Thursday, January 12, 2006

Possible name for my version of Cold Iron

As I get closer and closer to deciding to publish my own game based on Cold Iron, I'm considering that it needs it's own name.

One name I've got in mind is Troll Slayer, which doesn't seem to be the name of any game out there.

One reason I thought about that name is that I use trolls of various sorts quite freqently (though goblins and undead are frequent also). But maybe the fact that I use other creatures also is a problem for that name...

I also thought about something like Hot Steel that ties the game to Cold Iron, but that seems cheezy.

Frank

2 comments:

Frank said...

Good point about worrying about name last... I was just thinking that with my current round of thoughts, the system I'm describing really can't be called Cold Iron, and it can be handy to at least have a working name.

Of course it's not like anyone is going to confuse my use of Cold Iron for the work in progress with the real game, since truthfully the only person who has the "real" Cold Iron is Mark Christiansen, and he has been silent and invisible...

Frank

Frank said...

Yea, I see the tie to WHFRP with Trollslayer, it was the only hit I could come up with. I'm willing to ignore that, I want the game name to be unique, but anyone who tries to apply a concept from one game based on the name of the element in that game matching the name of the other game is in store for frustration (not sure which came first, Ron's Sorceror or D&D's Sorceror for example - but a sure lead to confusion).

I think a name mainly serves as identity, a shorthand for "that game about XYZ". D&D is actually only half evocative, dragons have never been mainstay opposition in D&D (low level character's can't dream of fighting them, at least not full grown dragons, and back in the 1e days, high level characters laughed at dragons, in 3.0, a mature dragon is an encounter fit for the climax of a 20 level campaign, or maybe even an encounter in an epic game).

But there is something to be said for a name that is partially descriptive. The way I run Cold Iron, trolls are definitely a mainstay encounter, and PCs can fight them pretty early one (perhaps not right out of the starting gate, but I introduced them into our 4th or 5th game session with no problems).

Yea, I had kind of considered the issue of hot steel and forging. Mostly I think that name would be cheesy, sort of like we used to think Tunnels and Trolls was a cheesy name for a take off from D&D (I wonder how much better T&T would have done had it been named differently - perhaps even resisting aliteration - of course they could have done with less cutely named spells also).

Frank