Feature: A ____ is something you can ______

by Eglantine

A Glossary of GNE Terms
	Absinthe Fairy A player who moves rapidly through the map handing bottles of absinthe to other players. Though Selva Morales is the original Absinthe Fairy, other players have since followed suit.
	acq slots see maxed out
	adoption A rare process, undertaken by players who want a more complex relationship with each other than the current “friend/acquaintance/enemy” ontology can provide. Adoptions are often cemented by a public announcement followed by a post to the discussion boards.
	Alice Sells houses at Pretty Good Realty in the Main; is the real name of dev in charge of housing and construction, whose username in the game is L’etranger.
	beef run Always grab a bunch of sides of beef before you settle in to mass-produce senses of entitlement.
	campers Players who camp out in known spawning locations waiting to grab stuff as it spawns. If you camp too much, certain players will resent you for it, complaining that you’re unfairly hoarding the game’s natural resources.
	camping out at the Main Players in search of housing often camp at the Main waiting for new houses to come on the market. See Alice.
	chicken Shortly after the Wipe, as the population strugged to adjust to a new scarcity of resources, Plurp began the practice of giving his fellow campers chickens in order to defuse the atmosphere of tension building up at popular camping grounds.
	closet A room of a house where only the house’s owner can enter. Highly coveted, closets can raise the real estate value of a place significantly.
	colored paper Colored paper can be redeemed for shekels at the bank or exchanged for goods and services, as in, “I’ll give you two greens if you’ll let me neuter your Bob Barker.”
	construction In response to new and homeless players who clamor for housing, once-pristine forests and swamps are being razed to make way for urban sprawl.
	demigods Players who, illicitly or licitly, have acquired superhuman wealth and skill in the game. Though none of them are devs, verily, they are as gods among men.
	devs/developers Slang for anyone who works for Ludicorp, anyone whose name is in purple letters; also, any person who can be bought in Bentown for 1 million shekels, or any person who is a required part of the recipe for making a GNE.
	drug dealers Often found loitering in the Strip, these scuzzy players corner the market on expensive ingredients (e.g. C, Skillz, Wizz) by buying from campers and yoinkers at a higher rate than the stores do. Also known as C-pimps.
	the end of the world Also known as “The Big Wipe.” January 31st, 2003: when the second round of testing ends and our characters die. Devotees of the Church of Our Lady of Emergent Complexity believe that Her most faithful worshippers, the pioneers, will be resurrected ITRG which will constitute a sort of virtual heaven-on-earth.
	enemy It’s rare for most players to make enemies. Making someone an enemy blasts their social index by -5 points and yours by -1 point.
	Eric’s screen of death There was a time when players used to praise Eric to the skies, but now we have come to fear and dread his smirking visage.
	farmers and ranchers Early slang for campers and yoinkers, coined by Plurp during the Paper Lane discussion on newbie theft.
	friends, downgrading of The only way to boost your social index once you’re maxed out.
	gayme Because everyone who plays this game is totally gay.
	genome rush It’s better than crack! Once a player can make their own genomes, they either start to level up at dizzying speeds (if they can get a good stash of C) or turn into desperate C-hos and start begging the drug dealers for a supply.
	giving head Who doesn’t love to give head… fresh, crispy, delicious head! (Lettuce or wombats will work.)
	GOD GOD runs on an automated SQL timer, saying things like “I have hidden another sheet of blue paper in a hub. Can you find it?” And every so often She also participates in the global chat.
	GNE Short for “Game Neverending”; most believe the GNE to be the hardest possible item to make, requiring on the order of 10,000 making points. Before the Wipe it used to take two players to make a GNE, because the component devs weighted 100 units each.
	guestbook A note you leave in the lobby of your house, for visitors to sign. One of the most common targets of newbie theft. Caterina created the first guestbook, but Capodistria was the player who invented the term “guestbook” for it.
	hacks Typically Javascript-based, though other sorts of attacks have been noted. Hacks are much less common since the Wipe and will be even harder to find ITRG, which will not use client-side Javascript.
	harvesting A catch-all term for grabbing spawned stuff. Encompasses camping and yoinking.
	Heaven Usually the last hub that newbies explore, since it’s not easy to find the stairway to Heaven.
	hubs A locale on the game that you can navigate to using the map. Each hub has eight lots in it. Here’s a map of all the hubs in the GNE.
	inflation Savvy husbandry of the game’s natural resources often causes runaway inflation. Symptoms include: players standing at the Plaza de la Revolucion handing out genomes to newbies, and secret parties where developers are wantonly consumed.
	installation A performance art piece consisting of a number of items scattered on the ground, usually in a public space. Installations were most popular (and most feasible) before the Wipe when hacking created a surplus of natural resources. Installations from that period were recorded in a document titled Stencilton Arts Walk.
	inspoetrivia Kind of like “Who wants to be a Millionaire,” except that the questions are really hard and the guy playing Regis Philbin is actually a ludicrously rich eccentric who styles himself inspoetica.
