These Generators Suck!

The region so far, all decked out in hexes and roads

Ok, actually they're great (which is why I care in the first place), but they're just a bit off theme for me.

The Problem

Whenever possible I try to offload my content generation to the irresponsible number of PDFs I've bought.  There's a couple in particular that I like.  Besides giving some rather unusual names, the extra details generated by Vornheim (and to a lesser extent with respect to generating random NPCs, A Red & Pleasant Land ).  Unfortunately, both of those are a little too weird for my tastes, and the names have a bit of a germanic/nordic and eastern european streak, respectively.  But I do love how the names sound a certain way but aren't actually names from there. Also, my end goal is to have a series of interlocking tables to generate quests or other on-the-fly content like AR&PL, and so that necessitates starting with my own NPC tables.

You may recall (it's been a while since I blogged) that the region I built for my ACKs game has a vaguely south american feel.  Thus it stands to reason I might want some spanish-sounding (sounding, not actual) names.  As we discussed, I have an RPG pdf problem, and I bought two small PDFs with a list of 100 Spanish names (one set male, the other female).  Unfortunately, a lot of them are a little too on the nose.  Anne Pilar, Lucila Lombardo.  I need some way to bridge the gap between sounding LIKE these kinds of names, but being as unusual sounding as Chloris Choke or Izaster Turnspine.

Markov Chains

Fortunately, every DM's best friend, donjon.bin.sh happens to have a Fantasy Name Generator that is powered by giving it a set of names which it then spits out random Markov Chains of.  With a little patience, I'm hoping I can put the normal sounding spanish names into the source, and re-roll a bit until I get some good sounding names.  

Challenge number one is splitting out first and last names, which the PDF with these names oh-so-incoveniently put in the same row.  For added fun, I'll be doing this data cleanup in OpenOffice Calc instead of Excel because this is my home computer and the money I could have spent on Excel for myself I spent on more RPGs!

A quick glance suggests that only a few last names like Del Toro and Del Sol have an extra space, so popping the list into notepad and replacing space with tab should be a good start. 

once the replace is done, we can paste the tab separated names into Calc and now the first names are in one column but the last names are in another.  Now we've got something that's going to be a little bit easier to work with when it comes to pasting into donjon.

Fun pro tip: Unlike Excel, if you try to select an entire column, Calc will select not merely your 100 rows with actual text, but so many blank newlines that it will actually cause donjon to crash, all while it says to itself "Yeah, seems about right".  Anyway, if you do this, be sure to just select the 100 or however many rows of source material you have.

Alright! Time for some Generating!  Let's see our first batch:

Edos

Íñicio

Serostoro

Eleó

Albrnoro

Herilanta

Ispelv

Jertondr

Sarteroma

Elilanco

right off the bat, I love this.  Obviously it's a little rough around the edges and we'll have to clean up a bit, but I'm very satisfied.  Since I'm making male names, I'll probably change Herilanta to Herilanto, and to stay consistent i'll change Jertondr into either Jertondro or Jertondo.  Other than that I'll probably do some massaging in the vein of limiting myself to 2 names of each letter (for a total of 50 male names) to keep things easier to remember.  But overall I'm actually quite pleased with this.

Other things I'll be looking for while filling my way to 50: a mix of long and short names (single syllable to multi-syllable).  

Wrapping Up

Well, eventually the well started to run a bit dry as we got closer to 50 names that could reasonably be pronounced by humans.  Just male first names for now.  Hopefully female names will be a little bit easier, and for last names I'll hopefully do a bit more "intelligent design" by throwing in surnames based on places already named.  anyway, for those in need of "vaguely spanish sounding male names", It's only fair I share my work:

Albrnoro

Andortic

Bastioq

Blas

Bentomó

Celeo

Caner

Dicon

Donch

Eleó

Elianco

Falaromo

Faror

Gafradá

Galiober

Garado

Gidor

Hendio

Herilanto

Íñicio

Inor

Jesto

Jertondro

Luergo

Lustio

Maro

Miodo

Niasento

Niolentí

Óstio

Panto

Parlober

Ponce

Profanco

Quaupo

Ranodu

Ruiomó

Sanino

Senton

Sergio

Serostoro

Sios

Telal

Tonde

Vianto

Vicald

Vaniro

Yali

Yaromondi