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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8823846" data-attributes="member: 29398">If one wants to abbreviate them you can't just use M.&nbsp; And for June-July you can't even just use Ju. (and people and institutions who use numbers for the months should be thrown out of the airlock)But in my game I can write down A 8 1087 and know I mean Auril, as that's the only month in the calendar that starts with A.PCs are confusing enough with their names IME, they don't need any help from the NPCs.&nbsp; A party I played in recently had three (or four?) characters in it whose names all started with &quot;Ar...&quot;.&nbsp; A party I'm in now has 5 characters out of 9 whose names start with B - hence our calling ourselves the B-Team - which is hell for the DM who I know likes using 1-letter abbreviations when he can.More to the original point: giving the NPCs distinctly different names helps keep them sorted during the actual writing process.&nbsp; I'm finding this now with a module I've just got done writing* for my own game: there's a significant NPC named Marc Villanova (a.k.a. Don Marco Villeva) and the boss dragon's name is Villaroto.&nbsp; In play it's no big deal as they come up at different times in the adventures, but in the writing process it was a headache sometimes.* - one of the few I've actually done out in full printable form, I suppose I should throw it up on Dragonsfoot and see if anyone's keen...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 8823846, member: 29398"] If one wants to abbreviate them you can't just use M. And for June-July you can't even just use Ju. (and people and institutions who use numbers for the months should be thrown out of the airlock) But in my game I can write down A 8 1087 and know I mean Auril, as that's the only month in the calendar that starts with A. PCs are confusing enough with their names IME, they don't need any help from the NPCs. A party I played in recently had three (or four?) characters in it whose names all started with "Ar...". A party I'm in now has 5 characters out of 9 whose names start with B - hence our calling ourselves the B-Team - which is hell for the DM who I know likes using 1-letter abbreviations when he can. More to the original point: giving the NPCs distinctly different names helps keep them sorted during the actual writing process. I'm finding this now with a module I've just got done writing* for my own game: there's a significant NPC named Marc Villanova (a.k.a. Don Marco Villeva) and the boss dragon's name is Villaroto. In play it's no big deal as they come up at different times in the adventures, but in the writing process it was a headache sometimes. * - one of the few I've actually done out in full printable form, I suppose I should throw it up on Dragonsfoot and see if anyone's keen... [/QUOTE]

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