"It's a joke name, sir."

[Mark]

"Like Biggus Dic..."

Every GM winds up dealing with this sooner or later. Most of the group has decided, formally or otherwise, to tackle the campaign (this time around, anyway) in a "serious" roleplaying manner but one player isn't on board. Oh, he creates a formidable enough character to pull his own weight but when it finally gets down to naming him he goes with "Phil McKraken" or "Clamidia Underall" or "Lance Pokenprod" or...

Anyway, how do you deal with a situation like this?


Alternately, what names have you heard?*


*Try to stay within the bounds of board policy, please.

 

[Timeboxer]

I have one player who kept coming up with new and ludicrous names for her character, like, every week -- she's a feline Shifter in Eberron, and would introduce herself as "Fuzzy Cat" or "Deus ex Machina" or "Yours Truly Bast' Stab-a-rat."

So on her first trip out of Sharn, I made her get photo ID. With an official name.

And when she insisted on something silly, I made her have to bribe the House Sivis representative to stand a chance in Dolurrh for them to accept it.

 

[DonAdam]

In an AU "living" campaign for our university, we ruled that goofy names could only be used for true names. So we ended up with true names like Lion-o for litorians, Logan for Wolverine totems, etc.

In my regular games, it is just totally out of the question. But then, everyone in my gaming circle understands that the GM makes the rules for his game; world building is one of the GM's responsibilities, so he is well within his proper sphere to define the boundaries of appropriateness for names, classes, etc.

 

[der_kluge]

I've never really encountered this, but I have a problem with the exact opposite. It's just a hang-up I have.

By this, I'm referring to overly common, non-fantastical names. A character in a short campaign I ran several years ago when we took a month-long break, made a character with this story about how he his mother was a gypsy, and cursed, and gave birth to a man/cow, who by all appearances was a minotaur. I found his story interesting, and clever, so I allowed his character. His name? David?

I totally cringed when I heard that. I think I've gotten a little more tolerant of it since then. My current priest in a Harn game is named Joseph. And then, ironically, a guy actually named Joseph joined our game. We sometimes get confused.

I think it depends on the nature of the campaign, maybe. This is low-magic, more gritty game, so more common names seem more appropriate to me.

 

[Lazybones]

In my Asian campaign, I simply made it a rule--no names that are silly plays on words (Wong Wei was the example I used in my Player's Guide), or are profane or insulting. Thus far no one's submitted anything egregious.

Unfortunately I could not resist the urge myself and set a bad example: one of my shopkeepers is named Lo Pei. But I did a lot of research on Mandarin names and most of them sound pretty cool (and have meaning).

 

[ptolemy18]

I've never really encountered this, but I have a problem with the exact opposite. It's just a hang-up I have....By this, I'm referring to overly common, non-fantastical names.

Yeah, I dislike that too. I'd rather have to deal with a silly name than a boring name.

Actually, in my campaign I'm DMing, *I'm* the guilty one for silly names.... the game is set in ancient Egypt but I've taken to introducing characters with the sillier-sounding Egyptian names I could come up with. Names like "Wenis" and "Iubet" (pronounced You-bet).

I just figured that if I tried to pronounce them any other way ("Uhh... it's Wenis pronounced "Wee-nash"), I'd probably slip into the silly pronounciation anyway... and at least this way the players remember their names... :/

Jason

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

(Wong Wei was the example I used in my Player's Guide)

Which, amusingly and ironically enough, was the actual name of the Chinese fighter pilot who crashed his jet into an American intelligence plane back in 2001. Though, if I were in your game, I'd go with Hung Lo, Cao Dung, or Wi Ping.

Joke names, though? Not had much of a problem with those in any games in recent memory. A high school Star Wars campaign had some silly ones... "Suke Lywalker" was the worst offender, but when the rest of the party consisted of Tommy Bobson, Roy D. Slicer, and a wookie named G'Zerghdt (which was pronounced jar-dal)... um... yeah.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I had a new player a long time ago (like '89) who was unfamiliar with serious campaigns... We made up his PC (a 1st level Mage) and I ran him through a short solo adventure (diggers in town had found an old temple with some undead, and he was delegated to check it out with the guard, being the apprentice of the only wizard in town).

He performed just fine, and got the chance to meet the local Marquis. The major domo is schooling him on what not to do when he enters the throne room, and asks him, "What is your name again?"

"Fast Eddy."

I hesitated for a second. Then I adopted the snootiest english butler accent I could, looked down my nose at him like an ostentatious major domo would, and introduced him as "Edward," drawing the name out for about five seconds.

He caught on pretty quick. He even made his official name "Edward Rapide" from that point on.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I've never really encountered this, but I have a problem with the exact opposite. It's just a hang-up I have.

By this, I'm referring to overly common, non-fantastical names. A character in a short campaign I ran several years ago when we took a month-long break, made a character with this story about how he his mother was a gypsy, and cursed, and gave birth to a man/cow, who by all appearances was a minotaur. I found his story interesting, and clever, so I allowed his character. His name? David?

I totally cringed when I heard that. I think I've gotten a little more tolerant of it since then. My current priest in a Harn game is named Joseph. And then, ironically, a guy actually named Joseph joined our game. We sometimes get confused.

I think it depends on the nature of the campaign, maybe. This is low-magic, more gritty game, so more common names seem more appropriate to me.

In one of my campaigns one player had a character named Frank. But no one blamed him, his own real life name is Taswell Mumford...

The Auld Grump, I went to school with a girl named Mary Christmas... her sister's name was Holly - I think that the parents should have been shot!

 

[Mystery Man]

I had to put the kibosh on both Dick Fitzwell and Dick Zenormous.