I find naming projects incredibly challenging. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I have the idea for the concept of the project before I have any idea of what to name it. 

When trying to name HIS MAJESTY THE WORM, I sat down and just riffed on every idea I had. I asked people for ideas. I pumped my playtest group for suggestions. 

Here's a sampling of the big list:

My favorite name that came out of the brainstorming sessions was "Katabasis." It's a Greek word describing the ascent from the underworld, in the vein of Orpheus. Because this game was about the loop running between adventuring in the mythic underworld and resting in the city, I thought a word about ascending from the underworld was pretty dope.

I ultimately took the big list to Reddit's RPG design community. There was no consensus there, except people definitely didn't like "Katabasis." They didn't know the word, so it just sounded like a generic fantasy word.

I definitely didn't want to name the project a generic fantasy word. There are enough RPGs named generic fantasy words. There are also enough RPGs named "Legend of X" or "Tales of Y." I wanted to avoid these formats.

Accepting advice from online weirdos carte blanche is never a good idea. I regret how much they got into my head about it. Ultimately, though, moving away from the name was serendipity: Rathayibacter chose the term for their RPG, and I'm glad we didn't accidentally overlap.

So, after the big list exercise, I was back to the drawing board. About this time, I was reading Italo Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies (Italian: Il castello dei destini incrociati). In this experimental novel,  a group of pilgrims find themselves unable to speak. Thus impaired, they use a set of tarot cards to illustrate their backgrounds and tell each other stories. 

I came upon this quote in the "Story of the Vampire":

The forest’s thickness is lessening, with room for paths of turned earth, rectangular pits, a whiteness as of mushrooms peeping from the ground. With horror we see from the thirteenth tarot that the underbrush is fertilized with half-withered corpses and fleshless bones.

“Why, where have you brought me, Fool? This is a cemetery!”

And the Fool says, pointing to the invertebrate fauna feeding in the graves:

“Here a monarchy reigns, mightier than you: His Majesty the Worm!"

I loved the rhythm of the name. It leapt off the page.  Because this game also uses tarot cards to tell stories, the allusion seemed apt.