Allow an artefact that lets a Blademaster choose the name of his or her blade

Hi there,

Not particularly sure how this one will be received. There could be two ways to do it, one is augment existing Blademaster Bands to permit this effect, or have it be a stand-alone artie that allows it.

This might be argued to be against the spirit of Blademaster swords in general, but also it can be argued that the Blademaster should be permitted to name the blade through which he will shape his destiny.

Not sure what else to add. Thanks for reading my idea.
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Comments

  • I totally support this, although @Tecton has said several times in the past that they don't plan on changing this current mechanic.





    Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
  • I'd be interested in seeing a token or artefact that let a blademaster pick what went into his sword but kept the naming randomized.
  • Big no to this.

    It's been denied before, and for good reason. It ruins a lot of the effect of unique sword names. Also, while Jinsun suggests it would cut down on silly names, I suspect it would probably be used to create a lot of overly silly names too. We don't need every blademaster sword to be generic badass or incredibly silly.

    If you don't like the name you get, you can humgii it and try again.
  • @Tael problem is that solution ruins immersion.  The sword created for them is supposed to be an extension of them. Also from watching others get their swords remade
     you need others to get certain materials because you can only get it once per achaean month.

    @Silvarien While I agree that the naming mechanism we have no creates far to many silly names I am on the fence about your idea. I am just not sure on way or the other this is solution.

  • KatzchenKatzchen Mhaldor
    I just did the quest so many times. Murad's a real joker.


                   Honourable, knight eternal,

                                            Darkly evil, cruel infernal.

                                                                     Necromanctic to the core,

                                                                                             Dance with death forever more.



  • I personally think they should really cut the cooldown to do the quest by at least half, or maybe not have to make em wait potentially 24 hours. It just becomes a giant tellfest to get every blademaster to pick you some ashes while you have every lump of metal and every other material sitting at Murad's feet just waiting for a decent name. Doesn't have to be badass but some of the names are outright stupid and no one except maybe a CiJ member would want to show it off.
  • edited May 2015
    I'm not really sure why everyone is assuming that being able to choose a name would lead to fewer stupid names.

    It's already very, very easy to avoid a stupid name. If you get a stupid name, you humgii it. Do that once or twice and you're all but guaranteed to get at least an average name. Getting a particularly badass name might require a ton of tries since badass names are relatively rare compared to more average names. But silly names are also more rare than average names - it's as easy to avoid a silly name as it is hard to get a badass name.

    And I know a ton of people who would use this as an opportunity to choose silly names. A lot of people humgii them over and over hoping for a particularly badass name, but a lot of people also humgii them over and over hoping for a particularly stupid name. Again, you don't have to humgii them over and over to get an average name - if you get a silly name, chances are that the next one will be more average.

    Letting people choose isn't going to have the effect of getting rid of silly names. It isn't going to eliminate either end of the badass-silly continuum. On the contrary, all it would do is reduce the number of average names by increasing the availability of badass and silly names. (And anything that makes it easier to do the quest more frequently causes this same problem. The current workaround for the timer of asking other BMs to get ashes for you is sort of silly.)

    In terms of RP, your blade is supposed to be an extension of your true self, not how you see yourself. The reason you don't get to choose the name is that the name is supposed to reflect you in a way that perhaps you don't yet recognise. You don't choose the name because you aren't perfectly self-aware. And this opens up neat RP avenues, where your character can come to understand in what sense the blade is a reflection of them. Sometimes you get a name and the connection is obvious, sometimes the character needs to reflect to understand it, and maybe sometimes they never do. I don't think that any of that should be seen as problematic.
  • I decided I was keeping the first blade I got, when I was BM. Got Phantom Victory-  which was awesome, and oddly fitting. With a few exceptions (Impotent Steel someone got one time...), I wish more blademasters did that.
  • edited May 2015
    @Tael I never said they should choose. I stated the current method has issues with the frequency people humgii swords. I kept my firdt and only blade (even got a band) even though I felt/feel it did not fit my character. Ancient Cobras.  

    I figured as you said and agree entirely with that it is up to the player to figure it out. My idea would make many players angry though.

    Make bands not humgiiable and one can only create a new blade after thier original decays. Only issue i see here is thieves. That and many will complain abiut having a name they dislike.

    But I doubt even Divine would agree with this as it removes all ability from a player to try and get a name they will tolerate.

