Indeed, a lot of people do, myself included. I'm happy with "procedure" though, it means more or less the same thing. "Something that is triggered by something else"

The "Spec_Proc" theory though does make a lot of sense. Not that i ever got involved with that mud business myself.

Agree, from my early programming years, "proc" is just shorthand from when a defined process is called. In this case the defined process being whatever the special item action is.

"Procedure" makes the most sense to me, since it's a name for a reusable subsection of a program (they're also called functions, subroutines, etc.). When an ability procs, it calls the appropriate procedure. "spec_proc" is just an extension of that.

"Programmed Random OCcurrence" is almost certainly a back-formation from "proc" and not the origin of the term.

I agree with Chris Anthony. "Proc" is short for "procedure", which is a well-delineated, callable block of code in various programming and scripting languages, including Pascal, DikuMUD, and Transact-SQL. That fact shouldn't really be in dispute given all the coders familiar with procedures and also given all the text MUDders who play those newfangled graphical MUDs nowadays...

"Programmed Random Occurrence" seems to be a poor backronym that people spread around for some reason. Wouldn't that acronym be PRO? Also, a proc doesn't have to be random.

But as Alex implies, etymology doesn't matter as long as you know what it means now.

It's processing. This is the way we always used even in the early 1980s. I remember even using the term in PnP games. The question always came up, "what are the odds of X ability (climbing a wall etc) processing?". I have honestly never heard of procedure before; it makes no contextual sense. And as for it being an acronym, that has all the silliness of post-hoc artificiality.

Paladins

Rely

On

Chance

"Proc" = "Procreate"