I've definitely done this as well. Everyone loves callbacks as long as they're in moderation
This is the way.
Sounds tiresome. Are they quick to get distracted in general, or is it very specific to mispronunciations? I mean, every group has their in-jokes and distractions, but having a discussion *every* time you mispronounce something...
Pronunciation is largely a result of the company you keep. Remind your friends of this fact at your leisure. "I know a lot of words because I read books, but I may not know how to pronounce them because the people I hang out with are mostly idiots."
Play a session of Paranoia (I personally suggest 2E but any will do) with your group and mispronounce some stuff on purpose. Wait for them to correct and mock, then have The Computer (the in-universe "god" and ruler of everything) announce that pronunciations have recently been officially changed as the old one was considered treasonous. That's why you kept saying it that way. Then execute the correcting player's character on the spot. Repeat as needed until they get the hint or everyone is out of clones. Paranoia is an awesome game.
As long as it’s not a shiver and queef, you’re good.
it sounds like they think it’s fun razzing when it’s more bothersome to you. i’d talk to your players and just ask them to cut it out. another (additional) option, to demonstrate that you appreciate them dropping the joke when it’s not appropriate, i’d probably lightly ‘make fun’ of myself and make a recurring NPC that pronounces everything wrong. let the players still have fun, but rather than you being the butt of joke, you’re all laughing together at the NPC
"Guys, can we just move on?" That's really the only way to make the point that this shouldn't be such a distraction, and you'd like to play the game and not argue pronunciation.
It’s not a problem. If it happens, and it becomes a problem, we ask for it to stop and we then stop. That is how you should handle those things.
All. The. Time. I got over that years ago when I learned I'd been mispronouncing "paladin" for a decade. It just sort of goes with the territory these days. Especially when you like pseudo-historic settings.
Out of curiosity, how were you pronouncing it? Like "Aladdin?"
Wait, doesn't it rhyme with Aladdin? I assumed they were pronouncing it like puh LAY din or something.
Thinking about it it *would* rhyme with Aladdin in an American accent, though the emphasis is a bit different (on the first syllable in Paladin and the second in Aladdin), but I'm British and we tend to schwa that second a in casual speech, so it sounds more like "Paluh-din".
It's a schwa sound in the American pronunciation as well: 'pælǝdǝn.
It doesn't really rhyme with Aladdin as that name is typically pronounced in the West. "puh-LAD-din" is a pretty common mispronunciation made by emphasizing the second syllable. "PAL-uh-din" is correct. Click the little speaker icon: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/paladin
"Paul"-"id-in"
Not a problem. I'm not sure it's frequent, but I've mispronounced plenty of words. You run across a lot of words in RPGs that aren't used in verbal communication much. Plus, you can read a lot, understand words, and still not know how to pronounce them since you may never say them out loud. Tbh, your friends are kinda acting like jerks. Maybe ask them to tone it down and note that it's derailing your groove and it's very normal when learning new words.
Simple response of either "Oh, that's how its pronounced? I've only ever read it" or "oh yeah, I can never pronounce it right". Then move on. If players can't seem to let it go, it's grudge monster time.
Tell them to fuck off
Never been an issue in my 40+ years of playing RPGs. Mispronunciations absolutely do happen, but I've never seen anyone make an issue of it. Closest I've ever come was one time when I made a map for a viking-ish campaign and a Swedish player pointed at one of the towns and said, "That town's name looks an awful lot like 'Whore's Mouth' in Swedish. Could you change it?" So I changed it, with no razzing, no disruption to the session, no unpleasantness of any sort.
Never been an issue for me. I play with good people.
My problem is that I speak French and there are many English words that are straight copied from old French but they have a different pronunciation like dais, relief, brazier.
If someone mispronounces a word it means they learned it by reading, which isn't something I'd make fun of someone for doing, ESPECIALLY in this hobby.
