Naming convention, specifically focused on rarer xeno species

Suggestions
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From what I can find from past conversations and forum threads the only 2 species really discussed when it came to naming were Human and Lizard, not surprising considering those are the 2 most common. I will cover those two first to set a baseline and go from there. Sorry if I tread ground that has been covered before hand, I tried.

Humans. The baseline of the game having any regular name, with the chance of making a funny/interesting name while still being valid. Nothing too special

Lizards have two different naming conventions, 1. Verbs the noun, basically infinite potential to set up character. 2. Ash Lizard convention which sounds middle eastern (?)

As for the other species I find it hit and miss, some I feel have a double standard on top of that.

Felinids take human names and cram in Ws wherever they can in most cases. Cat jokes

IPC pretty much follow silicon naming, make any fun acronym you want. (within reason obviously) Robot jokes

Squids. full memes? Either call yourself Cthulhu or butcher any name with Squ-. Squid jokes.

Apids. Vague on what the actual meaning of the guideline is so ill cover both in case. 1. Change the first letter of human names with B, similar to squids, classic ReBBit joke.
2. Any human name that naturally starts with a B, less options but still sounds OK.
would probably be called Buzz if I ever met one. Bee jokes.

The names after this point I consider the weakest when it comes to individuality and having overly harsh rulings.

I’m going to cover Ethereal, Plasma Man and Oozeling somewhat together.
The guidelines are very strict for these 3 but I can kinda understand why. These are the 3 most delicate races to deal with in a day to day basis and not being able to tell what species they are at a glance of their name could end up killing them, especially when getting medical treatment.

Ethereal being the least risky as the only real penalty is having an extremely rare blood type, not strictly necessary for Ethereal to be identified instantly and I don’t know how I feel about their names. Living energy/light, so solar systems could work I guess?

Plasma men are extremely hard to care for as they are a walking plasma fire contained within a suit and suffocate without a resource people just will not give you 99% of the time. I get that they need to be identified on sight but the enviro suit does most of the work anyway (granted the number of times I’ve seen a Human run around in plasma gear frankly ruins that for actual Plasma men)
However “Element - Numeral” is a tad restrictive, its kinda hard to actually identify an individual within the species and I swear I’ve seen two of the same element which is not hard to see coming. Hydrogen III I want to say being one of those. (Please inform me if correct about this assumption)
elements sometimes like to explode in the air. theming…?

Oozelings, the newcomer to the game. I can understand why they need to have a bit of a theme and harsh rulings regarding so. They are extremely hard to identify and trying to heal them like any other species has the chance of just insta killing them. The naming seems fine but I just cant shake the feeling that it could be improved in some way… (not that I can complain about it, I was able to switch my Human name around and make it work out, Norman Green → Green Normanson, easy enough) Just cant really connect the “Lastname-son” part to slime people.

And finally… Moths. The friendly airheads of the station. Straight up designed to be a joke but was still popular enough to save it from removal despite being objectively the most under-powered species. Harbinger of the dreaded LÄmp joke.
Yeah, calling yourself Lamp might be a bit on the nose and open to question/ridicule but I just do not get the forced Latinization of every moth characters name and even though I was extremely fortunate that it was never made an issue, the threat looming over what I believed was a decently creative name, which I could see being a valid representation of species I like the most was still worrying.
I mean… Latin name is not THAT bad… its just not for me… I couldn’t find one I liked.

I am not saying that the guidelines should be abolished, they are actually pretty acceptable IF taken solely as a guide and not as concrete law.
Yeah, some will inevitably take the piss when it comes to naming themselves but punishing an entire species with a strict naming rule born of pure preference I feel is a tad too much.

What I ask today is to allow unique and/or creative names (and not just for Moths either) not currently allowed by the letter of the rules to be acceptable.
Names that would make you think, yeah I could see that being an X or Y.
Species based jokes, gimmicks and everything in between (within reason of course).
Even if said names must be vetted before hand and even perma noted on profiles. I’m sure others would jump through all the hoops they could to have an interesting name outside of the restrictions, just as I would.

Thanks for reading this… frankly insane rambling. Open to other peoples questions and thoughts regarding experiences, especially with less common species.

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I’ll stay out of the others, but since Oozelings are the race I came up with and also came up with the limited lore for, I can at least explain the reasoning behind their naming.

