What's In a Name?

This one's about etymology and game design/worldbuilding. I suppose it's a devblog.

I have this hack that I've been working on. The iteration of it I released publicly is quite generic. It's the document I put together to test with my friends, to see if we liked the mashup of things a bunch of different games do, but all under one roof. The broadness of it was a strength, because it let me pick up any Odd-like adventure, taking a couple seconds to convert stat blocks on the fly. 

So my friends and I played it. We had fun! I put the pdf online (cover art courtesy of Perplexing Ruins' patreon) as a response to a Prismatic Wasteland challenge. I made a couple changes to the game. Then we played it some more, and I thought, "okay, great... now what?"

There was still work to be done. As it states on the itch.io page, and you can see first-hand in the game, there is no GM section. There are no enemy stat blocks. There's no treasure or adventures. Those things still don't exist today. But if I made them now, they'd be written for a generic fantasy game. That doesn't sound fun. So it's time to get specific.

There are many ways I could do that, but the way that always stuck out to me in the games I love are backgrounds. I'm talking Troika, Bastionland (Electric and Mythic), and Cairne 2e. Those games may leave a lot of blanks for you to fill in, but there is nothing generic about the fantasies they present. The random tables in the Bastionland and Cairn 2e backgrounds are an especially potent tool in this regard, so I said to myself, "after all, why shouldn't I? and got to work. 

The Etymology Sandbox

Sandboxes are great. There's a reason why they're such a popular campaign style in ttrpgs. You can do anything and go anywhere! So long as you stay in the confines of the box, of course. The sand is for the players, the box is for the GM. The freedom and creativity exist because it is manageable in scale. 

Game design and worldbuilding are sandboxes we get to play in as designers and GMs. Making backgrounds a la Bastionland and Cairn is doing both of these things at once. I needed to build myself a box, so I turned to my one true love: etymology.

I've long been fascinated with the way words evolve over time, but it wasn't until I heard Matt Colville talk about his problem with fantasy names* that I started applying that affection to ttrpgs. To summarize his view on the matter (and hopefully I'm not butchering it): a lot of names in fantasy novels and ttrpgs are bad because they don't sound like a language. Humans brains are wired to understand language, it's why it's possible for babies to pick them up and eventually start talking. Even if you only know English, if you hear another language your brain will recognize that it is a language being spoken because despite differences in words, grammar, etc. there is something about all languages that is... well, human. 

If fantasy names don't sound like language, that results in them sounding silly instead. I can't tell you how many years I spent coming up with NPCs and then regretting their names when I had to say them out loud. And I don't just mean the time when I accidentally named someone "urine." But even the other names didn't feel right, they were all piss-poor. (Sorry, I had to. Okay, I didn't have to, I just really really wanted to.).  

So I started using actual names for my NPCs. If I want that "fantasy feeling," I use names from 500-1000 years ago. That way they sound unfamiliar and fantastical, but they also sound "right" because our brains recognizes them as language. When I started working on the backgrounds for my game, I took the same approach. 

Gravelhack is very much an "elfgame minus the elves." A post-elfgame, if you will. I want it to feel medieval-ish, fantastical, and familiar. So I'm drawing from languages that shaped modern English: Old and Middle English, Anglo-Norman, the Celtic languages of the British Isles, you get the idea.  I want the backgrounds themselves to call on familiar archetypes, but their names would be the sandbox in which I have the freedom to reimagine these tropes. 

Here are some examples.

Vaillant d'Armes

I had recently read about the pas d'armes hastilude. I also came upon the phrase vadlet d'armes when looking for entries related to "knight" in an Anglo-Norman dictionary. I stumbled upon vaillant as the etymological root of valor. 

Once I had the name, I thought it sounded like someone who went around challenging knights to pas d'armes to prove their valor. Wait, maybe that's how people become knights in Gravelhack! Oh yeah, that's some specific fantasy right there. 

Let's take a look at a couple entries from the first table:

Why do you seek glory and honor?

1.  To expiate a misspent youth. You got a good, hard look down a path your life may have tread. Now you go another way. You have a set of lockpicks that you still remember how to use. 

2. To earn the respect of a parent. You are the illegitimate child of a noble and a commoner. You know that, should the need arise, you can seek begrudging aid from your noble relations.   

Clamber

One thing I've always liked about the old-school Thief is their ability to climb sheer surfaces. Clamber is a pretty old word that most likely comes from Middle-English. Naturally, I thought of this description for the background:

You are brave enough to scale the cliffs thievpies make their homes atop. The climb may be dangerous, but it is much safer to steal jewelry from a bird than a person. They may peck you, but it sure beats what the town guard does to thieves. 

And a couple entries from a table:

What helps you deal with the thievpies?

1.  A wooden bird-whistle that can lure or repel birds depending on how you play it.

2. Glass pebbles that catch the light, and the eye of any creature interested in shiny objects. 

There we have it. Gravelhack exists in a world where knighthood is earned—not through family or service as a squire, but by besting enough of them in one-on-one melee that they simply have to give it to you. Also, there are these magpies that nest atop cliffs to protect the shiny objects they steal from humans. And if you can believe it, there are some SOBs that are crazy enough to climb the freaking cliffs to steal from the birds! 

I don't think I would have ever come up with either of those backgrounds if I hadn't given myself etymology sandboxes to play in. I'm excited to keep playing in this sand and see what happens next. I haven't even started working on the talents the backgrounds will get as they progress in level. Those should be fun!

*I tried to find a video where Colville talked about this, but came up short. Maybe it was from a livestream? Alas.