I think names are surprisingly important — they establish the atmosphere of your world just like background music sets the tone of a film.

I generate random words using an online tool (recently I’ve been using donjon.bin.sh). For my world, the fantasy names are too “tropey”, so I use the Markov Chains generator (Markov Chains use source text to structure the random syllables it generates—if your source text has no Zs, nor will your random words).

In general (but not always) I figure that short, one syllable names are most suitable for nicknames, or for common, lower class names. Two syllable names tend to be typical, ordinary people, three syllable names are more well-to-do, four syllables names are more high-class (or pretentious) and five or more syllable names are very exotic—probably foreign dignitaries, wizards or sages. (They’ll probably have shorter names that friends actually know them by—if they have friends!)

Place names are just as important—in fact, even more important! Often Place names contribute to someone’s name, or a historic person’s name can become the name of a place.

Similarly, the names of Gods and Goddesses are vital. Get them wrong, and it’ll skew the whole vibe of your setting.

If you like, you can get creative, and make name words for particular regions have a particular character. Grab a source text for your Markov Chains that has the forms “kn” and “gn” in a lot. Okay, that’s one particular area. Use the combos “dz” and “dj” for another area.

Maybe have one area where everyone who’s male has a name ending in o, and everyone who’s female has a name ending in a. And, of course, the residents of that area will add o or a to the characters’ names—because that’s the rule for names!

When the PCs meet someone then they should, eventually, be able to guess their approximate social status, the region their family comes from, their religion, and maybe even their current place of residence—just from their name!

And yes. People’s names can change over time! Part of them will stay the same, but part may be to do with their profession, their home or something they’re famous for.

I tend to fing my “hit rate” on suitable names is only about 2%. Most random words aren’t easily pronouncable, or just don’t feel right. So sometimes I’ll spend a half hour just generating names and saving them off in a list. I don’t know what the names are for yet, I just have them on the side, then slot them into game sessions as appropriate. Yeah. I almost never use more than 25% of my name lists. So I generate more!

And pro-tip: some regions may have default names. In medieval England, loads of people were just called John—meaning, “You! Unimportant person!”. John Smith, John Miller, John Farmer, John Wheelwright… And even if that wasn’t their actual name, if that’s what his Lordship calls you, who are you to argue?

Hard sci-fi, you say? Excellent features could be battling cancer thanks to cosmic rays, and the disintegration of skeletal mass and deteriorating vision thanks to zero gravity. Punishing and crushingly repetitive schedules of medical therapy and physical exercise, plus batteries of psychological tests could add to the excitement of an expedition!

Or are the crew going to be far more fit for space travel than early humans?

Will their bodies be entirely synthetic, and their minds simply transmitted to the exploration craft after it arrives? Or will they be genetically engineered, proof against the rigours of interplanetary exploration? Will they be human at all?

Or could they be disposable human workers employed by an unaccountable interplanetary corporation, who are holding their nearest and dearest hostage to ensure their compliance?

Short version: if you want to go genuinely hard sci-fi, things may look very, very different to how they’re depicted in TV space operas.

I tend to be sceptical about unrelenting grimness—because I try to make my game world logical.

“The world has been enveloped by a fog of doom for a hundred years”. Okay, all people are dead from starvation. The last cannibals died decades ago. Next world!

The world has to be—has to be—sufficiently benign that children will, on the whole, survive into adulthood. Think about the hazards you put into your world. A 10% chance of killing each inhabitant each year? The population is now plummeting.

I think the way to evoke the setting you want is to have good areas and bad areas, benign conditions and crises. It’s the contrast between the two that’ll evoke the feeling you want. Happy kids, educated populations, active trade and thriving farms will just serve to highlight how grim things get when the systems of society break down.

A war, plague, fire or flood, a bad ruler, a subversive cult, or a band of wandering murder hobos become unutterably grotesque when your characters see its effects on ordinary people.

I totally agree—but why don’t players like an adventure? It only maybe because the adventure is poorly designed. (In fact, back in the days of Judges Guild I and my friends ran a whole bunch of incredibly poorly designed adventures, but still had loads of fun!) It could be about poor group dynamics. It could be about a disconnect between expectations and actuality. It could be about poor GMing techniques. Perhaps it could be about something else.

If the aim of a game designer is the help GMs and players to have the best possible experiences, then it surprises me that game designers don’t attend more to the processes of preparing for and playing the game, of recruiting and selecting the right players, and giving them the right expectations.

Then again, maybe there are other factors that motivate game designers. Or perhaps people buy games for reasons other than to have a great play experience. (Both of these things are at least a little bit true!)

I’m not working on anything, I’m playing with a theory. The core of the idea is that people to their best, most free-flowing, most imaginative GMing when they don’t really know what they’re doing. When they’ve first taken up the hobby, when they are running a new game that they don’t really know well, or when the player characters go so far off the prepared plot that the GM has to improvise wildly.

This is outside a lot of people’s comfort zone—but I think there’s an element of truth to it. What if, the more you study how to GM, the more you work at it, the harder it gets?

Were this to be the case, it might explain why many GMs are in an endless quest to discover that cool new system/background/adventure that’ll REALLY create an immersive experience.

Again, were it to be the case, what would be the best rules system to get back to the improvisatory state of gaming naivety that makes the magic happen?

I’m toying with the idea of running a campaign with no game system at all—to force me, as the GM, to improvise on the spot!