Spoon's Terminology Part IV: We need new & better names for NST/PRT/POT and soon!

This is an old thing but some dialog in another topic reminded me of this again.

Reading my own suggestion as well as Womby's I realized we are thinking about this from the wrong perspective.

(Which we should blame the devs for... )
It is thinking of these settlements from outside of the game, the words "NPC", "Story", "Player", etc are all Meta. So my suggestion in the quote above is wrong for the game.

Instead we should have names that fit equally from outside the game as well as from the inside of the game. This so that the in game hints and dialog in the game can refer to these distinct type of "towns" without it being too silly or strange. (Trying to avoid the I-word here)...

As well as "Town" being another misnomer, this is not towns we are talking about but rather anything in varied sizes from the smallest holdfast/hamlet all the way to the huge city/metropolis.


So IF we were Novians/New Britons what is the term we would use for it? Then could we make that something that would work from the outside as well?

So this seems like a three parter:
a)
We have the good old "towns", with history and run by traditional families from around here etc.
Then we have the sprawling new "towns" of the outlanders.


b)
In some of the new outlander "towns" they even own and control it. Making it not just a region settled by the outlanders but also owned by them.

c)
What we should call the "Town" part? Town is a misnomer since this could be any size

Settlement
Gives a hint of new, but usually refers to smaller, it is hard to say and S in acronyms is always a bit awkward.

District
The correct term since that doesn't distinguish between rural or urban but it has a too modern feel to it.

Borough
I'm pretty partial to this one since it has a nice pseudo-old-speech feel to it while basically having a similar meaning as District. It also has the benefit that it works with nested "towns" and explains why one would be right next to the other etc.

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Now it would be easier if Portalarium simply added some form of ruler/civic type to each so that it becomes synonimous with who owns what. Like Aristocracy vs Governors.

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So perhaps if new arriving outlanders go into 'settlements' and proper old family britons go into 'boroughs'?

Thinking aloud, so might think of something better later on...but then maybe

Outlander Lot Settlement
Outlander Governed Settlement

Those still tell a story which works both from inside the game and from the meta perspective. The only thing is that one needs to early and in marketing stress that Player=Outlander and everyone will get it.

But the NPC Story Town is more difficult, I don't have a good term/solution for that. Since most one wouldn't use for ones own village, town or city.
Native Borough
Doesn't tell the story quite as succintly. Although the 'Native' part works somewhat better than indigenous or similar, what comes after doesn't have the same umph in telling the story of what that is.

Anyone with better ideas?

 

Should be "These are" instead of "This Is" I do believe.. but other than that.. I concur 110%. (was so amazed that I actually caught a slip on your part that I almost passed out )

 

No matter what we call the different types of towns, it will be difficult to localize into different languages.

I think that having names that aren't confusing is more important than finding names that don't mention "players" or "NPCs". it complicates matters by considering the size of a town and using different terms like town, borough and settlement. My suggestions would be:

NPC towns = Main Towns
PRTs = Residential Towns
POTs = same (Player-Owned-Towns)

 

Someone suggested "Freetowns" for PRTs, so there would be less confusion.

 

Freetown sounds nice, but I don't think it is any more descriptive than the confusing name "Player-Run-Town". Players might think they can live there for free, without paying taxes.

 

Hmm, true. How about "Protectorate", since it's open for residents, but still under the Crown's purview and taxation

 

NST/PRT/POT acronyms are confusing and misleading and should be baned by the AAAAA (American Anti Acronyms Abuse Association).

Seriously now, it will be impossible to carry on the town denomination accurate information about it. IMHO we will do better by calling all of them "towns", and then add "There are several kind of towns, we must check the info about it."

 

I think every PRT should be attached to a NPC town through a portal. Then these become suburbs. You could leave the suburb via the portal, or through a gate to the overland. Perhaps each NPC town could have several suburbs surrounding it. POTs on the overland should be identified on the overland somehow as to POT type (biome, pvp status, and character). One should also see a list of nested POTs giving the same info. So if a person gets to an overland POT and moves the cursor over it, a gump appears with the POT info and nested POT info.

Naming wise, we only need to have TOWNS (all of which have suburbs) and SETTLEMENTS (some of which have nested settlements). The in-town passages to non-overland settlements should have a descriptive gump same as for nested settlements. Thus we have TOWNS, SUBURBS, and SETTLEMENTS.

 

Hey @Spoon,

"Community" is also another, less technical, less administrative sounding way of referring to settlements and boroughs.

As for the misnomer of "towns"; I'm not sure in a historical sense that there was a clear and fast difference between villages and towns and towns and cities. But you're right, at least in the sense, that the labels refer to the sizes in the game. But then again, the game doesn't even necessarily need to have a single general term. You could talk about "player owned cities and towns" pr "cities and towns owned by players.", for example, and be elliptical about how the terms are used. So, for instance, if we're talking about tutorial text, it could refer to POTs that way, leaving it open-ended to how you call them and grade them by their size differences.

