Having played Trevor the conjurer, I decided to write about some experiences of choosing an ordinary name like that for the character. Trevor was initially a joke, as a friend said as a joke that roll up a conjie called Trevor(those who know Magical Trevor understand this). I did this, with an intent to get a glimpse to the class, seeing how familiars worked etc. Any way, this kind of amusement does not last long, especially if you want to make the character as serious one. Some points to follow:

1. I managed to break free of the Magical Trevor model(the char also bore a physical resemblance to him, if anyone read his desc), but a concious effort had to be made to break free from the model, which was not a good thing. This is a burden for the category which people using literature-borrowed names such as Celebrimbor(minor char in LOTR, but there have been worse ones). In this sense Trevor was one of the Celebrimbors because of Magical Trevor. This generally not a problem for category we call as Trevors(normal RL names), as they generally do not have a specific person they are named after. If they do, they can be considered as Celebrimbors and this problem does apply to them as well. All Celebrimbors that are aware of being Celebrimbors have to work their way out of the model(this is a mental work to keep the character that was the source of the name apart from the one you are playing).

2. Some people feel that such names interfere with their RP enviroment and might choose to ignore you because of the name(For examples, Derexal was put off by Trevor's owl Bob who had his uncle's name and I was put off by Jukka the bard who had my cousin's name(the bard wasn't even the same sex an my cousin)). This was a valid concern for someone playing Trevors or Celebrimbors, as this can be counterproductive for those character, which is another good reason not to intentionally roll a Trevor or Celebrimbor. Some people in Dios have spoken about multikilling and full looting Trevors or Celebrimbors, but this is basically an empty threat as those multikillers can always find another.

This is a problem common to Trevors and Celebrimbors, and only difference between Trevors and Celebrimbors in this is the structure of the group that resents them. Basically, most resentment goes to Those Trevors from those people who know one of the same name RL. The next worst is Celebrimbors who are known by the people who resent them and the third is to Trevors from those who don't know anyone of that name. People tend to be less anal about this if they think someone is an accidental Celebrimbor or Trevor(This is extremely unlikely for Trevors with common English names). Being a Celebrimbor or Trevor can mean that people have a preset view of your character that may be entirely different from the character.

3. The burden that bothers Trevors, but usually not Celebrimbors, providing that the Celebrimbors are not also Trevors(with not an ordinary name), is accidentally bumping into a character or person with the same name with your character. This is part 1. coming true to a Trevor, and can lead to their players having to keep the other Trevor characters apart from their character. To an accidental Celebrimbor, this can happen to once, in the similar fashion it happened to Cytherea, though I do not know whether or not it contributed to her deletion. To Trevors, it can happen multiple times, as it is more likely for there to be other Trevor characters with same name. This happened to Trevor, and along with there being my other characters with their RP in the Fields, it was enough to ruin the RP of this character, leading me to delete him. To let the more successful characters(RP-wise) a chance to develop better.

After my own experience with Trevor, I recommend not rolling a character with a name that you know to be of one of Trevors or Celebrimbors. No offense to Vlad and his actual Celebrimbor intended. This is a rant about those names that pass Immortal scrutiny and still have some connections or associations to OOC world and the adverse affects of those associations. Also, this was not posted to critisize or support the name policies of said Immortals. I posted this to say: Don't volunteer to carry such an unnecessary burden in your characters name and pick a name that you don't know to have any OOC connections or meaning. It's simply not worth it as you can always choose a better name.

I would understand complaining about Jesus the Healer who runs around creating floods of bread, but this isn't what we're complaining about. We're complaining about Trevor. And we're not even complaining that Trevor is a valid Human name, we're complaining that Trevor is some obscure character from a little-known Internet cartoon.

Names should follow some form of convention. And I'm not talking about the "is this name found in any dictionary" convention. What I mean is, humans should have human names, dwarves should have dwarven names, etc. It's much easier to get creative with Gnomes because, well, how many gnomes do you know? Not many, I would hope. So what's wrong with naming your char Trevor? Does your CHARACTER know that Trevor is a popular RL name? Of course not. It's generic. Jesus, even though you wouldn't know of him IC, isn't as generic a name as Trevor. This brings me to:

Rule #1: No historical or literary names.

