05 March 2005

My Amazing Nautical Game Contest

Okay, so I'm doing fine on the actual game design at the moment, well on the way to a draft that I can playtest.

But I still have trouble with the name. The Ship is still the best I have, but it's not that great. I like it now more than when I started but there's no spark in it.

So, in an effort to have someone else help me, I'm going to have a game naming contest. Post a comment if you have any suggestions, and if you come up with a name that I want to use, I'll give you a couple of copies of Game X when I get it to the printing stage.

Things to bear in mind:
  • I'm already occasionally pondering nicking one of O'Brian's titles from the Aubrey novels... The Wine Dark Sea is probably most appealing there (and he nicked that one from Homer anyway).
  • The game's going to include multiple settings. At very least a Napoleonic and a science fiction one and I'd like to do more. So it can't just apply to one of them.
So there you go. Please spend at least a few seconds thinking about it, you may even get a little bit of free stuff out of it.

8 comments:

hix said...

It begins!

I shall give you:
CQD.
SOS.
Command Decision.
Mike Sands' "Nautical Adventures".

But so far, a) I like 'The Ship', and b) I might wait to read a bit more about it ...

Unknown said...

Yeah, I quite like The Ship for it's parallel to Das Boot as much as anything. And it does get to the heart of what the game's about.

I'll keep thinking about the others. However, I don't think I can really get name recognition yet...

Anonymous said...

Is it about The Ship, or The Crew? ;) There are also options like "Armada", though that implies a wider scope than perhaps is intended... It's a pity that "Wooden Ships and Iron Men" has already been used...

"Able Bodied Seamen"? No, that sounds to my ears like a particularly lame superhero group...

Unknown said...

It is a shame that Wooden Ships and Iron Men is taken. But that's actually a bit age of sail specific for me.

I might have to bring "The Able Bodied Seamen" into my next Capes game, though...

debbie said...

Ooh, goody! Naming a game fun! Let me see...

You could follow the White Wolf patter of Noun: the verbing such as:

- Voyage: the sailing
- Ship: the voyaging

Or the Regency period alliterative title style such as:
- Crews and Compasses
- Sail by stars
- Longitude and Latitude

Or you could go for the bold impact one word type title:
- Voyage
- Longitude

Or the allusion to appropriate literature (or crass TV shows) titles:
- Captain's log
- The wide blue yonder
- A ship for all seasons
- Endless horizons

Unknown said...

Hmm... "Captain's Log" or "Endless Horizons" are kind of cool.

What do readers think of "Between A Rock And A Hard Place" or "Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea"?

I think that last one might be it...

Anonymous said...

"Devil & The Deep" is good.
I just thought of this in the shower today: "Commander & Crew".

Which I think locates its genre fairly well.

Unknown said...

Contest closed, I'm sticking with The Devil & The Deep. Which I thought of. Too bad.