9/24/2016

Frugal GM Review: Anglo-Centric Placename Generator

Frugal GM Review: Anglo-Centric Placename Generator
This week I once again let DriveThruRPG "spin the wheel" as it were, to find me something interesting to review. Obviously I have to find something I think is interesting, and when the Anglo-Celtic Placename Generator showed up in the short list of "personalized suggestion" I was more than happy to grab it.

When running a game a bit on the fly like I was, place names sometimes needed to be created on the run and I don't always do a good job. Any help in that department is probably worth the $1.50 this Anglo-Celtic Placename Generator costs.

The PDF is a locked-down file that is eight pages and comes in at 2.83 MB. The file is A5 sized (5.83" x 8.27") which makes for a nice little printout on a folded US Letter paper. I'm thankful for the fact that the PDF is bookmarked, which is something I probably wouldn't expect with only six pages of content (the other two pages are the cover and a credits page).

What I'm used to seeing with shorter list products or single-purpose table generators like this is basically just a list of items/tables. Maybe a paragraph to show the order for tables. Hell, my d30 tables don't come with much in the way of explanation. This product devotes two pages to explaining the tables and their constraints/exceptions. I really found these two pages helpful because the format of the tables might be too confusing on their own.

The bulk of the naming convention is Element 1 + Element 2.....pretty simple stuff. With not quite 100 entries in each element you'll get some good variation. To spice things up a bit there are also Prefixes and Suffixes, as well as Interfixes. I've never heard of an interfix before and some of these entries have some additional "rules" to get the resulting place name to make sense.

On some level it seems rather complicated, but it really isn't. I plan on entering all these tables into a table generator so I can make up a bunch of names on the fly. I'm sure I'll have some fun trying to code the generator, but thankfully everything is quite well explained.

Frugal GM 5 Star Review: Anglo-Centric Placename Generator
Something tells me that a lot of effort went into creating the Anglo-Celtic Placename Generator, mostly on the research end, but also in the explanations and the layout. Sequestered Industries didn't skimp on the little touches that make a PDF more user-friendly and overall I think there is a lot of value for only $1.50. Based on this purchase I'd definitely be willing to check out their other generators.

I think these smaller/cheaper PDF products really do add a lot of bang-for-your-buck to RPG games.

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