The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermDigital term

Save scumming

Reloading a saved game repeatedly to undo bad luck or death, rerolling outcomes until they come up right. The term is especially associated with roguelike players, for whom it defeats the point of Permadeath.

Reloading a saved game repeatedly to undo bad luck or death, rerolling outcomes until they come up right. The term is especially associated with roguelike players, for whom it defeats the point of Permadeath.

Quick answers

What does "Save scumming" mean?
Reloading a saved game repeatedly to undo bad luck or death, rerolling outcomes until they come up right. The term is especially associated with roguelike players, for whom it defeats the point of Permadeath.

Nearby in the archive

Permadeath

Digital term1980

A rule under which a dead character is gone for good, with no reloading from a save. It is a defining trait of the Roguelikes, a feature of hardcore modes in games such as Diablo II, and a permanent risk for units in tactical games like Fire Emblem.

Roguelikes

Digital genre1980

An @ sign, a dungeon that never repeats, and one life: the college-terminal genre named for Rogue, fought over in Berlin in 2008, and reborn as the indie roguelite.

NetHack

Roguelike1987

The open-source roguelike first released in 1987 and still maintained decades later: descend some fifty procedurally generated levels, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor, and die in a thousand inventive ways along the way.

Fudging

Tabletop term

When a Game Master secretly alters a die roll or a monster's statistics, usually to spare the party or keep the story on course. Whether it is kindness or cheating is one of the hobby's oldest arguments.

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