Humor Penny Arcade on 4e Naming Conventions

[Lakashim]

Am I the only one that remembers the ruckus that "Golden Wyvern Adept" caused?

People cried out about the "crap fluff" and "telling me what is in my setting".

Now D&D 4 gets criticized for being too generic?

[underthumb]

Originally Posted by Tigerbunny

There's always something new and different to complain about, isn't there?

Generic names in the published rules are generic ON PURPOSE. So that you will come up with your OWN material instead of worshipping at the altar of someone else's creativity.

Treating uninspired, generic writing as a kind of virtue is really quite odd. I encourage you to read (what I take to be) awesome counter examples, such as Planescape, if you have not already done so. I think there's more to inspired, original writing than creating cannon-worshiping geeks and such.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Originally Posted by Lakashim

Am I the only one that remembers the ruckus that "Golden Wyvern Adept" caused?

People cried out about the "crap fluff" and "telling me what is in my setting".

Now D&D 4 gets criticized for being too generic?

Golden Wyvern Adept was crap fluff. Shadowdark is crap fluff. It's not being criticized for being too generic. It's being criticized for containing crap fluff.

edit: ...and one might notice that it contains crap fluff despite our outcry, with the specific offences removed. They took out the crap fluff we complained about, but left in the crap fluff we didn't know about, without understanding the general point that we don't want any crap fluff at all.

[Oni]

Darkbad

I like that.

Sounds like the sort of place a tribe of lost children would warn you about.

[MichaelSomething]

Originally Posted by Lonely Tylenol

Golden Wyvern Adept was crap fluff. Shadowdark is crap fluff. It's not being criticized for being too generic. It's being criticized for containing crap fluff.

edit: ...and one might notice that it contains crap fluff despite our outcry, with the specific offences removed. They took out the crap fluff we complained about, but left in the crap fluff we didn't know about, without understanding the general point that we don't want any crap fluff at all.

What's the difference between crap fluff and good fluff? Is it objective or subjective? Can you list some example of good fluff for comparsion?

[Lonely Tylenol]

Originally Posted by MichaelSomething

What's the difference between crap fluff and good fluff?

Well, a good start for a working definition might be that crap fluff is anything that a pair of satirists come up with in order to construct the worst possible name for a location in a fantasy setting.

That WotC hit that nail squarely on the head is quite a vindication for those of us who have been criticizing their ability to construct proper nouns for the last few years.

Can you list some example of good fluff for comparsion?

Walking into the obvious trap, how about:
Anything by Ari Marmell, most of Planescape, a decent amount of the Storyteller games, a lot of the stuff from the early D&D modules and supplements--particularly the stuff that has remained in the general consciousness over the years.

A good way to tell if something is good is to look at whether it has stood the test of time. Good versus bad is not an objective measure, but rather the aggregate of the community's subjective opinions. However, it's not that difficult to get a grasp of whether a given idea is going to work well, based on what has worked in the past.

With respect to WotC's NounAdjective naming conventions, the only successful example from the past that I can remember is the Underdark, but that seems to be an isolated case. Indeed, the NounAdjective naming convention has generated so many ill-conceived names for so many writers over the years that Penny Arcade predicted (successfully) that its readers would understand what they were parodying with the "Further Songs of Sorcelation" series. I think that it's telling that WotC not only did not avoid NounAdjective names like the plague, but embraced them as company policy, apparently not aware of the negative public attitude toward them that Penny Arcade has capitalized on.

[AlexS]

NounAdjective names are crap, but the main difference between Shadowdark and Feywild as opposed to Underdark, Waterdeep or Greyhawk is their relative age. The old ones are crap, too, it's just we're used to them.

Of course, it could be worse- they could've thrown together a random collection of letters to make pseudo-Tolkien names for places. Then we'd be stuck with even more pronunciation debates.

[WotC_Logan]

Man, I guess we should have gone with Underfell and Underwild after all...


(Note: This is a joke. These names were never on the table (as far as I know).)

