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The title mangling introduced a case of RAS syndrome. RPG games is redundant since the G stands for game.

The original title of this article is just "Dropping Loot". If you're going to mangle the title, at least mangle it in a way that doesn't introduce a new error!



Redundancy is an important part of communication and error- robustness I both human and computer languages.

RAS Syndrome is a sweet spot trading off economy of characters/syllables vs clarity of message. As with most things humans gravitate to, it is a rational act, not a stupid one.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."


Nope, completely disagree. It is not a rational act, it indicates thoughtlessness in language. And much as I like the Emerson quote, it does not apply here. The question isn't consistency, it's accuracy and clarity. The redundancy does not add anything -- your assertion that it adds error robustness makes no sense because the communication medium is not lossy.

Even if in the general case redundancy can be useful -- I don't correct others' spoken conversation so long as I can understand what's being communicated any more than you do -- in this case it detracts and distracts.


RPG is also the name of the genre. The genre is not RP. It's RPG. Games in the RPG genre are RPG games.

This is not different from saying "RTS strategy", or "the strategy you apply to RTS games".




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