  • edited May 2015
    I find a number of answers here a bit hard to understand.

    @Tael 's "Silly names" and @Makaela 's "ruining of immersion" and stuff -- the existing customization system allows, for example, a Logosian Longsword to have a player-selected name. What is inherently horrible about allowing something very similar in Blademaster weapons to what already exists for other weapons elsewhere in Achaea?

    There's a lot deeper immersion that could be created through a system that allowed player-selected names. For example, in the Suikoden series a village of warriors has a warrior name his sword after his girl and after she's allowed him to do so. I am not saying blatantly rip off Suikoden, but there are many RP opportunities stemming from the sword being player-named because the player could be justifiably made to jump through a lot of hoops to do it. Performing a process to name and rename is kinda like a delayed repetition of dice-rolling. And in a serious gritty immersive game like Achaea, there are people in combat with swords named "Rampaging Ferrets" and some such. With player-selected stuff, the admins typically remove inappropriate titles and such, but "Rampaging Ferrets" is game-generated and game-appropriate. This does not seem to me to make much sense.
  • edited May 2015
    The tradition is clear that the forger actually names the blade in a way they feel fits the wielder. Atleast that was my take away with how the quest for it was setup.

    Now with that said, it would be nice if Murad took time to learn about the blade seeker first.  As this keeps immersion and adds a small amout of being able to influence the name.

  • I went through dozens of blade forgings to get the one I have right now, and it was a real pain in the ass. I wasn't looking for the perfect name, just one that wasn't downright silly.

    That said, there are way too many problems with allowing someone to choose their own blade name. Either it would have to go through Divine approval like customizations, or someone would abuse it somehow. I wouldn't blame them if they said no (again).
  • edited May 2015
    Silvarien said:
    the existing customization system allows, for example, a Logosian Longsword to have a player-selected name. What is inherently horrible about allowing something very similar in Blademaster weapons to what already exists for other weapons elsewhere in Achaea?
    I feel like you answered your own question: That's how other weapons work.

    Blademaster swords are not other weapons. They're supposed to be special. That's why they have mechanics to make them unlike other weapons. That's why they're randomly designed and named rather than player-forged. That's why you can't choose the name.

    A blademaster sword shouldn't be just like a Logosian Longsword. It's supposed to be an extension of the wielder's innermost identity. Your example of naming a blademaster sword after a woman, for instance, is not at all in line with the existing blademaster lore. That actually serves as a great example of something that an artefact that lets you choose the name would allow for, but that shouldn't be allowed. It isn't aesthetically similar to existing blade names in the game or in the background lore and it doesn't make sense given all of the lines in the game about blademaster swords that show up in the forging, in help files, in lesson text, etc. Letting people name blademaster swords after people would require/constitute a big retcon about what blademaster swords are and how they work.

    Humgiing the swords isn't the most elegant solution - it's blatantly metagamey, none of the denizens involved acknowledge that it's happened or is even possible, and it pretty strongly contradicts the whole idea of a uniquely powerful one-to-one connection between blademaster and blade. But it does solve the problem of allowing people to avoid getting stuck with silly-sounding corner cases from the random name generator while still driving the bulk of sword names toward a uniform aesthetic. Letting people choose their own names avoids the silly name problem, but you lose the uniform aesthetic and the sense in which a name's significance might not be immediately apparent. As a means of solving the silly-name problem, it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And that's assuming that admin take the time to police the names and make sure no one submits anything silly (and ignoring the fact that people who want silly names will deliberately skirt that line). And that's all ignoring the fact that we'd still have silly-sounding randomly generated names in the game since you're talking about an artefact rather than a universal ability to define your own name for your blade.

    If naming your weapons whatever you want is something especially important to you, I feel like the answer is not to play blademaster, and instead to play one of the classes that allows for it. If you want to be a blademaster and name your sword, that's just sort of unfortunate - to a lesser extent, but in much the same way that if you want to play an evil priest, and it's not particularly hard to imagine someone wanting to do that (it's a thing in other fiction, it could lead to compelling RP, etc.), you probably shouldn't expect an artefact that lets you play as the priest class in Mhaldor.
  • It really does look like a fairly silly mechanic.  I mean, if you take Murad at face value, it really does seem like he's having a bit of fun at a lot of people's expense, actually.  That said, I think it's kind of hilarious (sorry).  But it seems kind of insane to be chastising people for saying it's silly, because it seems like it really really is extremely silly.  It's just that you either find the silliness amusing, or... not.  