Oozelings are not an alien race we found - they, like the other four slime “races” (Jelly, Slime, Luminescent and Stargazers) that pre-date them, are exclusively created in lab conditions by Nanotrasen. Unlike the existing races which require an existing body to undergo a catalyst induced metamorphosis, Oozelings are grown in a lab as sort of test-tube babies.

Oozelings are named for their color and the geneticist responsible for “cultivating” them. In English, the suffix -son on the end of a name means “son of”

They are not their own race with their own culture so much as they are slaves brainwashed from birth, and they are a relatively new race in terms of both just being introduced to the game and in terms of current nanotrasen timeline.

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Ah. so its neither of the ideas I had about creation, (human transformation and slime splitting/reproduction) neat
Fair enuf, makes sense.

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Bee lore in general is quite lacking, but there’s an ongoing effort to grow/establish it, and it’ll be closely tied to the rebirth of our library.

(Plans kinda came to a halt after the burning of the Library all at once)

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Laughs while eating your shoes.

Also singularly incorrect as flypeople exist.

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it’d be nice if I were allowed to make my own character without needing to follow “RP Guidelines” that dictate the lore of my character.

Also why would legal name changes not exist in SS13 universe? Anything that isn’t clown-tier should be allowable. Sunburnt is fine as a moth name, Gwen Price is fine as a lizard name.

But whatever, enjoy stomping all over everyone and saying “LMAO I DIDN’T MAKE THE RULE XD” I guess. Nothing I can do but bitch about it and be passive aggressive because you cocksuckers don’t take community feedback seriously.

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You’d think that limiting a players ability to be creative and how they bring their characters to life would be counterintuitive to being a more rp friendly environment.

A character that i’ve built up, made a backstory for, and built in game friendships up with? Nah all that is thrown away because some admin said “i dont like how you rp and this is a rule im going to enforce even though no one else does”

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Oh shit I forgot about fly people… Uhh, oops… Blame wiki.
Humans who goofed or I would assume similar naming to Apids due to buzzzing noises, probably without the flower last name too.

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Glad to see that some of the Xeno name restrictions were lessened.
Tying fly people specifically to humans goofing via teleporter (I assume) seems like a fair choice, still open to fly names/puns.
The Apid pun expansion is nice to see too, no complaints, doesn’t undo, just adds.
Looking back at ethereal names I realized that it isn’t too bad, some fun sounding stars and planets out there so complaint rescinded on my part.

Probably should have earlier but it slipped my mind, may as well add my own suggestions.

Fly and Apid are dealt with so that only really leaves Moth, was going to write race backstory but due to it existing I never brought up ideas.

General idea was that there are 2 major sects(?) on the home planet;
Those in the city and those on the ground. (Had ideas of a 2 tiered system myself so reworked my name idea to fit it better.)
Had the idea to tie Latin names to those in the city (and their descendants).
As for those on the ground, I had the idea of rather simplistic names, excerpt from my notes:

“the common population spoke in a somewhat lesser dialect (which would be dropped after education became more common), very simplistic names. typically named after treasured items or events surrounding the larvae or parents
(being called tablecloth because the family had enough food (and/or willpower) that they were able to keep one without eating it.)”

Slight bias as this is how I named my character.

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Hate to necro bump but its probably better than pinging admins or putting it in lore where it feels rather selfish due to personal interest… Renewed public opinion probably won’t hurt too.

Any chance of a decision or discussion of Moth suggestions and/or the ability to vet non guideline names through staff?

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How do I get rid of these insane ramblings getting in the way of my own insane rambling?

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Like so.

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Imagine if we had a suggestion tab, that would be nice.

Done a little digging and I’ve not been able to find any discussion of Moth guidelines prior to implementation, would you care to link any such feedback for public awareness, if it so exists?

Why DO you hate simple names anyway? And why is it moth players that are being singled out, the staff very much has a “vetting” process, even if it is unofficial.
Gukle and Bungo spring to mind, the latter may be gimmick role only, in which case fair.

However the team seems to have no issue with them having single, simplistic names and yet I get perma banned for being an observer called Sunburnt, Thanks for that (imo) horrific double standard.

