Comments

• 

  raubhi

  Posts: 6 June 2008

  i'm having trouble tracking down wereshark stats for 3.5.
  help?
  
  
  ...please?
• 

  DarthKrzysztof

  Posts: 132 June 2008

  Try _Lost Empires of Faerun;_ the WotC website says that they should be in there. If I were at home, I could confirm that...
• 

  raubhi

  Posts: 6 June 2008

  thankyou.
  
  workin on a seafaring campaign and pc's are gonna need their faces eaten
• 

  FemmeLegion

  Posts: 521 June 2008

  Have you a copy of _Stormwrack_, then? That's _de rigeur_ for a 3.5 seafaring campaign. =)
• 

  raubhi

  Posts: 6 July 2008

  i've got a pdf of it and an actual version coming in the mail. hadozee are freakin sweet.
• 

  raubhi

  Posts: 6 July 2008

  anyone able to suggest any town names??
  i'm putting in as many ports as i can support and some offshore towns and i think i'm having more trouble naming them. i'm trying desperately to not have them all be poo joke names. due to my state arrested development this is nearly impossible.
• 

  IceBob

  Posts: 98 July 2008

  I find it is rarely an issue to simply borrow generic-sounding names from real-world places. Cities like Capetown and Newport are good examples. Also, if one culture colonised several areas, you can simply name a few of the cities the same thing, only with a "New" plastered on front or a "-ton" slapped on the end.
• 

  FemmeLegion

  Posts: 521 July 2008

  A few strategies for naming places, based on some real-life place names I saw in my youth:
  
  - Nothing wrong with naming a place after natural phenomena. Real-life example: Cape Foulweather. It is highly prone to horrid fog, and it once took my mother and me 90 minutes to drive 30 miles because visibility was just THAT BAD.
  
  - Perhaps there's a striking feature to the place which might have inspired the natives to give it that name. Real-life example: Boiler Bay. If you are able to visit during a particularly low tide (what the locals call a minus tide), you can actually see that a large ship's boiler has been marooned on the rocks. It's been there for a couple of centuries.
  
  - Perhaps the above-mentioned natural phenomena remind the natives of something mundane, and the name is based on that. Real-life example: Devil's Punchbowl. It's a tiny round inlet (hence "punchbowl") that is always very rough waters.
  
  Another really solid strategy is to completely or partially name the town after a person (e.g. Haverton, or Haver's Cove). And remember that if the town has been around for a long time, the person doesn't need to be alive anymore, or even have any descendants there. Real-life example: Depoe Bay, named after a native American who'd acquired the nickname of "Depot Charlie" and decided he preferred the more French-like spelling of "Depoe". The Oregon Coast also has several cities named after native American tribes.
  
  If you want me to actually come up with some names, that's fine, but I'd rather start by giving you some ideas for doing it yourself. =)
• 

  raubhi

  Posts: 6 July 2008

  most of the stolen names i'm using are stolen fromoregon. in all fairness they stole most of their town names anyway.
  
  and if i timed this right it is the 666th post on this forum
• 

  DarthKrzysztof

  Posts: 132 July 2008

  \m/ o.o \m/
• CrazyDE

  Posts: 14 August 2008

  All you need for good names are some dice, Scrabble tiles, and a little creativity. I favor this approach to get away from the compound-word names so many fantasy cities are stuck with.
  Not that anything is wrong with compound-word names. They just don't seem particularly realistic to me.
• 

  FemmeLegion

  Posts: 521 September 2008

  See, I think compound-word names *are* more realistic when they're done right and are consistent with the culture. When I envision people coming together to decide what they'll name a town, I have a much easier time imagining them picking a name that is descriptive of the terrain, or the town's function (e.g. Fort Whatever), or relates to one of the people crucial in founding said town. I don't see somebody standing up and saying "Let's call this town 'Mahalia' because I think it sounds pretty" and having that get a whole lot of support.
• CrazyDE

  Posts: 14 September 2008

  I see what you mean by that, but when I look at a real life map, most locations have names that don't mean a thing to me. They probably mean something in a language I don't speak, or were named after their founder. I guess it depends on the history of the setting. More recently settled areas would probably have compound word names, and places that have existed for hundreds of years would probably have gibberish names based on dead languages. I suppose there are advantages to both methods.