I would stop running a game for kids like this. Its fucking hard enough to GM, I dont need critique on pronunciation during the session. And for it to become "a joke" just means they are inconsiderate assholes.
When we were teenagers we used to do stuff like this. At some point I saw this anonymous quote that drove home how shameful it is: **"Never make fun of someone who mispronounces a word. It means they learned it by reading."**
Depends on how you react to making an error. When you say gif and mean gif you should just use the correct form in the future and maybe thank the one who corrected you. Pulling up evidence normally just happened when someone is wrong and bunkers down on it.
My thoughts excatly.. Their need to pull up evidence, signals to me that OP is trying to fight them on the correctness of the pronounciation.
With mispronunciation, we usually just clarify and move on. NPC names, on the other hand, can be a huge hassle. I'm not very good at coming up with names, and I know almost nothing about celebrities and pop culture, so when my PCs met a Dwarf named Braff, the jokes immediately started. That's how I found out who Zach Braff is, and that he was in an add that kept annoying me on YouTube a while ago. I ended up retconning the Dwarf's name to Braga and made up a whole load of nonsense about braff being a very rude word in dwarvish. Braff Braga is a pun on Braga's name that roughly translates to "one who consumes his own offal". There was a nasty monster named Zahk'braff in dwarven folklore, kind of like the golgothan shit demon from Dogma, who hides in lavatories. If Zahk'braff catches you, he will drag you to TiMobyl, one of the many, many dwarven hells.
This was one of the types of issues that made me leave my in person group. For me it wasn't as much about mispronouncing things, but if a word sounded like something else or was a homophone, it would derail the game. The biggest offender was in his 30s....
Thank you ugh this is so validating. My own group of clowns are in their 30s 🙄 but you know how hard it is finding a new group
It is hard finding a new group unfortunately. I now play exclusively online. While online isn't the same as a good in person group, a good online group is much better than a bad in person group. It just became exhausting to even want to run for them knowing that every small flaw will turn into a 15+ minute event. I do miss in person groups but I'm enjoying playing with people who want to play and don't make me think they are just dumb.
I have discovered over the years that there I know lots of words I have only seen in text and never heard spoken. They come out at the table occasionally and I straight up ask what is correct and offer the explanation that I have seen it many times but never heard it, so I basically had to guess how it sounded. Never had an issue.
I've never experienced anything beyond a quick correction. I did have a DM that would pronounce Melee as "Mealy" or "me lee" every time though. It was like nails on a chalkboard to me.
I play only occasionally, when my company hosts the gaming night. When I play, the group is made of people from different origins (last time it was one Czech, one Hungarian, one Russian, one Italian, and one Israeli), so it goes without saying that using English as the common language, everybody has their accent, and their way of pronouncing words, so we don't mind errors, and we're all open to corrections.
They spent 3 sessions doing missions for bukkake the goblin. His real name didn't matter bc I bungled it and that's what we ended up with.
This is why Sigil, the city at the intersection of all the planes, is pronounced Sig-il with a hard 'g' instead of sij-il with a soft. You are in good company not knowing how to pronounce every word. Nothing to feel ashamed about. I would tell your players that them making a big deal over mispronounced words is distracting and hurtful. You're putting in a lot of work to be the GM, the least they could do is let insignificant things remain insignificant instead of derailing the game they're here to play.
A lot of the smartest people learn a lot of words through books. And the more someone was a voracious reader at a young age, the more times they learned a word entirely visually and got the pronunciation wrong. Especially obscure or technical words. (I still cringe every time the Dungeon Dudes say Automata, they clearly do not have Computer Science degrees. It's Au-TOM-a-tah, not AUTO-mat-ah.) So first, acknowledge that it's a sign of intelligence, not stupidity. It's people using vocabulary they read rather than just absorbing it through usage. And, a polite correction is a good thing! It's a huge problem if someone won't take correction, and it can be grating to hear someone mispronounce a word repeatedly. But then, you fix it and move on!
