Café de Nuit

Dude. Now I want to cast Will Smith as Urik von Kharkov.

InVinoVeritas wrote:Dude. Now I want to cast Will Smith as Urik von Kharkov.

He'd probably be better than we think, but I suspect a lot of folks around here would, if polled, vote up Tony Todd.

Brandi wrote:

InVinoVeritas wrote:Dude. Now I want to cast Will Smith as Urik von Kharkov.

He'd probably be better than we think, but I suspect a lot of folks around here would, if polled, vote up Tony Todd.

At the risk of horrific dismemberment, Eddie Murphy wasn't awful in Vampire in Brooklyn?

From the old Kargatane site:

http://web.archive.org/web/200012130311 ... nings.html

EO wrote:From the old Kargatane site:

http://web.archive.org/web/200012130311 ... nings.html

Thank you, EO. I can' t believe I'd forgotten Sanguinia. Sanguinia! Gee, I think there could a vampire or two in that domain.

I'm definitley going to have to change a few of these names, as I have one player who speaks French and another who speaks German. Maybe Strahdsbuddy is right and I should just get dumb players who only speak English.

SpiritCaller wrote:

EO wrote:From the old Kargatane site:

http://web.archive.org/web/200012130311 ... nings.html

Thank you, EO. I can' t believe I'd forgotten Sanguinia. Sanguinia! Gee, I think there could a vampire or two in that domain.

I'm definitley going to have to change a few of these names, as I have one player who speaks French and another who speaks German. Maybe Strahdsbuddy is right and I should just get dumb players who only speak English.

You can also just make everyone and everything have bad names. If you're fighting for the greater glory of the truly angelic St. Todblut, then Dr. Mordenheim might be a swell fellow.

InVinoVeritas wrote:You can also just make everyone and everything have bad names. If you're fighting for the greater glory of the truly angelic St. Todblut, then Dr. Mordenheim might be a swell fellow.

This sounds easier...

Send the PCs to the town of Bloodwaters or Dead Man's Flats... and have them face shadow fey or constructs or an evil cult or whathaveyou. Throw 'em off the trail of thematic naming... then when themeatic naming does pop up, they don't catch on right away

As for Ghastria, I actually found a real world Ghastria / Gastria Castle ... although that Ghastria isn't derived from "gastric" but from "castria" meaning "castle"...

But as for cool / silly names, I still think Strahdsbuddy wins it: his (purposeful?) misspelling of Pennsylvania to make "Pennsylavnia" always gets read aloud in my head using Bela Lugosi's voice...

Gonzoron of the FoS wrote:

Ail wrote:

Gonzoron of the FoS wrote: Note that the captain's name is "Stewart" and the first mate has pointy ears (a "cold and calculating" half-elf named Mr. Monterey)

Sorry, I'm still missing the connection.

Rearrange the letters in Sunset Empires, and you almost get USS Enterprise. (You just need to change the m to a 2nd R.) And the captain of one USS Enterprise was played by Patrick Stewart. The first mate of another USS Enterprise was a "cold and calculating" alien with pointy ears named Mr. Spock (in Spock's case, Kirk referred to a lot of the others as Mr. ____ as well, but in pop culture, it only really sticks on Mr. Spock, I think. And Monterey is the only person on the SE crew to be called Mr. anything.) I looked in the book last night and didn't see any other obvious references (and I've been a pretty hard-core trekkie at times in my life, so I'd probably spot them.) But I'm pretty convinced those three are deliberate homages.

I agree. I remember spotting it right away only because the first time I read/scanned through the adventure, my eyes read it as Sunset "Enterprise." Then I reread the name and realized it was a near-anagram. Then there are the descriptions of the captain and first officer (as Gonzoron pointed out): IIRC, isn't Captain Stewart also bald and Monterey have a thing for flattery?

Lord Cyclohexane wrote:As for Ghastria, I actually found a real world Ghastria / Gastria Castle ... although that Ghastria isn't derived from "gastric" but from "castria" meaning "castle"...

