I'm a huge believer in the feel of a name.  How it sounds.  The meaning doesn't mean anything to me, so I hate looking up names by their meaning and origin.  Unless, of course, it's a real-world setting and they come from somewhere else.  Then origin means something, but meaning still has no bearing on names to me.

For fantasy names, I normally select a letter to start with, whether it's a hard or soft consonant, or an uncommonly used letter.  That starts the feel for the name and feel of the character.  Then I just try out different letter combinations in my head to try piecing together a sound that fits.  I've come up with names for several other people as well as my own characters this way.

As for the realistic settings, with normal names, I incorporate preconceived notions to names.  Take advantage of that, to some degree.  Depending on the character.  As an example (I hated using it, but there could never be anything that fits better), I have a character named Jane that is, well, plain, simple, overlooked.  To double-layer it, though, there's the Jane Doe aspect of the name.  No one will realize she's missing if she disappears.  Another name.  Angelina.  Now, I'm not up on celebrities and such (someone mentioned that back a few posts, I'm too lazy to reference), so Angelina, to me, sounds very regal.  Long names like that take on a more sophisticated air to me.  Of course, that might not be the same to all my readers, but you can never control everyone's reactions to a name.

In summary, the sense and feel of a name is more important than an actual name to me.  It conveys a lot about a character, depending on how you handle it.  Angelina, for example, might be far from a regal person.  A loser in life who's been beat down at every turn.  She hated it when her parents called her their "little Angel."  So she cuts it down to Ann.  People are entitled to hate their names or butcher them so it's nearly something else.  On the other hand, people can love their names.  Angelina could very well be a regal person who could walk with books on her head all day.

And I could probably keep ranting, but I'll quit.

AD

Hmmm.... Dresden LARP.  That would be interesting.  Should this ever take off, maybe I'll have something else I can check out in California should I be forced to resort to going there for my car.  I've absolutely no experience with LARPing, so maybe I shouldn't ask how magic and such could be pulled off, and with that many people. 

DA

Oh there's no end to how happy I am to hear that the game's not being set in Chicago!  I already think it a bit cheap to be playing games in Chicago that don't jive with the books and can end up with Harry showing up in the end to save the day or even consult.  That's just... too easy.  I don't know.  Can't really explain why that bothers me so much.  But this is brilliant that someone else is being featured.  And glad it's not New York, 'cause then there'd be official word on somewhere I've already played for over a year and I'm sure none of it would fit.  I would be sad.

AD

In the end, this probably doesn't help out too much, but one of my best friends and I have been running/playing a game set entirely on rules derived from the books and no pre-determined system out there.  It's what we call a purely mental game.  No dice involved, so that seriously tricky situations can be avoided.  There are times when success would look better than failure, yadda yadda.  Of course, I wouldn't trust anyone other than my friend to run this sort of thing, having no rules to run off of other than what we can base off of what's been presented in the books by Harry.  It takes a lot of trust, a lot of objectivity, and a lot of reading more into things than would otherwise be necessary.  It's been a blast, though.  We've been playing for over a year.

AD

You're my hero of the day, Priscellie. 

AD

Fool Moon, page 222.  Malcolm Dresden died, specifically, of a brain aneurism.  I knew I wasn't imagining things.   (well, of course there is the whole withheld information of Chauncy, but...)

AD

Weekly Adventure #1

Close: The whole thing is a setup by a fairy of great power, one of the Sidhe in order to trick one of the characters into getting indebted.  There are a number of motives for this and who are we to try to figure out the way a fairies’ mind works.  The result of these could easily be a curse of some kind the fairy levels on the character as payment. 

The motivations of the Sidhe involved with this would have to be intricately plotted out for this to work, assuming this was going to be turned into something other than a one-shot game.  I know well how hard it is to get into the mind of the faeries, but it is possible.  I've seen it, and not just from Jim.  But as I said, if this were to be integrated into something bigger, it's no fun to just have the Sidhe show up once and not have tricked you into getting cursed for no apparent reason.  There's some big intricate plot going on.   Deep down... every Sidhe wants to screw us over.