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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 6100160" data-attributes="member: 3887">My advice would be to relax and have fun. Try to create NPC names that don't lend themselves to mockery and you practically guarantee the players will find a dozen ways to mock them inside of 10 minutes. Shoot for names with gravitas and more likely than not shoot yourself in the foot, err, nomenclature. I've become a big fan of word names, names ripped off from real-world cultures, sometime modified, sometimes not, and names otherwise stolen from sources outside my own head. In my experience, it's worse to create names that sound too same-y, which is a big risk if you try to do all the name-creation yourself. The world sounds as small as the DM's imagination. Borrowing freely from the wider world, real and fictional, helps mitigate that.I've found themes help. In the old homebrew I'm dusting off for a new Pathfinder campaign, the city of Narayan most names are bad French, bad Hindi, or a mix of bad French and bad Hindi. This is to give the names a particular and hopefully memorable sound, and to suggest the cities history; the original, ancient culture (Hindu-ish) and the barbarian culture that sacked then later integrated (French-ish). Here are examples from my campaign-prep. My players may want to stop reading now! <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dame Nathalie Satyajit-Rey, the evil, aristocratic captain of the Bred of Wickedness (who's also an evil priestess known for her Ray spells...). </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">L'Enfer Dame Adjani, La Petit Morte, the Sister of the Seventh Tower (Nathalie's goddess, sort of an advanced succubus).</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Mlle. Opalé Fleur, the mistress of Masion Basé Moi (which is on Rue Prix Nuit, aka Night Price Street). </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Diella "Dilly" Daliwhal, Mlle. Fleur's lazy maid.</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Bagwan-Bernard Bodhi, a very wealthy man.</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ragwan Wrothchilde, aka The Bloody Pike, a very wealthy pirate and politician, head of the Red Sea Party, or Mer Rouge.</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Pavur-Pascal Rajani, aka Pavur of the Golden Door, a famous magician specializing in teleportation. </li> </ul>And some other names:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lustful Curds, a foreigner who serves as Mlle. Fleur's "cheese-wallah". He's also an accomplished cigar-roller. </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Galen Wrecks, a hulking, brutish physician.</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Parzival Lanka, a knight and detective.</li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Kappa Jo, aka Josephat of Miir. He owns a coffee shop, and is, in fact, something of a kappa. </li> </ul> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tumult Gunn, clock-and-firearm maker, owner of the Bold Curiosities Shoppe.</li> </ul>(you may have noticed I don't shy away from puns... but hey, neither did Shakespeare!)</blockquote>

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