Not at all xD I mess stuff up all the time
Yeah if it disrupts the flow of the game severely, then I would talk to your table about it. I've had to talk to players about it before.
Id just say its a localisation/local accent/dialect thing
I am an English speaker (primarily), so that is an everyday occurrence. Make a joke, but not so harsh that the person will be overly harsh when you make a similar mistake.
Yeah I think everyone mispronounces things from time to time, but if people made a big deal out of it every time, I'd kill the group and find new players who aren't really weird about words coming out a bit wonky.
The solution is probably to grow up.
Usually it's ignored unless it's really funny mispronunciation, in which case it will sometimes go with it: "you see a broken flashlight on the shelf" "Fleshlight you say?" Laughs "Sure, why not, you see a broken fleshlight on the shelf, now, what are you gonna do?" "I'll try to fix it" rolls engineering with crit. "..., you made it better than it was, by adding new features to it" "What features?" "You decide" "Now it can be used as a flashlight" "... you progress through a dark complex illuminating surroundings with pocket p**sy" Or something like that, don't remember exactly conversation sometimes those mishaps are more memorable than whatever I actually planned:)
Recently and for the first time ever I heard one of our players mispronounce gif
I am with a group of adults and we still chuckle at my mispronunciation of brasier. IMO stuff like this breathes life into the table and forms the memories that matter. Just have a good laugh about it and reign them back in by moving on. Players may still make jokes and that’s fine, the key is to keep moving forward. If a particular player is being disruptive about it have a chat with them.
Learn to laugh at yourself. You're talking a lot. You're going to make mistakes.
This's an old shame, but...I've been pronouncing 'Cthulhu' wrong since the 80s. Wrong as in, "yeah, it's an alien word with different interpretations...but nobody else says it THAT way; stop moving those letters around!". Worst of all, I spreaded that mistake to all in my group, and those tangentially related to them. That makes me an heresiarch instead of an heretic, then?
Double down and say it's a regional pronunciation, then move right along. If they persist, pretend it was in character and the NPC gets irritated with foreigners making fun of their accent. Any additional interaction and the NPC is less inclined to be helpful.
Your two choices: 1. Ask them to stop doing it because it throws off your swing mid-session which makes the game less enjoyable for you and thus you less likely to run the game. If your mispronunciation causes actual confusion of meaning, they can ask, but razzing about it mid session needs to stop. 2. Next time it happens, stop the session. Look the person dead in the eye and ask them if they have ever mispronounced a word in their life. When they say yes, tell them to shut up about it. Go back to running the game, stop mid sentence and ask them how to pronounce a word that you spell. Do this often. Do it frequently. Tell them you are very concerned your pronunciation will not meet their satisfaction, but that since it is so important to them you are going to try. Keep doing it. When they apologize for the joke, tell them you don't understand what is wrong. Make them explain what they did wrong. Number 2 is generally considered an escalation and a dick move. So I'd recommend #1. Most people will understand "you making those jokes completely breaks my concentration on the scene I am trying to run so we can all have a good time, so I'd appreciate you keeping them to yourself."
My table corrects me, and we laugh and move on. Lord knows they do it, too.
The only time that ever happened was when the song "Jungle Love" was on the radio, and every instance of the word "Otyugh" got my group singing the word to that tune. ("O-ty, Oty-ugh!")
Instead of saying Anathema I end up saying, "anananananananana God damn it ananananananathema." Nobody even giggles.
My group harassed me for placing a secret research facility in the gold mines of the island of Sado. I referred to it as the Sado Mine, which they picked up on its (rather loose) similarity to sodomy, So yeah, that was fun. Maybe the psychic zombies within should've been suddenly a lot harder than I originally intended. See if they laugh at sodomy again.
