Whining & Complaining

[Summer-Knight925]

character in my rifts game

7ft tall wolfman who can throw a car

problem?

none....

I had more problems with D&D characters, both in numbers and in players, than I have had with rifts

but this thread is for complaining

so really all I got is that one player who gets WAY into character and takes away from actually playing...that and trying to explain why you cannot cast magic fang (which you can do) to make a monk's attacks magic but you cannot then go the step above and cast fireball to add the flaming abilitiy

the argument went something like
"its against the rules"-me
'YOU'RE AGAINST THE RULES!'-him

 

[Agamon]

The thing is though, at least for me, I can't understand why you think they're silly names. Oh, and I spend far more time GMing then playing.

Well, not the puns. They're exceptionally silly.

What I don't get is why anyone cares. Ryan can allow names that aren't silly in his opinion in his game, and everyone else can do the same.

This thread got way off topic for way too many pages (I wish I had some stories to share, but I guess I'm lucky with my players).

 

[Wik]

Oh man. It cracks me up that I tell a story to commiserrate with Oryan... and then get the exact same response he did. Wow.

Yes, I didn't like the name change because my players were doing it out of metagamey puns and fun. For what it's worth, I'd have no problem with them naming it a funny name - so long as the funny was "in game". But this was a metagame pun that the PCs themselves were not aware of - they had no idea what a Milennium Falcon was. In fact, I seem to recall "the Hummingbird" came about because I wouldn't allow them to name the ship the Milennium Falcon, and this was their sneaky workaround.

And while you might see ships with jokey names in the 'Verse, you'd never see one with a fairly obvious reference to a sci-fi movie - winks like that to the audience inevitably take people out of the story, which is not what Whedon is about.

And that's what happened to me. Everytime I mentioned "The Hummingbird", I was aware of the jokey aspect of the name. Just like a GM might be brought out of the flavour of his campaign when talking about Mittens the Tiger, or Marshmallow, or whatever.

For what it's worth, our game has had a fair number of jokey names - Theo the Thief, Clara the Cleric. A halfling named Duck. And a couple more I can't remember. Jokey names for one-off NPCs are fine. But for something that's going to be a major part of the campaign, that will be mentioned again and again (such as home bases, spaceships, and animal companions), it's probably a bad idea.

 

[Wik]

And to play Devil's advocate.

Think of some of the funny names out there in our real world. I mean, "The Rocky Mountains"? Seriously? If they had never existed in the real world, and I were to name a place like that in my game, players would raise their eyebrows and say "really, Dave? Couldn't bother to be a bit more creative?"

Newfoundland? Greenland? Iceland? The Red Sea? If I had put any of those names in my game, people would groan.

And then there's Titicaca, Timbuktu, Walla Walla, Buffalo, etc.

Let's not forget stupid names. How, in this day and age, can a person honestly have the last name "Weiner"?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A halfling named Duck.

Was he perhaps inspired by these guys:

The Ducky Boys gang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[haakon1]

Darth Vader. I've heard non-Star Wars-ophiles say they thought his name was Dark Vader and Death Vader. Both people asked, after I told them his correct name, "What does 'darth' mean?" (Apparently "vader" didn't strike them as needing a meaning.)

That's because everyone knows Vader, WA, is a small town on I-5 between Tacoma and Portland.

Vader, Washington - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Wik]

Was he perhaps inspired by these guys:

The Ducky Boys gang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ha ha. Nope.

In my campaign, all halfling names were taken from animals, plants, birds, and the like. So we have a halfling PC named Seahorse, and a bunch of NPCs with names like Piper, Sparrow, Rose, Lily... and Duck.

The idea being that halflings, as major travellers, would translate their name into whatever language they were speaking - humans might call them Rose, elves might say "Rualla" (or however you say "Rose" in elven, I'm making crap up here), and so on and so forth. It was a little detail I added as a whim.

I figured it'd be fun to have halfling names that sounded awful in English, but "sound really pretty in [insert language here]". So there were halflings named Duck, Goat, Whale, and - my personal favourite - Krill.

 

[CuRoi]

And while you might see ships with jokey names in the 'Verse, you'd never see one with a fairly obvious reference to a sci-fi movie - winks like that to the audience inevitably take people out of the story, which is not what Whedon is about.

Again, I don't think most people were judging or attacking you. I really did just want to point out I truly liked the name and that for private boats, I imagine names span the gamut of serious to absurd. At any rate, name tolerance is obviosuly all over the spectrum in an RPG, so no one is really "wrong".

To be devil's advocate here

Now, on TV a Millenium Falcon reference during another sci-fi program would have been distracting (and possibly spur some sort of lawsuit or something ridiculous.) However, the setting does make plenty of reference to "Earth that Was" with plenty of cultural ties to our own present day world.

Naming a ship after what has so far been a pretty enduring piece of present day "mythology" may not be that odd. Probably as odd as say naming a boat with some odd historical reference today - I might name a ship Bran today and someone will chatise me for forgetting "Raisin". However Bran was a mariner from Irish legends who had a number of fantastic adventures at sea and it's an entirely appropriate name. Those ancient tales have survived centuries. I don't at all find it hard to believe Star Wars, which has pretty thoroughly entered global culture over several generations of people would not survive in some form.

 

[CuRoi]

And to play Devil's advocate.

And then there's Titicaca, Timbuktu, Walla Walla, Buffalo, etc.

Let's not forget stupid names. How, in this day and age, can a person honestly have the last name "Weiner"?

I had a DM name a land in his realm "Titipu". Honestly, I have no clue what he was thinking and it may have even been a legit word in some sort of language. But the ribbing from the players was -relentless-.

The question should be how can anyone in this day in age have the last name of weiner and that same person have a proclivity for taking pictures of said member. Either the odds are astronomically astounding or there is some family history which justifies the whole thing.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

A sword named Clothes Drying Rod.

Hate to burst your bubble, but some badass from 400 years ago already had the nerve to do that:

"Kojiro's favored weapon during combat was a straight-edged nodachi with a blade-length of over 90 cm. (3 ft) long. As a comparison, the average blade-length of the regular katana are usually 70 cm (2 feet, 3 inches) but rarely longer. It was called the "Monohoshi Zao" (Clothes/Laundry-Drying Pole, often translated into English as "The Drying Pole"). Despite the sword's length and weight, Kojirō's strokes with the weapon were unusually quick and precise."

Named that for its freakish length, basically.