神河当時 - 『神河謀叛』のネーミング

昨日の記事の続きです。

Card-Name Quick-Hits
Kodama of the Center Tree - Champions of Kamigawa brought you the Kodamas of the Kodama of the North Tree and Kodama of the South Trees. As you may recall, though, five Kodama trees exist in Kamigawa (or at least I hope there are five, since the “Poem of the Five Trees” in the Kodama’s flavor text would otherwise be confusing at best). When Betrayers cards started rolling through Namebase, Brandon asked me to keep an eye out for any that looked liked they might make good Kodama. Body of Jukai had the right stats, but wasn’t exactly legendary, which was also true for Forked-Branch Garami and Scaled Hulk. That left only this card as a possible Kodama, and we thought the Center Tree was appropriate enough given the thing’s mechanics.

Pus Kami - Every now and then, I think it’s fun to test the boundaries of what makes an acceptable card name. I wasn’t sure if the word “pus” was too gross to use in a Magic name, but when Bile Urchin was selected in an earlier wave of writing, I thought it would be cool to have “bile” and “pus” both make their Magic debuts in the same set (little did I know that Bile Urchin would get pre-empted in Unhinged). Ew.

Stir the Grave / Clash of Realities - I mention these cards only to point out that I’m a sucker for wanting Instants and Sorceries to have names that invoke verbs, while also wanting Enchantments to have names that invoke nouns. In other words, Magic permanents tend to be “things” in my mind, while non-permanents tend to be “actions.” These aren’t perfect distinctions (Roar of Jukai and the Shoals, for example), but I’ve found myself becoming increasingly persnickity the longer I’m a creative writer.

Mark of Sakiko / Horobi’s Whisper - Similarly, I’ve become more and more aware of when I think it’s okay to attach a character’s name to a card. On one hand, I subsribe to the Dungeons & Dragons convention of naming a spell after its creator, a la Bigby’s Crushing Hand (for better or worse, I think of Urza’s Rage as less a moment of the story and more a powerful spell he invented). More commonly, though, I look for cards that a) have a block-specific mechanic so that they’re not likely to be reprinted in future sets, and b) seem like the sort of effect the legendary character would use. Horobi’s Whisper and Mark of Sakiko are two good recent examples. If an artifact, enchantment, or land is legendary and tied to a particular character--such as Umezawa’s Jitte--this is obviously also fair game for proper nouns.

引用元
A FLAVORFUL VIEW OF BETRAYERS Posted in Feature on February 14, 2005
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/flavorful-view-betrayers-2005-02-14

フレイバーテキストの話が終わり、カードのネーミングの話に変わります。

個別のカードの話が色々あげられている中でも、私が気になったのは、《さき子の印/Mark of Sakiko》《崩老卑の囁き/Horobi’s Whisper》についての話です。これらのように、伝説のキャラクターの名前をカードにつけることは何度かあります。その一般的な傾向というのが、

(a) ブロック固有のメカニズムを持っていて、今後のセットで再録される可能性がないこと

(b) 伝説のキャラクターが使いそうな効果を持っていること

ということです。実際、例に挙げれられたカードは、セット固有の連繫を使ったカードに、《夏の母、さき子/Sakiko, Mother of Summer》の能力を模したカードです。

オリジナルカードを作る際にも参考になる話でした。