Where does the term cheesy come from?

[darkmaster]

^ that.

[Mistborn]

Ahem

[Kaelik]

When using LMGTFY, you should probably check to make sure that at least one of the choices on the first page actually answers the question.

This is a fucking RPG forum, and he is asking about cheesy, so obviously he is not asking about why you would call a bad pick up line cheesy. He is obviously talking about why you would call DMM Persist cheesy. And nothing on the first page of google answers that.

[hogarth]

When using LMGTFY, you should probably check to make sure that at least one of the choices on the first page actually answers the question.

This is a fucking RPG forum, and he is asking about cheesy, so obviously he is not asking about why you would call a bad pick up line cheesy. He is obviously talking about why you would call DMM Persist cheesy. And nothing on the first page of google answers that.

Huh? The very first answer I see is a question: "Why do we call frivolous, lame or naff things cheesy?"

People calling DMM Persist "cheesy" is the same as people calling DMM Persist "lame".

[ACOS]

When using LMGTFY, you should probably check to make sure that at least one of the choices on the first page actually answers the question.

This is a fucking RPG forum, and he is asking about cheesy, so obviously he is not asking about why you would call a bad pick up line cheesy. He is obviously talking about why you would call DMM Persist cheesy. And nothing on the first page of google answers that.

Huh? The very first answer I see is a question: "Why do we call frivolous, lame or naff things cheesy?"

People calling DMM Persist "cheesy" is the same as people calling DMM Persist "lame".

To add: the first result I see (without even clicking on anything - it's right there on the link description) : "By 1858, cheesy had evolved a slang meaning of "showy," which led to the modern, ironic sense".

[Lago PARANOIA]

Cheesy is just not a generic insult to express disapproval like lame or stupid is. Cheesy in the context of competitions or hobbies means seeking or pressing an unsportsmanlike advantage such that the activity becomes less enjoyable and/or fair for everyone else.

The etymology of cheesy that LM linked to explains one of its other meanings. That is, trite, corny, maudlin; when we say that someone's daikatana-wielding Sepihroth-clone is cheesy, we could mean one or the other. I'm pretty sure that darkmaster was looking for the history of the first meaning.

[ACOS]

The etymology of cheesy that LM linked to explains one of its other meanings. That is, trite, corny, maudlin; when we say that someone's daikatana-wielding Sepihroth-clone is cheesy, we could mean one or the other. I'm pretty sure that darkmaster was looking for the history of the first meaning.

Well, in the same description result that I mentioned, it starts out with "Picked up by British in India by 1818 and used in the sense of "a big thing" (especially in the phrase the real chiz).". So, "big thing" -> "showy" -> ironic/derogatory seems to be a natural progression.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

EDIT apologies

[Dean]

This debunks the Korean explanation which I've never bought anyway. It's possible that it originated in the Street Fighter scene given his evidence.

This talks about how cheesy was used to mean "Cheap" or inferior and I would say that "Cheap" is the most commonly used synonym for cheesy. There isn't an etymology that I could find for when cheap started being used to mean unfair but I could easily see a crossover there once cheap meant unfair to allow a synonymous term meaning cheap to also be used to describe things as unfair.

The etymologies of lots of terms aren't as cut and dry as people like to pretend. Most terms don't have an easily identified birth based on some origin story-like event. Lots of them just come from some charismatic person somewhere using it for no real reason and then memetics handle the rest. For instance we all use the word "Hello" as a greeting because Thomas Edison liked it and said it a lot. At the time it was an exclamation of surprise or befuddlement but he liked it and used it a lot and because he was personally popular or powerful his personal catchphrase is now an accepted greeting across the entire english language.

Cheesy could very well have been one Streetfighter neckbeard's name for stuff he didn't like and that could be all the romance involved in the story but if someone does find something juicier I'm interested.

[Kaelik]

Huh? The very first answer I see is a question: "Why do we call frivolous, lame or naff things cheesy?"

