Bottom post of the previous page:
After way too long in drafting and with a significant amount of time staring at words until they make sense again, I finally have a draft for the proposed new naming policy that the admin and headmin teams don't hate enough to release publicly for the community to have a look at.This draft isn't final, and is still open to changes, but is likely pretty close to what we're looking for in the final policy. If you've got any feedback, you can post it here or/and in the policybus thread I'll be putting up after a few days for this topic, so without further ado
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Names for all species must not violate rules 3, 8 and 11 (I.E, not explicitly OOC, not creepy or sexual, and not bigoted) and must not be intentionally hard to spell. Examples of excessively OOC names include but are not limited to: References to real life persons or historical figures, or references to the characters existing in a game or game mechanics. Additionally, different character species have different requirements and guidelines: (Spook note – these can be split up onto the different species pages on the wiki after amendment / if they remain in their current state post-drafting, the main rules page does not need the guidelines for every species)
Humans: Characters are required to have a first name and a last name, and may have up to one title, honorific or nickname. Names should meet a minimum standard of good faith - references to historical figures, juvenile nonsense (examples: Poop Boy, Dorkhead Mcgee, Syndie Fukr), excessive puns or any violation of the above rules will be rejected as names. (MRP): While silly or unrealistic names on the MRP servers are still okay, names should meet the higher standard of avoiding explicit references and blatant jokes or puns.
Felinids: Felinids largely follow the human guidelines of requiring a first name and a last name but have a somewhat higher tolerance for silly or pun names, especially cat or food puns.
Lizards: Lizard names should either consist of two psuedo-words linked by a hyphen (example: Geeta-Jin, Azel-Zaw), or some variant of verbs-the-noun or equivalents (example: Made-For-Greatness, Scales-of-Silver, Sings-With-Frogs)
Ethereals: Ethereals names consist of the name of a celestial body (or a name that reasonably sounds like it could be a celestial body) followed by one to three capital letters. (MRP): Real celestial bodies with dumb names are excluded from reasonable ethereal names on MRP (yes the Eye of Sauron Nebula exists, no you cannot name an ethereal EyeOfSauron XP on MRP)
Plasmamen: Plasmamen names consist of an element, alloy or compound name followed by one to three roman numerals.
Moths: Moth names generally consist of some combination of latin words (primarily moth taxonomic names strung together), but receive a specific exemption to have any character name (justified in character as a nickname) they like that does not violate the general requirements to comply with rules 3, 8 and 11 (a minimum of effort is however still required even for silly moth names to ensure we don’t end up with 53 moths named “lamp” and 78 moths named “moth”)
Exceptions: Wizards, Nuclear Operatives and Performers (Mimes and Clowns): All of these are exempt from normal naming requirements for a believable or normal name and have partial clearance for minor but explicitly OOC references in their names, but should still hold back from too excessively OOC, or anything that violates rules 8 or 11 (Run-by-Chat the fake-streamer clown is okay, whentheantagisvalid the mime is not)
Interspecies naming: If a player has a character backstory that reasonably explains why a character of one species is using the naming convention of another, they may substitute the naming convention of their actual species for another, a human raised by lizards could use a verbs-the-noun style name, for example or a lizard raised by plasmamen may use their elemental naming scheme. The exception to this is that the moth nickname exemption is non-transferable, non-moths may use their base latin/taxonomic naming scheme with character reasons, but you cannot name a human "Table" with the excuse that they were raised by Moths.
The Gimmick Exemption: Names that lean on or are technically in violation of naming policy may at admin discretion receive an exemption to be used temporarily to enable interesting, entertaining or plain fun character gimmicks. Admins are encouraged to allow this where possible as long as players are putting in a good faith effort to use the exemption in ways that are beneficial for everyone. Characters using this exemption should not become a player’s primary player character in the long term – a few rounds as “high-lord Bob” can easily be made interesting, but gimmicks wear down and 50 rounds in it just becomes a drag for everyone else, to say nothing of 200 – keep gimmicks short sweet and interesting.
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A particular note of interest are ethereal names - several LRP admins are interested in removing the MRP division I have drafted in and outright banning stupid-but-technically-legal ethereal names on all servers, given my relative unfamiliarity with server culture on LRP, I'm interested to know what the community thinks of that proposal.