General World Questions and Suggestions

[Sarah]

Obviously I've written a ton of stuff for this universe to provide a lot of options, but there are tons of open spaces with not a lot of detail mentioned.

Here's where you come in: If you see some important ideas missing, don't be afraid to ask. I might have them in my head, but forgot to put them somewhere. Or, I might have not given the fact any thought, and thus you may be helping to spark some new ideas/expansion.

Questions about a planet or a race and how they might run things. Questions or suggestions about human government. Etc and so on. I might have an answer, or I might be just as perplexed as you... but maybe someone else might be able to suggest something!

Alternatively, suggestions help too. Obviously I have the final say, and obviously I can't implement every suggestion. But once and awhile, new ideas from someone else with a different kind of knowledge or creativity may be just what's needed to fully flesh out this universe!

[Sarah]

Okay here's a thought pokey just brought up to me:

Naming.

Obviously in naming Olive as just Olive, I've set it that Fauns must only go by one name. We should probably figure out which races use last names or not!

Humans obviously have 2-3 names (first, middle, last), Fauns so far have 1 name, and I think Centaurs would use only 1 name as well. Vampires and werecreatures probably also follow human naming concepts as they're probably closest related to Humans, and I think Dwarves should go by 2 names.

But what does everyone think about Merpeople, Winged, Selkies, and Elves? What would make most sense for these?

For Elves, since I was aiming for Tolkien-esque Elves, most of them use 1 name, and a few have alternate names that sometimes get applied as a last name, so it's hard to decipher their exact naming constructs. Should we stick with only 1 name?

[kaya]

Selkies should only have one name. <3 Elves should have at least two names because they have two names a first and surname. (Leoglas Greenleaf--bad example. xD) Chyeah. <3 Anyway, wing people sholud have one name as well. <3

[Sarah]

It's true, actually, Legolas is a bad example (hehe) because the reason Greenleaf actually gets applied to him is because that's actually what "Legolas" essentially means in Sindarin Elvish, so it's in actuality an alternative name that then gets applied by many as a last name. I think it's used as a second name in a poem somewhere in the book, and then people have assumed it's a last name (I actually do use it as his last name in another RP, as blank knows, hehe). Whenever a second name is applied to a Tolkien elf, it's generally another term or nickname. Another example is Elrond Half-elven. It's not his last name, it's just a label to say he is in fact... half-elven, lol.

... *is a Tolkien geek* ;D

[Blank]

Jul 29, 2009 22:44:58 GMT -6 Sarah said:

... *is a Tolkien geek* ;D

NEEEEEEEEEED

I pretty much agree with what was said above about the naming conventions.

[Sarah]

Should I just say one name for the remaining 4 races then?

[Blank]

Sure! It makes sense that the less-human-like races wouldn't need surnames.

[kaya]

Yesyesyes. <3 One name for the other races. <3 Sounds good yesyes. <3

[Sarah]

Okay! Adjusted the naming suggestion post at the bottom of the Races thread (which I added more recently, in case some haven't seen it yet).

[wanderer]

Actually, I was thinking about the naming. Things like the goblins, merpeople, etc. seem that they'd be more shamanistic and primitive culturally. Not a bad thing, but these groups typically had, as you said, one name that they go by. They also had a relatively small common naming pool between tribes so they'd even go by their tribe/clan name if it was big enough or by a qualifier granted at an adulthood ceremony. The qualifier would be something like 'Swiftfoot' or 'Dwarvenbane' or even 'Currentjumper' for the merfolk. The thing is it would describe something about them that's memorable enough to be recalled. Similar to the manner in which some ancient cultures took up given names like 'shieldcracker' like the norse, or the animalistic totem naming used by the native americans... I think we might need to set up basic culture for the races to keep them from being stereotyped and so that we can better understand how to play them.

[Sarah]

Good point. Right now the race descriptions are fairly vague, mostly because I was trying to avoid writing too much (since there is a TON to read for a newcomer and it can be a little overwhelming).

I wonder if starting a wiki might be a good idea? Maybe if I set up one of those we could really fully flesh out races and planets and whatnot for further reading.

Another thought I had last night is that we probably need to set some sort of standard distance between planets. The difficulty being, of course, that orbits don't move together and keep a regular distance from each other. But it would do good to figure out some sort of estimation system in order to figure out the time it would take to travel between planets.

What got me thinking about this was that I offered to have the Adeala stop back on Antheia to eventually pick up Louisa as crew, but then I realized that the basic timeline rules that I've set up for the site means if the trip between Terra and Antheia takes more than a week, Kaya will be waiting more than a month of real time to finally get her character in play without any one else to play with on the planet while she waits.

[Blank]

That seems almost too North American Native-centric to me. Primitive cultures all had different sorts of naming traditions and it would make sense that these inhuman societies would evolve with different naming systems completely unlike what we have on earth.

Basic culture may be good and indicating if they have a central authority or if they live in more tribal groups would be good, but I think it would be best to keep it brief. After all, the more restrictive rules we set up, the less fun it'll be to play and develop the characters, and also less directions to go in.

[wanderer]

Actually what I was saying was more Scandinavian based, though every majorly shamanistic society has used similar naming conventions. This includes Shintoism. I was just giving an idea for two naming schemes anyway. The Goblins, which coexist with the quite norse Dwarves, and perhaps the merpeople, who I could see naming themselves on prowess and body shape.

Oh, and isn't Yule on Antheia?

+Edit+
I meant the naming things after natural objects for Shintoism.

[Sarah]

Oh yes he is! This is true. So there is some room for interaction there for a bit, you're right.

Still, we do need some idea as to how long each planet is from each other. Or should we do the lazy thing and just say each planet is a week apart? ...which would probably not make any sense, but for the ease of travel and too much time passing before we can get to plots in other places?

[Blank]

Jul 30, 2009 15:38:35 GMT -6 @wanderer said:

Actually what I was saying was more Scandinavian based, though every majorly shamanistic society has used similar naming conventions.

Ah sorry. I'm more familiar with Native American naming conventions and I was getting kinda iffy over using something so similar, especially for Goblins since that would code them as Native and that's noooot so good considering their race attributes are violent and greedy. I'd rather stay away from any close parallels if possible.

Jul 30, 2009 15:55:38 GMT -6 Sarah said:

Still, we do need some idea as to how long each planet is from each other. Or should we do the lazy thing and just say each planet is a week apart? ...which would probably not make any sense, but for the ease of travel and too much time passing before we can get to plots in other places?

It would make sense to have the planets be increasing in distance from one another. So Heimdall and Antheia are three days away from Terra, Corus is five days, Glacies is seven and Nox is nine. We'll have to ignore the orbits simply because it'll be too complicated to try figure them out everytime you wanted to travel from A to B. And while I know the dates are really fast for space travel, since each week is a month of gametime, I think it'll be just the right speed to keep things paced properly.