Penny Arcade on 4e Naming Conventions

[ferratus]

I don't think I'll go as far as a couple of commentators that the cosmology isn't as good as in previous incarnations of D&D. I definitely think it is a more useful and more interesting cosmology than the Great Wheel and/or Planescape.

However, there are a couple stinkers in there and the "Shadowdark" and "Feydark" are definately stinkers as concepts go. They don't really add anything to the setting that the regular Underdark can't provide, and the names are just goofy.

I think the biggest key that this was a mistake is that they haven't really shown us monsters or locations based around these paralell underdarks. They just aren't very interesting. I'm definately going to use "Tartarus" (the dwelling place of epic immortals who fell prey to death and trapped by the Raven Queen) as the new name for the realm below the Shadowfell.
The Feydark I'll just not bother to mention.

 

[rounser]

Darkbad

Sounds like Strongbad's plane. You go there if you want him to draw a dragon.

Some other suggestions:
Nastybleak
Reallyawfulland
Naughtywrong
Yuckyfar
Omgwtfbbq

 

[WhatGravitas]

However, there are a couple stinkers in there and the "Shadowdark" and "Feydark" are definately stinkers as concepts go. They don't really add anything to the setting that the regular Underdark can't provide, and the names are just goofy.

Which is - for me - an odd thing, because of the pretty awesome name drops in the power list for the warlock.

A lot of 4E fluff sounds like they tried to give it a lot of flavour, probably too much ("Golden Wyvern Adept"), realised the backlash and then pulled back - hard. To the point of going into the opposite direction.

Add in the (IIRC) stated goal of less latin-derived names... and you get Darkbad.

Cheers, LT.

 

[The_Fan]

Man, I guess we should have gone with Underfell and Underwild after all...


(Note: This is a joke. These names were never on the table (as far as I know).)

I wonder what, pray tell, were the proposed alternatives?

Might give some a bit of perspective.

 

[Wormwood]

The old ones are crap, too, it's just we're used to them.

Precisely.

Even disregarding the lame portmanteaus of yesteryear, some people actually believe that alphabet soup stupidity like "Iggwilv" and "Zuggtmoy" are somehow *superior* to the lame crap we get today.

Clarke's Law applies to every edition of this game.

 

[Primal]

Oh, Gary, you brought so much eloquence to the game, and improved the vocabulary of so many young people through three decades of gaming. Now your successors stumble through the language like drunken rhinos. They slap together campy, juvenile portmanteaus like they had never seen a thesaurus or even read anything more challenging than Weis and Hickman.

In memoriam: literacy, evocative language, and taste.

I have been a firm supporter of 4th edition since its release, but one thing is clear: the people who wrote this game are game designers, not writers. I shudder to think that many of these people also write fantasy novels, if this is the best they can do. Of course, if it's not the best they can do, why did they publish it?

Hear hear! This almost brought a tear to my eye... let's toast to the demise of literary aspirations of all the drunken rhinos!

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Precisely.

Even disregarding the lame portmanteaus of yesteryear, some people actually believe that alphabet soup stupidity like "Iggwilv" and "Zuggtmoy" are somehow *superior* to the lame crap we get today.

For the record, I'm not one of those people. Especially with regards to Iggwilv. The hell is up with that one?

There is some good stuff in the WotC books. For example, I liked the 3e tome of magic for fluff. It was consistent, evocative, and--most importantly--not stupid. The binder fluff was particularly good, and I liked the feel of most of the shadowcaster power names.

I also appreciated some of the fluff they stuck in various places in the splatbooks. Complete Arcane, for example, had stuff like Black Lore of Moil, which was not the greatest feat ever, but did provide an interesting hook. Who or was was Moil? Why would a character unearth this kind of knowledge? However, they ruined it later on by explaining the name--although I can't remember where.

Part of the problem with Golden Wyvern Adept was that they obviously didn't want to just leave it at the name of the power. There was a whole Golden Wyvern Thing sitting there connecting these power names. Unlike Black Lore of Moil, which could refer to any number of things that you could plug into a campaign, the Golden Wyverns were something very specific, that you could use or throw away, but would be difficult to adapt. Much better to just come up with a good name that suggests something that has the potential to be cool, and let people come up with the cool thing on their own. Perhaps hint at what that cool thing is, but don't make it canon.

World of Darkness--a setting known for its fluff--was always at its best when it didn't spell stuff out. Once it started to explain the backstory in detail was when it lost me. I think there's a lesson to be learned there. Don't abandon the idea of fluff altogether in favour of toss-off names like The ShadowDark. But don't tell the whole story behind the name either.

 

[Dedekind]

I go back and forth on the names. My favorite one to laugh at so far is Enduring Wallop (a feat) and Rub Dirt On It (a power). Someone used Dark Moon Revenge, or something for their warlock the other night and we all started to giggle.

 

[pawsplay]

Am I the only one that remembers the ruckus that "Golden Wyvern Adept" caused?

People cried out about the "crap fluff" and "telling me what is in my setting".

Now D&D 4 gets criticized for being too generic?

Shadowdark implies that it is both shadowy... and dark, which we might have guessed from the fact that it is dark. What else do we know about it? Uh...

Greyhawk implies an animal, and also assigns a color to it. We don't automatically know what it means, but it sounds cool, and it's obviously intended to be memorable.

Golden Wyvern Adept... something about adepts associated with golden wyverns. I don't know what it is, but it's definitely not something in my campaign world. I suppose it would be all right as a name, in a specific setting, if the part about golden wyverns seemed to be about something. But golden is usually associated with things that are regal, superior, or pure, and wyverns are nasty, two-legged predators with stinger tails. Golden Wyverns might be some kind of assassin cult or something, but really sounds like it might be a debauched tavern.

Now imagine it was Golden Dragon Adept, and the power you gained suggested something about golden dragons (which tend to be wise, powerful, and benevolent, and masters of both fire and water). No problem there.

A few things that make a name potentially bad:
- If it's not clear what the second word adds to the first word
- If there is some ambiguity about what modifies what
- If it sounds stupid
- If it is not evocative

Examples of bad:
Deathjump Spider (is it suicidal?)
Shadowdark (Darkshadow?)
Feydark (ok, it's fey-related and dark, but where or what is it?)

Examples of good:
Warforged (war sounds good; forged sounds like it involves metal)
Underdark (subterranean and very deep down, where it's dark)
Green Dragon Inn (it's an inn, with a sign of a green dragon over it)
Waterdeep (it's a deep with water in it; we don't know the significance, but it sounds like a place name)

 

[Umbran]

Clarke's Law applies to every edition of this game.

Any sufficiently arbitrary name is indistinguishable from magic?

I think you might mean Sturgeon's Law.