I and everyone else at the table offered many suggestions on good fantasy names, she eventually decided she liked something she saw written nearby on the table - and her half-elf was christened Loretadine. Last name - Tablets. She picked that up off of a pack of allergy pills.
Everyone gets a small kick out of it when NPCs call her "Miss Tablets".
I had a friend back in high school who would do something similar. With every one of his characters, he would use the first words he saw once the character was rolled up. This led to:
Snappy Tom
Burlap
Heart Lung
Dementia Praecox
This same player was also known to quote "Leave It to Beaver" at random. "Gee, Beav, Dad's gonna go ape. He might even slug ya!" One of the funniest guys I've ever met, but not a terrific roleplayer.
Luckily, this was at a time when we weren't doing more than hack and slash. Once the campaign began to evolve, he began to lose interest.
Dementia Praecox
Y'know... Somewhere there is a goth girl looking for the perfect name. Will she ever find her way to these boards?
:D
Where: Gen Con
When: Several years ago
Game: MERP by ICE
Offensive Character Name: "Dildo Baggins"
Oath: "I swear it wasn't me." and/or "If you are still out there death isn't good enough for you."Poster: G3
I just saw the name used in a soft core porn version of LOTR called Lord of the G-String. My wife and I rented it on our bad movie night.
One of the worst names in a campaign i was in was a Dragonlance, Tinker-Gnome:
Sonofab#*chIhitmythumbwiththehammeragainandbyallthatisgoodandholyitreallyre allyfreakinhurtssobadIthinkIbettergoseethepartyclerictogetitfixedbeforeitsw ellsupsobadthatwehavetogoallthewaydowntoicewallglacierjusttogetitbackdownto normalsize...
there was more, but I'm already tired of typing it!
Needless to say, we just called him Sonof.
I like that one. Bad names, eh?
Frutiger Roman (a style of text)
A ranger named Ordik (We added a question mark)
Olidoc Dirtstar (I hope dirtstar isn't too R-rated for this)
Zigmund Feud
A male dwarf named Lori (claims he saw it in the LotR appendices)
An archer named Thok
Irky Timbers (actually he was the npc gnome in the Sunless Citadel I think, but we quickly started calling him Urkel)
The barbarian enchantress Boobsalicious (Don't ask how she casts daze)
Those are just the ones off the top of my head.
Some of you might have heard this story before. We have one guy called Jonny (not me) who is incredibly bad at coming up with original character names, and incredibly good at getting them killed. You can imagine the fun this combination causes.
The DM's going easy on us if Jonny's character doesn't die once every two sessions. 90% of his male characters are named Taren, or some alternate spelling thereof - Tarin, Tarren, Tar'yn, and so forth. All of his female characters are named Kia.
When I prohibited him from naming his next character 'Taren', he named him 'Zethrin'. We thought this was really clever until, two sessions later, we realised that he'd been playing Final Fantasy 7 and was just mis-pronouncing 'Sephiroth'.
He once misspelled 'arm'.
Taren once died, and we introduced his new character immediately by finding him hanging comically by the foot from a cliff face. We cut him down but he fell, and as a result, died in a combat with sea trolls at the bottom of the cliff.
Every time he makes a new character, he also makes a backup character, just in case.
All of his characters look like Morgan Ironwolf from "Ecology of the Adventurer", except the ones that take levels in Dragon Disciple.
Once, in a boss fight, he died after three rounds and the DM let him rush in immediately with his backup character. The backup character died too.
He survived a battle with Ashardalon, the half-fiendish great red wyrm. He managed this because he was so multiclassed that his Will save bonus was +3 at level 20, and so he spent the entire battle running away in fear.
Once we hit around 18th level, the party cleric used to prepare one True Resurrection each day for Taren.
