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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MonkeyBoy" data-source="post: 425110" data-attributes="member: 1229">Ah yes, getting your hands on a true name.First you (the DM) need to decide who or what will have truenames. This really boils down to; does joe the farmer have a truename? or only the powerful, immortal types. This can drastically change the methods for getting truenames.For instance; joe's truename is unlikely to be recorded in some great grimoire (unless you run a classically mythological game, in which case you might need to go find the Norns to find it out, or similar...), this may mean that joe himself doesn't know his true name - in which case powerful divinations are the way to go.If, on the otherhand, joe and others like him don't have truenames, these can be reserved for mighty beings. Good candidates might then be;Fiends, Devas, Intelligent (old) Undead (Vampires, Liches, Mummys and the like), Dragons, Fey etc.I also include living but effectively immortal mortals (if you can follow the logic; I have very old but not undead characters in my campaign, but they are still mortal, just not really subject to aging...)This can lead to different forms of truename in different cases;For a Fiend or a Deva, they likely have the name they use in front of mortals (essentially a stage name) which will likely be in common. Their truename would then just be their realname, which would be in the appropriate language. You might like to rule that on the Prime, this works as per your rules for truenames, but on their home plain, its just their name... (might add some more flavour?)For Undead and my "preserved" characters, I'd use their truename as simply being their _real_ name. If they're 100s or 1000s of years old, this name could well have passed into the dimmer depths of history, and as they grew in (suypernatural) power, this link to their old, fully mortal days could grant the appropriate power over them...Dragons and Fey I would treat similarly to Fiends and Devas, though its frequently morein keeping with the feel of these beings for it to be a non-mystical power that the name might hold over them. I think back to the old rules for subduing dragons, and can see a "dragon code of honour" which precluded stamping on and then eating someone who had the "courtesy" to address you by your proper title... Similarly the root myths about the Fey are scattered with tales of them being confounded by use of their real names. (of course these are all just variations of the same root theme, so repetition is no great reinforcement).Working from your decisions on the sources and nature of truenames, you can see where they might be found. Probably most interesting is the possibility of the truename of powerful undead (or my preserved characters) being found in "random historical documents", like censuses, diaries of old aquiantances etc.Leads on to interesting plots involving working out just _why_ all these minions of the lich are hunting for the people who found this dull, pointless old book...</blockquote>

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