Character Rollaholic - Mea Culpa

[Death Machine Miyagi]

By the way, having a name generator that offers you culturally appropriate names based on what race and background you chose would be splendid.

 

Given the amount of effort that is very obviously going into making the world of PoE feel authentic, I would find this very, very welcome as well. Or at least some friendly tips in the character creation screen about naming conventions somewhere so the character name seems to fit better.

 

In RPGs, I just can't bring myself to name my character after particularly famous real world figures or famous characters from literature. If I do, every time I spot my character's name I get dragged out of the game. If I use the name of a real person, it has to be something that doesn't immediately conjure up immediate historical connections in my mind. If I use a name from literature, it can't be friggin' Aragorn or Legolas or Bilbo, it would have to be some minor secondary character whose role in the story I barely even remember. 

 

Well, okay, I would do it sometimes back when I still played MMOs. Way back during the early days of WoW, I had a dwarf hunter named Don Quixote with a pet named Sancho Panza.

 

Or maybe just Sancho? Can't remember if you could give pets last names. Anyway, that was fun for awhile. 

Edited May 26, 2014 by Death Machine Miyagi

[JFSOCC]

I have a standard name I use. in games where I have to make more than one character, I have a standardised process where I bastardize names of deities... long story.

[ManifestedISO]

What do you mean, every character I've ever played is a real person trapped in another dimension, somehow whispering their true name into my headphones.  

[ShadySands]

 

By the way, having a name generator that offers you culturally appropriate names based on what race and background you chose would be splendid.

 

Given the amount of effort that is very obviously going into making the world of PoE feel authentic, I would find this very, very welcome as well. Or at least some friendly tips in the character creation screen about naming conventions somewhere so the character name seems to fit better.

 

Lord of the Rings Online does this

 

 

I mostly use my own name because I'm not very creative or very good at roleplaying

[ArtB]

A name generator would be really awesome. Also, if I'm not mistaken (do correct me if I'm wrong), Aedyran draws heavily from Old English, so we could use super-cool Anglo-Saxon names for characters from the jolly ol' Empire. Byrhtnoth, Wulfstan? Hell yeah.

[Osvir]

I think a sort of descriptive "Naming Guidelines" during the naming phase (like the LotR MMO that ShadySands shows in his/her post) is most conventional for Obsidian to develop instead of creating a random generator with a button and all.

A [button]+inputting all names in the generator requires much more work than simply writing "Common names are..." in a box. It also allows the Player to fill in the blanks if it says "Common name endings are -dar, -fed, -blah, -di, -blo". Unless they could make a "Random Common Name Ending Generator".

Edited May 26, 2014 by Osvir

[Hiro Protagonist II]

If you haven't already, you definitely should try the Realms of Arkania games. Creating a party can almost be considered a full-blown game by itself (it can take up to several hours).

 

You even get to pick values for various character flaws (claustrophobia, acrophobia etc.) and there's loads of skill choices.

 

But do avoid the remake.

 

Traveller is also a great game with fantastic character creation system which can take hours as well. You start as an 18 year old and develop your skills, abilities, experience. Also up to you if want to stay in a certain field or change careers every four years in a sort of 'mini-game', where the player makes career choices (including going up in rank) that determine the character's life up to the point right before adventuring begins. So when you start adventuring, you could be around age 30, 34, 38 or 42 by the time you start your character while other players could stop at age 30. There can be drawbacks when continuing with career/age progression so most players stop at age 30 or 34. Definitely the best character creation system I've played.

[Zwiebelchen]

I usually take a standard name for all my characters in most single player RPGs. Though I give it a little bit more thought in MMOs, simply because those names are usually taken.*

 

*this is actually a serious matter. Especially on highly populated servers, it's extremely hard to find names that are not taken and still sound like an actual name. That's why you will occasionally see matchups like on an older LAGTV episode between two players called "Colonpounder" and "Dickbruiser", which was extremely comical...

Edited May 27, 2014 by Zwiebelchen

[Lephys]

I've got a name I default to if I need to, but I always try to think up a spiffy, unique name each time I make a new character in a new game.

 

I kind of just pretend languages don't exist, and yet I'm a human who can make phonetic sounds, and try to come up with something that phonetically is pleasant/fitting for that character, then spell it. I also try my best to repeat it a bunch (and imagine it being said in a lot of different situations a name would), see if anyone would come up with a nickname for it, etc.

 

Yeah, I definitely spend too much time on that, sometimes. I used to not default to anything, so now I don't spend QUITE as much time.

[Barothmuk]

Another + 1 for a lore appropriate name generator/list of lore appropriate guidelines.

 

Nothing more tedious than going to the game's wiki, looking up a bunch of character names, typing them into a baby name website so I can find their cultural origin and then scouring through a list of names just so I can find something lore appropriate.

[Fatback]

I ussually name my chars something like this

 

Fatback

Pig

Pig N Fatback

[Messier-31]

Has there been some intel about race/class limitations?

[Death Machine Miyagi]

Has there been some intel about race/class limitations?

 

Yep. There aren't any.

 

Which is wise. Always hated that about AD&D 2nd edition.

Edited May 29, 2014 by Death Machine Miyagi

[Messier-31]

I noticed that there's a lot of diacritics in some of the game's names.

 

Will it be possible to use them while naming your character?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic