No Stupid Names

bandwagonFirst of all, throw out the common knowledge.False cognates are good. "Herpys" is an excellent elf name. Glancing at my list, I have "Odd" and "Snorri" on it; you best BELIEVE those bastards will be strange and sleepy respectively.Alphabet soup is good; the less vowels in a name, the better. I like how leaving out vowels forces you to fill in the gaps in mental pronunciation. (This is a setting-dependent theme.)Unintended cross-linguistic double entendres are good; use Google translate to seed more of them. The Spear Mountain, why, that must be Ben Gae, the gayest mountain on the continent."Don't do this, don't do that" Just DO!!!!!Common wisdom says reusing an NPC is better than inventing a new one, since old NPCs come with baggage. Baggage is more fun than a blank! there's lots of straps and hooks to latch on to, lots of context to consider. Unspoken context matters because without it the only thing players have to riff on is what the gm tells them.Using familiar words as…