In my experience so far, none of the people I play with really bother with any of that "chummer" "frag" and "drek" stuff, aside from some occasional pseudo-Shadownet posts... I happen to think that's a good thing, for the most part, but I was wondering how things look like in other games?

Well, we do occasionally sling "chummer", and "frag" and "drek" we tend to keep for those occasions where the sentiment needs to be expressed but without the full vehemence of the RL equivalent… I suppose you could say that I use them similarly to the way the Irish use "shite" and "feck".

Then again, you've probably noticed that

~J

In character, the group I'm with uses the slang. Out of character, we don't.

I occasionally use them in real life. People just stare at me. Kind of funny, actually.

Same here Tanka. I told a clerk to slot off once and he just gave me a blank stare. BUT IF YOU ARE A DREKING CLERK, LEARN WHAT FRAGGIN BUTTON DOES WHAT!

[offtopic]Wutasumi: Never, ever, ever tell me you yelled at a clerk. I work retail. That pisses me off to no end. Now, if he was being blatantly rude to you before you said a word, that's fine. However, if he just can't find a key, then maybe you shouldn't be such an asswipe.[/offtopic]

It's always fun to randomly spout SR slang at people. They just kind of stare at you and blink a few times.

[offtopic] Tell you what, try to refrain from yelling when you get charged 1000$ for cigs, then be told it's your fault. You'd yell too, and tell him all sorts of stuff.{/offtopic]

Or wonder if you are high.

Also, does anyone else speak the language the PC is speaking in?

I don't use much of the slang because we play in spanish, so it sounds quite strange to say "Hola, chummers, ¿qué tal va todo?". Still, I do employ it on occassions, and surely would if we played in english.

What's really fun is to have a character that speaks using a mix of three or four languages in addition to the slang and speak like that to random people. The looks of utter confusion are worth it.

ALERT!!!!! THREAD HIJACK!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yea, he pressed the wrong button and then tried to blame it on me.

IT TOOK 5 HOURS TO GET IT FIXED!

And that, is why I hate Marlboros.

I use some of them, don't use others. "Frag" and "drek" are pretty good, though they don't entirely prevent me from using the real-world words when I get sufficiently exercised. I don't use "frag" when I actually mean "have sexual intercourse with", either (I say "screw" if I don't feel like pulling out the big guns)... it's more of a general expletive. Things can be fragging stupid, or get fragged up, but I'd never say that the sammy was late to the meet because he was too busy fragging some hooker (and if someone did say that, I'd wonder why he felt the need to kill the hooker with "friendly fire"). And I never, ever, ever use "hoop", and I laugh at any alleged shadowrunner who does. You can say "ass" on prime-time TV. There's no particular reason for a game revolving around career criminals to censor it. And it sounds stupid, to boot.

Actually, "hoop" has a possibly worse connotation than "ass" does. "Ass" refers to the entire thing, while "hoop" could only refer to the hole. It could also be a perversion of "hoolahoop" (sp?) in reference to jokes about how big the particular hole ends up after a stay in prison. No one said it is an attempt to censor anything. Considering what I have read in at least one book, my interpretation is probably far closer to reality than the idea of censoring it.

And before you laugh at them, keep in mind there is someone laughing at you for every internet abbreviation you use for being "too ignorant to use proper English and sounding stupid." To us, however, that slang sounds perfectly fine.

And, all of my checking says that "frag" does not mean the act of sexual intercourse. They use a different word for that.

Though there is the somewhat misleading term mother-fragger. Though is it ever actually used in a novel or book?

~J

Actually, yes, I think. However, these days it can be argued that phrase doesn't mean the literal translation. In fact, note the following definition from M-W Online Dictionary (with a certain word changed to frag):

Slot-off is the greatest expression in shadowrun.

One of my all time favorite Shadowrun memories was when playing through the Harlequin adventure. There's a scenario that involves travelling to Germany. There, the character refers to the runners as chumlichen, instead of chummers. (In German, it'd be pronounced something along the lines of coom-leak-en.) He, of course, hadn't ever had any German, and just decided to pronounce using English phonetics.

So it came out as "Chum-Lickin". We've joked about the horny gay German troll ever since.

I tend to use the sort of all-in-one cyberpunk slang lingo I've pulled from a dozen different sources, originally for a CP2020 game set in 2075. I mean, some of the SR slang is okay. Thinks like 'slot off', or 'geeked' or 'trog' - those are fine. But drek and chummer are the two that really, *really* get on my nerves, almost as much as 'choomba' from CP2020. Even if 'drek' is a real word, if you wanna swear, swear.
It tends to be polyglot, too, with an emphasis on Russian and Soviet slang. I'd toss in some Chinese, if I knew more than two words in Mandarin or Cantonese.

The end slang result tends to be something like this. Most of it is fairly self explanitory:

Massey: 'So this Veed rolls up on me while I'm walking, and downs the window. Turns out he's tryin' to bump the Vories for pimping in his turf - keeps quizzing me on if I know any of 'em, why I'm out so late, and so on.'
Pi: 'What happened? He try to get rough?'
Massey: 'Yeah, after I told him to stop jawin' at me. He gets all red in the face, tries to pop sights on me, wakarimasu ka? So what could I do but air him out? You rez how it gets out there.'