It's come to my attention after playing D&D for a while that WoTC and Paizo authors are just as guilty of making terrible character names. For example, Balsag the Hunter from the Sunless Citadel 3.0 adventure. Bring his name up in a group comprised of males aged 20-23 and watch the game get derailed. Shukak, the AOW lizard clan chieftain is another example. Looks like a great lizardfolk name on the page, but say it aloud a few times and add a dose of immaturity and even though he's dealing out a lot of damage with that +1 returning trident, no one can take him seriously. Because his name sounds like a combination of an article of footwear and a slang term for the male appendage. Everyone in my campaigns will now be named Jim or Billy. Even the female characters.
It's come to my attention after playing D&D for a while that WoTC and Paizo authors are just as guilty of making terrible character names. For example, Balsag the Hunter from the Sunless Citadel 3.0 adventure. Bring his name up in a group comprised of males aged 20-23 and watch the game get derailed.
Yeah, I ran this game a couple weeks ago...
...such an unfortunate name...
Great posts James Keegan and Jonathon. Balsag and Shukak. Hahaha :]
Well, we all goof once in a while. My son got a kick out of it when his party met a half-elven trader named Verinesti while exploring a mountainous region. Needless to say, this NPC was quickly retired.
I was always quite fond of a fellow player's familiar - a raven named Quoth.
Pets can have funny names. Characters should not.
For example, Balsag the Hunter from the Sunless Citadel 3.0 adventure. Bring his name up in a group comprised of males aged 20-23 and watch the game get derailed.
Indeed. Has anyone ever run Secret of the Windswept Wall? Even though they know he's at least six levels above them, my players were utterly unable to fear a gay wizard named Sionaas.
While casual social gatherings are certainly a common use of the game, there are many DMs and players that use D&D to escape reality, and wish to do it with deep immersion roleplaying. For these people (I'd like to call myself one of them), such nonsensical naming conventions completely ruin any fun they might have, and they take the game the run pretty seriously. Both styles are valid, but rarely compatible.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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While casual social gatherings are certainly a common use of the game, there are many DMs and players that use D&D to escape reality, and wish to do it with deep immersion roleplaying. For these people (I'd like to call myself one of them), such nonsensical naming conventions completely ruin any fun they might have, and they take the game the run pretty seriously. Both styles are valid, but rarely compatible.
Amen, brother Saern. I've had a fair share of goofy character names pass beneath my discerning nose but, to my credit, never once have I permitted one of them to be the final name of the character once the game had begun.
There was one slightly amusing name that passed my judgement though. A cleric of Lathander named Xeric Amblecrown. That's right... Xeric the Cleric. It wasn't so bad though, as none of the PCs actually called him that in-game.
A couple of favorites from my circle:
The Druid Schroedinger, who has a panther animal companion (Schroedinger's Cat)- I thought this was very clever.
After banning silly names partially because one guy had Beebelobo, Bobolobo and their cousin Baybaylobo, the same character came up with a great gnome character (or so I thought) name Th'dulgir Gudmundsun, until I looked at his character sheet and realized the gnome's middle gname was Groinius. I am not sure if he actually intended it to be silly, but...
Fakov Urdeye- Another of the reasons I banned silly names, and one it also took me a few sessions to catch on to.
Blorag, the barbarian, a name which seems so wrong on so many levels we just wound up having to call him Blogar.
and last but not least...
Hez Haresh, Cleric of Ilmater who became, to everyone but me, Haze Hashish Cleric of Stonater...
I also agree with an above poster that PC names are hard to come by and inevitably an unintentional slip up will be made. I had an NPC named Dimajo, and never realized the slip until someone asked the NPC "So, you like Baseball, huh?" or the captain of the guard in one of the towns named Cochrane, who became -----ring to the "cleverly mischievous" players.
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I find that spelling things backward can actually lead to decent names sometimes - I had a Jedi Master named Marb Rekots, and a friend named one Amak Artus, which I loved until I realized what he had done (and even after that it was pretty cool).
Most of the problems I've had with names have been on the DM's end as well. We had a guy who would put absolutely no effort into NPC or place names, and I'm not just talking about ones that he had to come up with on the fly. This led to our Star Trek crew visiting the planet Ooban, and, later in the same session, another one called Naboo.