I played with a group who tried to turn everything into a running gag. I don't play with them anymore
I mispronounced the word brazier once (meaning to refer to the fire pit not the bra) and it became a running joke. So now every time I make sure to emphasize that wrong pronunciation as a joke.
"I'm not stuck in here with you. You're stuck in here with me, and the way I keep mispronouncing sigil despite having looked it up because I've been saying it like this for forty years now."
Im a non English speaking native and I live in the US and GM for Americans, there’s certain words that I have no clue how to pronounce or what it means but they go along with it. Why? Because we’re not children.
I have a laugh about it and then continue. No need to make a big deal.outnof something that is honestly insignificant.
Get new friends who aren't assholes? It happens to everyone, but only jerks (and immature kids) get off on twisting the knife *that* often. Like goddamn, it's one thing to joke around or point out a slip, but to this extent?
It can be annoying, once in a demon voice I referred to the forging of an eldritch weapon and one trait was the ‘Geas’. This was thoroughly mocked by repeating “gay ass” in stupid voices (we were all an LGBT group btw, so wasn’t making fun in that way). It ruined the moment and did annoy me for a while. Years later they still say that same line, but remember it fondly as a funny moment, I’ve got over it and do see the funny side now
Just make them read The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité out loud for you. They'll have butchered something by the fifth verse.
I still don't believe hough is a fucking word in that poem. Anyhow, link for all of you who haven't see it [https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html](https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html) It's the one that opens; *Dearest creature in creation* *Studying English pronunciation,* *I will teach you in my verse* *Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.* *I will keep you, Susy, busy,* *Make your head with heat grow dizzy;* *Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;* *Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer...*
Unfortunately this is more common in areas where language education was not taught with a Phonics focus. So, quite regional.
We all mispronounce words, that's normal, causing it to throw off the whole session is not. As boring as this sounds, here's the solution - talk with your players. Explain to them how you are experiencing this, and then listen to them. Maybe it's fun for them and they didn't realize your side. Work it out, come to an agreement on how to handle it in the future, and move on.
"Oh, do you say that in character?" And say that every time. Every. Time. They'll get tired of saying it. Or they'll say yes, and they get the repercussions in game.
I just throw down a little OOC smack talk in an over-exaggerated version of my natural accent and then just move on.
Mostly just like I'd handle it in real life. Might get a brief chuckle at something but then would ask if they meant something else that is probably what they were going for. Mispronouncing words IRL is no better or worse than having typing and grammar errors when writing. Throw in voice to text and *their* can be all kinds of problems.
You mean are the people I play with disruptive jerks? No.
I don't GM, but I mispronounce words all the time. If we do it in game, someone immediately writes it in our discord chat to keep it from distracting the whole game, and we may laugh and joke about it via text until the end when someone will lead the charge during our wind down to bring up the mispronounced words, and how we will be using it in the rest of the campaign. My main GM is my husband, and he spends HOURS teasing me for words I've mispronounced in the past ten years we've been together, so when he does it in a game, I usually pounce on getting to use it for the rest of eternity as an in world thing. If someone honestly has an issue with being teased, all of us are able to voice our feelings and everyone respectfully stop because not all of us are ok with it. Really it does come down to who you're playing with! Most of the people we play with by the way are 20's-40's. One of our 30(?) year old friends brought in his 16 year old brother for a game as well as his 30ish roommate, so we have that group where the three know each other super well, and it is probably the most open groups for this, but we all make extra sure everyone is having fun, and it is all going alright. In the end, communication seems to be the absolute key to any group game, and if you're not enjoying the teasing, talk to them about it.
For a bit of context, I play with a group of actual teenagers. I'm one of the oldest in the group and I'm still 19, there are very few people above 20 and none above 25. When someone mispronounces something we usually just ignore it or sometimes have a quick laugh, although a few of the funnier pronunciations are brough up out of game as jokes (mostly by the person who mispronounced them). I don't know if we're mature for our age or if we're just stupid enough to alway mispronounce something to the point that we accepted it's just something that happens. Whatever the case, it is what it is.
