Evil Machinations

Beyond ‘Fred’: Ancient E...

Posted on Aug 13 2010 | 1 Comment

Sometimes the hardest part of building a character is coming up with a good name. You can always take a name from Tolkien or other fantasy novels, but you’ve seen those names over and over and you want something a... Read More »

Beyond “Fred”: Anglo-Sax...

Posted on Jul 22 2010 | No Comments

Finding a good name is sometimes the hardest part of designing an NPC. You want something more exotic than “Fred the Fighter”, but “Frewxyque the Grand Thunder Duke” becomes too hard to say with a straight face... Read More »

Beyond ‘Fred’: Italian N...

Posted on Feb 12 2010 | 2 Comments

Image by cloudsoup via Flickr Tired of games where all the characters are named Ariel or Thorin? What a character name that sounds distinctive but not too far out? What about using a real-world name? Perhaps something historical... Read More »

What’s in a Name?: Alphabet

Posted on Jan 15 2010 | No Comments

Here it is — the final post of our What’s in a Name? series. Today we’re talking about alphabets. Well, actually not about alphabets. While you can create a whole new alphabet for your language, it’s... Read More »

What’s in a Name? Stress is Go...

Posted on Dec 30 2009 | No Comments

Image by quinn.anya via Flickr It’s day 3 of our series on creating a naming language and today we’re talking about stress. Not that kind of stress — this is the emphasis we place on one syllable... Read More »

What’s in a Name? The Music of...

Posted on Dec 14 2009 | No Comments

Welcome to Day 2 of our series on creating a naming language. Every language has its own particular sound. Japanese sounds different from Spanish and few people would mistake guttural German for tonal Chinese. Frequently,... Read More »

What’s in a Name? Language!

Posted on Dec 11 2009 | 1 Comment

Creating names can be one of the most challenging parts of creating a game setting. Sure, you can name things whatever happens to come to mind, but that can create names from all over the map (literally, if you’re borrowing... Read More »

Beyond ‘Fred’: Russian N...

Posted on Nov 06 2009 | 4 Comments

Sometimes the hardest part of building a character is coming up with a good name. You can always take a name from Tolkien or other fantasy novels, but you’ve seen those names over and over and you want something... Read More »

Beyond ‘Fred’: Roman Nam...

Posted on Oct 05 2009 | 6 Comments

Finding a good name is sometimes the hardest part of designing an NPC. You want something more exotic than “Fred the Fighter”, but “Frewxyque the Grand Thunder Duke” becomes too hard to say with a... Read More »