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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 2450063" data-attributes="member: 3400">I guess what most makes me lose my suspension of disbelief is too much of the same old thing. If ever orc fights to the death over pocket change or every plot is of earth-shaking significance, it starts to feel more like a cheesy game to me. I can accept certain plots being a big deal, major quests and all. And I can understand all orcs in a particular location fighting to the death because if they don't, they know they're going to be horribly punished in this life AND the next by a head bad guy they fear more than the PCs. But every time and every place and every plot?I also have a problem with puzzles out of nowhere but a Games magazine. Riddles I can accept, as well as curiosities like the Gordian knot. They have legendary pedigrees and fit the milieu. I will say that, whatever the puzzle, the language doesn't bother me. I consider it irrelevant as long as the campaign has some form of lingua franca that makes sense. I can easily make the assumption that the English we are using around the table stands in for that common language.Relatively mundane names don't bother me either. Even Sniffles's examples are excellent names with good and ancient pedigrees that I have no trouble seeing in a pre-modern environment. I might stay away from Jason as it's pretty common now, or find a more old-sounding variant on a current modern like Mathias for Matthew, or insist on using the formal version of Frederick rather than Freddy. I actually have more trouble with the torturously coined names you often see in gaming with excesses of Ns, Ys, and Es at the end that all sound like they're trying to sound either Celtic or elven or totally absurd. Gygaxian names drive me the battiest. Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter, yeah, right.  If the name doesn't feel natural to me, I'll going to have a harder time suspending my disbelief. In an online game I'm playing now, we've been hired by a gnome named Bamfiddle Ankleclicker. My character, by comparison, is a mundanely named Geoffrey of Verbobonc. I know which one I can say out loud with a straight face.</blockquote>

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