But my favorite story has to be from a group that I wasn't involved with - the player's name was Neil, and every character he made up was named after him. This led to some interesting conversations:
"Remember when Neil took down that villain?"
"Neil the paladin?"
"No, Neil the Jedi."
Strom should be a dust wight ;)
How about these two horrific names
Melf...the elf. As in Melf's acid arrow.
Bozal Zahol. As in Bozo z' a-hole.
I knew a guy who ran a gnome wizard name of Yoda.
Back in '81 or so I played a fighter who primarily used a whip. Named him Indy. Isn't that awful? Eh, I was thirteen.
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We had a guy in our gaming group, Ravenloft campaign - supposed to be pretty characterful and all - who named his character Nameless Fighter. In another campaign prior to that he named his charisma 18 female paladin Claudia Schiffer.
Ran a game for a whole bunch of newbies one time. Most of them made a decent effort to come up with decent character names, but amongst them we had Fubar the ugly dwarf, a hard-as# fighter named The Auditor (in bad Arnie accent), and another dwarf whom the player named Grimbolg 'Ogre Slayer' Smith. Why Smith I dont know...
One of my long term players named his first character Rincer B. Just B, didnt stand for anything. His next character was a halfling thief named Slippery Sam. On a few occasions when he DMed he would come up with on-the-fly NPC names like Zazazeshza and Zekwashashan.
Had a player name her character Josh Rogan.
I thought of a couple more:
Ranger Bob- the product of a guest spot in a terribly difficult campaign, would have been more clever if he was a wizard, but alas...
Buckaroo Lipinski, interstellar tapdancing expert (Fading Suns)
-from the same mind as the above
Pie Goodslice- halfling rogue and eater of shiny things "...because everybody loves pie..."
I can add:
'Bilbao'- a sombrero-wearing South of the Border halfling Ftr./Thief in 2nd Ed.(From a funny little illo by Jim Holloway of TSR)
'Syleas' (Silly-ass) the elven thief, died in the Temple of Elemental Evil when he was left behind after the rest of the party fled into the Nodes...go figure.
Ennurai 'N'dagecelo'-elven master archer-ranger in the 'Night Below' campaign. The last name is the famous female Soul/Rap artist Me'shell Ndegocello's, the first name became pronounced 'in-your-eye' after his habit as a 1st edition archer-ranger of blowing monsters away with one shot...
'Tiboz' Twinkletoe (another rap artist for a first name), whose famous moves included 'the halfling hack' and 'the Shire shank' with his twin shortswords...
'Varga X', a vargr Traveller character back in the day...
'Haakon' (Hack-on) the dwarven Slayer priest-plays like his name says...
and who could forget Dix Masonhelm, the sentimental but knuckleheaded name of my own dwarf PC from 1979...ehhhh!
I ran a campaign once that included a fighter that always got into brawls over nonexistant provocations. This happened so many times that instead of calling the character by his name, we all just called him "Eric Cantona." (If you're a futbol fan you'll understand the reference). Eventually, the player just changed his character's name to "Eric Cantona..."
In a slightly silly campaign I played a ruggedly-handsome and buff druid named Stone Durdigan who had an ape companion named Bubbles.
In a game I DMed, one of the players created a gnome wizard named Wondraif Tondaloo, or 'Wonton' for short.
The only time I actually didn't let someone use a name they wanted to use was when someone wanted to play an elven wizard named 'Minsc'... I try to have my players pick original names, at least.
One of my friends has this kind of naming as a habit at times.
Grassy, a Gnoll Ranger. (It's a pun)
Ragethunder MacBerserkanger, a Dwarf Barbarian.
He's had other ones, but they were so ludicrous I've deleted them from my mind.
An EIGHT-YEAR thread-necro? Seriously!?!?
Love Lord of the G Strings....Great movie.