Whining & Complaining

[Krensky]

The word is not an ancient egyptian word. "Marshmallow" is a modern day word according to what I remember reading back then. But I didn't do extensive research on this, and frankly, I didn't/don't care.

I wonder how many ancient Egyptians named their cats Marshmallow.

Old English mersc-mealwe. Mersc being marsh and mealwe being mallow. It's a drift in spelling and pronunciation. I's not a modern word.

I don't have a problem with any of those names except maybe Cincinnati because it reminds me of the city. But I could probably let it slide since I think the city is named after an actual persons name (don't shoot me if I'm wrong, I've never even been to Cincinnati).

The actual horse was named (in all most certainty) after the city. His one (grand?)sire being named Boston. Dapple is the translated name of one of the horses from Roland (and yeah, it is a cutsey name). Ox-head was Alexander the Great's horse.

Those names are not "cutesy" or slapstick silly. When I told my friends about the name Marshmallow, they all groaned. I guess it just depends on the type of game atmosphere that people enjoy which determines what they find appropriate or not. "Cutesy" when it doesn't fit the subject matter is just not what I enjoy in my D&D games.

Like I said, your table. I just think this is more GM... something, it's not really whining, then player whining.

 

[Krensky]

I get the vibe you're going with here. Silly names are a slippery slope. But a familiar . . . you might be able to cut them a little slack on it. Familiars are often two steps away from being cute anyway.

I'm playing a character from kind of a Ravenloft type world and he's a wizard, but the family he's from is sort of like an Adams Family set up. Spooky but kind of goofy, too. The character's spellbook is bound is his deceased mother's skin. What is the spellbook called? The NecroMOMicon.

Yeah... that's going too far.

Puns are right out.

 

[RainOfSteel]

So lets post up all the various complaints you can remember hearing by players.

I was going to do a point-by-point response, but by the time I got to the end of your list, it just would have been too long.

I'll shorten it up to say that I have seen many similar complaints. The most common is totally ridiculous complaints about the lack of one specific race or about spectacularly silly names.

If a player can't look down a list of reasonable races and classes and pick from them and be happy with it, that individual is not a gamer and should quit.

I can take silly names in campaigns because I know how utterly obnoxious some players are wont to be if thwarted, but I still hate them.

Basically, your post is a tale of players who are, mentally speaking, just beyond their toddler years. If you thwart them, they throw a temper tantrum. This happens in people I know who are in their 30s.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

one of the biggest complaints or whining I used to get was when people would make assumptions, ran with them, were upset when they did not pan out, and presumed I was doing something wrong.

Ugh, this is definitely the type of whining I hate most.

I had a player who would assume by default that EVERYTHING I did was wrong unless it was something so blatantly obvious that he could tell what it was without having to make assumptions.

Except he didn't wait until his assumptions didn't pan out. He would accuse me of messing up the moment any situation arose where he didn't understand exactly what was happening. It slowed down the game considerably and would confuse newer players when he started describing in detail how something was supposed to work compared to how I was doing it (of course due to the whole "assumptions" things what he was describing tended to not be the same thing they were actually faced with).

He eventually crossed the line when I tried to talk to him about it outside the game and asked him to tone it down and not jump to conclusions. He declared that he wasn't going to and that he had the "right" to do what he was doing because he'd been playing various RPGs longer than I or any of the other players and was therefore "smarter than us" and always right. He tried to mix in a few comments of "I know you're the DM and it's your call" but he clearly didn't believe it.

He didn't really fit into the group anyways though, and he's not been welcome to join us any more after that crossing the line comment. I believe he came from a group in which his old DM made problems and combat ridiculously difficult but at the same time didn't hide anything from the players, and encouraged things like metagaming and cheating to find "creative" solutions to all situations. So I guess he wasn't used to not knowing everything.

I'm not his old DM though, but he seemed to have trouble realizing that fact. He never really did get a grasp on the concept that I'm not trying to kill the players at all times. Ah well.

 

[Mallus]

Puns are right out.

In D&D?!?! That's... that's... nerd blasphemy!

"First they came for the puns, but I did not speak out, for my PC's name wasn't, strictly speaking, a pun.
Then they came for the anagrams, but I did not speak out, because I haven't used an anagram name since, like, high school."

(Actually, I used to feel similarly about puns and humorous names in my 20s. I love them now. I've either lightened up, discovered my inherent talent for them, or am experiencing very-early-onset Alzheimer's. Perhaps all three...).

 

[Agamon]

I get the vibe you're going with here. Silly names are a slippery slope. But a familiar . . . you might be able to cut them a little slack on it. Familiars are often two steps away from being cute anyway.

I'm playing a character from kind of a Ravenloft type world and he's a wizard, but the family he's from is sort of like an Adams Family set up. Spooky but kind of goofy, too. The character's spellbook is bound is his deceased mother's skin. What is the spellbook called? The NecroMOMicon.

My brother's wizard got a raven familiar and couldn't think of a name. I offered, "Mr. Nevermoore?" He liked it, and I took it and ran with it, giving him a dapper British accent and a smug attitude that didn't suffer fools lightly or take kindly to requests he thought were beneath him. Most memorable familiar in any game I've played.

 

[Mallus]

I think "marshmallow" is whimsically awesome with reference to the dessert, but it's also marsh+mallow, a family of medicinal plants, see for example:

Marshmallow

Yeah, I think Marshmallow was clever. Marshmallow in French was even cleverer. Now if the player had tried "Marshmallow" in an even more obscure language, say, Esperanto, it would have been a crowning achievement in (whimsical) cleverness.

Frankly, I want players to do stuff like this. Eh, to each his own.

 

[Mallus]

The character's spellbook is bound is his deceased mother's skin. What is the spellbook called? The NecroMOMicon.

Oh that's good...

... but I submit for your consideration: Umbullto Ego.

He was an Awakened bull with an INT of 18, originally bought, uplifted, buffed, and them magic-jarred and used as a sort remote combat drone in a gladiatorial match against a gelatinous cube with monk levels. After winning the match he has freed, declared a citizen, and entered into a campaign for public office. Later he went to university, where founded a discipline called semioxtics, which, of course, is the study of bull.

I miss 3e sometimes... and what my group did with, no, make that 'to' it.

 

[Tuft]

Yeah, I think Marshmallow was clever. Marshmallow in French was even cleverer. Now if the player had tried "Marshmallow" in an even more obscure language, say, Esperanto, it would have been a crowning achievement in (whimsical) cleverness.

Frankly, I want players to do stuff like this. Eh, to each his own.

Loved Marshmallow too. Pets get cutesy names all the time, and it is extra fun if it is som kind of ferocious animal. Just compare to the kind of ironic nicknames people tend to get, such as calling a really big guy "Tiny".

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yeah, I think Marshmallow was clever. Marshmallow in French was even cleverer. Now if the player had tried "Marshmallow" in an even more obscure language, say, Esperanto, it would have been a crowning achievement in (whimsical) cleverness.

Eibisch has a nice ring to it. And then there's Heemst.