#168: The Best Names for NPCs
doctors hate this one weird trick for naming your characters in a way that makes things simpler but also more interesting
I. Dear Reader,
I’ve been a playing a lot of games recently where the players’ characters and many NPCs are all part of the same organization. This could be a pastoral community, a military unit, a corporation, a crew, and so on. And I started to use a naming convention that is both easy, very flavourful, and a lot of fun.
Basically, everyone uses relevant, coherent nicknames.
Let me explain. These are all groups or communities of some kind and so everyone knows each other. So no one needs to use their full name. They use nicknames. Nicknames that they didn’t choose. Nicknames that were bestowed on them. Maybe they’ve been a part of this group since they were young. Maybe they joined recently but have a reason for keeping their real name private. Regardless, in this group, everyone’s got a nickname.
And these nicknames have a convention. My go-to naming convention is common nouns or verbs. Some might have “cool names” like Razor. Some might have funny names like Potato Chip but if its a joke, it’s a joke for the characters in the game too. But most have normal ordinary words for names. Words like Barrel or Biscuit. This, for me, is simpler to do than coming up with more, authentic, real-sounding names. (Just think of whatever earworm is in your head and you’ll get a bunch of great names - like uhm, Bucket and Mop, an iconic duo from the town of... what, it’s a good song)
But it’s not just simple, it’s also worldbuilding. All of these characters have their nicknames for a reason. There could be a character called Mumbles because they mumble a lot. But also, there could be a character called Mumbles because they talk really well. The first is one kind of a nickname and the second is another, funnier kind. Is this a good world-building and easy characterization? Yes. Does this make their names easier to remember? Also, yes!
If the names sound too simple to your ear, add an adjective. Need names for pirates? Well, that’s Greenplank and Oldmast. Why are they called that? Well you tell me…
Yours nomenclaturely,
Thomas
II. Media of the Week
On the latest Design Doc, Hannah and Evan talk about Questlandia 2, the game that was the initial reason they started the podcast and where their interests currently lie. Like so many of their episodes, this one is also an honest and vulnerable look at what game design feels like on a timeline of days, months, and years.
A flipthrough of co-host of the Vintage RPG podcast, Stu Horvath’s new book of RPG history. It’s called Monsters, Aliens and Holes In The Ground and seems to be pretty interesting.
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III. Links of the Week
Articles
On Mazirian’s Garden, a new type of magic for a naval society including a kind of necromancy that works on ships.
Meguey Baker, co-designer of Apocalypse World, talks about mortality, why we might include it in games, and why we want to play with it.
S John Ross, designer of Risus, has this term he keeps throwing around called “high trust trad”. As far as I know, he’s the only using it. This is a post that tries to understand what the term means and explores this alternate stream of trad adventure writing that isn’t as popular anymore.
Josh Hittie publishes a design dive into his NSR-ish game about exploring an absurdly huge space, Deathgrind!!Megastructure.
On the Mindstorm blog, a fun post about using seasonal cartoon favourite Over the Garden Wall as an inspiration for adventure design.
Alice is Missing is one of those games that has gotten a lot of rave reviews. This one from Jack Edward’s newsletter is an interesting counterpoint with a lot of interesting exploration of what the game is doing and not doing.
Graham Walmsley talks about what dice actually do (going beyond success and failure). Good post, and it has diagrams!
Misc
Bundle of tabletop games to raise funds for humanitarian aid in Gaza. Notable games include Beam Saber, Godkiller, Monster Care Squad and more.
November has a couple different community events happening:
There’s National Game Dev Month (inspired by NaNoWriMo) where you design a game over the month.
The unofficial Powered by the Apocalypse discord is organizing a “make a move” event over the course of the month.
You know the classic “talk to your players” or “get a new group” advice? There’s a flowchart I’ve somehow missed that illustrates it (original link).
IV. Small Ads
All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.
Play out your own found footage horror experience with Don’t Play This Game. A legacy solo RPG of handcrafted horror. Back the Kickstarter’s final week here.
Tiny Library: Modern Fantasy is a deck of 51 single-card RPG fragments from 51 different creators. That's a huge amount of diversity and pure creativity on the tabletop.
Planar Compass issue 3 is an Old-School Essentials zine that takes you to the plane of Law and Time. Featuring new classes, spells, monsters, dungeons, and more!
This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.
Arkham Gazette, a magazine of supplemental material for Call of Cthulhu, from Sentinel Hill Press
Apocalypse roleplaying via Palladium with a huge bundle of sourcebooks
Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!
S John Ross is such a great designer. The concept of high and low trust is very useful and more people should know about it.