A worldbuilding trick worth stealing

If there is one thing that I hate that is coming up with names for my NPCs during prep or play. Sure, there are numerous random name generators, including the bottom part of each page of Mythic Bastionland.

But let’s be honest – have you ever kept consistently using a name that you’ve generated? In my sessions, players soon forget “Alaric” and instead refer to the NPC as “the knight we met in the forest”. Even worse – I myself tend to forget the name since this one more thing to juggle.

So I’ve come up¹ with a little worldbuilding trick that solves this problem and at the same time makes the Realm more mysterious and intriguing:

• As a coming of age ritual (“The Masking Ceremony”), every person in the Realm dons a mask and chooses a title that replaces their childhood name.
• Most peasants simply choose their occupation as their title and create a simple wooden mask from materials that are common in their area.
• Many people choose an animal whose characteristics they identify with.
• It is improper for an adult to be seen in public without wearing their mask. Likewise, their childhood name is now never to be used again.

Now players are free to refer to a person’s title rather than having to memorize a made-up name. I find that titles tend to stick with me and the players way better:

• “The Herbalist”
• “The Chain Knight”
• “The Honour of the Ancestors”
• “The Red Fox”

It also gives me opportunities for memorable character descriptions. One of the first things I tend to describe is the mask that a person is wearing:

• Wooden mask decorated with fragrant flowers and herbs.
• A mail coif that covers the whole face.
• A steel mask with intricate carvings and runes, each dedicated to a remarkable ancestor in the wearer’s lineage.
• Carved in the shape of a fox’s face, with most of the red paint peeled off.

Going one step further: the players might want to uncover the truth behind this odd tradition. What is the deeper reason why the people in this Realm hide their faces and childhood names?

Most people in that live in the Realm will not give this tradition any second thought. It always was this way, why question it? However, investigative players might become curious. Some ideas for reasons for the players to discover over the course of the campaign:

• Names give power over people, like in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea saga.
• A skilled witch can read the thoughts of any person whose face she can see.
• The society deeply values what a person strives to be rather what they were born with.
• Their faces belong to the Gods.

In any case – feel free to steal this idea for your TTRPG campaign. If you do, tell us how it went below in the comment section!

1. The seed of this idea actually came from Nate Whittington’s post on worldbuilding. ↩︎