NAMING CONVENTIONS - CHARACTERS, SPELLS, AND MORE

Tesla's an awesome name for an electric attack.

post=95055
Incendia ball

Maybe you could just shorten that to "Incendia?" Leaving "ball" on there really isn't adding anything, and it clashes badly with the fancy-sounding latin.

I like the ideas in this thread, specially regarding character names. I like trying to differentiate between "nationalities" by picking names from different origins. Although on the topic of spell/element names, if you've got a fire spell it should be called "burn" or "fireball" or something, not some Latin/Greek bollocks, and not some five syllable word you got from a thesaurus that just means fire. At least put an obvious fire icon next to it so we don't have to sit there with a dictionary in one hand. So for spells I say, simple and descriptive is best! Everyone's just going to call it "fire" anyway. :P

post=93964
i'm from that (apparently) nearly non-existant school of thought that every spell skill should be useful throughout the entirety of the game, so making Fire 1, Fire 2, etc, seems kind of redundant to me... I think it must be a jRPG thing.

Oh man, you're not alone there! I hate when you get to the end of the game, click "magic" and you're confronted with a huge mess of 20 or 30 different attack spells, which are all just slightly different versions of the same thing, and then you just scroll past the whole lot of them and click "Ultima" again.

Atticus is meh. I don't dislike it, but I wouldn't use it in my game world.

You got me with Icarus, though, I do like that one. It gets big points for beginning with I, the manliest vowel by far. Like, if it were Acarus or Ocarus or something, you'd just get another "meh" from me.

ecilpaladincay

I'm making this game (that doesn't have enough content for a gamepage yet), and I decided to use this system for spell names:

<spellname>: low-tier single-target spell
<spellname>la: mid-tier single-target spell
<spellname>neo: high-tier single-target spell
Ra<spellname>: low-tier multi-target spell
Ra<spellname>la: mid-tier multi-target spell
Ra<spellname>neo: high-tier multi-target spell
(there are some exceptions, though)

As for character names, I use both generic and weird ones (not giving out examples, though!) Item names are generic and very short (Green Herb, Blue Herb, Detox Vial, etc.)

post=133096
It's hard to find names that fit with each other doing it this way.

As in...what? Character names? Spell/Skill names?

To be honest, I starting to use real-life names when it comes to the stories/games/etc I make and--it may be because we as people are used to hearing generic, sometimes bland, real-life names--I usually find all of my character's names fit well together.

post=133124
Like, for a fire-slashing attack, I'll use something like Steel Inferno.

I do this, as well. One of the strongest attacks for one of my characters was fire elemental, and I therefore named it "Infernal Tempest" (though, infernal means hell-like or fiendish but I was like whatev, it's good enough).

This is a good topic.

Failure to pay any attention to this can really kill a game. Like having characters named, respectively, Omega and John makes it impossible for me to take your game seriously.

If I have had any consistency with naming conventions across games (a la the Biggs/Vicks & Wedge nod to Star Wars that appeared in many Final Fantasy games) I am not sure what it is. Several hints do appear that the some of the games take place in the same universe (or more broadly, in the same multiverse) but that's not really what's being discussed here.

I try really hard to be really consistent with everything within a current game.

In terms of character names, in Iron Gaia most characters have real names (Roger Aaronson, Dietrich Slade) and not-so-real names assigned to them by the GAIA (Alphus, Omegus, Sigmus, etc.). In To Arms! I am jacking almost all of my character naming conventions from George R.R. Martin. Slightly medievalized, fantasized versions of real names a la the naming conventions in A Song of Ice and Fire.

In general I try to stay away from IRL names as they fit fantastical settings poorly -- although any real name can easily be exoticized by changing or adding a letter or two. Take for instance, say, Justin and Morgan. Pff, not in my Final Fantasy rip-off, amirite? But after a couple minor replacements, you get Jutrin and Vorgan - crazy. Prime fantasy namery. No one would even notice you were bastardizing your friends' names. Doesn't yield the best results, but it works in a pinch, particularly for those quest NPCs who don't really matter in the long run but spend enough time on-screen to warrant a better name than "Short Bandit" or "Shifty Aphrodisiac Vendor".

Justyn and Morgen are better, and in fact Morgan can probably stay how it is considering how close it is to both Morrigen and Morgana (Le Fay).

I like my skill names to be consistent, descriptive, memorable and evocative and when possible, reasonably straight forward. Phylomortification sometimes takes place here. This is also where I like to include nods, homages, and inside jokes although later on these are sometimes removed as I begin to take a project more seriously. (I changed the name of an ability in To Arms! from FIREBAL!!!!!! (1 L, 7 Exclamation Marks) to the more vanilla Fireball recently.)

Edit:

All of my current projects are set in apocalyptic/post-modern scenarios with heavy interaction between science and magic, so a lot of my spells are named off of weird science things, especially chemical mechanisms. Or I'll make up stuff that sounds really science-y. Obviously doesn't work for, say, a medieval fantasy game (though a few of the early Final Fantasy games pulled off Meltdown), but I really like the effect it lends to a post-modern setting.

My interest is peaked already. Release something you gibbering whoreson.