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I told my group that they had to have a name and a short introduction telling what set their party apart from other groups. (Being a former DJ, I enjoyed hamming up the introduction each group at the beginning of each match.)
So, my group decided to call themselves "The Elements" (the dwarven cleric represented earth, the wizard represented fire, etc.). They had trouble deciding what their unique characteristic was, so they asked to be introduced this way:
"And in this corner, The Elements... who are good at... winning."
We got a lot of mileage out of that.
Without any prompting, the group decided they wanted something to reference the place that most of them had met - the Whispering Cairn. They spent a few minutes trying to incorporate Zosiel's name, before deciding against it. They then focused on the "Wind" aspect of the Vaati and the Rainment of the Stormwalker item that they had found in the tomb (switched out for the Circlet of Wisdom +2).
Anyway, in the end they decided on "The Stormwraiths," which I thought was pretty cool.
After playing through The Whispering Cairn (and with me providing some encouragement in the form of a small experience point bonus) my group came up with;
The Rough Diamond Company
Nothing remarkable, but it fits quite well. They DO play kinda rough, but that's probably because they need to just to survive...
Gotta love 1st ed. flavour , with all it’s juicy, scary, crunchy bits!
The Funkytown Allstars.
The session when they were filling out the Champions Games forms fell close to the birthday for one of the players. This particular player HATES the song Funkytown, so naturally I got him a card that plays it when opened and gave it to him at that session. The rest of the party thought that name was appropriate to commemorate the occasion.
Suggestions from various party members:
Initially: Uhhhhhhhhh.....
Filge, later: We could be the Masked Marauders. OOOoooOOOoooo.....*wiggles fingers in sarcastic spookiness*
(All other party members stare)
Filge: (defensively) No one else was suggesting anything...
Fern the swashbuckler, later still: We could be Unstoppable Style.
Vincent the fighter: That name's kinda...um...
Fern: Because, you know, we all have our own sense of style...? And, um, they won't be able to stop us?
Croi the barbarian/druid: Or, (dramatic pause) we could be Unstoppable Fury. (no one even dignifies this with a response)
Croi: How about Wormbane?
Thomas the wizard: Ooh! Spawns of Kyuss.
Talin the cleric: That seems an ill omen. And also kind of in bad taste. Wormbane is definitely the better option of those two.
Fern again, even later: How about Diamonds in the Rough. There we go.
Thomas: I want no association whatsoever with that little hellhole town.
Filge: Here, here.
After weeks of IC discussion and MONTHS of OOC debate, our group finally settled on Thomas's suggestion of "Eye of the Storm." It alludes to the Wind Dukes, and works for each member on a personal level for various reasons. All told, though, the group felt somewhat silly for agonizing over a name amidst other gems such as "The Woodchuckers" and "Varmint Patrol"...
Before we began playing the Age of Worms AP, my campaign was made up of randomly selected Dungeon adventures. Luckily we had only played through a few of them when AoW began, so we were able to start the AP from the beginning - the adventures have been playing catch-up to the PC's levels ever since, but as of the start of the Champion's Games (which we've just recently begun), I finally don't have to use the Scaling the Adventure sidebar anymore (hooray! Just in time, too - my second child was born about 3 weeks ago, and finding time to advance the monsters from the published adventure somehow doesn't seem like something I have a lot of time for anymore these days - just going out one evening a week to actually play D&D is pushing it these days). Anyhow, not so long before we began AoW, we played through Final Resting Place from Dungeon #122. Since some of my players had consistently failed to give me any info on their characters' backgrounds despite my incessant pestering, I took it upon myself to provide some background for them - for good or ill. So it happened that the party rogue's cousin Hrodel showed up begging him and his companions fo retrieve their uncle Kai's body from a troglodyte lair (where the suicidally depressed widower and former adventurer had taken out the trogs' illithid overlord, kamikaze-style, with a bead of force), to be buried beside his beloved wife. Uncle Kai was one of the founding members of a now-retired band of adventurers known as the Last Men Standing. When they returned to his home town with Kai's body, the locals were thrilled. The priest who performed the funeral rites was also a member of this band in his younger days, and at one point referred to the party as the Last Men Standing. I believe they were at Kai's wake in the Last Man Standing tavern at the time (no-one is sure if the bar was named after Kai's band or vice-versa, but it is where they used to drink). Anyhow, the name sort of stuck. Allustan heard about it from the party, and at some point must have passed it on to Eligos, who in turn passed it on to what's-her-face that introduced the party to Ekaym. At least that's what I decided when my players had already spent 20 minutes of our session debating over team names and was clearly getting nowhere fast... They were fine with "Last Men Standing" as a team name when Ekaym handed them the sign-up sheet for their autographs with the team name already filled out, explaining that's the name Eligos had told his friend they went by. So they sort of inherited the name without necessarily wanting it, and every so often ever since, someone will call them the Last Men Standing out of the blue and they'll be sort of surprised at how their fame has spread.
PS. I also gave the party rogue an Aunt (Hrofanna, AKA Fanny - just don't call her 'Aunt Fanny' to her face or she'll pop you one with her rolling pin) who he lives with whenever he isn't disappearing off to Diamond Lake or wherever for months on end without so much as leaving a note, who cares about nothing so much as keeping him safe from the "family curse" she believes has killed all the men in the Rifter family save him (well, there was that one time with the black pudding in the sewers outside Zyrxog's domain... but he's feeling MUCH better now. FYI there is no curse (or is there?) - just that perhaps "adventuring rogue" isn't the safest family business to get into...). so his character has to endure a lot of shrill nagging, to the rest of the party's delight and to his chagrin. Surprisingly enough though, the rest of the party all gave me their PC's character background blurbs fairly soon after they met Aunt Fanny... Concidence? :o)
Kang
