Project: Fantasy Name Generator (Part 2)

In my last post, I described a method of procedurally building syllables that I devised after taking exception to a particular syllable-based name generator I found online.  This was the core functionality and beginning of a program which had, as its goal, the ability to generate lists of name suggestions for fantasy RPG characters.  When I left off, we had a set of rule for defining the logic of vowel and consonant sounds, and a set of rules for combining those sounds into syllables.

Project: Fantasy Name Generator (Part 1)

For my first post of actual content, I thought I’d write about a recent small C++ project I took on.

For a bit of background, I play a lot of fantasy RPGs.  The identity of my characters is very important to me — not always from a roleplaying perspective (though sometimes that too), but more the combination of name and appearance.  I spend a lot of time in character generation honing those two aspects.  I’ve gotten booted out of games for “inactivity” timeouts because they didn’t feel that character generation counted as doing things.

This project dealt specifically with names.  I have a decent sized stable of names which I’m fond of and use frequently, but sometimes for one reason or another, that option isn’t available to me and I get to think up new names.  Usually this involves thinking of names I’ve liked in the past, combining, swapping vowels, reordering syllables, and just generally playing with letters like Lego bricks until I come up with something that’s both aesthetically appealing, and available for my use in the game in question.

One recent time in particular, I wanted to move away from my long-held personal quirk of using names beginning in K, so that invalidated my entire stable of regulars and necessitated that I do a lot of name mangling.  To get some name seeds to play with, I ended up using some online name generator websites.  Most work pretty well, but every now and again I’d run across one and just scratch my head going “Man, I could write a better namegen than that.”

Famous last words.