Recently there has been more and more outcry due to the Latin only “guideline” and the removal and disdain of anything not within that incredibly strict box, not saying that the Latin names them self are bad but by forcing everyone who plays moth to use it, you are frankly ruining the charm of the race for a lot of people.

You complained about people raising issues with no suggestions or alternatives in a recent thread @Ruko
Well here you are, A suggestion that has been sitting in this thread for 2 months.

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This is what moths have been tied to since before Bee’s inception. This is not something Bee came up with in a vacuum, but the naming guidelines for them in general. We simply force the guidelines.

Gukle was warned and asked to change their name because it didn’t come off as lovecraftian to the admin that asked them to. When they were asked to change it, Gukle almost immediatly provided us with the souce of the name seen here. Gukle’s name follows our guidelines directly and is not an exception made for them.

I don’t know what Bungo plays at all - nobody has raised issue with the name and it’s not so out there that it stands out when skimming the player panel for names. I can @Bungo to speak for themselves here though

I am not saying that the guidelines should be abolished, they are actually pretty acceptable IF taken solely as a guide and not as concrete law.
Yeah, some will inevitably take the piss when it comes to naming themselves but punishing an entire species with a strict naming rule born of pure preference I feel is a tad too much.

Concrete law is the way it’s going to go - you have been invited to expand that concrete law with second definition much like lizards follow.

What I ask today is to allow unique and/or creative names (and not just for Moths either) not currently allowed by the letter of the rules to be acceptable.
Names that would make you think, yeah I could see that being an X or Y.
Species based jokes, gimmicks and everything in between (within reason of course).
Even if said names must be vetted before hand and even perma noted on profiles. I’m sure others would jump through all the hoops they could to have an interesting name outside of the restrictions, just as I would.

Then you have to make a convention that these fit in with.

Come up with a replacement convention that is enforceable by admins and you will have fulfilled what I said. I still don’t see a replacement convention anywhere in your post. All you suggested was that we make exceptions for names that might make sense - Sunburnt does not even if we lax a bit, for instance.

A few additional nitpicks from your first post since you were apparently suggesting it was your interpretation of our naming rules:

Felinids take human names and cram in Ws wherever they can in most cases. Cat jokes

The only “cat jokes” that would be allowed are going to be along the lines of Neko (japanese) and loose names like Catherine or Kate. If a felinid name is an obvious cat joke or reference, it will be removed. Pinkie Kittie is probably the most famous offender here, and we also intervene when someone is getting out of hand with uwu speak

I’ll say it straight up - I think squids should be removed. We have all of two squid players and the race does nothing special that makes them stand out. The only reason the “Squ-” names are even remotely acceptable is because that’s what their names default to when you’re using a random name. Like with felinids, if a name is blatantly a Squid joke, it’s going to be ruled as a meme name and not an actual character name - we just don’t have enough squid players for this to have ever been an issue.

Ethereals are one of the only races that starve completely to death, oozelings being the other. They are also unable to hide from pursuers in dark places.
You also made no suggestion of naming convention here to replace the one you’re criticizing

Again there is no replacement convention suggested here

Already addressed in an earlier post

TL;DR

Since this post got so long, here’s the summary;

  1. We are never not going to require characters follow a convention.
  2. You did not suggest replacement conventions
  3. I said to suggest a replacement convention, not just ask for exceptions to be allowed.
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Jokes:
I originaly covered every race, not with the intention of changing them but to point out what type of creative names were possible, seeing as most barring plasma and ethereal were human based, it wasn’t the hardest to get a reasonable sounding name that was also memorable.

This, there are 2 tiers, why not use them and let people have fun (but not outright meme) names again? You wanted conflict, have tension between the descendants of both castes.

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just play on lrp lol

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Except there’s a difference between naming yourself Chuckelfuck McGreytide and wanting to have an open discussion about changing naming conventions in cases where they are enforced.

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To be honest, I’ve never really thought about it, it’s just a name that I’ve used as my character since the start.

Originally I thought that I’d use it for when I play gimmick roles, it would act as a sort of stage name for the stage magician, but it kinda stuck around I guess.

I’ve never once been bwoinked nor asked to change it, if it is too much of a problem just yell and I can change it to something to do with that uhh, tree I think? The one with bungotoxin (I made the character before even hearing about the toxin existing)

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The tree is literally called a Bungo Fruit Tree
There’s nothing more to it.

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