Any npc I make up on the fly is 100% an orc. I can just put bodily-fluid+weapon together and boom, named.
Oh, him? Yeah, that’s the Orc bartender PissMace.
Sweatdart
SnotDart
You can’t miss.
It Snot hard to hit target.
Precumrapier
Woah, woah, keep that thing in its sheath.
Due to circumcision beyond our control, it doesn’t have a sheath
Believable. I once passed by a book titled “Common Circumcision Rituals of Orc Clans in the Great Southern Wastes” written by Dr. SpinalfluidHammer, MD. The cover was of the author holding a too-large knife covered in too much blood. He seemed happier than the situation called for.
I just use the MST3K approach: This is Blast Hardcheese.
Our player who likes doing this to the DM: “So they’re giving us horses? What are the horses’ names?” Our DM: “…no. You choose.”
“Horsey McHorseFace.”
“You no longer have the right to choose.”
This is how I accidentally named one guy “ThisGuy” and the other, “Thatguy.”
On the plus side, Jim Bob the bridge builder is a long term friend I keep looking up when we visit town.
“Dasher, Dancer, Prancer…”
“His name is Meatball”
“They aren’t attached enough to the horses to have chosen names for them, they are referred to by their coat colour.”
“What colours are they?”
“…fuck.”
…i cast speak with animals and asked the horses their names: turns out they were darryl and his brother darrell…
I need to start doing this to my DM
I did this one campaign which was a hexcrawl where the party was shipwrecked on an island purported to hide the lost city of gold.
The site of the shipwreck was home base, but the party obviously wanted to explore. There were some NPC crewmate survivors, so they would assign them to work on projects while they were exploring. I would always tell them that “some guy” was working on their stuff.
Cut to a few months later when they have a sort of mutiny on their hands. It seems that one crew member in particular was fed up with how much work they had to do while the party went adventuring that they turned the crew against the party.
The mutinous ringleader’s name? Sum Gai
Id just use a random name sheet. Get some fancy names print em out sprinkle in a little setting specific stuff and roll dice for it. 100 names each and a D100 will do the trick, if its not fitting at all, just roll again.
This is always a part of my prep sheet, is a little list of random names.
Look at you, planning in advance
Only got to do it once. Make a name binder and you’re set.
Gotta remember to bring the name binder though :P
…this is why I leave the DMing to my friend
There’s also online fantasy name generators. Which basically just do that, but you don’t need to bother with tables.
Terror Island writing tip: Specify that characters have names. This makes them more relatable. (That’s the title text for that comic.)
I’m imagining something like:
Player: I ask the NPC for his name.
GM: He tells you his name.
“How do you spell that?”
“I dunno, how do you wanna spell it?”
