User:Haliris/Sandbox

Naming Policy

This page provides the naming conventions that are enforced as part of the rules. The only exception to these conventions are for characters whose backstory support said exceptions and where a name in line with the templates wouldn't be consistent. For instance, a lizard that was raised by moths, or a human that became an IPC for a period of their life...

Admins have full discretion when enforcing Naming Policy, names that are references or deemed inappropriate will be censored.

By Race

• Human: Normal human names, the kind that won’t raise an eyebrow if you chose to name your child. This applies to all other races that reference human names. Human names should not include any prefixes nor suffixes.
• Apid: Human First name that starts with B, Flower last name. Names that resemble clever bee-puns or names involving buzzing are permitted.
• Ethereal: First name is any celestial body or name that sounds like one (look into Greek/Roman mythology for inspiration if nothing else), Last name is two capital letters.
• Felinid: Normal human names, though preferably with Asian origins.
• IPC: Robotic Acronyms or Model identification numbers. Human names are not appropriate for IPCs.
• Lizard: Hyphenated names describing some action, or two part hyphenated names following Ashwalker naming conventions.
• Oozeling: First name is almost any color, last name is any human surname ending in "son".
• Moth: Latin (or psuedo-latin) species name OR a Single word object, concept or event of some special significance to the character. Names containing "Moth" or "Lamp" are not permitted.
• Plasmaman: First name is or sounds like a periodic table element or a chemical, last name is either Roman or Arabic Numerals.

Other information

• All races: Are forbidden from having titles, nicknames and honorifics in their character name. This means “Dr” is not your first name and quoted nicknames don’t go in the middle of official IDs
• Clowns, Mimes and Wizards: May completely ignore the guidelines outlined above, but are still up to admin discretion on whether a name is inappropriate in general.

Comments

I opted for opening the Naming Guidelines fully to admin discretion, by allowing creative players to escape the restrictions of the species templates through the backstories of their characters. I didn't define any standards, fully relying on admin discretion. Naturally, it should be agreed between admins that players should put some amount of effort in their backstories to warrant being granted an exception for their characters. The intent of this policy change isn't to allow players to name their lizards "John Doe" upon a simple request to admins, but to encourage player creativity.

I decided however to keep the templates mostly unchanged, minus some slight modifications here and there to make them less restrictive and more practical. In my opinion, entirely ditching this system would be unwise as only a minority of players pour a significant amount of efforts into creating their characters. Completely removing all standards would be a disservice for players learning to get into RP as restraints can help foster creativity.

The only overhead this adds for us admins would be to properly write a note everytime a name out of these guidelines is approved, as so we don't contradict each other. I don't expect additional staff reports to be generated after this policy change as the players most likely to escalate to this level already do so under our current policies.