nosig wrote:
having worked with people in real life with names that have caused me concern using in public.... I find this entire line of discussion silly.
When I glance up from the mod that I am running, that the Coordinator gave me 5 minutes ago, that I played months ago and while I am speed reading the summary for, and I look for table tents to see what I've got at my table. I see 5 players - 4 with tents (this is a very well prepared table - I average about 20% table tents).
1) "Sam - Human Fighter" (a smudged number marked out a few times that I think is a 6) "Little Dude with a Big Sword" and an anime picture of a character with a sword bigger than him.
2) "Mortavish Lollenthal Ratavinsky the 3rd" and a lot of discription of a gnome who I think might be a rogue.
3) "Natasha - Dancer of the Northlands" scribbled on a folded 3x5 index card.
4) "Quwett'chrn'tkkw* - Female Human (Mwangi)" and a discription involving facial scars, feathers and bone piercings. *The name needs to be pronounced with a tounge pop at the end.
I now try to twist my poor dyslexic mouth around names in the module that I have only heard once months ago... and I wonder, why can't we have names that I've heard before? That I can pronounce?
If you really want to enforce some "rules" on names - There should be COMMON first names - you know, by culture and religion and location. This would give me a chance to learn how to pronounce them. After all, how many Johns do you know?
How about a contact named Irorigift, cause he was the gift from Irori (at least his mom thought so). or an underworld contact named Thug... or Whitey cause he has white hair.
Oh, and in the list of names above, the only one from fantasy lit. was Sam - he was named after Samwise Gamgi.
I named my character after a common dwarf name and stuck an n on the n of it so it was a variant and combined two things dwarves would know a lot about roots and beards.
