Name that... thing

Mithril. With one word, those in the know have an image of a silvery yet light metal in their head. The rest of the population react completely normal with a "what?".

Steel. Now we pretty much are all on the same plate. You know it, you have seen it, probably touched it. You might not know exactly what it's properties are or how it's made, but you know it's heavy, sturdy and well, a metal.

You see Mithril might be very well known and it's highly likely you get crucified by a strong following of Tolkien if you politely inquire about what the hell that is, but it's still a completely fabricated thing, something named by (although lots of background thought went into it) purely one persons brain with no correlation to reality.

If the following example sounds familiar, you get 2 geek points. Say we don't speak the same language. I pick up a cup of coffee from the table and offer it to you, then say "kekorti". Now what do I mean? Coffee? Drink? Warm? Pay attention the damn thing is hot? Friend? Drink this and die in honor? Yes it's from Star Trek.

The fear of making mistakes

Players are deathly afraid of one thing, more than anything else and that is making a permanent mistake. In real life we all know how easy it is done. I recently have manged to fabricate 3 of them in what is for me a very short period of time. Hindsight is always better of course, but we rationalize in reverse too. I could have seen each of those three mistakes clearly before making them. I could have avoided them, by avoiding the subject, thinking it over more, collecting more information and so on. But at the time, well, it seemed the right thing to do.

Now a player works exactly the same way. They think about it, agonize over it even, to the point where they block themselves from enjoying the game. It often starts at the beginning, by choosing a race, gender, class, starting location, profession, faction, heritage and many other things that might be rather important. Or not.