Coriolis
Prep and Lonely Fun
Anyone else do the thing where you come up with aaaaallll the NPC names you might ever need, so you don’t sit there like a dope at the table and go umm ahhh how about Joe? No?
Here’s a metric buttload of names from various middle eastern countries. Alphabetized, trimmed for redundancies. Dunno what you might need it for but Coriolis sure needs it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y-tsCctEqo_akRmFwSKM2KNDM0Lqjfjo/view?usp=sharing
archive.org – The Story Games Names Project
I do it before every game. I was doing it as a GM, I am starting to do it as a player also.
I always do a list of ten names for each culture in the game. Cross them off as used, and replenish between sessions. Also I try to make sure each name starts with a different letter.
Yes. Then, depending on whether it was manually or randomly generated, I always hit a point a few sessions in where I’m desperately scrolling down for either something that isn’t too similar to another NPC in the scene or something that isn’t totally inappropriate to the feel of the scene.
I did this for my Burning Wheel game! I needed, at the drop of a hat, to have appropriate names for our Inupiaq, Diné, Mayan, and Hawai’ian-inspired cultures. The name list was an absolute necessity.
I didn’t alphabetize my list, cause I know I would have been scanning the list going “hmmm I already used an A name, how about maybe a C name??” With them scrambled, I just go 1, 2, 3 down the list and grab em.
I sometimes make a mixed list, from different origins and use that to generate the description from the name.
I did a lot research into naming conventions. The traditionalist factions would address each other by surnames while the new wave faction would use first names. Its a small thing but it does a lot to lend the world a sense of etiquette. Plus when the character decides to breach etiquette, it has more impact. The story names project does a pretty good job explaining Arabic naming conventions too.
Kyle Simons sure, I own a copy.
I like doing my own anyway.
Wilhelm Fitzpatrick yeah for sure about the alphabet and naming npcs. Syllables too!
I’m deciding how I’m gonna encode planetary vibes, too. Like there are a few major worlds and they maybe should sound culturally consistent. Although probably only I’ll hear the difference between Kua (Persian) and Dabaran (Egyptian) or whatever.
Paul Beakley I honestly didn’t pick up the difference between Kua and Dabaran. I was taking a class in Afghanistan Studies at the time so we had a lot of focus on the Order of Martyr [sp?]. I’m guessing you haven’t gone through character creation yet, so you’re probably not sure where you are going to start. The different group concepts can lead to very different experiences.
Have you been eyeing the ‘grand campaign’ Fria just finished the kickstarter of?
Are you going to have them roll to see which Icon they were born under?
Aaron Berger they all agreed that the Explorer crew looks cool, and I’m in the mood to barf forth, so I think we’re good to go.
Definitely gonna have them roll their Icon. That’s RAW!
Order of the Martyr seems like maybe the only vestige of actual Islam left in the setting. The rest is clearly pre-Islamic and I have no idea how we end up there in this setting but WHATEVER. It’s not any weirder than scifi settings that worship Roman gods or whatever.
Aaron Berger other stuff you asked about:
* Yeah, I backed the Emissary campaign book. I have no idea when I’d run it but I’ll have it, you bet.
And the differences between the planets, I’m just totally making that shit up. I mean there were hundreds of years, I think, post Portal Wars pre arrival of the Zenith where there was no space travel, IIRC. So yeah, I think the planets surely diverged during that time.
One of my favorite bits about the setting is how fast things have changed since the Zenith arrived. It’s only been 60 years! But now there are 10 factions, several religions, an all-encompassing megacorp, and a pseudo-Internet. Which seems very much like a story of the late 20th century.
Our group were explorers on the edge of the Kua star system. They were investigating the dormant star fleet. Spreading AI malware cultist scheme later. They left the area pretty devastated. We were then going to do the space travel back to Coriolis.
The space travel encounter list is available in one of the supplements and its the closest the Coriolis gets to the feeling of hex exploring with Mutant. It was around this time that I lost steam and dropped the game. There are a lot a great things about the setting. My instinct to try to improve on past failures does make me want to return to the game and give it another go.
Yeah I’ve got the supplemental stuff! I do wish the space travel rules were just folded into the main rulebook, that’s a little disappointing.