People calling DMM Persist "cheesy" is the same as people calling DMM Persist "lame".

Yeah no, that is very obviously not even remotely close to what they mean, so... I guess stop being an idiot.

I mean, if you don't understand why this was posted in the fucking RPG section of the board instead of the random completely unrelated to gaming part, just don't offer an opinion on the subject.

EDIT: WHOLLY FUCK! I just read the ignored poster too, WTF is wrong with you people? Have none of you ever talked about 3e D&D on message boards besides this one? How the fuck can so many people have no idea what the fucking word cheese means when applied to an RPG context?

[fectin]

I don't understand what you're getting at either, Kaelik. Enlighten us?

[Whipstitch]

In fairness to Hogarth it's entirely possible that cheese as a gaming term stuck because people already understood "cheesy" to mean something laughable and inauthentic even as they used it describe standing roundhouse spam or gimmick rushes specifically. Just as Patch Adams features bathos instead of pathos it could be argued that chipping your opponent to death in the corner sometimes feels like a joke when the game is ostensibly about skill.

[Kaelik]

I don't understand what you're getting at either, Kaelik. Enlighten us?

This is literally the first result when I search cheesy DMM D&D

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthre ... ist-combos

Notice some key points:

1) He calls it cheese.
2) He likes it so much he is putting it in his game.
3) He's not even a player trying to use it to gain asymmetric power to live and crush the campaign before him.

Obviously he does not mean "lame" because he would not put it in his campaign. Obviously he does not mean "showy" because he is just slapping it on a pile of NPCs who aren't even probably that big a deal. Obviously he does not mean "cheap bullshit low skill tactic" because if he thought so lowly of it, he would not be putting it into his fucking game.

Here is the second link:

http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/ ... 24c4290851

He is specifically asking for people to cheese up his Cleric. And he sure doesn't mean "make him showy."

Obviously as it applies to D&D post 2000, cheese means a very specific thing about comboing abilities in unforeseen ways with no more negative connotation than the word powergamer (IE, some people might bitch, but plenty of others are neutral or straight up identify with it).

[tussock]

So, people are using cheese to mean, like, cheese on a sandwich, where it makes it better but it's also just stuff people do without any real effort. Or maybe because they got a sandwich but it has no cheese, which is, like, wrong on a moral level. Like a fry-up without bacon.

But it still totally implies that you made something good without needing any skill. Which is where the whole cheesy victory thing comes in. Where it works, but anyone can win that way. Using cheap horse-archers to kill everything for you in 5e.

[Ice9]

Wha ... is the meaning of cheesy really in question? It's a pretty common terms on most boards, I thought. I don't know about the origin, but it's roughly:

Tricks that go above the level of "standard" optimization, in that they give an inordinately large gain in power for what they cost. Sometimes because of bad wording, sometimes it was just poorly balanced. This may or may not reach TO levels of power. It's not an entirely negative term like munchkin, and there are different levels of cheese.

Also, different people have different thresholds for what they consider "cheese".

[violence in the media]

Cheesy is just not a generic insult to express disapproval like lame or stupid is. Cheesy in the context of competitions or hobbies means seeking or pressing an unsportsmanlike advantage such that the activity becomes less enjoyable and/or fair for everyone else.

Just throwing support for Lago's definition here. I feel like the unsportsmanlike connotation is the key part of the definition.

[Ice9]

It's part of the definition in competitive games, like for example Starcraft. Although that mostly applies to casual play. In professional play (tournaments and such) then cheese (defined in that game as high risk / high reward tactics that seek to catch people by surprise, often early rushing) is just part of the game and you're expected to deal with it.

In D&D, that's not generally the meaning people are talking about.

[Pseudo Stupidity]

Cheese is definitely borrowed from competitive gaming. Cheese (competitive gaming) can be defined as the following: "A strategy or play that relies heavily on a specific high risk/reward option." Cheese usually requires a ton of commitment to it or else it will fail, but it's proven to work very well when it does work.

