Naming Fourth Edition

[TwinBahamut]

A wild, faerie plane? The Otherworld.
The descendents of dragons? Dragonborn is fine. Dragonkin is also good.
The plane where dead souls go? The Netherworld.
The fey inhabitants of the Feywild? Faeries. Maybe Elves.

Simple works. It is when you start trying to sound fancy or start making stuff up that it starts coming off wrong.

 

[Rechan]

Someone mentioned in another thread that Hasbro basically wants names that can be owned/associated with D&D, rather than traditional English words (I.e. tiefling instead of cambion).

Any truth to that?

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Someone mentioned in another thread that Hasbro basically wants names that can be owned/associated with D&D, rather than traditional English words (I.e. tiefling instead of cambion).

Any truth to that?

Well it's true that I said that, but I'll point out here that it's just a theory.

 

[Hussar]

Dunno if there's any truth to the idea of Hasbro pushing this, but, it does make a certain amount of sense. I could easily see WOTC doing this all on their lonesome really. After all, pretty much every D20 publisher that puts out a setting of some sort makes up their own words for elements in the setting.

And, it does make separating OGC elements MUCH easier. After all, Asmodeus is a pretty hard sell to copyright. As is, say, Faerie. But, Feywild, now that's going to be WOTC IP and very easy to protect.

 

[Wormwood]

Faerie
Draconians
Shadowlands
Fey

*shrug*

 

[Lanefan]

1. Arborea, or Etherea, or The Motherforest, or...there's so many!
2. The descendents of dragons are called, well, dragons. The descendents of dragons mixed with something else could be called any number of things; Draconians works for me.
3. Niflheim or Valhalla. Hades or Elesyium. Hell or Heaven or Limbo. The lich's living room. They go all over the place!
4. Sprites, pixies, nixies, elves, dryads, sylphs, faeries, etc. All of these and more; as one assumes there'll be more than one type of creature native to the place....

Lanefan

 

[Rechan]

So, New challenge:

Can you come up with names that have not been used previously in anything? As in, not in mythology, and not in other works?

So no Hades, no Shadowlands (Exalted), no Draconians (Dragonlance). Come up with New Words for them, not old ones that are public domain.

 

[Elphilm]

Can you come up with names that have not been used previously in anything?

Well, the 4E design team has already done that. I don't really have a problem with the names - I would only change them to something nicked from world mythology for my own campaign setting because of the resonance mythological names often provide. However, if the goal is to come up with original, copyrightable names, Feywild and the others are fine enough with me.

 

[Scarbonac]

Dupont Circle
Irving
The Morgue
The Homeless

 

[wedgeski]

I must admit I take a kind of twisted pleasure at these 'well what would *you* call it..?' threads, because without fail there are hardly any suggestions that are not:-

1. Strongly associated with another product or line.
2. Ripped off from other mythological or fictional sources.
3. Awful.

There have been a couple of gems suggested over the months but on the whole I would say that WotC's names remain at the top of the pile... for me at least!