[Kamikaze Midget]

Now D&D 4 gets criticized for being too generic?

No, it gets criticized for sounding dumb.

I mean, the "genericness" of the words is part of the reason it sounds dumb. Part of the beauty of Gygaxian prose was that the man obviously owned a friggin' thesaurus. Instead of "Shadowdark" you could have used something like "Umbral Pits" or "The Cimmerian Gulf" or "Crepuscular Warrens," or, I dunno, use a thesaurus.

"Golden Wyvern Adept" has the exact opposite problem in that it has no relation to any shared reality.

"Feydark" doesn't try hard enough; "Golden Wyvern Adept" tries too hard. There is a middle ground.

[Fallen Seraph]

I sorta like hyper-generic fluff names. Since it means that it is just that much easier to warp into something else, it is a nice simple base to build upon.

Where I would want better fluff names is in setting books, where I am specifically buying it for tools to build that specific world as I wish it to be.

[ferratus]

I don't think I'll go as far as a couple of commentators that the cosmology isn't as good as in previous incarnations of D&D. I definitely think it is a more useful and more interesting cosmology than the Great Wheel and/or Planescape.

However, there are a couple stinkers in there and the "Shadowdark" and "Feydark" are definately stinkers as concepts go. They don't really add anything to the setting that the regular Underdark can't provide, and the names are just goofy.

I think the biggest key that this was a mistake is that they haven't really shown us monsters or locations based around these paralell underdarks. They just aren't very interesting. I'm definately going to use "Tartarus" (the dwelling place of epic immortals who fell prey to death and trapped by the Raven Queen) as the new name for the realm below the Shadowfell.
The Feydark I'll just not bother to mention.

[rounser]

Darkbad

Sounds like Strongbad's plane. You go there if you want him to draw a dragon.

Some other suggestions:
Nastybleak
Reallyawfulland
Naughtywrong
Yuckyfar
Omgwtfbbq

[Lord Tirian]

Originally Posted by ferratus

However, there are a couple stinkers in there and the "Shadowdark" and "Feydark" are definately stinkers as concepts go. They don't really add anything to the setting that the regular Underdark can't provide, and the names are just goofy.

Which is - for me - an odd thing, because of the pretty awesome name drops in the power list for the warlock.

A lot of 4E fluff sounds like they tried to give it a lot of flavour, probably too much ("Golden Wyvern Adept"), realised the backlash and then pulled back - hard. To the point of going into the opposite direction.

Add in the (IIRC) stated goal of less latin-derived names... and you get Darkbad.

Cheers, LT.

[The_Fan]

Originally Posted by WotC_Logan

Man, I guess we should have gone with Underfell and Underwild after all...


(Note: This is a joke. These names were never on the table (as far as I know).)

I wonder what, pray tell, were the proposed alternatives?

Might give some a bit of perspective. :P

[Wormwood]

Originally Posted by AlexS

The old ones are crap, too, it's just we're used to them.

Precisely.

Even disregarding the lame portmanteaus of yesteryear, some people actually believe that alphabet soup stupidity like "Iggwilv" and "Zuggtmoy" are somehow *superior* to the lame crap we get today.

Clarke's Law applies to every edition of this game.

[Primal]

Originally Posted by Lonely Tylenol

Oh, Gary, you brought so much eloquence to the game, and improved the vocabulary of so many young people through three decades of gaming. Now your successors stumble through the language like drunken rhinos. They slap together campy, juvenile portmanteaus like they had never seen a thesaurus or even read anything more challenging than Weis and Hickman.

In memoriam: literacy, evocative language, and taste.

I have been a firm supporter of 4th edition since its release, but one thing is clear: the people who wrote this game are game designers, not writers. I shudder to think that many of these people also write fantasy novels, if this is the best they can do. Of course, if it's not the best they can do, why did they publish it?

Hear hear! This almost brought a tear to my eye... let's toast to the demise of literary aspirations of all the drunken rhinos!