Veed: I decided this was Euro-war vet slang for VD, after the NKVD and its' successor the MVD. Basically any authority figure posessing means and wherewithal to detain or injure the populace. Cops, basically.
Bump: To rough up but not kill.
Vories: Slang for multiples of the Vory V Zakone.
Pop Sights: To draw and unsafety a weapon, usually with intent to fire. From the retinal sights that appear on a smartgun.
Wakarimasu ka: Japanese for 'You understand?' Technically, since Massey and Pi are friends, 'Wakkaru ka' or 'wakkata ne' would be more likely ('Do you understand?' and 'You understood that, right?' respecively), but I decided wakarimasu ka just rolled off the tongue a bit better.
Air Out: To perforate an animate object, usually a person, usually with lead. Shamelessly lifted from Blade Runner.
Rez: To be intimately familiar with. To know the 'resolution' - aspects and proportions - of a thing.

I occaisionally use "frag" or "drek" only when usuing stronger language would be just a waste of energy. I also use "Smeg".

Mother-fragging hoop-kissing drek-eating son-of-a-slitch.

Tell that Mother-fragging hoop-kissing drek-eating son-of-a-slitch to slot off!

Fuck no.

Sorry, omae, but since we play in French, this fraggin'drek has never been brought up on at the gaming table...but my maternal language being French, it's got quite an "exotic flavor" when I read SR fluff and novels which may actually seem a bit stupid to you English-speaking trogs, dandelion-eaters, halfers and tuskers out there...
I tend to agree with one of the posts which said that a little bit more Chinese or Russian (don't you think, priyatel?) should appear in streetspeak...and to be even more logical, how come there's no Salish, Haida, Tlingit, Kwakiutl, lakota, Hopi and other Native American words and expression in Shadowrun linguo? With half of North America being Native, it seems there should be a heavier influence on 2060s English, neh?

i called my girlfriend a chummer, and she thought i was calling her a dirty name... lol

I like to use the terms while playing other games in general. It gets a lot of question marks on video games. But I love to explain it. Usually with the first line being, "don't worry, I am street sami."

Ohh. . and never call a fisherman a chummer. It does actually mean something to them, apparently.

----------------------
SilverWolf a.k.a. Maverick
"Skin head eh? Sounds like its time for the old ONE! TWO!"
-
"It helps to look in the face everyone one you clean. You have to make sure it isn't the one your supposed to be extracting. (sigh)"

I second Crimson, fuck no.

Yes I use the slang, but not overmuch.

In our group of all American players, it is the foriegn languages that get the blank stares. You know the old saw...Three languages=tri-lingual, two languages=bi-lingual, one language=American? Well like any generalization, it has its exceptions, like me. But it holds pretty true around most of the table. When my character breaks into Spanish or Japanese, I will too, and then have to translate in most cases. I am fluent in Spanish, and stumble along blindly in Japanese, which is considered really odd considering I was raised in Hawai'i. However, this also gives me the option of throwing in Hawai'ian pidgin if my character knows it. Being a kama'aina has its benefits, even if the term haole is also one that fits me.

I ran my games in Spanish, so the point is moot.

Chummer is just a replacement for nigger anyway.

Really? I've seen no implication that it's overused in rap or hip-hop.

~J

By 2050, it won't be the edgy to say. It will be ubiquitous.

My group uses it but not much. I tend to use it quite a lot for NPC's and occaisionally for my own characters. I've even used it in real life too, like asking 2nd line support for the 411 on the drekking <insert broken thing here>.

"Hoi Chummer. Tell that Mother-fragging hoop-kissing drek-eating son-of-a-slitch to slot off! Else I'll perforate his hoop! Scan?"

:o)

I definitely second Adareal. A few of the terms just don't have the right feel; chummer and frag, namely. Frag... It just doesn't have the same sound as its RL equivalent. It's too soft.

Slitch is GREAT, so is slot-off. I do actually use chummer, but I'm starting to use mulchik (Russian for little boy). I found a great online cyberpunk dictionary I'm working on memorizing, and I'm grabbing more and more words from Russian and Japanese as well, along with that fantastic English slang (like the barfly in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels).

Hey, what was that term for an ork or troll's wart things again? That was in first edition, and for some reason they dropped it.

I don't usually have my characters use it in the games I play. I like feeling like I'm in an R-rated action movie when I play SR, and language is a part of that (a small part, but an atmospheric part). The shadowslang is just too soft for that purpose usually.

I was going to say thanks, but I guess since I'm already welcome I don't have to

~J

Frell, No!

Fuck no.

Too contrived, and I was introduced to SR's slang in the era when DnD was annoying me with its renamed Hell and the Abyss and Devils and Demons (Baator and all that politically correct crap). Combined with input from a gamer's father (who observed that 'shit' and close variations had been part of the English language for centuries), I had no inclination to suddenly start using make-believe curse words.

I stick to some SR slang for which there are no contemporary equivalents (Rigger, wizworm, etc.), but not drek, frag, etc.

uh cray frag is used in RL today...

With an entirely different meaning.

~J

not really it was never said that to frag was to copulate in SR books (unless it was in a novel I haven't read) they just occupy a similar level of vulgarity in their slang forms. and to me at least... to seriously mash somebody with fragmentation weapons is at least as rude as using them to create decendants

I never said it meant to copulate, though IIRC the notes for SR1 did say that it did. However, currently if I frag someone it means that I kill them, not that I leave them without pay and the Yakuza on their tail (not that there's a huge difference).

~J

I agree and when I fuck someone i ki... uh never mind

We throw the slang in from time to time, usually if we're being particularly IC at the time. As a GM i use them with NPCs to give the players a better feel, but we use real swearing as well, because really we can't see words that have been around for centuries suddenly becoming unused within 60 years!

just remember people in the 1600s naughty was a swear word the correct word was naught, old words going away is bad... new words appearing is normal... it's also entirely reasonable that in 60 years time shit and fuck have become so mainstream that they are no longer profanities