DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 34A: In the Dust of the Old City
You can assure Reggaloch that additional slaves will be sent to him within the week. We have become very interested to discover what our Brothers of Venom are doing that requires such a constant flow of common flock. We have asked Illadras, but she has told us not to concern ourselves with it. Be cautious, but discover what you can.
Urnest
Sauron and Saruman.
The similarity in their names — and the confusion it’s engendered in generations of book-readers and film-watchers — is often held up as a cautionary tale to writers: If character names are too similar to each other, it will make it difficult for your readers to differentiate them.
In the specific case of Sauron and Saruman, the confusion was so feared that, infamously, Saruman’s name was changed to Aruman in Ralph Bakshi’s animated version of The Lord of the Rings.
The questionable wisdom of Bakshi’s decision aside, this is nevertheless advice also well-heeded by GMs.
This confusion of names is actually something I ran afoul of in this session. In brief:
- Urnst is the name of the Commissar who rules the city of Ptolus.
- Urnest is the name of a chaos cultist based out of the Temple of the Rat God.
So when my players encountered this note from Urnest, the entire group was suddenly filled with dread: Oh, no! The Commissar is in league with the cultists!
… and this was despite the fact that they’d already made this mistake once before.
In that older installment of Running the Campaign, I talked about how and why you can maneuver your way out of that situation, but I wanted to approach it from a slightly different angle today: While acknowledging the logistical challenges that can be created by similar names, why would you want to nevertheless have similar names?
First, if you’re dealing with a sufficiently large cast of characters (which is not unusual in a long-running RPG campaign), it can simply be a matter of necessity. For example, you’ll sometimes hear the Sauron/Saruman rule given as, “You should never have two character names with the same first letter.”
Except that would mean never including more than twenty-six characters, and then only if you’re willing to include some exotic X’s and Z’s and the like. (Although this is quite a bit easier in your typical fantasy fare.)
Second, there could by any number of practical reasons for doing so. Tolkien, for example, may have chosen the names deliberately for their similarity and the thematic resonance it would have in the book. Or, because the names were ultimately derived from the languages he had created from Middle Earth, the linguistic world-building may have been the most important factor for him. (He never commented on this issue, so we don’t really know if it ever occurred to him.)
Similarly, in the Ptolus sourcebook there are two more characters named Urnst: Vladimir and Taltos Urnst are alchemists operating a shop in the Undercity. Unlike Urnest, however, the similarity of their names to Commissar Igor Urnst is not a coincidence, as they “claim to be distant cousins of the Commissar…”
When you have similarly named characters, though, there are a few things you can do to help your players (and maybe even yourself) keep things straight:
- Keep the characters in different spheres of the campaign from each other — different locations or different factions, for example.
- Is there a different name that they could be referred to? (A first name or nickname, for example.)
- Give one or more of the characters a title (Lord, Chancellor, Empress) and use it consistently to distinguish the characters.
- Provide context reminders to help nudge your players’ memory (e.g., “Tessa, who you meet at the tavern last week…”).
Some of these tips are a good idea even if the character’s name ISN’T similar to anyone else!
Campaign Journal: Session 34B – Running the Campaign: TBD
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
As an example of your advice at the bottom, I suspect if they had been referenced consistently (or every time) as ‘the Dark Lord Sauron’ and ‘Saruman the White’ it would have helped.
I’ll add that saying them aloud is also a good check here, at least for me; the written words might be more clearly different than they sound.
For similar reasons to what Jeff said, I always try to spell my NPC names the simplest way possible. It may seem “more fantastic” to spell a name as “Bhenn” instead of “Ben”, but you have to read the name aloud and your players aren’t going to know the difference; and if they’re keeping notes it’s nice to have names be easily searchable.
“Or, we prefer, vampyres. With a ‘y’. It’s more modern.” — Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
Of course, you might want to lean into the confusion if the people are not right in front of the PCs. No one is going to mistake Urnst for Urnest is they’re standing in front of them and you should make the difference clear, but a name written on a note? The opportunity for comic or tragic confusion followed by the “Oh, Urnest, not Urnst. We’re bloody idiots!” Might be a lot of fun.
On the other hand If Urnest sends you against Urnst because they sound too familiar to each other…
Also the Hospital I am working at has 5 Mary’s, 4 Alex’s, 2 Jeaninne’s and a bunch more I can’t think of right off the bat.
In my active campaing I’ve made this accident two times, well one was more because of a player. I had a white skin Tiefling NPC called Blanche, then a new player entered group and his paladin is called Blanche and at the time of creation I’ve not remembered the NPC. I ended up retconning Blanche the NPC to Blank, the character briefly appeared two times during the session in a not so proeminent rolle of goon. Since she was being mentally controlled by a mage, my choice of Blank ended up being luckily thematic.
The second one was Pierre. One of my players has a complex background and one of the characters of his background is Pierre. Problem is when I was in need of a name for a misterious mage controling a goon NPC named Blank (witch by the way I just did cause Ive messed up two factions), Pierre sounded very fitting on the spur of the moment. Said player noted the name and questioned me privately about it, witch I gave him a inconclusive response. Now I am considering if the mage Pierre, is actually Pierre the background character.