User blog:OniKisaki/Origin of names in RPG

Or: How being bad at naming gave me a great story.

The game RPG started as a spoof, and all I had was a list of things I wanted to mock, without any story. I listed the party members as descriptions like useless healer and veteran warrior.

After a while I realized that I was calling the characters by their descriptions, and they were all [Adjective] [Class]. I realized that I could name them that way.

But what to do about the Main Character? The player could pick a class to act as their last name. First I thought to allow the player to choose an adjective first name, but that seemed limiting.

Then it made sense to make the quest about finding out your name: but who would know it? Then I came up with the Gods, but they needed a leader, so I came up with the Programmer. Then the problem was: what would his name be?

Making it part of the quest to find out his name was the next step. Since the reveal happens at the end: the Programmer’s name made sense, and it gave a reason to have dungeons.

And in the end, the revealed name of the Main Character makes sense, too.