arscott
First Post
But while it's perfectly common to see someone named Smith or Miller, try finding people named Ironhammer or Grainsmasher.
Owlbear, despite the slights it's seen on these threads, is actually a great name. Someone who's never seen a picture of an owlbear would nevertheless imagine something pretty close, just on the strength of the name. Similarly, a gaming group who's never heard of an owlbear is given the monster's description, but no name, will probably wind up calling the monster an owlbear (or a bear-owl) by the end of the combat. But had the 4e team invented the owlbear, you can bet it'd be called a featherclaw rager instead.
4e has fairly distinctive naming conventions, and they consistently produce bad names. The problem, as I see it, is threefold:
1) Focus on the game-important features of a creature.
The 4e name for a stegosaurus is "Bloodspike Behemoth". But take a look at the stegosaurus for a moment. Who, looking at a stegosaurus with the gigantic plates on its back, would decide to name it after the tailspikes? Those greek-loving 19th century biologists decided to call it "armored roof lizard" instead. But there's no "hit character with back plates" power, so a much more impressive aspect of the creature is ignored in favor of its weaponry. The word Greyhawk betrays no creativity. After all, there a plenty of grey hawks in the world. The creativity comes when someone chose to name a castle, a city, and ultimately a campaign setting after a bird. Nobody said "hey, shouldn't the name of this ruined castle emphasize the nature of the death cult that the PCs will encounter within?" Nobody said "This city is supposed to be our player's home base. Should the name emphasize it's safe and homey nature"?
2) Overdosing on Cool
Sorrowsworn Soulripper. There are a lot of cool words in that name. The problem is, these words are cool because they invoke concepts and images in our minds. In this combination, the invoked concepts become meaningless--When I hear sorrowsworn, it invokes the concept of tragic duty. Perhaps a sorrowsworn does terrible things for noble reasons, or toils in penance for some past wrong. Soulripper, on the other hand, invokes something that goes past the material world to attack a creature's very soul--and with a word like 'rip' I imagine the attack is intentionally painful. But the concept of tragic duty combines poorly with a creature that excels in psychic torture. The words in the name become meaningless.
3) Improper adherence to form.
Deathrattle is a great and evocative name for a snake. Calling it a deathrattle viper instead only detracts from it. Feywild and Shadowfell are a thousand times cooler than "plane of faerie" and "plane of shadow". But feydark and shadowdark are laughably bad. The fact that you can combine words in a slightly different way to get the much superior underwild and underfell reveals how little thought went into those names. The designers have established a pattern of names that doesn't always give the greatest results. And now that the pattern is established, it's actually killing the creativity that exists.
