Dynamic Naming

[Russell of Los Angeles]

I think dynamic naming for locations would be great, and even more important than for buildings, objects, or resources. The name of a place is an expression of the culture of the people that live there. Cultures don't agree about the name or significance of a location, so naturally there would be some discrepancies.

I think the following would be a good method for the naming of roads, based on the names of locations:

There is a IRL road near here called "Westwood Northern".
Guess what it connects? Westwood to Northern (part of the city).
A celar example is one from another town called "Dublin Granville"
Yes. It connect Dublin to Granville.

The road names could just be filled in as players name locations.

Signs would be a big help.

And as for the transition process, all existing characters could have all locations automatically named for them so that nothing is subtracted from their knowledge. They would have the option of changing a name of a place they already know by the traditional name.

Another great advantage of dynamic names for locations, besides reflecting different cultures, is that it would help to seperate the knowledge of different characters. For myself, it's sometimes difficult to remember what set of knowledge each of my different characters has about the world. Dynamic names would help this.

[julie2]

There are a lot of good points and a lot of interesting suggestions here (Why isn't it on the "Suggestions" board, btw?). I think we've got to bear in mind NVN's point , though. Unlike us, our characters only get a few real-time minutes per day in which to learn about the world their in,, so a lot of information-gathering tasks have to to be made a lot quicker and easier to accomplish than they are IRL. In a lot of cases, anway, the name of a thing only provides information you could usually tell at a glance IRL, either by the appearance of the thing, or some appropriate sign. The name "tomato " for instance give you all the information you need for your character to "see" and describe the fruit to others, since we all know what a tomato looks like. It's a shorthand description, really Your character might not know all the same things you know about tomatoes;
he might not know what a tomato is called . Ive seen people RP that learning proces, and done it myself... but really, it would get , not only tedious but downright impssible if we were forced to RP it every time, because we really didn't know without asking.

PS. Spory if this seems a bit out-of-synch. I only read page 1 before postig and thought I'd read the lot! I'm now frantically catching up.)

[Revanael]

(Why isn't it on the "Suggestions" board, btw?)

A good question. I think it should be.

Easy to do, too... Hold on tight, everyone!

[Doug R.]

I think animals should be dynamicly named. There is no reason why, when a character sees an animal that they've never seen before, that they should automatically know it's called a "cow." This would eliminate the need for LD to translate new animals into 12 or so different languages (which they will have to do, since I'm in the process of adding them). It will also add the ability for regional naming and typing of animals (Kriff lion, Zhift lion, etc), and the possibility for more naturalist type characters (According to my studies, the Kriff and Zhift lions are the same species, etc).

[Doug R.]

Doug,

While I see your intent, this won't work for a number of reasons.

1 - You won't be able to have regional species, because if a charrie names a lion a Kriff Lion, all lions that charrie sees will be kriff lions, so that doesn't work as you intended.

2 - Unless entirely new names are made up for things, it leaves the possibility that dynamic names will just be -wrong-. For instance, what if rabbits are suddenly called wolves? This would lead to a level of confusion that is completely pointless and unnecessary.

The best way to create regional diversity is to simply create regional diversity like you are already intending to do with your new animals.

[Chris Johnson]

Whilst I can see the logic of not knowing an animal and the development of regional animals it won't save the LD any effort - infact it will give them a harder task as they will have to translate "A 4 legged creature about 1.8 meters high and 2.5 metres long, It is eating grass has udders and makes a mooing noise" into the appropriate languages as opposed to just translating "Cow"

[tiddy ogg]

No! No! No!
Recipe for chaos. The dynamic place names are bad enough, making mapmaking so much harder.
What do these newspawns do in the first 20 years if not go to some sort of school to learn this sort of thing.

[Piscator]

Whilst I can see the logic of not knowing an animal and the development of regional animals it won't save the LD any effort - infact it will give them a harder task as they will have to translate "A 4 legged creature about 1.8 meters high and 2.5 metres long, It is eating grass has udders and makes a mooing noise" into the appropriate languages as opposed to just translating "Cow"

Exactly my first thought.

[Leo Luncid]

Is there a possibility of making this optional?