Friday, 13 April 2012

RPGs: Games with character

Nothing quite beats a good role-playing name for an immersive role playing game. It safely puts you outside the boundaries of conventional reality and helps you to define who your character is, most often literally. For the past decade I've seen very few names for characters in fantasy RPG's that aren't labels for tanks, healers and DPS (damage per second) roles. The earliest example I can think of is Orgrim Doomhammer from the Warcraft series. What kind of weapon does he use, and what happens to the guy on the receiving end of it? A more recent example is Ember Doomforge from the Ghosts of Ascalon novel set in the Guild Wars universe, yet again playing on the theme of doom. Sylvanas Windrunner, Kael'thas Sunstrider, Ardenor Crush, Thaulid Hammerspur. Hell, even Lomo Kettlemaker. The list goes on. It's a convenient way to categorise avatars and NPC's so that you're never wondering what it is they actually do. It's a fantasy yellow-pages made easy.


'Chief Nounverb of the Badass clan addresses you, weakling.'
The formula is foolproof. This isn't being written out of hate, but of my appreciation of the essential cheesiness that underpins all game-worthy fantasy IP's. The Forgotten Realms, Kryta, Azeroth and all the other RPG kingpins. They thrive on this stuff. Mannoroth's death at the end of the Orc campaign in Warcraft III would have been nothing if Grom Hellscream's name was Derek Bingley. A toast... to Chief Nounverb.

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