What's your screenname mean?

[howandwhy99]

Um, have a seat, my friend. We need to have a chat.

What? It takes a bit more breath to say 99. More than say "million", "billion", or "zillion". Plus it is easier not having to accurately count the zeros. Two nines is easy.

Howandwhy99 is actually a strange name for me though. Most of my character names have some riddle involved in them for the other players to figure out.

 

[Tom Cashel]

Thomas Cashel Fitzmaurice O'Boyle O'Flynn is a minor character in James Joyce's Ulysses, but it was way too long for the User Name field.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

(I love telling this story, it contains so many elements of geekdom that it oughtta qualify for some kind of prize.)

When the D&D movie was announced I was talking about it with some friends on the internet. A joke was launched in the discussion about possible gag credits for the film. I wondered aloud if a tarrasque wrangler would be on hand to make sure they were treated humanely.

 

[RangerWickett]

In 11th grade, about a week before my then-girlfriend would break up with me, she gave me a plush Ewok, the Ewok Wicket from Return of the Jedi. That was in late 1998. The little Ewok was a bit of a frustration for me because it was a really nice gift, and then we broke up soon thereafter.

In late 1999, she and I got back together, and I discovered EN World. Times were good. I made a new screen name (my old one was from Mechwarrior 3 online gaming - Vergil17), and I decided to include Wicket. I misspelled him, though, and added an extra T. And because it was a D&D messageboard, and I didn't know how much people would end up arguing over rangers, I made my screen name a Ranger Ewok because that seemed the most appropriate class for him. Plus he was nice and heroic that way (2nd edition rangers were goody goody, remember?).

Thus, Ranger Wickett. The screen name has lasted me 5 years now.

 

[Gez]

Sometimes, during one of the alt-crazes that ravaged the (EN) world, I was tempted to register as WickedRanger...

 

[Swiftbrook]

About ten years ago I was trying to think of a good name for my character. It of course had to fit my concept: Greyhawk, Gnarley Ranger, Elven, and an Archer. Just a single name, "Swiftbrook" fit my concept very well. To me the name creates a vision of a walk in the woods--back to nature. I've used it as my screen name since I've been on the Internet.

It's cool to see that Reaper Games has made "Elladan Swiftbrook Elven Ranger" miniature here. It's a two sword style ranger, not an archer. Though, to be honest, through 2E my ranger wielded two swords, a bastard sword in one hand and a sun blade in the other. Could I dish out the damage!

-Swiftbrook

 

[drakhe]

There be dragons & tigers here...

My first nick was Tiger Alpha (or T-alpha). I was very much more a computer geek at that time and not yet involved in gaming (except computer games).

One thing I dreamed of was being member of a tiger team, a team of experts supposedly sent in (covertly) to test an installations security (probably military in origin). And I was off course the leader of such a team (ehrm ehrm) hence Tiger Alpha.

But then I got sucked into real gaming (first card games, then pnp RPG's, then mini's and finally board games), so I started looking for a new nick. As my main interest has since focused on RPG's and one of the archetypes in fantasy (my main style of RPG) I kinda fancied dragon as nick, but off course so do thousands of other gamers ( ;-) ). Because I didn’t want to be dragon13452, I figured I could stick with dragon if I could find a twist. At the time I was playing in some fantasy campaigns and one thing struck me: we had a lot of Norse influences going on in different games. So I played with that around and norsified dragon ending up with drakhe...

In a pinch (and for these specific purposes) and my real name being Guido:
My RPG players know me as GuiDMo
The crowd at my FLGS (The Celtic Cross) knows me as GuidOrc

 

[Uzumaki]

I picked Literary reference, since my name is derived from the name of a Japanese horror manga. It's about a town taken over my spirals, as Uzumaki means spiral (or really anything in a spiral shape). That was years ago, and now, since the ever increasing popularity of Naruto, another manga who's main character is named Uzumaki Naruto, somebody else always has my SN.

 

[pogre]

pogre was my nickname when I played college football - something about having the last name pogue and resembling, well - an ogre

 

[Plane Sailing]

I've always been interested in the derivations of popular sayings, and I was intrigued to find out where the expression "plain sailing" (i.e. a simple task) comes from. Basically it was a corruption of "plane sailing", a reference to how easy it was to plot your seafaring navigation once there was a method that enabled you to plot your course as if it was on a flat plane rather than the surface of a sphere.

When registering for ENworld I liked the idea of "basically simple" riffing off it's original derivation to become a sailor of the planes (multiple planes of reality has always been one of my favourite fantasy tropes).

Simple, eh?