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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 5220312" data-attributes="member: 58416">While it's an old book, Ultimate NPC by Mongoose Publishing is good.<a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61x8WLoHu3L._SL500_AA300_.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-NPCs-Supplementary-Rulebook-XIII/dp/1904854109&usg=__gbHsi4AkBMhTraPl0eCE-KJ_m2o=&h=300&w=300&sz=30&hl=en&start=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=In_y-3FyNx2X6M:&tbnh=116&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dultimate%2Bnpc%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox%26tbs%3Disch:1" target="_blank">Google Image Result for http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61x8WLoHu3L._SL500_AA300_.jpg</a>   Aside from that, I usually just make up names.  For a list of race names, I usually do decide upon common themes in the culture's names as well as what sort of sounds I want those names to have.  Other times, for a villain or a hero (or even possibly a race name) I will consider what (if anything) that race/hero/villain is supposed to embody, and I'll base the name on that. An easy example is a race I created for one of my GURPS campaigns.   Due to a divine curse, the whole race has the Skinny disadvantage; they appear sickly and emaciated.  I played around with the word 'emaciated' for a little bit, and I came up with Maciati as their racial name.  Sometimes I will mix and match word parts from different languages too. There are also times when keeping things simple is best.  Some of the most famous D&D iconic character names are jokes or plays on words if you actually sit and look at the name for a little bit.  Cigam the wizard is an example; Melf the male elf is a good one too.   For town names I sometimes try to scramble the letters from a place I know and see what I can come up with.  In one of my campaigns, one of the cities is Taloona.  Taloona came out of a city near where I live: Altoona.   Town names is also a place where simple also works well; even in many real life languages, place names are often little more than a description of the place.  In one of the games I've ran, Stunekaven (derived from Stone Haven) was a village built into a natural formation of rocks which made a good natural city wall for the people who lived there.  Words for 'town' and 'settlement' are also popular as parts of town names in many settings; it's the reason why there are so many Dales in Forgotten Realms.</blockquote>

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