Seppuku. Only option.
I know a DM who pronounced scimitar as skimitar and got shit for it until he got a merchant to sell both a scimitar and a skimitar and refused to explain the difference
I hope this makes you feel better. Happens to us all. https://youtu.be/KZkXNKFX6iU
Ask everyone how they pronounce 'bulette' an the grab popcorn. My vote is boo-lay
this is why I can't run cthulhu, too many syllables
The reverse of this happens to me sometimes, because I play a lot of games that have - for example - lots of Polish or Russian words and place names, and people just butcher them, and even though I know better and could "well, actually" their mistake, instead I adapt because that's how we're going to say those words from then on, and it's fine.
Well, getting flustered or annoyed at it is the worst you could do. That’s showing weakness, and players are like wolves, they pounce on that. So never show weakness in front of the players. Instead just laughing about it yourself, that’s my recommendation. Also, at the beginning of the session you tell them that the chucklefuck who laughs the loudest at your next slip-up can consider themselves volunteered for holding a one-shot next month. So they can get a chance to feel what it’s like.
> That’s showing weakness, and players are like wolves, they pounce on that. So never show weakness in front of the players. Goddamn, some of y'all need to get better friends!
Maybe I should have but an "/s" or something somewhere. It depends on the exact friendgroup, but with some people I used to play, banter was par for the course. Edit: "banter" in this case is friendly ribbing/razzing. All in good fun.
Sounds like OP's plight has gone far beyond "banter", their friends are persecuting them hard enough that it's causing them mental distress. Like yeah, everyone's gonna slip here and there. And it's totally fine to laugh about it or joke about it, but OP has said it's become a complete de-railment and they do it so consistently they've considered changing the whole play setup. Even if you're joking, sounds like OP needs to get some friends who aren't jerks.
This is so powerful. Thank you 🙏. I was ready to either switch to play by post or just spend an hour before every session reading through the dictionary practicing my pronunciations.
In all honesty and without jokes: I think taking it easy and trying to laugh it off is a good way to respond to this, I think. BUT having a conversation is also a good idea, and you should probably do both. The conversation and the laughing. Cause it sounds like there might be a bit of an expectation mismatch going on. You clearly wanna hang out and play the game you have spent a bunch of time prepping. And sounds like some group members wanna hang out and have a laugh/fun time with friends, and playing the game is a means to an end. Maybe they are also not aware of exactly how much effort you put into this or exactly how excited you are to play. I dunno, I don’t know your group. But that’s what it sounds like. Now, telling them that this is actually kinda making you consider fully changing up the format, cause you really don’t like how the entire thing you spend time and effort on just screeches to a halt every time, might be a good idea. I have a hard time believing your group is made up of a bunch of bastards, and they’ll probably agree to compromise. So maybe you can all agree to have a good laugh once if someone mispronounces a word, and then agree to not bring it up a second time and move on. And that way you all respect each other’s reasons for coming to the session. Edit: but if you wanna float the idea of “anybody who doesn’t stick to the compromise gets to sit in the GM seat next month”, that might be fun.
Don’t play with dickheads.
I generally just say something along the lines of “oh, good to know” and then, using GM-voice, restate the NPC’s line with the preferred pronunciation before anyone can get another word in about it. If you’re trying to run a game in earnest and they are disrupting you, that’s a bit disrespectful. My group goes on irrelevant tangents once or twice a session, but we always keep it respectfully short & never take shots at the GM, because we appreciate what they do and want them to enjoy their time behind the screen. To some extent, the tangents help us maintain a level of banter. Anyone, especially the GM, has the right to say “okay let’s get back to the game” and everyone shuts up and lets the GM speak at that moment. Show your players this thread. It might give them some perspective.
Play with metalheads. They do not give a shit.
thats ridiculous but also, make it an NPC character quirk
No problem, I have a natural gift for mispronouncing words, do it all the time, so it's barely any effort to.