As for getting away from "meta-" distinctions and having more role-play friendly terms, here are some other pairings to think about,
Novian town vs. Outlander town (the natives are Novians)
Old town vs. new town

@Aldo, nested towns and wagons that lead to places that don't show on the map are evil. I will not discuss such things!

 

I largely agree with @Spoon. There is no reason why with a little effort we can't use names that are compatible with NPC conversations and roleplay.
I don't think the word settlement implies either age or size, and is a good candidate (but I'm OK with community as well).
As for story settlements/communities, one option might be to assume that all story settlements are of historical significance (they do after all help define what is canon).

So, my take on it is
Historical Settlement (or Community) (HS or HC)
Outlander (or Avatar) Residential Settlement (or Community) (ORS or ARS or ORC or ARC)
Outlander (or Avatar) Owned Settlement (or Community) (OOS or AOS or OOC or AOC)

 

@Womby,

Yea, I was thinking about "historical" as a synonym for old... and other synonyms that could work in other contexts, like "established", "foundational", etc. I'm thinking there may be some other synonym that's not coming to mind which might even be better.

 

The issue with it being in NPC conversations is that POTs won't be in the Offline mode of the game, and should not influence the actual storyline. They're neither moderated or reviewed by Port, so "canon" can't exactly be maintained.

 

@HoustonDragon

It is still important for role play, a great deal of which will involve and/or take place on POTs.

 

NPCTowns can be Burgs. Hey look! One localization already taken care of! (German, of course).
PRTowns can still be towns.
POT... I don't know. They can call the kettle black I guess. But seriously, something unique would be good. I like communities for these.

Burgs, surrounded by Towns, with Communities dotting the landscape in online mode. It is an interesting question, and I agree that simplification would be best, especially for localization purposes.

 

I can agree with that, which is also why I wish Port would do more to actually put together some actual guidelines or direction for the POTs, versus the completely hodgepodge aspect that we seem to have instead. It goes back to the stuff that's been asked for quite a bit previously about the general world's structure, governments, groups, etc that folks have wanted to be able to write and roleplay their stories within the new background that we're getting with Shroud.

There's nothing wrong with fan fiction and roleplaying. There is a problem when it goes all over the map (to me, anyway) and ends up being extremely confusing from a lore/canon standpoint. Sure, we can have the Vampire Sparkly Lord Whoever who's busy hunting for Katniss as his future date to the Hogwarts Ball, and then have Kylo Ren jump in to do a My Little Pony song number as the basis of someone's "roleplay".

Do I really want to see that in Shroud? Oh hells no. Again, don't need or want the super plot twists and turns to be spoiled for me or anyone, but some basic ground rules would certainly be helpful, and avoid the headaches later.

 

@Spoon
Kingdom Run Town - I believe most regions and npc/story towns within them in novia fall sovergn under the kingdoms in them.
Community Run Town - no leader, PRTs
Outlander Run Town - Pots


kept it unified, sounds/looks decent to me.
KRT - CRT - ORT

 

Towns - You know. Towns.
Settlements - Places where people live, not in towns.
Estates - An area granted to a person by the crown. (I say granted, but we know money changed hands.)

 

Looking at all the replies I really would like it if the 'type' also could be used as the short form for s longer descriptive term. This so that we don't use an acronym as the short form.

Example:
Blabla blabla estate
Blabla blabla borough
Blabla blabla community

So that if one use estate, borough/burg or community then experienced users get which is which. While if we use the 'full' name it is somewhat self explanatory for beginners.


Hmm.

How about Outlander vs Traditional for the player vs game part?

(Just small refinements here to show the long and short example).

So player owned town could be
Long: Outlander Governed Estate
Short: estate

So player run town could be
Long: Traditional Lot Community
Short: community
(I like the suburbs concept if not that Port hasvthem rather as their own entities not close).

So NPC story town could be
Long: traditional ruled borough
Short: borough/burg


Traditional then implies as we as players are used to, or game controlled. So if you don't want to live in player owned you seek a Traditional "town".

Ruled instead of royal maybe to fit the story parts better.

 

Great thread, just wanted to throw my support behind the idea!

 

Letters of Marquis. Now go forth and plunder.

"Letters of Estate" would be a more formal way of issuing a POT.

Landed Knighthood would also be an expression for an Outlander to use.

Using Foundational City for an NPC city might work, but it has another connotation as well. The first 230 POTs are considered Founder POTs

Cities is Legend or Cities of Lore might be a good name for NPC cities