    Sell the artifact.  Let people who care about silly names buy it if they want.   Anyway, some day the guy with "Rabid Rabbits" will kill you all for making fun of his sword.  
  • I like that idea @Katzchen Or, and I know this is horrible roleplay and ruins immersion, have the option to reject names.  Maybe only three times per forging?  Just to allow for a better chance for something more elegant that Raping Gorilla.
  • Katzchen said:
    I'm sorry, but when my character who is a respectable, honour-bound Mhaldorian Knight has Murad give her the blade 'Stolen Carp', and insist it's 'right' for her, that's ridiculous, and I'm not running with that for RP.
    Which is exactly why you can just humgii it and pretend that never happened - just like all the denizens will act as though it never happened.
  • KatzchenKatzchen Mhaldor
    Tael said:
    Katzchen said:
    I'm sorry, but when my character who is a respectable, honour-bound Mhaldorian Knight has Murad give her the blade 'Stolen Carp', and insist it's 'right' for her, that's ridiculous, and I'm not running with that for RP.
    Which is exactly why you can just humgii it and pretend that never happened - just like all the denizens will act as though it never happened.
    I do, but I still think it's a 'better of two evils' RP choice, and it would be nice if that could be somewhat mitigated.


                   Honourable, knight eternal,

                                            Darkly evil, cruel infernal.

                                                                     Necromanctic to the core,

                                                                                             Dance with death forever more.



  • I like the 'Murad asks you a few questions' thing. Maybe it prioritizes certain keywords a bit more heavily based on your answers - so maybe you do get Dueling Carps, but if you're a Eleusian your likelihood of getting a forest-y keyword goes up, then you answer you like to hunt so certain animals/concepts up in rank again (hawk associated with exploring, for example), after a few questions the rng gets done with the weight.
  • Just give cities pools of names. Keep the randomness, but weigh names towards the player's 'home' and potential flavor.

    Mhaldor shouldn't get Lemmings. Cyrene shouldn't get Damnations. Nobody should get weird exotic names like Skolef.

    "Singing Bass" should be a universal threat, though.

  • Arditi said:
    "Singing Bass" should be a universal threat, though.
    I remember Isis once got "Righteous Bass". "Lifeless Ant" was a pretty bad one too.
    You know, that one thing at that one place, with that one person.

    Yea, that one!
  • AodfionnAodfionn Seattle, WA
    Pools of names for the cities YES PLZ.
    Aurora says, "Are you drunk, Aodfionn?"
  • edited May 2015
    Once saw a Mhaldorian newb get "Holy Mountain"

    You know, that one thing at that one place, with that one person.

    Yea, that one!
  • Unwavering Badgers is still the best sword name ever.
  • Holy Cats.

    I rest my case.

  • Dortheron said:
    Once saw a Mhaldorian newb get "Holy Mountain"

    I once got Heavenly Suns on a Targossas alt. That was pretty neat.

    I also once wielded the legendary Morning Python. And, even if I just humgii'd it (and expect most others would do the same), I would be sad to see no more jokes about Holy Cats or Morning Pythons.
  • Tael said:
    Dortheron said:
    Once saw a Mhaldorian newb get "Holy Mountain"

    I once got Heavenly Suns on a Targossas alt. That was pretty neat.

    I also once wielded the legendary Morning Python. And, even if I just humgii'd it (and expect most others would do the same), I would be sad to see no more jokes about Holy Cats or Morning Pythons.
    I'm still waiting for the day that someone gets Breaking Wind, but Morning Python is hilarious XD
    You know, that one thing at that one place, with that one person.

    Yea, that one!
  • KatzchenKatzchen Mhaldor
    Daeir said:
    Cities already have pools of names for swords weighted towards certain words. Why do you think 4/5 mercy blades are in the Good faction?
    Possible, or it's just because other people humgii them? I've had blades like 'Subtle Redeemer', 'Sacred Storms', 'Silent Hope'. Maybe there's a slight skew, but it probably needs to be raised a bit if so.


                   Honourable, knight eternal,

                                            Darkly evil, cruel infernal.

                                                                     Necromanctic to the core,

                                                                                             Dance with death forever more.



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