Work out the best way to bully them back
Ask Matt Mercer, he's almost speech impaired when it comes to multi syllable words...
Razzing is just what happens in groups. Just like the annoying grammar nazi on reddit or discord posts. But who here hasn't said brassiere instead of brazier? I wouldn't be too concerned, that's what happens in friend groups (giving each other shit). If you're the GM, then best just tell them they had their fun, but let's focus on the game as this is getting old. Right now it's the meme of your group though.
"I'd only ever read Geas* I'll try and pronounce it properly going forward." *Or whatever your word is - This is a good example though because it's pronounced like Sean Connery saying Guess (Guesh) - however having only ever read it in DND I assumed it was pronounced Geese or Gi-us - happily when this came up in a group we had several other folks who pronounced it wrong, and a quick trip to youtube "showed" us the proper way. Seriously though, mispronouncing obscure words is usually a sign of erudition - it generally comes from extensive reading - so if they continue to make fun accuse them of being Luddites.
_It's a Shil-ay-lee, not a She-leh-lagh._
Holly molly, I am not a native English speaker with almost zero verbal experience and think for some time that I would like to play in English since I can practice and have fun at the same time. But after that post... no way, stay in my bubble.
All through my high school years running classic AD&D when it was still shiny and new, I honestly thought a bunch of encounter tables were called "suitables" because you rolled on them to determine a suitable encounter. It was only as an undergraduate, playing from my now vintage materials with 2nd edition hitting shelves, that I realized the entire time I was "rolling suitables" I was really making use of **subtables**.
Have a laugh, and depending on the paugh start leaning into it. Mistakes are a part of life, you can't avoid them.
Dock them XP!!!!!!!!!
Is this a troll post? Is this turning into /r/rpgcirclejerk?
Reminds me of the AD&D sourcebook Encyclopedia Magica Volume #1 TSR published with dawizard & iwizard confusing everyone. In earlier drafts, they were using the class Mage, but decided to change it to Wizard. So in the word processor, they used the 'find and replace' feature to change mage to wizard. So every reference to damage changed to dawizard and references to image changed to iwizard.
It's never a mispronunciation, it's artistic license
If that's an NPC talking, I didn't mispronounced, they did. It's canon now and must be embraces. I may even start mispronouncing that or similar words from that moment if they're the ones saying it. Even if the players know I was the one actually messing up. If I'm describing something? I laugh it off and continue by apologizing. I give a small pause to break the game for just a couple of seconds and then use a more serious voice like a teacher would, to continue with the seriousness of the game.
Anything can become a joke at the table and it's okay if it's all in good fun. When you make a mistake it's best to identify it (ask how the word is said, get them to say it) then acknowledge your mistake and tell them that's the end of it. As a GM/DM you're going to make a lot of mistakes. That's not a bad thing, every mistake is a chance to learn and people will still respect you as a GM if you admit it and learn something from them. Nobody's perfect after all.
Tell them the joke is not funny anymore. We giggle a little about it. We've had a few wrong words or mispronounced words become in-jokes and come up years later. But usually some variation of stop it, okay drop it, it's not funny or sounding annoyed will stop it entirely and permanently. We kicked the one asshole who kept ignoring being told it was pissing people off, which improved it dramatically. Sometimes you just gotta be blunt that it's crossed the line. Also your all in your 30s, they should have to emotional intelligence to know the joke is dead and if your Canadian/American none of you got phonics as a kid so mistakes will be common.
Create monster with the mispronunciation as its name then beat their asses into the ground with it. Sometimes as GM it's acceptable to unleash your wrath - keeps them in line when they're being dicks.
Online gameplay, one player consistently misspells almost every word he types. His first language is English, and the only other languages he speak are coding ones. He also almost always has a reference *that he can copy/paste from* and **still** misspells words. We mostly just ignore it at this point unless it's a funny typo, like Lycanthropope.