[Lonely Tylenol]

Originally Posted by Wormwood

Precisely.

Even disregarding the lame portmanteaus of yesteryear, some people actually believe that alphabet soup stupidity like "Iggwilv" and "Zuggtmoy" are somehow *superior* to the lame crap we get today.

For the record, I'm not one of those people. Especially with regards to Iggwilv. The hell is up with that one?

There is some good stuff in the WotC books. For example, I liked the 3e tome of magic for fluff. It was consistent, evocative, and--most importantly--not stupid. The binder fluff was particularly good, and I liked the feel of most of the shadowcaster power names.

I also appreciated some of the fluff they stuck in various places in the splatbooks. Complete Arcane, for example, had stuff like Black Lore of Moil, which was not the greatest feat ever, but did provide an interesting hook. Who or was was Moil? Why would a character unearth this kind of knowledge? However, they ruined it later on by explaining the name--although I can't remember where.

Part of the problem with Golden Wyvern Adept was that they obviously didn't want to just leave it at the name of the power. There was a whole Golden Wyvern Thing sitting there connecting these power names. Unlike Black Lore of Moil, which could refer to any number of things that you could plug into a campaign, the Golden Wyverns were something very specific, that you could use or throw away, but would be difficult to adapt. Much better to just come up with a good name that suggests something that has the potential to be cool, and let people come up with the cool thing on their own. Perhaps hint at what that cool thing is, but don't make it canon.

World of Darkness--a setting known for its fluff--was always at its best when it didn't spell stuff out. Once it started to explain the backstory in detail was when it lost me. I think there's a lesson to be learned there. Don't abandon the idea of fluff altogether in favour of toss-off names like The ShadowDark. But don't tell the whole story behind the name either.

[Dedekind]

I go back and forth on the names. My favorite one to laugh at so far is Enduring Wallop (a feat) and Rub Dirt On It (a power). Someone used Dark Moon Revenge, or something for their warlock the other night and we all started to giggle.

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by Lakashim

Am I the only one that remembers the ruckus that "Golden Wyvern Adept" caused?

People cried out about the "crap fluff" and "telling me what is in my setting".

Now D&D 4 gets criticized for being too generic?

Shadowdark implies that it is both shadowy... and dark, which we might have guessed from the fact that it is dark. What else do we know about it? Uh...

Greyhawk implies an animal, and also assigns a color to it. We don't automatically know what it means, but it sounds cool, and it's obviously intended to be memorable.

Golden Wyvern Adept... something about adepts associated with golden wyverns. I don't know what it is, but it's definitely not something in my campaign world. I suppose it would be all right as a name, in a specific setting, if the part about golden wyverns seemed to be about something. But golden is usually associated with things that are regal, superior, or pure, and wyverns are nasty, two-legged predators with stinger tails. Golden Wyverns might be some kind of assassin cult or something, but really sounds like it might be a debauched tavern.

Now imagine it was Golden Dragon Adept, and the power you gained suggested something about golden dragons (which tend to be wise, powerful, and benevolent, and masters of both fire and water). No problem there.

A few things that make a name potentially bad:
- If it's not clear what the second word adds to the first word
- If there is some ambiguity about what modifies what
- If it sounds stupid
- If it is not evocative

Examples of bad:
Deathjump Spider (is it suicidal?)
Shadowdark (Darkshadow?)
Feydark (ok, it's fey-related and dark, but where or what is it?)

Examples of good:
Warforged (war sounds good; forged sounds like it involves metal)
Underdark (subterranean and very deep down, where it's dark)
Green Dragon Inn (it's an inn, with a sign of a green dragon over it)
Waterdeep (it's a deep with water in it; we don't know the significance, but it sounds like a place name)

[Umbran]

Originally Posted by Wormwood

Clarke's Law applies to every edition of this game.

Any sufficiently arbitrary name is indistinguishable from magic?

I think you might mean Sturgeon's Law.