Who cares about Otiluke, Mordenkainen, Rary and whatever geezer names they trot out.

[Herschel]

This is an issue with D&D Next that I don't know the design team has even looked at in any major way. In the latest survey, they spammed out all these old spell names, many with names of "some old Wizard or something" attached. I've been around longer than the game and they don't even mean much to me any more. What are they supposed to mean to newer players?

Unless your game is stuck in a chronostational Greyhawk, they're either all dead and stories fading, some names people talk about or newer players may never have even heard of them.

Yeah, Mordenkainen is basically Gary's Elminster/Mary Sue and most of them are in the same vein, but if they're going to trot that stuff out again then make it evocative. Otherwise they may as well call it "Jim's Floating Disk".

A stand-alone, evergreen product would be cool, but probably not a good idea. Sidebars would be immediate and right in the new PHB, but could take up a whole lot of already tight print space. I'm not sure how they should do it but I do feel something should be done if they're going to use those names. Tell us who Tenser and Bigby were, don't leave it as just ways to make spell names longer.

Thoughts?

 

[CAFRedblade]

The thing is, those names for those characters' spells came first.

It's like if a scientist discovers a new species, or element, they name it, or the item gets named after them.

All those names are iconic in a general sense at this point.

Yes you could name Tenser's Floating Disc spell to just Floating Disc,
but it's not as evocative (to me) even if I've never played in Greyhawk.

Even if you never come across those wizards in your campaign, or rule they are all long dead, they were the first to create those particular spells. Perhaps one day your Wizard will develop a new spell which will carry on his name long after he is dead....

And you can easily change the name to something appropriate for your campaign setting...

 

[darkseraphim]

Why don't we just call the spell Disc? The Floating part is just as redundant as Tenser.

(a little grognard sarcasm to brighten everyone's day)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I love these spell names. They create an implied world, where these names can mean something. What exactly can be up to the DM.

But hey, who cares about Schrödinger's Cat, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Newton's Law, Euler's Number, the Pythagorean theorem, Einstein's relativity theory, Hawking Radiation or Einstein-Rosen Bridges...

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

They are the spell equivalent of Bell's Theorem, Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, or the Fermi Paradox.

EDIT: everybody appears to have the idea...

 

[El Mahdi]

Who cares about them? I Do. I like them, and I completely disagree with the OP.

New Players may not know those names, but it can give them a feeling of depth and history to the game...a sense that there's layers of things for them to discover. It also opens up the possibility (group and campaign dependent) that they may have a spell named after their character someday. And that's Cool!

IMO they're a plus, not a negative. But if one doesn't like them, one can simply ignore the character names.

They're an iconic part of the game for me, and add depth to my games even when I'm not using Greyhawk (which I mostly don't). I think they should stay.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Because every world should have someone called 'Medium' Rary, and a Male Elf called Melf? I'd almost prefer renaming every Mordaniken's spell in Dark Sun after one of the Sorceror Kings and in the Realms after Elminster.

Either that or rename the sorceror kings Mordaniken, Melf, Tenser, and Bigby - and then go beat them up at epic level.

 

[Umbran]

What are they supposed to mean to newer players?

Exactly what they meant to us when we first picked up the game - that there's a history and setting behind those spells, and thereby to the practice of magic in the world. Evoking that feeling of history can be important to the adoption of the game.

You don't need to be "chronostationary" for those names to have meaning in the world. Today, we still reference the names of Newton, Mendel, Darwin, and Einstein, because they are part of history. Being long dead is no barrier to the reference.

 

[El Mahdi]

...But hey, who cares about Schrödinger's Cat, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Newton's Law, Euler's Number, the Pythagorean theorem, Einstein's relativity theory, Hawking Radiation or Einstein-Rosen Bridges...

And don't ignore Gianni Vandehey's principle of entropic inversion...



(here for those that don't know the reference)

 

[TwinBahamut]

I love these spell names. They create an implied world, where these names can mean something. What exactly can be up to the DM.

But hey, who cares about Schrödinger's Cat, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Newton's Law, Euler's Number, the Pythagorean theorem, Einstein's relativity theory, Hawking Radiation or Einstein-Rosen Bridges...

They are the spell equivalent of Bell's Theorem, Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, or the Fermi Paradox.

EDIT: everybody appears to have the idea...

The difference here is that real world scientists are real people who have actually done something to deserve the respect, and that the use of their names is done to avoid confusion. D&D wizards are not real, not even in the context of the history of most published campaign settings, and their names are not needed to distinguish spells.

Does it matter if a spell is "Melf's Acid Arrow" if there is no other thing in the game called "Acid Arrow"? It doesn't do a thing to add to clarity. On the other hand, Euler's Number or the Pythagorean theorem are rather important to clarifying which number or theorem is being discussed...

Still, I'm not a fan of this style of naming spells after random wizards simply because I've never cared about them at all. When I first started playing with 3E I didn't have a clue who they were, the game never even briefly explained who they were, and I just thought their names were weird and out-of-place. Nothing over the last several years has changed that initial opinion.