Creativity, or lack thereof...

[nedjer]

But there are a couple of carbon copies that make me see red. Drizzt D'oh-turdden and Wolverweenie.

have to agree and clarify the Wolverine: Not Dead Yet earlier. It's his mate that makes the book. Which leads to noticing how everything around Wolverine is more amusing than Wolverine himself. Military conspiracies, Jane Grey, Xavier, motorbikes and everything except the one dimensional Wolfy like an eye in the storm around him

Bit off topic but marginally more interesting than troll drool

 

[haakon1]

I'm with Umbran. If the player is enthusiastic about your game and isn't a jerk, I would say that you have a good player there.

And also in my opinion, if he's mimicking a character from a novel, at least he envisions his character with a personality. I recall a friend creating a fighter and naming him "Fighter" once, and his sole purpose was... fighting.

Nod. There are five PC's in the 4e campaign I'm a player in (I run and am much happier with 3.5, but hey, DM's house, DM's rules).

-- McLovin, the Warlock. Yes, named after the fake ID in "Superbad". McLovin likes to do massive damage, and doesn't really care if he gets killed or not, because, as his player says, "Hey, who cares, it's just D&D."

-- Seeker II, the wizard. Renamed by popular demand from whatever the player wanted to call him, because we all loved the original "Seeker the wizard" in our first multi-year 3.0 campaign. Seeker likes to use clever tactics and not get killed, which mostly means staying away from the rest of us and trying to get us to be serious for a minute once in a while.

-- Erik the Viking, the warlord. Yes, named after the Monty Python character. not so much Erik the Red the actual historical guy. He's a redhead with a big sword, and a spiked helmet. He likes to kill stuff.

-- Tiberius, the paladin. Yes, named after the "T" in James T. Kirk. He likes to talk to the NPCs, and wants to restore the we-haven't-bothered-to-name-it fallen empire by killing all the monsters he can find.

-- Warden, the cleric. I think there's more to Warden, but I'm not sure what. Warden is very different from the rest of us, in that his priority is not killing stuff, but keeping us doofuses alive. He also talks to NPCs, but not as much as Tiberius.

That's seriously the full extent of the revealed personalities (in 3 sessions) and backstory for the whole party.

So, a character with a personality, no matter where it's ripped off from, yeah, that's pretty stylin', but it might get in the way of the all important killing stuff, and pointless wise cracking.

The belly laughs on Saturday came when we killed a bunch of kobolds, by the side of a river. The question of what to do with the bodies came up with many interesting answers (omitting the folks laughing until they nearly fell over at various "ideas"):

Warden player: Cut them open and search for gems!
Tiberius player: Let's make them into a boat.
(several) How could we make a boat?
DM: If you can kill it, you can make a boat out of it.
Seeker player: Let's take their weapons and armor to sell.
(several) Who wants kobold armor?
Erik player: Maybe we could make shin guards.
Seeker player: Maybe we could put their heads on spikes as a warning to the others.
Tiberius player: Maybe we could stick their heads on the spikes on Erik's helmet.
DM: Maybe you could hang their 'nads from the spikes, like fuzzy dice.
Seeker player: Seriously, why don't we just burn the bodies. We don't want to leave equipment behind for the other kobolds.
McLovin player: OK, burn the bodies, then dump them in the river.
DM: OK, what's left of the burned kobold bodies jams against some rocks, here, just down stream.
(several) OK, let's go find that kobold lair.

Hmmm, I never realized the guy playing Seeker is trying to be serious . . . well, compared to the rest of us, at least.

 

[haakon1]

In my longest running 3e campaign I had one player name his Barbarian after the beer he was drinking while making the character...

My dwarven cleric Newcastle Brown got his name the same way . . .

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That sounds more like the main character in a mystery show...

Bwhada-dah waaaaaaaaahhh

"Tonight's episode of Mysteries of Newcastle Brown, P.I.: Hickory, Dickory, Death."

 

[haakon1]

That sounds more like the main character in a mystery show...

World's Largest Dungeon, actually. The main thing I remember about that campaign is our PC's being very concerned that they couldn't buy any supplies, and thus "playing house" to create their own little base -- moving all sorts of furniture and resources to their hole-up place, and using "Purify Food and Drink" on a lot of dire rats. Much tastier than darkmantle, we assumed.

 

[Oni]

Hey sometimes too little creativity is better than too much.

For instance you want to run a classic fantasy campaign, would you rather play with the guy that nicked his character from a book, or the guy that has come up with an awesome way for you to work his obese alien princess with split personalities who communicates through interpretive hula dancing into you game.

 

[Swedish Chef]

You know, from a DM point of view, having "consistency" from one campaign to another certainly makes it easier to plan out a campaign.

For example, in my group, I have the following players:

J - no matter what he plays, and it's usually a thief or fighter type, he always maxes out his fighting prowess and his move silently.

G - usually a spell caster of some sort, with fire based spells as the focus.

V - some variation of Drizzt. Lately it's been a female variant, and usually elf (but only once drow). Always quiet and brooding with some dark secret.

D - relative new player (compared to the others), who loves to tweak the hell out of whatever character he plays. Checks out these boards and others for optimal design.

C - son of V, always wants to play something "cool", loosely based off whatever video game he's currently interested in. Sadly, he's usually playing Call of Duty type games! Not exactly ideal for high fantasy.

J - daughter of V - plays something loosely based off of whatever anime she's currently following, and like her brother, is usually annoyed when the game doesn't really suit an anime archtype.

None the less, when I'm starting up a campaign, I take this all into account and try to plan as best as I can around the above information. And, since the four original members (myself, and the first three listed) have been gaming together nigh on 20 years now, I think we're doing okay.