Hey all! Five Fires stuff today.

It's a game about hip hop, but I don't use much jargon or slang. Why?

Lots of reasons.

First: what makes hip hop great is that it evolves so much from era to era, new sounds, new topics, new styles...new slang.

if I embedded any slang from one era, it would be incongrous with the slang from another era. In the playtest and the main core rules, it didn't seem wise to do.

Next: the "authenticity trap". Slang in the core makes it *feel* more "authentic" to folks...

but what I've found about jargon is that it splits audience into "insiders" and "outsiders".

My personal experience in thought is that insider terms are usually a cheap way to create experience feel. If I use the right terminology, it "flavors" the experience.

That's not bad!

But if you stop there, it's not great. I wanted to focus on the systems that create the experience and feel of people trying to create art from the margins for themselves and others while being criminalized and exploited at times.

I wanted to focus first on the system expression, and to de-emphasize terms as expression.

Last: I also wanted a blank slate at the core, because the plan is to make hip hop era playsets that capture specific places in time.

and you know? All of these decisions could be wrong.

But in the end, they are the decisions I am making. Hopefully the thought process makes sense/is interesting!