Game Ideas Un limited: Sounds Like

  Kelly wrote to me the other day.

  It was not, I am sure, Gaming Outpost's own Kelly Tessena; it was an e-mail from someone self-identified only as Kelly, and other than the question Kelly asked (which I have now forgotten) I know nothing more.  It was not any of the several Kelly's I know currently, in any spelling of that name, and I probably will never know more about this Kelly than I do now.

  Interestingly, all of the people I know today named Kelly, or Kellie, or Kelli, or however it is spelled (save the one for whom it is a surname, not a given name) are girls.  However, it happens that the very first person with that name that I ever knew was a boy, Kelly Semple, and I was probably at least ten or eleven years old before I knew that it was also a girl's name.  Similarly, I was no doubt in high school before I knew that Gayle was a boy's name, and names like Terry, Chris, and now even Bobby and Sam have this inherent ambiguity:  knowing the name does not tell you the gender of the person.  Even as I write, I am not certain whether to refer to my virtually (in both senses) anonymous correspondent as him or her.  I would normally default to using him, in no small part because languages descended from Proto-Hittite tend to use the masculine pronoun for an antecedent which is personal but of unknown gender.  However, I'm not so sure I'd be as likely to do so if the name had been Tracy.

  I did have a character in one of my games in which this was an interesting aspect.  The character was a female drow cavalier (I've mentioned her before) whose given name was Lorianna Syleen Thalanar; she never removed her helmet, and she always went by Lors Thalanar (although if she wrote it, it was LorS).  The misdirection worked well, because after a while the other players (who were in the dark as much as their characters) worked out that Lors was actually a woman, but it was a very long time (and an encounter with another female drow) before they worked out that she was a drow.  By disguising two facts, Lors was able to keep one of them secret a very long time.

  The villain in the Tom Cruise film version of Mission Impossible used this sort of occlusion to help hide her identity.  She was known only as Max.  That film used another name to good effect, suggesting that Job 314 was not a job number but a verse from the book of Job (which is pronounced with a long Oh such that it would rhyme with robe, not cob, for any reader not aware of that).  I'm not certain what that particular verse from the Bible had to do with anything, but if it was merely a coded countersign that could make sense.

  Of course, that last is an example that only works in print.  Sometimes there are such things that only work in print, while others only work to the ear.  In the fourth Harry Potter book, his friend Hermione Granger makes a big deal about her idea for founding an organization called S.P.E.W.; his best friend Ron Weasley keeps calling it spew, and it leads to some humorous bickering between them.  However, at one point Rowling refers to "a S.P.E.W. badge", which confuses me, because if that's not an S.P.E.W. badge then I don't know the difference between the sound of S.P.E.W. and the word spew.  It might work to the eye, but it's bad as dialogue because the ear can't hear the difference.

  Sometimes, of course, differences the ear can't hear are very funny, or very useful.  In an old Get Smart episode, Agent Smart has just met the villain, an Asian who dramatically displays the metal claw that has replaced one of his hands, and announces through a thick accent, "I am de Craw."  Max, completely missing the significance, replies, "Pleased to meet you, Mister Craw," and the next minute is spent with the frustrated villain trying to communicate, "Not de Craw, de Craw," while waving the metal appendage around uselessly.  I haven't seen that show since it was in first run episodes, but the humor of that moment has stayed with me for decades.

  But useful applications are, well, more useful; and I have one to offer.  I have it in two versions, and you can choose whichever one works better for you (or even see if you can catch them with the same ruse twice).

  The players are given verbal instructions from someone who tells them they are seeking someone named Quentin.  Because this is spoken, the players will hear it as a familiar name, and will probably write it down somewhere to remember it; they head out to the populated area where Quentin is alleged to be hiding, and begin their searches.

  Early on they are befriended by someone of some influence whose name is Siege.  He makes himself helpful, telling them what he knows about the area and the important people in it, even though he doesn't think he can help them locate the person they seek.  In fact, no one here seems to know anyone of that name.

  Siege is an intriguing name, of course; the player characters might even go so far as to ask where he got it.  It's simple to casually write off such a thing.  "It's silly.  My initials are C. G., and they used to call me C. G. all the time, but it kind of got shortened to Siege."

  What doesn't appear immediately is that the C stands for Cuenton.  This is the villain they've been seeking, and he's been right in front of them the entire time, guiding them everywhere but where he is.

  The alternative version uses the name Quincy, to the ear, but it's really Kwince, the nickname being Cage, a shortened form of K. G.  It works the same way.

  In my mind's eye I can see my old gaming friend Bob groaning as the light dawns, as he realizes that the solution to that clue he's been carrying around all this time has been right in front of him since he got here, but he didn't catch it.  I think he would love it.  I hope your players do, too.

  Next week, something different.

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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.