| Bob the Adventurer | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 17 2007, 05:07 AM (347 Views) | |
| kismetrose | Jan 17 2007, 05:07 AM Post #1 |
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During the times that I've run D&D, I've done my best to use distinctive names; I've tried to give each character a unique name so that they could be told apart. I've also tried ot use fantasy-sounding names that aren't heard much in my neck of the woods. I've shied away from using common, real-life, modern, local names - no Johns, Michaels, etc. But every now and then a name would creep in, like Bill the town guard who came into his own during the Thandell war. When you're running D&D, what kinds of names do you use? What about your players? I use fantasy names in large part to set a mood and to give a certain tone to the game - to set the world where Moclyss the drow wizard lives apart from the world where we live, and to help my players grasp Moclyss' world better. I also use fantasy names to distinguish characters from one another. It's all fine and good when a campaign is new, but my long-running D&D campaign's had a few hundred NPCs run through it. Sometimes the names help me remember things about the NPCs, even if I haven't seen them in a while. |
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| Freston | Jan 17 2007, 10:27 AM Post #2 |
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Guild of Necromancers: Give us your hungry, your sick, your cold
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I've found the perfect solution Kismet
You know this has been a great help to me for quite some time now. I really owe you thanx for that. But even with a list like that the occasional 'regular' name finds his way to an NPC. Also, I have a couple of NPC's with the same name. |
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| DarkElf | Jan 17 2007, 10:59 AM Post #3 |
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Ritual Partaker
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I like to have specific names for my NPCs, specially the important ones. The problem I always have is usually my players want to talk to some random guy walking down the street. Thats when Bob always comes into place. |
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| kismetrose | Jan 17 2007, 01:43 PM Post #4 |
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I'm glad that you like it and that you're able to use it! When I run D&D I grab from that list a lot. I've also been using Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names for some time now, for D&D, Stargate, and Vampire, and it has been awesome. |
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| kismetrose | Jan 17 2007, 01:48 PM Post #5 |
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Ahhhh! I see. It's easy to be caught flat-footed when players try to engage an NPC pretty much on a whim. That happened to me not too long ago. One of my Vampire PCs was trolling for a new servant and she came across this sailor starting to develop arthritis in his hands. I had to come up with a name for him off the top of my head - Henry, not as though there weren't plenty of Henrys in fourteenth century England - and I thought he would be too low-brow for her taste. Not only did she employ him, though, but now he's gotten himself a major part. But here's another question: Do you folks prepare a list of names before a game session? Do you come up with them from inside your head or do you consult a book/web site? |
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| Redisbest | Feb 4 2007, 04:03 PM Post #6 |
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Habitual Offender
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A list of names beforehand sounds like a really good idea. I usually end up naming NPC's something that sounds interesting but that's already in my head- like Hyram, my favorite crazy old man NPC. I named him that because he's acutally a very powerful wizard (he's forgotten that, though) and I didn't want the players to figure him for anything more special than a crazy inkeeper. Right now most of my main players are from your list- even many of the river/lake etc names are pulled from there. Everything else is pretty much named for French words that I pronounce funny. I took Spanish and have not even the vaguest idea of French pronounciation rules, so the variations that occur naturally through my ignorance allow for some interesting variety.
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| kismetrose | Feb 5 2007, 12:00 PM Post #7 |
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Valefor is able to do that really well and in a few moments he's usually able to come up with something interesting, but I can't seem to do that often. I tend to want a certain sound that I just can't generate on my own - like, I want a person to have a high-noble sounding name, or whatever.
Well, I'm glad you're able to use it! I tend to use it when I'm playing games like D&D. Right now I've been having to use other sources since White Wolf stuff tends to use more real-world names.
French pronunciation is a LOT different than Spanish. I'm only able to pronounce French things that I've heard before, or that look like something I've heard before. It's a beautiful language to be sure, but its pronunciation and spelling rules can be quite mysterious. You know what really got me? When I was going to do an Aztecan-style thing for a Stargate game, and I got to looking at the names of the gods. Pronunciation was a wild shot in the dark there, as well as tongue-exercise. |
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| Freston | Feb 6 2007, 05:16 AM Post #8 |
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Guild of Necromancers: Give us your hungry, your sick, your cold
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I usally have a list handy when we play. I write down about 30 names from Kismet's list on a smaller piece of paper that I keep with my other DM stuff. I usally have no clue as how to pronouce them, and seeing how it's influenced by different styles I add some random accent to the names... just whatever comes to mind. English, for the most part.
Justy randomly change the pitch of your voice when pronouncing a vowel. And for te rest you pronounce everything differently than you write it But French is a beautiful language, except that: Je parle toutes les langues, exceptée la langue française parceque c'est une langue très difficile
So is English to a non-native speaker, as whitnessed here But I understand this will be fixed:
That will clear up some difficulties EEC-style:
EDIT: Sorry for the derail... I just followed my train of thougth whilst typing. |
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