Now, you also wouldn't want to name your character after anything other than a proper noun. So, Drum the Bard, or Digger the Svirf wouldn't make good names. Now, as last names, they might work. Like SomeBard Eveningsong (much in the same way we have Miller or Smith). Basically, you want your name to be just that - a name. Not some random word.

Rule #2: No words from a dictionary (or variations and combinations thereof), and no slang.

Seems pretty simple. And it is. Which is why the rules are:

Carrion Fields requires Player Character names that are compatible with a fantasy roleplay environment. The idea is to create an atmosphere that is free of outside references, and the questions you were asked upon character generation are intended to guide you in this aspect. Specifically, we do not allow words from the dictionary ("Killer") or slight variations on them ("Killa"), including slang. Combinations of words ("OrcKiller") are also forbidden for the same reason. Also, we ask that you do not take names from historical sources or published works ("Stalin", "Beowulf").

Final judgement is at the discretion of the Immortal staff, and may result in deletion of the character. Take a few moments to think about your name before deciding on one during character generation.

It says, quite plainly, that the questions asked at generation were to serve as a guide in naming your character. As a matter of fact, it says at generation:

The following questions are good guidelines for determining if you have chosen an appropriate name.

That doesn't mean that you can't name your character Trevor. If you honestly answer yes to all the questions, then there is no way your name can be denied. If you lie, it doesn't mean that your name is inappropriate, it just means that it may be inappropriate:

If you have lied in the previous questions and we deem your name unfit you will be denied without warning.

-----
"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri."

Is there some outside reference that is Magical Trevor that I am not getting, because I knew a guy from Scottland on XBOX Live with the name Magical Trevor. I guess I thought it was original, if it is not let me know?

Magical Trevor is a silly little Flash cartoon. There are three of them, each progressively worse. I'm not terribly surprised not many people know who this is...

I hate to admit, though, I've got the song from the first one stuck in my head.

-----
"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri."

C'mon. You can look this stuff up these days.

That said, there's nothing anything inherently bad about a human named "Trevor". I meet people named "John" or whatever all the time, and I don't greet them with "I can't talk to you! I know another John and I can't separate them!"

It would be bad if there were many Trevors within CF, just because it would be hard to keep track of who is who, but the existing name rules have always prevented simultaneous Trevors, and if any Trevor exists for a while (as has now happened), you won't see any more of that name.

I think it's a lot weirder if every character is named something bizarre and unpronouncible, and the Flash cartoon is an obscure reference at best. Certainly not anything I'd want to interrupt a player over.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I don't know if the naming code is just stock rom, or more likely, just really old and nobody really reads it anyway, but what makes Maryjane an illegal name, and Trevor a legal one, or more pertinently either Mary, or Jane?

Maybe the initial questions at rolling should be updated to reflect the current naming policy.

I'm not in favor of some maximum number of google hits as a criteria to judge a name by - just going off the current battlefield - Aryze and Leontina would fail, Dargmart would be "acceptable". All three names are fine with me.

I'd like to think the playerbase is responsible enough to police themselves on this issue, but then again on occasion there have been notable examples of self-policing failing.

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of names I find unacceptable, but I know them when I see them.

Imm enforcement of naming policy, for many years now, and Imm stated policy regarding names, bears little resemblance to the ACTUAL name questions every new character has to answer.

But, why bother with those questions right? Everyone just hits y;y;n;n;y and ignores them. Even the Imms don't care if you lie when you do that.


If you want to be as lax as you are, at least change the written rules to resemble that.

It's bad form to have stated rules, and almost NEVER enforce them.

In my opinion.

Here at The Carrion Fields we promote a roleplaying environment. Because of
this atmosphere, we do not allow just any name you may want. The names must
meet a certain criteria and if they do not, they will be denied. The following
questions are good guidelines for determining if you have chosen an appropriate
name.

