Names offer context, identity, and even evoke different feelings based upon their sound. Additionally, some of the names are more gender neutral than others, and you can easily tweak them-do whatever best suits the needs of your game and the needs of the character! These can be starting points for you, not ending points. A random result could even give you a hook to help you further build out that NPC’s personality. You can roll randomly or simply choose one that suits the character you wish to portray. The good news is we have taken the liberty and done the hard work up front, leaving you free to copy, paste, and print right into your notes. The trouble is that, while they are great to have, they take time to generate yourself. These random generation tables can be used for just about any topic. Random Generation Tables: Topics, Characters & More No.Rune-covered, 6-sided gray die from ancient Egypt, used in tabletop games. Once you have a good surname, select the first name with a good ring to it. The first names are not meant to match with the other components on the line… (especially given, as I mentioned, that the other components are not supposed to match with themselves even). The names I made up I tried to keep short and punchy, so that I and my players can remember them. Sometimes I slightly modify them, or spell them differently.

I tend to prefer archaic real world names as much as possible, as they have an air of familiarity that lends them credibility. Then continue to generate random lines until you get a satisfactory match for the character you’re trying to name!Īs you will notice I also add some first names too.

My suggestion here is start by generating one random line and picking your favourite word from it. If you do want to try more random results, here’s a little number generator you can use (NOTE: I wanted to embed this, but the widget creates some major spacing issues on my page! Sorry, for now you’ll have to keep it open in a separate tab).Ĭurrently, my table has 208 lines. Rather than have the table go on forever, I saw there was space for four components on each line, and I think this rather increases the usability of the generator, as you can quickly mix and match various combinations even on the same line… NOTE: many of the epithets and nouns can be reversed to good effect! Some of the epithets and nouns found on the same line might work well together as written, but the idea is to choose a word you like and then find its perfect match elsewhere on the table (throwing words randomly together rarely does it for me!). The generator does NOT feature finalised names. Let me start by saying that you will need to do at least a bit of legwork yourself here. Now I know there are plenty of great name generators out there (I list a few at the bottom of this page)! But none quite as specific as the one that I would ideally like to be able to refer to.Ī couple of days, and lots of word association later, here it is… please bear in mind that it’s not just for generating heroic names, like Thunderlust and Dawnwarden, but good old commoner names too like Cherrycheeks or Beetlebag… in fact, it’s arguably more for the latter, as these are the folks that need naming, but we’d really rather not have to put too much effort into. Whenever I try to pull something out of thin air I tend to inevitably get a fairly small pool of results revolving around the words ‘black’ ‘star’ ‘storm’ ‘gold’ ‘fist’ ‘jaw’ ‘hand’ etc., and I figured that some kind of table or chart with a much larger word pool would be of great assistance. Gile Ravenplume takes a break from gladiator training…Īnyway, having decided I liked these kind of compound names, I started jotting down words that might make up one half of a good surname. Lavinia Brightswan was a powerful mage I created for my adventure the Gleaming Cloud Citadel. It can be spectacularly unsubtle like ‘Bloodfist’ or ‘Skullbasher’, or just a name that resonates with the right ring for that person, hinting at their personal qualities, without going so far as literally describing them. I like these types names for several reasons:ġ) When you find a good combination it usually sounds convincing!Ģ) As these compound surnames consist of familiar words, they are easy for you, and perhaps more importantly for your players, to remember – and pronounce.ģ) You can hint at the character’s physical appearance, attributes or personality, by dint of giving them an aptronymic moniker. This post was first published in Nov 2020, and updated in Jan 2023.Īs any Dungeon Master will attest, but particularly any who write and publish their own adventures, coming up with vaguely credible names you don’t hate for all your NPCs is a major pain in the I’ve found myself leaning into recently is the classic ‘epithet + noun’ formula for NPC surnames.

Random medieval names