Can bad character names kill the campaign.

[Henry]

My advice is to not let it bother you so much. If a player won't be obliging enough to come up with a serious name, then FORCE one on them. ("Brian" or "Bill" or "Dougie" are fine enough - just have NPC's that know them refer to them as Brian, or William, or Dougal/Douglas. I'm talking about the "Deathmonkeys" and the "Pimp-Daddy Bills" of the gaming world.)

"Deathmonkey the Dwarf" becomes "Turrsrengill Alaquinnor of Clan Stonegrinder." With a given name like that, NO WONDER he left home and changed his name! Have all the NPC's look strangely at "Pimp-Daddy Bill" when they ask his name, and have NPC's show up occasionally that know him from "back home" and who ain't down wit' dis Pimp-Daddy bizzness.

"Pimp-Daddy? Who do you think - wait a minute! Algernon? Little Algernon Thristlequisp, IS THAT YOU??? My, how you've changed, I almost didn't recognize you! Have you seen your sister lately?"

If a player isn't accomodating with a semi-reasonable name, don't let it derail you, MAKE IT YOUR OWN!

My players know one thing - I want at least a paragraph of background - I'm not a "background nazi" who requires 4 pages of backstory for a 1st level character but I require at least a plot thread or two. If a player refuses to give me even this, that's fine too - but their background is MINE. If they don't want embarrasing relatives, family secrets, embarrasing middle names, and former kissing cousins in their backgrounds, they need to give me something else to occupy my wicked little mind.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

depends on the name I suppose, if someone tried some leet speak name, that would be bad. Or a name of an object in todays world that couldn't exist there, like my name is chip computer.

But Bob, frank, Great zambini etc don't bothe rme at all. And in fact there lack bothers me a heck of a lot more. People talk of mersion, and well quite frankly aworld withotu bizare names is so freakin absurd and unrealistic that it disrupts my sense of imersion.

Names in real life I know of

3 not three but 3.

Bird with broken wing shall fly again

Richard Head

Garcia Garcia Garcia

and if I thought about it I could go on.

But wait I supposed to beleive it's only our world that has people with wierd/screwed up names, fantasy worlds would never do that.

 

[DinoeL]

I don't know. Once, all of out characters had names cobbled together out of russian history, and that campign didn't have any problems.

We had Fydorivich, Aleksandr Kerensky, Antonin Rasputin, Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Ulyanov and Vladimir Lenin with no problems.

I hope you know what the last two were the same guy...
And not all the other names are spelled correctly, Fydorivich (Fedorovich) is not even a name it is a father's name (don't know how it is called in english) I am Leonid Viktorovich Onokhov, means my name is Leonid and Onokhov is my family name, and my father is Victor so I'm Victorovich. But it is very rare then someone is adressed buy his father's name.
It really angers me then in extremely expensive movie I hear very strange names pretending to be russian and see a random Cyrillic letters (like in Bourne Identity movie). Like there are no russians in US whom you can ask.

In my campaign I had a elven mage called Sinus who was riding a horse named Square, after death of Sinus I wasnt very a surprised dwarven cleric Tangens appeared , but since it was not wery serious campaign it was ok.

 

[Henry]

Shard just reminded me that South Carolina has a government official named Richard Puffer. But he goes by the name of Dick.

 

[diaglo]

i had a student visit my lab for a summer project named:

Nylon Legg.

she was stacked so who cared what she called herself.

 

[Angcuru]

Hey Kraedin,

A: DinoeL is quite right about the names

&

B: Be proud! Your post prompted the emergence (however temporary) of a lurker!

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Bad character names (as in really poor done to be dumb funny or something similar) won't kill a campaign.

They might though be foreshadowing to a problem player. Given a few sessions the humor in the name will wear off. Does the name get changed or does the player kill him in some annoying way that disrupts everything?

Also if the player cannot put enough effort forward to even come up with a name what is he or she going to put effort into.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Bad character names (as in really poor done to be dumb funny or something similar) won't kill a campaign.

They might though be foreshadowing to a problem player. Given a few sessions the humor in the name will wear off. Does the name get changed or does the player kill him in some annoying way that disrupts everything?

Also if the player cannot put enough effort forward to even come up with a name what is he or she going to put effort into.

I agree with most of this but the effort part. I suck at coming up with names, I can write up a great backgound and then sit there for hours and have nothing for a name. I doubt i'm unique in that I suck at names.

Still though when someone has a really crap name the quesiton comes up why? Is it supposed to be disruptive, are they not taking the game serious enough, just trying to be funny, or does it actually fit the character?

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, but coming up with names is easy even for people who suck at it. There are tons of name lists online, and I have probably half a dozen freeware names generators on my hard drive.

In my opinion, there's no excuse for not coming up with an appropriate name. And in some campaigns, the silly name is appropriate!

 

[Azul]

I really do not like it when someone in the group has a really poor name that completely clashes with everyone else in the party. Like for example you have:

Aiden Ambergrove
Lady Lidia of Waterdeep
Korgoth Ironhammer

and....

Bill

Its just does not work for me.

note - those names arent very good but what the hell its REALLY early.

Actually, we have a Bill in our campaign... that's his full name. He's a juvenile ogre (as per Savage Species) with Int 6 and Cha 6... somehow the simple, unremarkable and monosyllablic nature of the name fits the character (who is generally sweet natured, if dumb as a post). The player adopts his best "lovable lunkhead" expression and greets strangers with "Hi! I'm Bill!" as if this answers all the mysteries of the universe... and to him, maybe it does.

The rest of the party has more "typical" fantasy names.