Naming and renaming as a core aspect of play [PEACH]

[MaxWilson]

[This came up in another thread but I'd like to invite wider feedback on it]

Rules don't just dictate gameworld outcomes (which would remove player agency), they also tell you how players should do things: they can shape the play experience.

Here's a combat-relevant example I've been noodling on. Suppose a DM proposes a rule:

Naming and renaming as a core aspect of play: Instead of naming the monsters for you, I want you guys all to make like Harry Dresden and name the monsters yourselves. When I tell you that there's a hideous fleshy thing attacking you which looks like someone stitched the upper half of a gorilla onto the body of an octopus, I'll stop and ask what you want to call it, and I'll use that name in further descriptions. I may have written 'cephalopterids' in my setting notes, but if you call them 'octokongs', I'll say 'octokong' whenever you see a hideous fleshy thing like a gorilla stapled to an octopus. If I'm not sure exactly what an 'octokong' is to you I'll ask for clarification before deciding whether to call a given thing an octokong.

This new procedure would have no impact at all on player agency and their ability to create outcomes, but I believe it would have an effect on the experience of play. Instead of players passively waiting for the DM to finish a probably-irrelevant description of exactly what a Star Spawn Grue looks like so they can roll initiative and start killing things, now you've got an active listening cycle where the DMs and players have a conversation where they come to a mutual agreement about what this horrific new aberration [Star Spawn Grues] actually looks like, in both of their imaginations, well enough so that the DM knows (or at least thinks he knows) what the players see in their heads. And if they are careless and just assume that any hunched, shadowy form is definitely a Space Orc [Star Spawn Grue] they have no one to blame but themselves when the tactical implications bite them in the form of a six-armed [Star Spawn Mangler]!

Would you under any circumstances want your DM to adopt this rule?

[Monster Manuel]

That sounds superb; I would love this.

You can even be creative about re-skinning the appearance of some creatures so both the names and appearance are unique to the group; maybe in your world displacer beasts have kind of a reptilian thing going, and your party winds up calling them "creep-lizards". Now they are a completely in-world unique thing, while still mechanically being displacer beasts.

You;re going to have the experienced player who sees how they play and what they do and in their head goes "oh, that's just a displacer beast". Play that up, in-character, and have that character constantly annoyed by the names the party comes up with.

"Look out! Creep-lizard!"
*sighs* "ACTUALLY, it's not a lizard it's classified as an aberration and it's called a Dis-"
"CREEP. LIZARD."

This would be utterly delightful.

[JackPhoenix]

I don't see the point, and I don't see what makes players coming up with their own nicknames for various monsters "a core aspect of gameplay". Describing the creatures they encounter without explicitly telling them the name is normal at my table, at least for stuff the characters wouldn't be familiar with.... everyone knows how an orc looks like, but few people will be familiar with the three-eyed, slimy tentacle-fish thing, but if the GM's description of what they see is vague or bad enough that the players won't notice "the space orc" is larger than every space orc they've encountered before, and it's got six arms instead of two, it's not the player's fault.

[MaxWilson]

That sounds superb; I would love this.

You can even be creative about re-skinning the appearance of some creatures so both the names and appearance are unique to the group; maybe in your world displacer beasts have kind of a reptilian thing going, and your party winds up calling them "creep-lizards". Now they are a completely in-world unique thing, while still mechanically being displacer beasts.

You;re going to have the experienced player who sees how they play and what they do and in their head goes "oh, that's just a displacer beast". Play that up, in-character, and have that character constantly annoyed by the names the party comes up with.

"Look out! Creep-lizard!"
*sighs* "ACTUALLY, it's not a lizard it's classified as an aberration and it's called a Dis-"
"CREEP. LIZARD."

This would be utterly delightful.


I don't see the point, and I don't see what makes players coming up with their own nicknames for various monsters "a core aspect of gameplay". Describing the creatures they encounter without explicitly telling them the name is normal at my table, at least for stuff the characters wouldn't be familiar with.... everyone knows how an orc looks like, but few people will be familiar with the three-eyed, slimy tentacle-fish thing, but if the GM's description of what they see is vague or bad enough that the players won't notice "the space orc" is larger than every space orc they've encountered before, and it's got six arms instead of two, it's not the player's fault.

@JackPhoenix, what is not normal is for the DM to habitually rely on the player's descriptions/classifications going forward. That is novel to this procedure.

The point is to avoid leaking DM knowledge into the play experience in order to:

(1) Highlight the player's role in the experience more than the DM's,
(2) Make it easier to stay in character (DM adopts your terminology),
(3) Give the DM more space to play dirty tricks on the players without feeling like a lying dirtbag,
(4) Increase uncertainty, and hopefully heighten both a sense of discovery and engagement.

I like @Monster Manuel's point about putting "experienced" players and novice players on a more even footing w/rt in-world events. (I see this as in-line with point #4.)

Again, this proposal is not aimed at changing game outcomes per se (though #3 might make the DM more willing to do things that change outcomes, like use deceptive monsters a la Death Kiss vs. Beholder switcheroo if they both qualify as Tentacled Horrors to the players). It's more similar to playing chess with on a life-sized chessboard with members of your extended family playing all of the chess roles: intended to change the experience of play, not the mechanics.

P.S. @Monster Manuel, in my head the player objecting to "creep lizard" sounds like C3PO. :)

[ProsecutorGodot]

The only real implications that I find as a consequence to this is when a new player character pops in and you find a "Psychic Squid Face" flanked by several "Yellow Voldemorts" and you have to explain to the player what that means instead of "oh that's Githyanki attacking a Mind Flayer" and that's great in my opinion, it has so little mechanical impact but the amount of engagement it brings to the table is terrific.

In my own experience, it usually doesn't matter what a creature is actually called and players tend to just call them something else until corrected (sometimes corrected over and over) so why waste time making sure they're correct when you can simply allow them to make the correct answer themselves.

Also some monster names are annoying to remember. Yugoloths (and abyssal creatures in general) are so often misnamed in our campaign that I'm still not sure if I've been calling them what they actually are.

[Magic Myrmidon]

My group actually had this happen naturally. The DM described these wolves (and other creatures throughout the campaign) as moving erratically, twitching, sometimes even phasing in and out of the ground, trees, and terrain.

Our group dubbed them "Bethesda Wolves", and it stuck.

[MaxWilson]

"Yellow Voldemorts", I love it!