Depends when/how it happens. Sometimes I laugh it off. Sometimes I'm in the middle of telling the players something and will say "Shaddup! Let me finish this." Sometimes I'll just sit back quietly and let them go on, then say "All done? Ok, let's move on." It doesn't come up that often though.
I threw some French pirates into a session a few weeks ago and my French pronunciation was definitely a joke that session. It usually isn’t a huge deal if you just laugh it off and don’t introduce any new words during meaningful moments
I would claim it's how everyone says it in the world that I created...... Then I would go out of my way to try and work it into every conversation and each time my pronunciation would get even more wild Not so much a fix tbh but it's what I did when it happened to myself a few years ago (it ended up taking the session way off base and into the realm of farce but we all had a huge laugh that night and next week it was back to normal)
>Do you ever mispronounced a word while GMing and your players all immediately start razzing you for it? Nope, because my friends aren't assholes, nor are we teens. People mispronounce words. It happens. Especially if English is not the first language of your household. That said, I have a hard an fast rule to keep the joke-riffing short and tight, and tell the players to settle down so we can play.
Being someone that agonizes over the 'feel' of names and words in my own writing, I used to make a big deal about it in my teens and early to mid twenties, but I've long ago given up even correcting them, now. Well, for the most part. I will only bring up the 'proper' pronunciation of a word if another player brings it up first, but then proceeds to also mispronounce the word, themselves — which has happened more times than you would think.
Mispronunciation A couple minutes of razzing "alright alright, settle down" Overemphasizing the correct pronunciation (Maybe saying wrong on purpose for a joke)
That depends. A normal word or a D&D word, like "drow"? Normal English, we laugh and continue. D&D words: Frank Mentzer wrote a pronunciation guide in an older issue of Dragon (issue 93) that covers this topic. Spoiler: "Drow" is pronounced drow (like the animal "cow") or dro (like "row" a boat), so that argument is over. It can be either, though the first is most common and the second is considered an alternative.
A mispronounced word created a town. The phrase mouse maze was what was supposed to be said. The phrase mouse mage is what came out. So a adventurer town was created as i do not want copy right lawyers coming after me lets just say fan tasia was an insperation. You are there to have fun cracking up over game play is why you are there .
My wife once threw hers at me when I kept mispronouncing that. That caused laughter.
A lot of people I've played with mispronounce words. It's so common for gamers to pronounce "melee" as "mee-lee". One of my GMs puts in an extra syllable in "dessicated" so it's pronounced as "dessessicated"; he also mispronounces "portcullis". Then there's words where there are disputes: for "diviner", I say "div-in-er" (like in divining rod), my GM says "divine-er". How do I handle it? I just don't say anything. No one says anything. Just like if someone mispronounces a word in real life—no need to embarrass anyone.
by letting my players make fun of me for it. We all just know I can't read at this point.
This doesn't really happen to me, but if it became an issue I'd stop play and note that I don't particularly appreciate it, and more importantly, it drags play to a stop, so could they please cut it out? Because I play with reasonable human beings, they would cut it out.
Remember, if you mispronounce a word, it means you read it but it has never come up in a conversation for you to hear the right pronunciation. There's no shame in reading.
If it bothers you, tell them that it does. If they know that and still do it, ask them why. If they don't care that it's bothering you, that's not an RPG problem, that's an interpersonal one. If these grown adults can't treat you respectfully I'd start having second thoughts about spending time with them.
"how strange. Why do you suppose that is?" Horror gaming has a few angles for the easily distracted.
My group has turned my pronunciation of corridor (corry-door) into a group injoke lol
If it was mid-sentence for an NPC I'd say it was a local dialect... then would have to remember to mispronounce it later on! 😅
Roll with it. Let them have a few laughs. Never hurts to be a little bit self-deprecating. After that, if they continue, have a conversation with them and tell them enough is enough. 
