The Name Game

I used to get paralyzed when naming characters. Endless worrying about if the name was already in use elsewhere, or wondering if any particular name 'sounded right' — not to mention, my OCD went into overdrive. This quagmire was also exacerbated by my experiences working in the video game industry where decision making can often result in Design By Committee dragging out the process even longer, if it allowed to and should be avoided if at all possible.

My struggles of naming characters would get so bad that I would wait until the very end of the writing process to decide on names. To be clear, this can work, but I believe it is more valuable to develop characters along with their names — it will make the resulting story and characters stronger.

Rather recently I have cobbled together a way to make the process fun, while also serving the vision of the story and characters. I have an extensive collection of reference notes on my observations of the Sword & Sorcery genre, so let's start there. For this particular adventure I'm referencing three main authors and works: Nifft The Lean, by Michael Shea, Conan (series) by Robert E. Howard, and the "Swords" or "Lankhmar" series by Fritz Leiber. Not only are these stories exemplary of the genre, but embody the tone I'm aiming to emulate — this is in no small part due to the apparent influences of the historical Ancient World on their settings. 

Step 1 — Start by simply taking a name from a story you think fits the appropriate tone of the story, or for a stronger result, something that might fit better for the actual character. I gravitate to names that contain flavor, or hints of the character's' actual personality, or traits, but your mileage may vary. For this instance, the character I'm naming is the villain of my story. At a high level, she is a heartbroken sorcerer who is determined to exact revenge on her former lover, and I figure she would be quite spiteful. As a jumping off point, I'll use the character Bêlit from "Queen of the Black Coast", by Howard. My character isn't a pirate, but I like how the name looks, sounds, and feels. This might seem...too direct a lift, or uncreative, but bear with me.

Name: Bêlit 

Step 2 — Begin rearranging the letters until you get something unique, while still capturing the right 'feel': 

Name: Bilêt, Bitêl, Bêtil, Lêbit, Libêt, Têlib, Tilêb

Step 3 — Try replacing a few letters:

Name: Balêc, Bilac, Butil, Labut, Lasêt, Têlac, Tilêm

I ended up with Bilac (pronounced: bye-lack) which also sounds similar to 'bile', which I feel further reinforces her traits.

Looking up the etymology of a real-world name can also push your imagination or character development even further.

In the end, I will always need to spend time naming characters, so why not make a fun game of it?

Rolling With Advantage

For starters, I think it is fair to say that I'm treating this blog as a Dev Diary rather than anything that I want or hope anyone would read. Although, other creative types might find my ramblings here useful — if only as a sort of mirror or gauge in which to measure their own successes and failures in their creative journeys. 

Second, a bit of full disclosure and honesty. Back in October of last year I was laid off from my video game dev job (among many others) to join the seemingly countless unemployed workers in the field. This hit particularly hard for me because I put damned nearly everything I had into the job, and it still failed — my team I and were not able to ship the project we'd been working on for five years. I will talk more about that later, and more likely on a platform that will have a greater likelihood to reach the video game dev community — https://bsky.app/profile/doktorwarlok.bsky.social. That said, one of the main take-aways from that future missive will serve as a good segue into the topic for today: Rolling With Advantage, aka Self-Care.

After I was laid off, I took a lot of time to decompress - a process in which I'm still working through. I was attempting to recharge through devoting more of my time to my true interests, TTRPGs. During the last five years of stressful video game development (at the very least) I neglected the practice the art of design for my personal projects. And unfortunately, (at the very most) neglected the simple enjoyment of the art form itself. This was a huge personal failure where actively avoided Self-Care.  

January rolled around, and I saw The Merry Mushmen were calling for final submissions for The Chaos Crier #1 — I don't think I need to re-iterate my love of the system here, but if this is your first visit, please check out some of my previous posts. I decided to take a stab at submitting an adventure. My plan was to convert an OSE adventure I'd written for my gaming group a couple of years prior, but upon re-reading, I decided to start fresh. This was ultimately the right decision, but unfortunately, I should have spent more time getting in the correct head-space. I let the deadline and desire to "ship" something take precedent over the enjoyment of the creative endeavor itself - what a wicked trap I had laid at my own feet. I made rookie errors that were easily avoidable had I just taken more time to self-reflect, analyze, and above all: enjoy the process. 

I also began to take Self-Care more seriously. I won't get into the details here, but I will say that I have discovered that the time spent toward that effort has paid off far beyond my expectations.

So, in that light, I have yet again decided to start from scratch. Reworking the exact adventure felt more like hammering a square peg into a round hole. To be clear, I'm not throwing it all away - the advice and feedback I got from the Mushmen still stands true. The basic theme and tone remain in-tact. I'm nearly done with the outline, and frankly, I feel revitalized having gone through the process again. 

Once I have the first draft of the new manuscript ready, I'll post a portion of my design notes here, so if you are into that sort of minutiae, stay tuned. 

-Doktor Warlok