Slashdot Mirror

IGS Games has a name generator for those of us who have a difficult time with naming our characters.
igsgames name generator.

As an example here is a name I generated choosing the options Descriptive, Elvish and Gang: Sinful Lanorain Legolan and her Mysterious Band of Pirates

Worth checking out.

Help those who are lazier than you! (maybe even yourself at a later time.. ). Provide a link!

Shameless Plug: IGS Games

Yeah, it's the lazy way out but I'm tired of sitting at the computer trying to think of some creative name.

The best name generator I have ever used is igsgames name generator.

Many features and options. Also has a random thing generator and many other useful things.

Unless you already know what you want, you basically need something thats interesting to tell a story about. Just randomly throw some right-sounding syllables together, and then add some random details.

Since its harder to think of random stuff than stuff that somehow makes sense, try a free online name generator

Having played both IGS and Earthdawn, I can state that I found IGS to be far easier to play than Earthdawn. Within one sessions of IGS, players have figured out what they need to roll to succeed with a skill or in combat. After several sessions in EarthDawn, some players still couldn't master their Steps.

IGS uses d6. Just about everyone has at least one d6 at home. EarthDawn uses combinations of polyhedral dice. Of course, gamers usually have enough to share but new players don't always have any. At one unfortunate session, all the players had to share their dice.

EarthDawn has been around longer and has a larger fan base and more suppliments. IGS is newer and gaining its own base.

IMNSHO, IGS is better. But I am biased. I got in on IGS early and have converted. I see the light!! All I'm asking others to do is give it a chance.

> Do you think it will spell an end to D&D ?

D&D died years ago. In Jr. High we used to play D&D, then we moved on to AD&D with its cool hard bound books and pages and pages of charts. At first we tried to follow the rules, actually use encumberance, spell and weapon timing, treasure tables, etc. But we found that they started to get in the way of the fun of the game. We started dropping them and replacing them with our own ideas until eventually we were playing our own game and just telling others it was AD&D to keep them from getting confused. (They were anyway, but that is a different story). After the second edition rules came out we dropped the pretext of even playing AD&D.

These days I play with a group of friends who are starting to publish their own Role Playing Game, igsgames. Their rules don't get in the way of the important part of game, Role Playing. No pages of charts to remember, etc.

Now where was I going with all that... oh yeah. D&D may be dead, but the RPG industry live and prosper, gaining new blood as an aging rules system dies (d20). And that is a Good Thing [tm].

I remember that in the years I played D&D, AD&D, Star Frontiers, and a handful of other RPGs, I wasted the most money on AD&D books because they are chocked full of crap nobody ever really uses in game play. What I mean is, it's about weapons and combat and who can honestly say they didn't end up making up their own bastardization of the rules just to keep the roleplay flowing? Who really runs the whole tedious AD&D combat sequence?

The genre isn't dead. I have friends developing a streamlined game system that keeps all the stuff you want in a fantasy RPG, but leaves out all the complicated unwieldly combat rules (which I vaugely remember evolved out of a naval combat boardgame) that turn roleplaying into arguments about how to roll dice in a particular situation.

I'll cheer if the D&D books go out of print, and the copyrights go undefended. That's because they trademark stupid things like "halfling" because the Tolkien pricks trademarked "Hobbit". It's stupid. Besides, all my old tattered and rotting books may eventually be worth something then...

All I know is that if D&D books go out of print because WoTC goes out of business before anyone (who cares) buys up the rights, it won't stop the old fogeys. Nobody *REALLY* needs any new D&D rules (D20) anyways. Everyone always ends up making things up as they go along, and that's fine with or without WoTC.