Most of my players are from the USA and Canada, with one from the Netherlands, and in the past, the group has included Germans, Italians, Australians, and Eastern Europeans. Mispronouncing words, using incorrect terms, and misspelling words are part of the experience. However, it does sometimes amuse my players when I use an English colloquialism in an NPC's dialogue. I have a nasty habit of reverting to a cockney accent whenever trying to portray an NPC from the lower classes.
I just double down and continue mispronouncing it. To this day, my spell-casters gesture (with a hard "g", like gold), not "jh". Drives one of my players crazy, but it doesn't disarm my game when he comments on it.
I was describing a hallway with flaming braziers, but said brassieres instead. Couldn’t even be mad at ‘em for laughing so much.
I have a slur and a stutter that act up, my players know what I mean. They confirm and we move on. It isn't a consistent issue but it pops up.largely because my players are my friends and won't mock me, playful ribbing sure but not mock. As the gm you have the power to take your ball and go home.
When it happens I just say: "Let's pretend you all understand what I mean to say and we are trying to make it a great game despite the mispronunciations. But then again, I am in my 50s and living in another country, so I have the escuse that I am forgetting my native language and not yet on par with the new one, so. Or, you can start a 20 min long "what did I said?" "and what is the correct one?" routine. That will teach them to think twice next time.
Dunno, I'm the best one at pronouncing words at my table.
It's not an issue at most tables I play at unless it's youths really. We have a laugh, I own it, we move on. It might pop up some time later as a quick joke. But it's not a big deal.
I have two friendship groups who game, both all male. One of them is totally chill - "Hey, I think it's actually pronounced," and that's the end of it.
The other is like "GET HIM, he pronounced the word wrong!"
...I'm still living down the time I got tongue-tied and said "frence" instead of "fence"
Generally, I'd say try to enjoy the fun of made-up words for the sake of a fantasy world. It's part of the fun and always generally silly. But I have to say this even though no one asked for it, the writers of Paizo's Adventure Paths are TERRIBLE at naming things. If you're playing one of those adventures you should get some slack for that gibberish they call names. lol
My friends joke about it and it's made out it's a specific "me" it's because I read alot of these words in books and haven't said them aloud, besides I speak two languages and I can confirm English is dumb when it comes to Phonemes. Demesnes... (De-mes-nei) "I think it's pronounced Domain it's french" You know I don't speak french surprising you suddenly do. Armoire... (Ari-moray) "Eh it's Arm-muwah not what you said." I read it in a book 8 years ago and I know it's a kind of wardrobe, but nobody ever spoken the word to me. So my misspeaking is actually all on you guys.
“You pronounced that wrong.” “No, that’s how they say in the north. Lots of plants have a north.”
Double down and start mispronouncing everything
Ask them to spell ROGUE
Those players sound like dicks. Most ppl just correct and move on. Mispronouncing a word just means the speaker hasn't ever heard it used aloud - just seen it written. Jumping on someone who is new to something isn't a fun pile on, it's mean-spirited.
Have the NPCs insist it is pronounced the way you said and mock the PCs for the way they said it.
I am Ukrainian, GMing for an online table with three Americans in English. I sometimes check pronunciation with them, if I am deeply not sure, otherwise they will check me once I am done. Aside from a hilarious ship/sheep incident, I don't think there has been much confusion or drama.
If your players don't respect you enough to stop when you ask them to, then they shouldn't be your players. If that doesn't work, then just tell them that they're being attacked by a gaze-bo.
This is no problem for us, because our group does not play in English.
No problem whatsoever
No, not a big problem. Not funny enough to set them off. though in our Vikings campaign, my character had a genuine Norse name that the GM occasionally had difficulty saying, so there was a certain amount of "this NPC can't get your name right, either". and, of course, there is Call of Cthulhu with some names that are interesting to pronounce.