"It's a joke name, sir."

[Mark CMG]

Just two days ago I told the Swashbuckler in my upcoming game that the character was fine, but the name Innigo Montoya had to go.

I think sometimes people take on names and character personas without quite realizing that even they will grow quickly tired of keeping up the schtick.

 

[Cedric]

I think sometimes people take on names and character personas without quite realizing that even they will grow quickly tired of keeping up the schtick.

If I'm running a humorous game, I actually don't mind at all. But since I planned a semi-serious game, I'm shooting down silly names and concepts.

 

[^Graff]

The only time that I've ever had a DM complain about a name was in a Swashbuckling Adventures campaign. Since my character was from Avalon, I decided to mix and match the names of two famous English people, Oliver Twist and Lord Cromwell. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that Lord Cromwell was Lord Oliver Cromwell, and my DM, who has a degree in Military History, forbade it. I ended up settling for John Eric: Adventurer, and he didn't get the pun (probably because he'd never read Al Bruno III's stories).

 

[llamatron2000]

....This is hilarious. Yesterday, a friend of mine created a monk for a friend's game, freaking named his monk Barack Obama.

 

[Nerfwright]

I once named a dwarf fighter Norman Conquest.

Waaay back in 1st ed, the brother of a regular player joined us for a single evening, and named his character 'Bob the Elf'. He was quite snooty about his elf-ness and insisted he be referred to as 'Bob the Elf' whenever spoken of in the third person. It was a howl, and he was a great player, but I don't think he ever gamed again.

 

[Brimshack]

I've never had any problems with a joke name. Produced my fair share of them myself. When the joke gets old, people just igore it after awhile and functions just like any other name. Eventually, the established players often forget the joke of a name, and we remember when a new player shows up and starts laughing at one.

But then again, I don't know that I have ever made a conscious choice to run a SERIOUS campaign, so to speak. Oh, the games have their serious moments, but they also have quite a few moments of levity. I can't imagine trying to minimize the humorous content. If a joke gets old we just stop laughing and move one.

 

[Andor]

I find it interesting that half this thread is people relating the horrid names that have been given to real children (a cousin of mine knew a Richard Head, frex.) And yet there is a large complement of people who find bad names ruin their in game verisimilitude.

How is it that you can believe in a dark high priestess who will torment sacrifiices, consort with demons, release undead to plauge the living, and cast great rituals to end the world, but naming their kid Ima Victem is going too far?

 

[mattcolville]

I ran a game at work for a bunch of cow orkers, many of whom had never played D&D before.

One of them named his character Rocky Rhode. When he told me that I said "Ok, I'm just going to call you smegma."

After a few of these, and the rest of the group laughing, he changed his name.

 

[Cedric]

I ran a game at work for a bunch of cow orkers

Freudian typo? Or do you really just not think much of your coworkers? Hehe..

 

[Rika]

I once met a woman named Barbara Doll. Poor woman was in her 40s at the time.

Our worst in-game name was just weird. A fairly new player to our group once named his druid "Frog" his first spoken words to any of the characters were croaks.