Is this name an original name as far as you know?



Trevor lied and broke the rules. Celebrimbor lied and broke the rules, Thror did the same. So did MANY others. When they KNOWINGLY answered this question with a Y instead of a N. But, the stated ENFORCED policy ignores this question. Either get rid of it, or modify it to reflect current name policy.

If you look down to the last question, with the *and*, you find that the sentence "The names must meet a certain criteria and if they do not, they will be denied." Is false. Either that sentence is true, or the one in the last question is true, in my opinion, they are mutually exclusive. If you want them to mean the same thing, either remove the *AND* from the last question, or add the same *and* to this sentence so it becomes....."The names must meet a certain criteria and if they do not *AND* the immstaff doesn't like your name *AND* you haven't ranked up past middle ranks *AND* you aren't roleplaying well, they will be denied."

That would make the character creation naming questions in agreement with stated imm policy regarding enforcement.


Is this name a combination of two other names (e.g. Maryjane)?


Ok, this one is somewhat enforced, although, many people just change spellings and get through.

Is this name found in any dictionary or a common slang term?


I personally would amend this question to take into account google, and/or wikipedia.


By answering as you have to the previous questions you have claimed that your
name is completely legitimate in our fantasy world. If you have lied in the
previous questions *and* we deem your name unfit you will be denied without
warning. This is your last chance.

Are you sure this name is acceptable?




And here's the crux of it. That *and* word. That basically means "Break the rules, we don't care....unless one of us doesn't like your name, then we care." I'd rather have that *AND* be an *or*. But that's me. That *and* means that all of the previous name questions weren't rules to be followed at all, but polite suggestions at the strongest.

Also, that "You will be denied without warning" is VERY far from accurate. If you roleplay decently in the eyes of the imms, or get past 15 or so without them noticing, it becomes a "we don't want to make them waste all that work" thing. Nomatter how many other people have their rp experience tainted, damaged, or down-right ruined by having to deal with horrid names pulling them out of role.

I know that I have had more than a few of my own chars die-off because IC I would have had to deal with people with Crap names, so it's a choice between "Break role and ignore them" or "not break role, and have your time on cf turn from fun to extreme unfun by having to deal with them". Either choice leads to the character just not being fun anymore, and eventually to deletion.

In my years of mudding, that has destroyed my desire to play more successful, decently rp'ed characters than any other single thing.

Search engines find Magical Trevors and small Sicilian towns called Valguarnera. And that my orc Murgh was in fact a chicken(was pretty funny discovery when I googled him for the first time).

And what comes to Trevor the character, I would have accepted the name change because of Magical Trevor, as it was guilty as charged in this case. However, if a character of mine would be brought to ROTD(or whatever is done to chars with names deemed bad) for some equally obscure reference which I wouldn't recognize, I wouldn't be eager to accept a change of name or think that the Imm would be reasonable in the name enforcing policy. And I don't tend google my character names before rolling them, which means that accidental obscure references such as Murgh the orc can happen.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLR,GGLR:2005-43,GGLR:en&q=valguarnera

Or just www.Valguarnera.com most results are in Italian due to the fact it is a Cicilian town as well as a former royal family in Cicily.

POSTER'S DISCLAIMER: "Of course....I don't play anymore, but its just my 2 cents."

I've never heard of "magical Trevor", but I can name people in RL named Trevor. I've never heard of Celebrimbor, nor have I ever known anybody named Celebrimbor.

I don't really mind Celebrimbor (was a minor char), or Trevor (not an incredibly common name). What mostly annoys me is names really, really close to common phrases or names that are abbreviations (especially since it specifically mentions them while rolling). Also, names that don't fit the race. IE : Richard the Orc. It might be cute if it came up once every 10 years but unfortunately if you continually let it slide it always comes up. Smokwead the druid. Tim the Elf Paladin. Stuff like that just utterly ruins any hope of RP'ing with these people. How can you take an elven paladin seriously if their name is Tim?