D&D General Of the 15 D&D characters I can remember playing, 8 of them were human

[Lanefan]

All 1e-variant characters except where noted. '*' indicates a "one-hit wonder" that didn't get through its first adventure (or, for a few, its first encounter!). Some of the odd names were generated using an in-house random generation system. One-offs omitted.

Prince Dumystor Danara - Human Ranger
Astacoe of Einnoc - Human Fighter
Eohyl Eriglif - Part-Elf Fighter-MU
Lanefan Detustre - Human Fighter
The Hon. Amaco Ee - Human Ranger
Gutezapre Coriorx - Dwarf WarCleric
Noynek Mik - Human Ranger (shared with another player)
*Terriann Meyan ap Tasanta - Human MU
*Falstaffe - Human Fighter
Khurin Jaggedblade - Dwarf Fighter
*Westra - Hobbit Fighter-Thief
Fergus E. Mong - Gnome Illusionist
*Ellen Ferran - Part-Elf MU-Assassin
*Cynthia Ulaniel Barin - WarCleric-Illusionist-Thief
*Silk - Dwarf Cleric
Skyboot Sharlineriel - Elf Illusionist
George Tookson - Hobbit Assassin
*Ashalion "Ashe" Nilrahar [... etc.] - Elf Thief
*Bofur - Dwarf Bard
*Tuerezo - Human WarCleric
*Troikka del Filamarth - Sylph Bard
Aelinelaure "Aelyina" Turyavie - Elf MU
*Barin son of Tharin son of [... etc.] - Dwarf WarCleric
*Telchar Angrenost - Elf Fighter
Perethorn "Pippin" Greenbuck - Hobbit NatureCleric
*Rosie Pussyfoot - Hobbit Thief
Kracz von Hellemond - Human Fighter
Tuiminorien "Tim" - Human NatureCleric-Ranger
Grashnalk "BigPig" Half-Orken - Part-Orc Fighter
Que'frnlrl "Ka'fell" - Dryad Bard
*Galadhremin Tarsilemende - Elf MU
*Carantha of Los Trellos - Human Ranger-MU
3e Gloramir Windhorn - Human Fighter-Wizard
3e Appppil Pagey - Part-Elf Wizard (Illusionist)
3e *Hrothgar son of Horthgar son of [... etc.] - Dwarf WarCleric
3e *Fosbhe the Endlessly Incompetent - Human Fighter
3e *Godmorton Cholmondeley-Smythe - Human Paladin
3e Bjarnni Sigurdsson - Human Ranger-Cleric
3e *Slivacorendhya "Sliver" Larethian - Elf Wizard-Thief
*Bieran DaFrijh - Part-Orc Fighter
Amelia "X" Xana-Deianeira - Human MU
Thorheim Stannisson - Human NatureCleric-Thief
*Zarine - Human Necromancer
Jasmine - Part-Elf NatureCleric-Assassin
Riff - Dwarf Fighter
Raff - Dwarf Assassin (Riff and Raff are brothers)
*Harne - Hobbit Ranger
*Antrayna - Elf Ranger
*Cholmondeley Cavendish-Smythe - Human Cavalier
*Anathame "Anne" Vorcoire - Part-Elf Necromancer-Assassin
(Lady) Elena (Grey) Vokorovitch - Elf Necromancer-Assassin, later MU-Thief
Aloysius St.John-Smythe - Human Cleric

Make of that lot what you will.

 

[TwoSix]

Seems like the biggest distinction to me is that some people can remember all their character names (or keep notes!), and some do not.

 

[Lanefan]

Seems like the biggest distinction to me is that some people can remember all their character names (or keep notes!), and some do not.

I'm kind of our group statistician, so if I don't have this info I'm not doing my job right!

 

[aco175]

I have encouraged my son to keep all his PCs in a binder to help remember since I have no idea of half my PCs now that it has been so long. I do know that I have only played 1-2 humans in 35+ years. I think I played most halflings and dwarves. I went through an elf phase in 2e (eladrin in 4e) and a gnome phase in 3e, but went back to halflings in 5e. With the 10ish PCs in 5e I would say that 8 were halflings and 2 dwarves. I was trying to go all 5e with just halfling thieves, but needed to play a cleric in AL, so I made a dwarf.

 

[R_J_K75]

Seems like the biggest distinction to me is that some people can remember all their character names (or keep notes!), and some do not.

One day last week it took me about 6 hours to remember what I had to eat the day before or if I even ate. Eventually it came to me.

I tend to play these type of characters mostly. Clerics, race depending on the deity, no one else wanted to do it and I was good at it. Wizards and Rogues or combo of the 2, usually elves or halflings. Played a barbarian/berserker and a paladin here and there but not too many. 1 Psion who was murdered in cold blood by another party member. The only character name I can remember off hand was a seafaring druid named Gorton Vandekamp. He used to take the ships wheel off the boat after docking it and put it in his backpack so no one would steal it. I dont think any of them got passed 7th or 8th level. There's a ton more most likely but I'd be here for the next day trying to remember them. I just made a goblin rogue yesterday for 5E for an upcoming game another player is supposed to DM but I doubt that'll happen,

 

[Richards]

I've been the DM for most of my gaming career, so I have a very limited selection of PCs, dating back to when I first started playing AD&D 1E, then nothing for a few decades, and only recently have I started playing in my son's 3.5 campaigns (while still DMing my own). But here goes:

