The Power of Names

What do your players remember from your game? What's memorable? In my experience, they don't remember the same things the DM remembers. It certainly isn't the best-designed elements, or for that matter whatever the DM spent the most time planning.

Two of the most well-remembered monsters from the past several years of my game are the Rattagator and the Doomcow. The Rattagator was just a re-skinned crocodile, deployed to provide some danger and tension while moving downstream in an underground waterway. It didn’t do anything particularly novel in combat, but the name and the image of a rat-alligator emerging from the underground river stuck with the players.

It was a similar story with the Doomcow. This monstrous hippo was just an aquatic ambush predator on a random encounter table. But it lived on in memory long after the characters defeated it.

These monsters were not complex. The fights were not the most dramatic or most tactically interesting  that the players experienced. But they felt cool and weird and fantastic, and the memorable name locked in that feeling. 

Names have that kind of power. In one session I introduced an unimportant slaad as an antagonist. The slaad died the same session that he first appeared in, and had little lasting impact on the game.

But his name was Johnny Satan, and the players remembered Johnny Satan for long after other NPCs were forgotten. His fire-resistant leather jacket was a signature garment for one of the players for a long time.

These examples are mostly humorous, but they don’t have to be – epic or fantastic names can work too. Magic: The Gathering has a great style for naming monsters and NPCs. Because MtG has to work with limited space on a playing card, they have to imply a lot of story in just a few words. “NAME COMMA TITLE” is a great way to do this. Kozilek, Butcher of Truth tells a story even before they know anything else about the monster. Alesha, Who Smiles at Death is much more memorable than “Alesha the Brave.”

I use this kind of construction all the time. When playing online it’s particularly useful, as characters will see this “formal name” when the creature is added to an initiative order. 

The next time you prep a game, spend a little less time tinkering with the fine mechanics of encounters, or writing detailed backstory and lore, and a bit more time just thinking of some memorable names.