Cheese does not mean unsportsmanlike at all, unless you're one of the people who actually use the word Cheap to describe strategies. Those people do not count.

Examples of cheese would be rushing in Starcraft, Kirby swallowcide bullshit in Smash Brothers Melee, or starting with a high-power consumable item in League of Legends.

It's normal to hear people saying "be ready for X cheese" where X is a common risky strategy to discuss weaknesses in opponents. In smash I might say "Marth might try some edge cheese." because it's easier than saying "Marth might try to ledgehop a dair to spike your ass." It's the same thing in League where you might call out "be ready for early dragon cheese" if you see a champion that wants to take early dragons on the other team.

Tabletop seems to use cheese to call something "highly optimized and relying on a specific tactic." A charger build is cheesy because it relies on one thing, but picking Wizard isn't cheesy.

[Username17]

Dragon Magazine #138 from 1988, a full 3 years before Street Fighter 2 even existed contains a review of Cthulhu Now:

There is also one cheesy major plot detail where Investigators are unfairly tricked into mistaking coincidental phenomena for causally linked events. Despite these sleazy but essentially goodnatured plot tricks, the scenario is absorbing and entertaining.

Basically, video game players have no fucking idea how incredibly young their entire discipline is. Any time anyone tells you that any use of language began in video games, you should probably regard that as ignorant boosterism. I'm not saying it's impossible for video games to form culture, but for fuck's sake I remember a world without Nintendos in it, and language wasn't all that different for the most part.

Neither Starcraft nor Street Fighter II are the origins of the term "Cheesy" as relates to gaming. I mean, obviously. Cheese meaning "Cheap" or "Inferior" is attested to 1896 in American slang, possibly as an ironic reversal of "Cheesy" meaning "showy" or "fine." In gaming, a "Cheesy" tactic has the same meaning as a "Cheap" tactic - meaning that it is one whose "costs" (whether they are in-game costs or the out-of-game difficulty in learning the player skill to use them) are incommensurate with the power. This can be considered either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether you consider it to be "clever" or "unfair" to get such an advantage.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

That's pretty much my stance on the topic. Slang re-purposes existing language at least as often it invents words whole cloth and you accomplish that by making use of existing connotations rather than completely ignoring them.

[Ice9]

Tabletop seems to use cheese to call something "highly optimized and relying on a specific tactic." A charger build is cheesy because it relies on one thing, but picking Wizard isn't cheesy.

I'd go a step further - being an ubercharger isn't cheese (though it might be called broken by some tables), the feat Battle Jump is cheese. As much as it can even be said to be used consistently, anyway.

In gaming, a "Cheesy" tactic has the same meaning as a "Cheap" tactic - meaning that it is one whose "costs" (whether they are in-game costs or the out-of-game difficulty in learning the player skill to use them) are incommensurate with the power. This can be considered either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether you consider it to be "clever" or "unfair" to get such an advantage.

Sounds about right. The Dragon #138 reference is using cheesy as "lame / corny" though, which seems like a pretty different meaning.

[ACOS]

In gaming, a "Cheesy" tactic has the same meaning as a "Cheap" tactic - meaning that it is one whose "costs" (whether they are in-game costs or the out-of-game difficulty in learning the player skill to use them) are incommensurate with the power. This can be considered either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether you consider it to be "clever" or "unfair" to get such an advantage.

Sounds about right. The Dragon #138 reference is using cheesy as "lame / corny" though, which seems like a pretty different meaning.

Even in that Dragon Magazine reference, there seems to be the implication of a lack of "fair play".

[Username17]

The Dragon Magazine review gives its own thesaurus definition of cheesy, by using synonyms in adjacent sentences. They meant "Sleazy" or "Unfair." Which is the same as the "Cheap" definition in a gaming sense.

-Username17