But as for cool / silly names, I still think Strahdsbuddy wins it: his (purposeful?) misspelling of Pennsylvania to make "Pennsylavnia" always gets read aloud in my head using Bela Lugosi's voice...

We could have ended up with an actual US state of Transylvania, had the Transylvania purchase not been invalidated in 1776.

The clock called Goldfinger in Individa was a goofy one for me. I even changed the name when I ran the Evil Eye just so I could avoid stupid jokes.

Yaoi Huntress Earth wrote:The clock called Goldfinger in Individa was a goofy one for me. I even changed the name when I ran the Evil Eye just so I could avoid stupid jokes.

Absolutely.

After looking through Dominic d'Honaire's Double Ententes (thanks again for the link, EO), I wrote down some that were about the worst, in my opinion. Since then, one of my players and I have been coming up with new names. Here are a few that we've renamed so far:

Arak: Anachrela

Avonleigh: Myralon

Dementlieu: Belleterre (La République de Belleterre)
We decided that Dementlieu ("mad place"), while it originated as outlined in Gaz 3, was used as a nickname nowadays (sometimes a derogatory one).

ermordenung: assassinare
Ermordernung was not an acceptable name for us with Borca being an Italian-style domain and ermordenung is itself a German word, so I used Google Translate to get the Italian equivalent.

Guignol, Marcel: Guillory, Marcel
Guignol is a ridiculous surname for a Frenchman, so far as I know. But as a nickname for a political figurehead it fits nicely.

Misroi, Anton: Michaud, Anton
Misroi means "evil king"; not a reasonable surname, really. Again, this would be good nickname for those who know of him.

Mordenheim, Victor: Mittgenstein, Johann
I originally chose Wittgenstein, but as Lucien Doomdark noted earlier, it turns out to be the surname of a rather famous German philospher, so I changed the first letter to M for Mordenheim. Mittgenstein just happens to also be a real German surname, though as far I can tell, not of anyone famous.

Sanguinia: Iarnateren
Mircea is a name of Romanian origin, though it's probably also used in a few other countries. Thus, I decided to make this domain a sort of cold post-medieval Romania. Iarnateren translates literally as "winterland". More poetically, the land is also called Terren de iarna a drăgosti, "land of winter's caress". The folk are called iarna de oameni, "winter's people".

Whäl: Miest Bluer
Whäl is found in the Book of Sorrows. As you might guess from its name, its darklord is derived from Captain Ahab. My player and I both decided that it needed renaming. The people of the domain we named the Hălle, after the island's major settlement, St. Hallen.



A few names we plan to leave as-is, such as Chateufaux; there are some places in the real world with odd names that don't immediately make sense like this. On the other hand, there are a few that may annoy others but seemed like a good fit to my player and myself, such as Todstein ("Deathstone") and Nebligtode ("Foggy Deaths"), noted by Chris on page 1 of this thread. But that's just a matter of personal taste. But there are still more that I haven't been able to yet figure out names for.

So, anyone got any suggestions?

SpiritCaller wrote: ermordenung: assassinare
Ermordernung was not an acceptable name for us with Borca being an Italian-style domain and ermordenung is itself a German word, so I used Google Translate to get the Italian equivalent.

The problem would be that "assassinare" (Italian for "to assassinate") sounds really close to the English one, something that the authors were probably trying to avoid. In Italian I can suggest "uccisore" ("slayer"), or "tagliagole" ("cutthroat") or "sicario" ("killer", properly used for contract killers). It still sounds lame to me, but I suppose the original sounds equally lame for German-speakers

Sorti wrote:[The problem would be that "assassinare" (Italian for "to assassinate") sounds really close to the English one, something that the authors were probably trying to avoid. In Italian I can suggest "uccisore" ("slayer"), or "tagliagole" ("cutthroat") or "sicario" ("killer", properly used for contract killers). It still sounds lame to me, but I suppose the original sounds equally lame for German-speakers

Thanks! This is the sort of thing that I don't know since I don' t speak Italian.