Jon, human druid (AD&D 1E, a pre-generated PC I chose out of a pool my cousins had made for us to teach us the game around 1979)
Bloodaxe, human fighter (AD&D 1E, the first PC I recall when my brother and I started taking turns DMing our own campaigns)
Shadowjack, human fighter (he was an experiment, sticking with leather armor and trying for a high-Dex build)
Trojan, human fighter (AD&D 1E, playing with my neighbor's B-52 crew, who mostly cheated their butts off, around 1988)
Hondo, human monk (AD&D 1E, same B-52 crew)
Skunge, half-orc assassin (AD&D 1E, same B-52 crew)
[decades pass]
Sam Crow, humanoid crow gestalt ranger/rogue (sidekick to my nephew's humanoid sheep gestalt baabarian/cleric in a D&D 3.5 Skylanders campaign built specifically to teach him about D&D in 2017)
Jace Syngaard, human fighter (D&D 3.5, the first PC I ever ran from 1st level to 20th, 2017-2019)
Jhasspok, lizardfolk/fighter/barbarian (D&D 3.5, my current PC - 11th level and counting, 2019 to present)

I chose Jon for my initial PC because he had the least-sucky stats of the pre-generated PCs; only later did I learn my cousins had used a random number generator to get a number from 3-18 for all of the ability scores instead of adding 3 random numbers from 1-6 for each ability score. (So no bell curve, just a flat randomization.) Despite not being thrilled with my first PC, I was intrigued by the game and wanted to learn more about it. We ended up getting the three core AD&D 1E books for Christmas that year and quickly started our own campaigns.

Playing with my neighbor's B-52 crew (when I was stationed in Minot AFB) taught me an important lesson: bad D&D was definitely worse than no D&D. I was excited to play for the first time in six years or so but that excitement was premature: the other players would roll their attacks and grab up their d20 before anyone had a chance to see it and they invariably always reported getting either a 19 or a 20. They also always made all saving throws and did very near to maximum damage with all attacks. I, in the meantime, rolled in the clear and stuck with what the dice showed. I found the other players were actually getting mad at me for draining resources like healing because I failed a few saving throws here and there and took more damage on average than they did. The neighbor was nice (too nice, really - he was the DM and wouldn't call his crew out on their cheating ways, but then he had to work with them day in and day out, whereas I was just a neighbor), but the others really sucked all the fun of the game out for me. And then that was it until I started running an AD&D 2E game for my sons once they were old enough.

Johnathan

 

[R_J_K75]

Playing with my neighbor's B-52 crew (when I was stationed in Minot AFB) taught me an important lesson: bad D&D was definitely worse than no D&D. I was excited to play for the first time in six years or so but that excitement was premature: the other players would roll their attacks and grab up their d20 before anyone had a chance to see it and they invariably always reported getting either a 19 or a 20. They also always made all saving throws and did very near to maximum damage with all attacks. I, in the meantime, rolled in the clear and stuck with what the dice showed. I found the other players were actually getting mad at me for draining resources like healing because I failed a few saving throws here and there and took more damage on average than they did. The neighbor was nice (too nice, really - he was the DM and wouldn't call his crew out on their cheating ways, but then he had to work with them day in and day out, whereas I was just a neighbor), but the others really sucked all the fun of the game out for me. And then that was it until I started running an AD&D 2E game for my sons once they were old enough.

This is terrible. Im not sure who to feel worse for you or them. You because you had to endure their cheating or them being so petty that they felt the need to cheat at a game where the object isnt to win and there are no winners. We played with a dice scooper too. Always rolled high or rolled low whatever the needed case. Unlike you or your DM we called him out on it as soon as we realized what was going on. He didnt come back shortly thereafter.

 

[Richards]

Yeah, I didn't stay with that group for very long, as I found I wasn't really enjoying the game at all.

Johnathan

 

[Lanefan]

One thing that truly amazes me whenever I see lists of people's character names is that, other than pre-gens from modules, no matter how many plyaers list how many characters there's never any duplication of character names between players.



And now that I've jinxed it...

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

See, I do not like multiclassing. Didn't back then, don't today. A bunch of the characters that didn't make the threshold were ones I dabbled in multiclassing and hated.

The level limits only really came up in one campaign that got high enough for them to matter. But the funny thing is, having this invisible, looming ceiling definitely affected our character decisions back then.

This is interesting. For me it was the opposite.

But then, when I was younger and we were playing AD&D we didn't generally get up to high enough level for the level limits to be a real issue.

In AD&D the availability of multiclassing to demihumans made them extremely appealing. After 3rd ed came out and humans got actual racial benefits and more flexible multiclassing, they became a favored choice for me.

Playing with people that cheat at D&D sucks, and sucks the fun out of the game. I can't imagine the misery of being the only person not cheating at a table. For that DM, being put in a position where you have to game with a friend or coworker and then have to deal with the social consequences of calling them out on their cheating is a daunting prospect. I stopped playing D&D with a friend of mine because of his rampant cheating, but I never confronted him about it. I briefly played in an online game with him recently, and it was glorious seeing him have to take the rolls he actually got from the VTT app.

Playing with my neighbor's B-52 crew (when I was stationed in Minot AFB) taught me an important lesson: bad D&D was definitely worse than no D&D. I was excited to play for the first time in six years or so but that excitement was premature: the other players would roll their attacks and grab up their d20 before anyone had a chance to see it and they invariably always reported getting either a 19 or a 20. They also always made all saving throws and did very near to maximum damage with all attacks. I, in the meantime, rolled in the clear and stuck with what the dice showed.

I'm sure many of us have Arthurs, Tarans, Gandalfs, and whatnot in our early days of gaming. But coming up with a character name can be such a personal decision, and one that is informed by the movies, books, and other media that each of us has absorbed over the years. To one person, Bolo the Just could be a perfectly dwarven name, but to someone else their platonic ideal of a dwarven name is Gimvak Hammeraxe.

One thing that truly amazes me whenever I see lists of people's character names is that, other than pre-gens from modules, no matter how many plyaers list how many characters there's never any duplication of character names between players.



And now that I've jinxed it...