Group names

[demiurge1138]

In the Eberron game I'm running via IRC, the group is the Freelance Police. It's the name of their business, you see. In the Eberron game that died out last week live, they called themselves Incorporated Inc (no, I don't know why), but they will live on in Darguun lore as the Six from Sharn.

Until recently, though, nobody had ever brought up party names in D&D. I do like the atmosphere it brings, though.

Demiurge out.

 

[Brain]

Only one of the groups that I am in has a formal adventuring name. "Flames of Destiny"
The individual members have titles in line with that, for instance my character is known as "Brightmantle's Flame"

 

[Tetsubo]

Names of groups that I have GM'd for:

Overkill Inc. (Gamma World)
Companions of the Crystal Star
Band of Blackcroft

 

[Angel Tarragon]

In one Forgotten Realms group I am a member of The Company of the Morning Star. In one Drgonlance game I run my PCs have formed an adventuring organization known as The Spirit Seekers. In the Greyhawk group I DM, the PCs are known as The Liberators of Celene. And in the Dragonstar game I play in our group is know as The Silver Sentinels of Savain.

 

[Dagger75]

I have had only one group name themselves.

They were called The 5 Aces. Granted there are only 4 aces in a deck of cards but they were a group of grave robbing swindling rogues so it fit. Whats even funnier is there were 6 people in the group. They stuck with it. I still don't know how they really came up with the name.

 

[Ambrus]

I've always liked the idea of party names though most groups I've played in don't often feel the need to name their group. As a DM, I stumbled onto a good trick for getting the PCs to name their group: have NPCs start to refer to them by a name they don't like. It'll force them to choose something better and tell every NPC about it. That's what happened in a campaign I was running: NPCs assumed that the high Charisma bard in the party, named Liam, was its leader so they began refering to the PC party as Liam's Band

The PCs really hated the implication that they were the bard's lackeys so they quickly threw together their new name: Rickir Athair (which the druid PC claimed was druidic for Warriors of Life), a name I never really liked much.

In our latest campaign, the PCs were encouraged to form a Holy order and so they had to choose a name so they named themselves the Walkers of the Twilight Path. It's a bit too verbose for my taste, so NPCs usually just refer to them as the Walkers of Twilight or even just The Walkers.

 

[kenobi65]

One campaign I ran, the PCs started out as a platoon of soldiers sent on a mission together. In that operation, they were referred to by their commander as "Wraith Squad" (yes, I stole it from the X-Wing novels), and the players referred to themselves as the "Wraiths" from then on.

Another campaign, a group of giants that the party was harassing referred to them as "these ghosts from Cormyr." That name stuck, too.

Generally, I think names that the characters would actually use themselves work best when they sort of come up organically during the campaign.

 

[RuminDange]

The main group in my homebrew took the name "The Band of the Gold Dragon" after they received a magical tattoo of a "gold dragon" from a powerful half-gold dragon archmage after completing a very critical adventure stopping a great evil from raising again that the archmage had stopped two-thousand years before that cost her life to do so. She was still around keeping the evil locked away.

The other groups in my world don't really have a name for their group.

And this is the first campaign that I have had where they came up with a group name. Granted they had to have a name to get a King's Charter to grant them certain rights and privileges in the kingdom while adventuring.


RD

 

[spyscribe]

Our party doesn't have a good collective monniker, but I really wish we did.

In character, it's not such a big deal, but since I've been writing a story hour, I've offered other players in the game large sums of money* to give me something to call our group other than, "the party."

*or at least, piddling small change.

 

[Corsair]

Step 1: Accidently interrupt an archdevil's plans for raising a small army of elite half-fiend adventurer commandos.

Step 2: Raise said devil's ire by going so far as to convert one of his would-be commandos, and get a miracle to have her full humanity restored.

Step 3: Fight off numerous attacks by minor devils any time you stay in one place too long.

Step 4: New character joins the group. "So what do you folks call yourselves? What?? You don't have a name? You need a name. Like those Hellcats we just fought! We could name ourselves after them!" The Paladin, aghast, "No! We can't name ourselves after them! We FIGHT them on a regular basis!" The new guy ponders for a second. "Well, how about 'Hellsbane' instead? Be all like... the bane of Hell. Lets be honest here folks, no matter how bad the residents of Hell are, the name sounds cool."

So the name stuck, even if the new guy who came up with the name died in the first fight he participated in.