	Instancia What the devs call the world of GNE as we know it. Kyle Stein theorizes that this is because our world is “the first instance.”
	ITRG stands for In The Real Game (aka The Big Game). As in “Woo-hoo, I just got fired from my job because I’ve been playing the prototype all day, which means I’ll have even more time to play ITRG!”
	lag Network latency causing all sorts of wackiness. This, of course, will be fixed ITRG.
	lard There are players who will do anything for a little sweet new age lard.
	leveling When any player advances a level, it’s announced automatically to the global chat window and is often followed with lavish applause.
	lo siento mon frere This bastardized half-Spanish, half-French error message appears when you try to grab something that another player has already yoinked, due to network lag.
	lots There are eight lots in each hub. A lot can be a store, a house, an empty lot, or a bunch of other stuff.
	making loop Sometimes, due to a bug in the client code, you can get so engrossed in making an item that your screen hangs. Requires a refresh to escape.
	making points The more of these you get, the more recipes appear in your making tab.
	making paper The process of turning individual sheets of paper into quires and reams, or, marginally more profitably, into colored paper.
	maxed out You can only have so many friends and acquaintances before you max out the limits. “Maxed out” can also refer to heavy packs.
	Media Shire A soulless den of sin and iniquity, where desire is bought but not sold.
	nebulation A process for the transmogrification of certain objects, named after the dev called Ben, whose username is neb. Bentown is also named after neb.
	newbie anyone whose level is lower than yours; anyone who still thinks it’s a good thing to hug someone with a Sweet New Age Love; anyone who thinks colored eggs are a tasty treat
	newbie mentoring Enthusiastic new players often express an interest in setting up some official program of “newbie mentoring.”
	OG Stands for original gangstas, old guard: the opposite of newbies, players who’ve been around a long time.
	PARP People’s Army for Revolutionary Principles: The first gang of vigilantes, organized by James Holloway and Traducer before the Wipe. This shady bunch occupied Civic Center and started charging tolls to everyone who passed through it.
	party When a bunch of players get together, with food, drink, and gifts, and set off collective mood-boosters.
	pioneers If you haven’t bought a pioneer account yet, you should!
	prototype Yes it has flaws. I am not finished yet! This is merely a throwaway PROTOTYPE, puny humans.
	purple paper For five million shekels, “makin’ purple” is the only way to go.
	quaff The best way, the only way to drink a potion; what Stenciltonians yell at parties in place of “Chug! Chug!”
	rare items Many of us have never seen them. Among the few who have, they acquire a legendary status. They include: electric sheep, manifestos, skateboards, Dos Pesos, christmas trees, and the coveted fuzzy dice. Bob Barker was a rare item, once, before Wintermute changed its spawning rate.
	recipe A list of ingredients you need for making stuff.
	ruining the economy See inflation; also, if rarely, used as an epithet toward players who detonate their New Economies in crowded hubs like Bentown.
	shekels Virtual money that appears in your status bar. No one has ever seen a shekel.
	side of beef Some players will go on long making binges, well past the point of starvation, just for the pure pleasure of crawling to Canada and burying their teeth in a nice fresh side of beef. Selling sides is a profitable, if tiring, way to get shekels.
	slide A link that takes you to a totally different place on the map. Also known as a teleport, a tunnel, or a wormhole. The only way to get out of Heaven.
	sliming One of the few acts of violence allowed us in the game. James Holloway’s weapon of choice.
	social index A calculated score that depends on how many friends, acquaintances, and enemies you have, plus how many people consider you a friend or an enemy.
	spawning Items spontaneously appear in certain places on a regular basis, by means of some GODly abiogenesis.
	stabbing Hurting another player with an oboe or marshmallow dagger.
	statue When a player is AFK but still standing in a public place, they become a virtual punching bag and/or repository for gifts. Aka “mime.”
	Stencilton By far the biggest city in Instancia; even players who live in Media Shire are commonly considered Stenciltonians.
	St_wart/St. Wart/”Boss Tweed” The Head Honcho of Ludicorp; we dare not write His name outright in global chat, for it will oftentimes cause Him to appear.
	thieves People who go into other people’s houses and take valuable things (not food) without asking. Most commonly perpetrated by newbies.
	trouting Slapping people with large trouts is relaxing!
	Wintermute Tower The ominous, black, nine-story house of the dev known in the game as Wintermute and in real life as Jason, this eyesore in Convivial Grove has been the focus of repeated protests.
	the Wipe After the end of the first round of alpha testing, all user accounts were reset to level 1, and all social relationships, destroyed.
	yoinkers When lag is bad enough, these ruffians can dart in right under your nose and grab what’s spawning before you can even see it’s there. The word originates from the Simpsons. Unlike campers, yoinkers rarely share their spoils.
	Yogi’s moving service One of the most famous and well-used hacks, this piece of Javascript code (rumored to be authored by yeoz) was used to increase the weight you could carry in your pack. Yogi’s moving service was heavily used by early homeowners, among whom an immovable harpsichord in the lobby became a status symbol.

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