Humans invented the saying “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” but it’s not a very human expression. Not only can you judge a book by its cover, we almost always do just that — maybe even to the point where one could argue it’s human nature. A CORRECT expression might be “You can’t judge a book by its cover very accurately.”
So what’s the value of a good name? It’s quite simple — the better the name, the more people will play it. And lets face it, that had to be part of the reason you wrote the scenario in the first place, right?
So what goes into a good name? Several factors:
- It should have SOME relation to the scenario itself. It need not be descriptive, the reference to the scenario doesn’t even have to be explicit (e.g. Islands of the Wheel), but it should have some connection to the scenario.
- It should be memorable. A half dozen years ago, or so, a movie came out called It Could Happen To You. Did you see it? If you did, I’ll have successfully tracked down the eight people in the world who did. It wasn’t a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t awful either. The biggest mistake it made — changing its name from Cop Gives Waitress 7 Million Dollar Tip to It Could Happen To You. Now, the former title isn’t the greatest in the world either, but it’s downright brilliant compared to the latter. Part of being memorable is also being distinct. DON’T call your scenario “Exiled”! (Don’t even get me started on Attack of the Clones! Yech!)
- Avoid overused, cliched words. The most common of these — “Quest”. I’m convinced one of the reasons Spy’s Quest wasn’t received as well as it perhaps should have been is its downright awful title. Using the Scenarios contained on A Simple Scenario Page, the word “Quest” (or Quests) appears in the title of 7 different scenarios. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that of those 7, only 1 appears on Spiderweb’s Solid Adventure table, Quests of the Spheres, whose title was uniquely able to avoid the “Judging a book by its cover” syndrome, as it was a sequel to another well received scenario. A few other words to avoid in the title — Doom, Demon, and Terror.
- It should be good! This is the most nebulous of standards, I admit, but some titles work, and some just don’t. It’s easy to fail this last category, I’ve done it on a several occasions (eg Kalloskagathos) — but make every effort not too.
Some of my favorite titles:
- The Wreck of the Slug
- Trouble In Mendor
- Farmhands Save the Day!! (The second ! really makes it good)
- Nephil’s Gambit
Of course, the surface portion of scenarios also contains the subtitles. I, however, cannot even pretend to know a thing about creating decent subtitles, so I will leave the subject silently. I will say this however — Doom Moon, one of the worst named scenarios I have EVER heard of, has the BEST subtitle.
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