An observation...JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett and Gary Gygax are giants of fantasy, and they all have something in common.
Tolkien: Started with an elven language, made world and story from that. Character names, history and songs echo it.
Pratchett: Most character and place names are thinly veiled allusions or puns.
Rowling: Latin buff, and also likes her anagrams, puns and similes for her names. e.g. What's In a Name? -- The Guide to Harry Potter Name Etymology
Gygax: Seemingly a thesaurus, anagram, cant and mythology buff in sourcing his names and concepts.
They also have something else in common: mindblowing popularity. I don't think that this is a coincidence. A concensus technique in songwriting is to start with the name. It's a very powerful weapon in the writer's symbolic arsenal.
Next edition, if there is one, I'd like to see D&D move away from the overt (e.g. Shadowfell, Feywild, Warmage etc.) and the trademarkable-yet-contrived (e.g. eladrin, wilden etc.) back to the resonant and unconciously suggestive cyphers and dusty old words in the core implied setting. Your thoughts?
Tolkien: Started with an elven language, made world and story from that. Character names, history and songs echo it.
Pratchett: Most character and place names are thinly veiled allusions or puns.
Rowling: Latin buff, and also likes her anagrams, puns and similes for her names. e.g. What's In a Name? -- The Guide to Harry Potter Name Etymology
Gygax: Seemingly a thesaurus, anagram, cant and mythology buff in sourcing his names and concepts.
They also have something else in common: mindblowing popularity. I don't think that this is a coincidence. A concensus technique in songwriting is to start with the name. It's a very powerful weapon in the writer's symbolic arsenal.
Next edition, if there is one, I'd like to see D&D move away from the overt (e.g. Shadowfell, Feywild, Warmage etc.) and the trademarkable-yet-contrived (e.g. eladrin, wilden etc.) back to the resonant and unconciously suggestive cyphers and dusty old words in the core implied setting. Your thoughts?
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