What’s in a name? A lot.

Giving something the right name presents one of the many interesting challenges we face when designing elements for D&D. With a feat, power, monsters, or magic item, it can be difficult to get the right name, but they’re nowhere near as hard as naming paragon paths or epic destinies, and even those pale in comparison to naming a class.

A base class deserves a solid, one-word name. It should be easily understood and evocative of the class’s features and uses.

Sometimes design of the class stems from its name. Classes like cleric and rogue are easily named because their names carried forward from the previous edition. Even so, there was a time when we instead had the priest and thief classes.

I can only speculate why priest was used in 2^nd edition when cleric had been used before; maybe it was thought that priest was more likely to be understood by first-time players. Thief changed to rogue with 3^rd edition because calling the class thief pretty much required thief players to behave badly. How many times did the thief in your 2nd edition game get an “extra” share of the treasure?

So even the easy choices aren’t without difficulty. Let’s look at some of the other factors that might make the right name hard to find.

Tradition: A transition to a new edition always calls into question what elements from the previous edition carry forward. Sometimes that creates conflict. A class might be redesigned with a very different concept than before. A class that once did three things poorly might now do one thing well. Can you call it a duck if it doesn’t quack or waddle anymore?

Originality: The most unique and interesting classes that take the game and fantasy in new directions often leave us searching for the right word to describe them. We aren’t making this class (as far as I know), but imagine a psionic class that creates constructs of psicrystal to fight. What would you call that class?

Copyright: Every now and then, the idea of ownership comes into the discussion. We can’t own the word wizard, and even if someone else makes a game with a wizard who casts many of the same spells as the D&D wizard, that’s not enough to call foul. But if we called the wizard the glyphcaster, or better yet, the zyborg, no one could steel our cool idea! Of course, they also wouldn’t want to. And with a class name like zyborg, people could be forgiven for not noticing it was cool. Most of the time the idea of copyright doesn’t come into play with classes—the names of product’s on the other hand, well, that’s a whole other discussion.

Competition: It’s sad to think about it considering how much World of Warcraft and other games owe to D&D, but sometimes we have to be wary of naming things the same way that other popular properties name them. Just because it’s not worth our time not to sue over similarities between name and design of a class, it doesn’t mean some other company won’t take issue.

Meaning: Good solid names are evocative of specific meanings informed both by how the English language is generally used and how the game has used a term in the past. If D&D had not used cleric for its fighting devotees of a god, who would now choose to name a class with such a milquetoast term? Crusader is very evocative, but given recent events around the world, it also became very politically charged. On the other hand, assassin is a great name for a class, but if you think in general about what a fantasy assassin might look like and do, you probably end up someplace uncomfortably close to the rogue.

So what does this mean? Do we agonize over class names for hours or days?

Hardly. Most of the time, the right choice is obvious. Sometimes however, our pirates become buccaneers.

It’s not so bad though. It’s still way easier than naming Magic cards.

Steampunk elements have appeared in countless electronic games, many roleplaying games, and several war games. There are steampunk comics galore, novels in the genre, and even TV series (Brisco County Jr., The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne). There have been many steampunk cartoon shorts (the Amazing Screw On Head), and there are elements of steampunk in syndicated cartoons and some movies like (Hellboy comes to mind).

People make steampunk costumes for conventions, mod their cellphones and laptops to look steampunk, make steampunk stuff from legos, sell steampunk designer watches for thousands of dollars, and even make steampunk dolls.

So, when is steampunk going to hit the big time? Is the combiation of wizz-bang tech and victorian styling too incongruous for the general public?

As a steampunk fan, I don't think that's the problem. The thing is, even as a steampunk fan, nothing has quite captured my imagination quite yet. Lot's of things incorporate elements of steampunk, but nothing I've seen has really gone whole hog and truly dived into the genre.

Steampunk is ultimately not about realism or historical fiction. It's a fantasy genre. To really sell itself, it needs to plunge the audience into a world wholly drenched in it. The steampunk aspects need to be second nature to the setting as much as castles, wizards, and dragons are to typical fantasy.

Then we need to see a really good story.

We haven't seen it—yet. I think it's on its way. Within ten or fifteen years, I predict we'll see steampunk make a big splash.

I hope I'm wrong though. I hope it happens a lot sooner.

Here's why:

No sympathetic characters. The main character is a self-involved, alien-baby-killing functionary who only does something nice when he has no other options. Everyone else in the film seems stupid, racist (species-ist?), or cruel. The only thing close to a likable character is the kid alien, but it shows little emotion beyond curiosity. Even its father (mother?) is hard to empathize with because the ultimate goals of that character are unknown. I suppose the documentarians are nice, but they aren't involved in the story.

Logic problems. How did the alien weapons get down into camp? Did the humans bring them down with the aliens and let them keep them for kicks? Why were the aliens aloud to keep ultra powerful weapons that they can use to blow everything up (which we see them doing in early parts of the film)? Why was a violent kingpin aloud to stay in the camp and take advantage of the aliens? Why are the aliens motivated by cat food and not dog food, or spam? Given stupid super soldiers with ultra powerful weapons who are motivated by cat food like crack fiends for crack, why didn't some government simply use the aliens and their weapons as slave soldiers? How come the only government involved is the South African government? How is it that the alien ship and weapons are there for years but no one as learned anything useful from them? Every human speaks English to the aliens, and the aliens speak alien to the humans: How do they understand one another? How can the humans have leapt the speaking language barrier but learned nothing of their written language?

Ultimately, I felt like I was watching a cheesy version of Schindler's List where Schindler is only trying to save one person, he's doing it for self-serving reasons, and all the people in the concentration camp are crackheads who are about as smart as doorknobs. Add to it people getting blown up like jam jars stuffed with dynamite, and there you go.

Depressing, juvenile, pretentious, annoying.

That puts me in the 10% who hated the film. That means if you're reading this, you're 90% likely to disagree with me completely. 

I'm glad you enjoyed the film. There certainly was some great acting, particularly on the part of the lead whom I've heard was a first-time actor. The shots and documentary styling were certainly neat. And given the small budget, the special effects were quite good.

Still, from me it gets a rating of : DO NOT WATCH

Now I'll have to check in here and update things as part of my morning web surfing routine—I mean, my regular and responsible internet research to better my understanding of game design and to gain inspiration for the day of industry ahead.

So today at work I'm writing some DM advice about quests. Like a lot of DM advice, the basic premise can often be boiled down into a single kernel of wisdom, but giving a few examples and expanding upon the idea gives the concept time to sink in. Still writing the exansive text can be tough when the one-sentence version is echoing in your head.

I chatted about one particular frustration in that regard with Peter Schaefer wotc_peters) and Stephen Radney-MacFarland, and Stephen said something very smart.

"You know the dirty little secret about quests, right? You give out XP, and the players say 'Augh, we're only 57 points away from 11th level.' And you say, "Oh, I forgot the quest XP! You all get 100 more XP.' 'Yay!' Everybody's happy."

Is it cheesy? Is it a cheat? Sure, but who cares if it makes the players happy and excited to play again? (Especially if the alternative is them discussing rolling drunks in the alley to earn the XP they need. Maybe that's just my game. . . .)

The point is, putting that kind of advice in a rulebook speaks to how people actually play the game rather than how they are "supposed" to play. Stephen and Peter said we should do more of that in our books, and I agree.

So to give a kernel of wisdom in a sentence: DMs, you should cheat when it makes the game better.