BBEGs with really bad sounding nicknames from the PCs...

[Southern Oracle]

In the Warhammer d20 campaign in which I play, there's a dwarven king named Agathor. Unfortunately, my wife and I had watched "The Birdcage" the day before, and when the DM said "Agathor," my wife heard "Agador" and burst out laughing. Now, we all refer to the dwarf as Agador, much to the DM's annoyance.

In a different campaign, the arcane disciple in the party calls the paladin Iron-Britches on a regular basis. It has nothing to do with the paladin's name, but it annoys him greatly.

 

[LordVyreth]

Wow, have I been lucky. I've gotten away with calling one of the game's biggest BBEG's Phellis Mune for over three years of the campaign, and I haven't even heard the obvious names on that one!

 

[Rel]

Thanks! One of my old NPCs was known as "The Owl" but other than that, I have always given them more "believable" names (for my campaign style, anyway). This really could be a good way to use simple nicknames if properly established in the context of your overall story.

I'm actually doing this now in my Sharn campaign. Not for everybody but the action right now is centered in a bad part of town and I figure that nicknames are common and annonymity is prized. So far the PC's have met Mug (proprietor of The Dusty Mug tavern), Bonebuckle (Bugbear who wore a scrimshaw beltbuckle carved into the shape of a shark's mouth), Stump (Goblin drug dealer who was missing part of one arm) and Copper (a Halfling fence).

Another fantasy setting that made use of this convention is Lawrence Watt-Evans' Dragon Weather trilogy. Most of the characters characters in those books use pseudonyms of some sort.

 

[Taloras]

Cant say I recall any bad guys getting nicknames, but one of my PCs got a nickname due to his name.....Ivellios (which i picked from the FR sun elf names)....became Evil Eyes. both IC and OOC.

Then in our epic game, my warforged scout rogue with lots of Jump and Climb became The Iron Ape due to him jumping from tree to tree (he had a +50 to jump and climb each) to escape some swarm spell....of course, he died when the vampire PC slammed him and got 2 crits out of 3 attacks....this was while he was jumping....a vampire coming out of gaseous form directly on top of him.

 

[SuperFlyTNT]

Nefarious Darius... :sigh:

 

[kenobi65]

At GenCon last year, we were playing an RPGA Living Death module (Living Death is set in 1890s "Gothic Earth", and one frequently encounters fictional versions of actual historical figures).

In this module, we were hearing about the actions of a long-deceased Spanish man (leader of the first real attempt to unearth the ruins of Pompeii) named Alcubierre. It took me about 30 seconds to re-christen him "El Kabong."

(For those of you who didn't watch the Hanna-Barbara cartoon "Quick Draw McGraw" when you were kids, "El Kabong" was Quick Draw's alter ego -- think Zorro, only wielding a guitar instead of a sword, with which he'd hit the bad guys over the head.)

 

[Shemeska]

Dude, they call you "Shemmie." What makes you think they won't give similar treatment to your Creations of Penultimate Evil?

But yes, I still get called Shemmy. *chuckle* Mocking BBEGs gets paid back in spades most often, though in a campaign as dark as mine has been, it's honestly a coping mechanism on the part of both players and PCs to lighten the repressive gloom of the plot at times.

I've made them cry, and they hate some of my antagonists out of character, so I think that when all is said and done it's quite allright to let them give nicknames to some of those objects of loathing.

This past Saturday was the final session of our sprawling little Planescape game, and between who lived and who died, I think both DM and players can claim some level of victory as it was. Multiverse saved, but plenty of open ended questions to explore in a sequal campaign, and one major trick I managed to keep unrevealed till the game was over (that made several players squeel in surprise).

 

[Swedish Chef]

My group always comes up with deregatory names for the BBEG. Just their way of "reducing" his evilness to something more manageable.

Until the last campaign when they met Kor. He very quickly became known as "That dirty son of a b*tch!"

It never bothered me that they belittled the previous ones, but it sure felt good that they hated this one so much that they *couldn't* belittle him, even though they really wanted to.

 

[Crothian]

The Lady
Croaker
Raven ...

simple nicknames. glen cook doesn't give them a name or background until the reader needs to know more.

well, until he thinks the readers needs to know more...as a reader I wanted to know more well before he wanted me to know more.....

 

[The_Warlock]

Hmmm, well....

Some friends of mine in a White Wolf WOD run were up against a soul-sold vampire named Valkilnius - they dubbed him Val-kill-us-all. Not my baddy, not my problem...

In my longstanding FR run, I ran the old Dungeon adventure, The Pipes of Doom, wherein the intrepid adventurers faced off against the lich Pomerian - whom the party almost instantly started to call Pomeranian...He was not pleased...he lost the day (twice), but several power word kills got his displeasure across before then.

Just last night, the party decided to engage a green dragon ally of a hobgoblin army that had captured a party members ancestral keep. Her name being Krazenthuril - the party stopped just short of renaming her Chrysanthemum.

Barring those, the company of adventurers has actually been pretty good about not pissing off people who's scale of power they don't know - well, at least not pissing them off via nicknames.