Dear 4e, Please Stop with the Horrible Portmanteaus!

[billd91]

Um, you do realize that Rivendell, Blackmoor, and Greyhawk are all portmanteaux?

There's nothing wrong with good portmanteaux, but some moderation is a good idea. In the MM1, there are something like 5 under Archons alone. And when you get to B you find them doing double duty with Warthorn Battlebriars and more.

We used to joke about games in the 1990s being the colon games. There was <name>:<subtitle>. White Wolf was THE colon game company. Now, 4e is the game that brings us oodles of portmanteau-named monsters. It's the Portmanteau Monster game (which sounds like it could be an awesome comedy game from CheapAss Games).

 

[Truth Seeker]

QTF and rep...

I think that bombarding the average player with strange foreign names makes them difficult to remember, whereas regular English words are easier. "Shardmind" is much easier than, say, "Dhalyyp" or something. Especially when you only hear it.

 

[Celebrim]

<---Back from a quick trip to the dictionary.

I don't have a problem with it, if you want these things to sound more exotic, take the root words and translate them into another language.

I heartily approve.

The Stormclaw Scorpion becomes a Szponburza Scorpion...

Szponburza works well enough. Since szp doesn't occur in English, I'd probably happily shorten it to Sponburza.

The Deathrattle Viper can be a Doodrammelaar...

And a 'Doodrammelaar' is simply a better name than 'Deathrattle Viper'. And if we want to get away from the foreign language portmanteau we could change the spelling to something like Dudrammelair.

I think the problem with using American English as a naming convention is that it sounds anachronistic rather than mythic. In English, virtually nothing mythic has a modern English name. Even myths that come out of English culture tend to retain their old or middle english names. Translating into other languages makes the creature sound in the ear (to an English native speaker) more fantastic, legendary, and typical of the way things are named especially if they are occult, esoteric, or cryptic.

 

[avin]

IP protection resulting in horrible uninspiring names.

I'll tell that again: no offense, but I hope that people responsible for 4E fluff are kept far away from this specific task when 5E design starts.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

I wonder if the shift away from generic, to the point names to strangely-specific portmanteaus and orginal names has anything to do with trademarking, specifically, it would be very difficult to trademark "fireball" or "fighter" or "dwarf", but names like "tide of iron" or "swordmage" or "shardmind" might be easier to trademark.

Of course, if that is the reason, then I think its a bit silly--what makes 4e cool, distinctive and popular are the mechanics, which are awesome, not the names, which are stupid. Another game could have a "battlemind" class as well, but if it didn't have nifty 4e mechanics, I doubt anyone would want to play it. And if it *did* mimic those mechanics, but named the class something different like "Precog" or something, that strikes me as a far more serious breach of copyright--the fact that it wasn't actually called something as stupid as "Battlemind" is hardly a mitigating factor.

 

[Rechan]

Yes! Oh, to harken back to the days of the Fighting Man, Magic User, Gelatinous Cube, Owlbear and Darkmantle. Such original and foreign names!

 

[Garnfellow]

I think that bombarding the average player with strange foreign names makes them difficult to remember, whereas regular English words are easier. "Shardmind" is much easier than, say, "Dhalyyp" or something. Especially when you only hear it.

You really think "shardmind" just trips off the tongue and immediately evokes a vivid image to an average player? A totally newbie is going to hear that word and immediately understand what it means?

Seems like a terribly generic and colorless name to me.

Maybe I'm limited, but I wouldn't immediately associate "shardmind" any more with a magical crystal construct people than I would "Dhalvyp."

But that's a little bit of a strawman. All made up names don't have to be gibberish. To people sensitive to the nuances of language, it is possible to create completely made-up words that actually seem to sound and look like what they are meant to evoke. There used to be this guy, Tolkien, who had a real knack for it: Mordor, Sauron, ent, balrog, Lothlórien. And he made up a whole bunch more just like that!

Don't get me wrong: good names are difficult. But crappy portmanteaus are much too easy.

 

[Garnfellow]

Yes! Oh, to harken back to the days of the Fighting Man, Magic User, Gelatinous Cube, Owlbear and Darkmantle. Such original and foreign names!

If a name can't be cool or evocative, it sure as heck ought to at least be utilitarian.

Fighting Man, Magic User, Gelatinous Cube, or Owlbear all might be prosaic, but do you really have any confusion over what any of those terms signify? If not, mission accomplished -- albeit without any flair.

The bad portmanteaus easily fail all three tests. (And for the record, darkmantle is a good example of a bad portmanteau.)

 

[Elbeghast]

My fightbrain is hijacked by multiple mindshards of battlerage, just thinking of all the ridiculous portemanteaux used in the game.

 

[Turtlejay]

I've no problem with a mix, but I think in general we are kind of awash in less creative names anyhow.

Sitting in my local Cold Stone the other night and looking at the names of ice cream, I was kind of wondering what it took to 'normalize' a name. Vanilla ice cream is named vanilla, and we know what that is and what it is referring to. If I were to create a new flavor of ice cream that kind of tasted like flowers and cinnamon, I could either name it Hargrabl ice cream, or more likely, name it something descriptive like Cinnamon Bloom or something.

Go to a restaurant and look at your options. They are discriptive, and even if the word used is nominally new, it is most likely indicative of the dish being referenced. New names in 4e seem to be similarly constructed (see Penny Arcade's cartoon about the Shadowfell for illustration). I'd like to see some new classics. Things like Dragons, Illithids, and Drow all hold meaning to the average D&D player, and it would be cool to have more of those types of things, where the word was not at all indicative of what it refers to.

That being said, I'm not sure I think the battlemind, shardmind, etc stuff isn't as horrible as it is being painted. Better than the ardent, certainly. . .

Jay