Location Titles In-Game

[Jessamine Blake]

I figured this was as good a place as any for this question. Basically, I want to know how we're going about giving names to locations. Not so much my whorehouse, or someone's ranch, but for instance, the name of the settlement my whorehouse is in. Should we consult together to come up with common names, or look for historically accurate names of settlements from the time period, or what? Just figured we might want to collaborate a little bit on this matter, since if one person just decides a name, the rest of us would pretty much have to stick with it from then on, barring an act of The Father or The Holy Ghost.

Forgive me if this is incoherent, I'm trying to type while listening to Matt Damon's explanation of why people think George Clooney is gay.

[Mr. Pearse]

That's an awesome question. Generally speaking, while characters posted so far have adhered wonderfully to period and circumstance, we shouldn't feel strangled by the historical setting (in the same way we've resolved not to be bogged down by any too-rigid narratives). Making up names is fine, so long as they're cool and make at least some sense. For instance, in the draft of my first story post (I wrote up all of this site-related stuff in one very long sitting), the starting town is "Little Bethlehem." It'll be up to other people to decide whether they're based in this town, just stopping by, or aren't even involved in that thread at all! New Mexico Territory is a giant tract of land, and there's enough room for people to populate it with just about anything.

One other word on historical accuracy. While you should be familiar with the general era, more complex tie-ins are at your own discretion. I noticed Whit-, er, Samuel (gotta stop doing that) built a character sheet with impressive knowledge of period arms. He referred specifically to Henry and Winchester rifles where I might have just said "repeater." However, I've been lucky to read several different treatments of the Civil War, and am looking forward to weaving my character into the eastern campaigns under greats like Lee and Jackson. As a rule of thumb, if you're going super-historian, still include enough detail that the non-historian knows what's going on; having to frequently consult Wikipedia to unravel a post will be no fun at all.