Tana Pigeon | Word Mill Games
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February Preview
🕑 Added 2025-02-26 04:28:54 +0000 UTCGreetings Tier 3 Mythicists! For this month's preview, I have a revised Name Sounds table.
I wanted to make the table (which is found in Mythic GME 2e) smoother and easier to use for Mythic RPG 2e, so I'm taking a different approach to it. In principle, it works much the same, but with less work required.
The table, as shown above, now only contains one and two letter combinations. The concept entries have been removed (things like Animal and Occupation).
The results are used more literally in this one. The advice right now is to roll once for the first letter or two of the name. If that alone inspires a name then you're done. If not, roll a second time and consider that letter or two somewhere after the first. That should be enough to interpret a name.
For instance ...
I want the name for a pirate ship. I roll Ea. That doesn't inspire a name so I roll again and get N. That makes me think "Eastern". That could be the first half of a ship name. For a second word, I roll U. I need more and roll Kh. I go with "Urkhan", for a full name of "The Eastern Urkhan".
I need the name of the king of a fantasy nation. I get Y and Ro. I go with King Yoro.
For the leader of a 1920's London cult, I get Ra. That makes me think Raymond. For a last name, I get At and Gr ... Athgranger. Raymond Athgranger.
For the name of a demon lord, I get B and Co. Belaco.
For an elven queen I get Yu. Yulenda.
For the name of a big scary dog guarding a cellar door, I get Ke and U. Keanu.
For the name of a starship for a PC and their companions, I get Al and Ot. The Aliot.
For an abandoned robot found in a post-apocalypse military base, I get Ph and Z. Pheta-Z.
For a lonely, crusty old island that nobody visits but a pirate stashed their loot, I get Sh and Ke. Shakes Island.
If you like, try it out and let me know how it works for you compared to the current table!
Happy adventuring :)
Comments
Tana Pigeon
Ohhh, I like that :) I think this table is a keeper!
KJ Potter
I was just playing around with this. I asked myself, what should I name? I decided I needed a name for a seedy starport bar on a frontier planet. I rolled "De" and "Ma" and got The Dead Man Tavern. I like this system!
Tana Pigeon
That's a good point. It feels more like the other Meaning tables now, in function. Before, it was too much of a strange outlier. My original intent was for it to embrace a level of chaos, where you just keep rolling sounds until something clicks with you. But now I think that's unnecessarily messy and not intuitive. This way the only unambiguous part is the first roll, which is the start of the name. Then another roll if you want letters that appear later in the name. That still uses some of the original principle of seeking a sound, but in a more logical framework that mirrors more closely how the other tables work.
Jeremy W. Sherman
This is going to be a lot smoother to use. I like that it takes the same “roll only as little as needed to inspire” approach too.
