Dungeon Fantasy party compositions

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kromm

[*]Rufus Gordianus Falco, who singlehandedly inspired the justiciar added to DF in Pyramid #3/10. Also human.
[...][*]Helena Justina Claudia, human, the wife of Rufus and something like a DF 15 archer with the learned lens.

It doesn't bother you or your players when names of fictional characters are used as-is for PCs and their Dependants?

I find it jarring, personally.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Icelander

It doesn't bother you or your players when names of fictional characters are used as-is for PCs and their Dependants?

I find it jarring, personally.

Those bother you, but not Recnam Orcen and Vinz Clortho?

Anyway, having met some of Sean's players (during that campaign, actually), a little silliness seems to be expected in the group.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

Those bother you, but not Recnam Orcen and Vinz Clortho?

Anyway, having met some of Sean's players (during that campaign, actually), a little silliness seems to be expected in the group.

I know Vinz Clortho is from Ghostbusters, but I didn't recognise Recnam Orcen. Maybe the serial number is filed off better there?

In any event, any name that I can recognise from fiction bothers me if there is no plausible reason for it to be duplicated in the case of the character. One character sharing a name with another fictional character can be a coincidence, but once you put him in a relationship with a character that also shares a name with the fictional paramour of his fictional namesake, it more than stretches the bounds of coincidence. To me, that seems like something that would make it impossible to take the character seriously and thus, something designed to reduce the enjoyment I could derive from gaming.

[cbower]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I know Vinz Clortho is from Ghostbusters, but I didn't recognise Recnam Orcen. Maybe the serial number is filed off better there?

Spell it backwards. Took me a second to get it too.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Icelander

It doesn't bother you or your players when names of fictional characters are used as-is for PCs and their Dependants?

1. I don't care what my players name their PCs. It's none of my business. Choosing a PC's name is the highest player privilege. I refuse to be heavy-handed in that regard.

2. More generally, I don't find names jarring. After five years coordinating a huge first-year survey course at a university, where I had students whose real, legal names were swear words in English and/or whose parents must have been hippies (Starflower?), I'm immunized.

3. Those specific names you singled out mean nothing to me . . . If they're from fiction, it's fiction unfamiliar to me, and I don't do term searches on PCs' names.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by cbower

Spell it backwards. Took me a second to get it too.

Eh, it isn't beyond the realms of possibility that characters would adopt silly names like their profession backwards, as long as that name for their profession exists in their world. It's being named for fiction that doesn't exist in the setting or other such examples of meta-game artifacts that I mind, because that makes it harder to accept the game world as a place of its own.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Icelander

It's being named for fiction that doesn't exist in the setting or other such examples of meta-game artifacts that I mind, because that makes it harder to accept the game world as a place of its own.

I use collaborative design exclusively, so if a player decides that a name exists and makes sense in the setting, then it is so. A name is just a label, and in infinite worlds, it isn't especially unlikely that an infinity of completely unrelated people could by dint of large numbers share a name. I should add that none of the names I listed provoked even a snicker in actual play . . . people were aware of what I just said and simply took unusual names in stride. The only forbidden name in my group is "Boba Fett," owing to a certain (non-Star Wars, gaming-related) video that I shouldn't link here – and note that it's forbidden by consensus, not by GM fiat.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I use collaborative design exclusively, so if a player decides that a name exists and makes sense in the setting, then it is so.

Everyone has their own style, of course. Personally, I couldn't abide playing in a setting where entire cultures spring into existence, regardless of surrounding geography, economic conditions and neighbouring cultures, by a throw-away decision to pilfer a fictional name for a character. It seems to have a very high risk of becoming a silly hodge-podge, with everything but the kitchen sink thrown in and a coherent history impossible to come up with.

Originally Posted by Kromm

A name is just a label, and in infinite worlds, it isn't especially unlikely that an infinity of completely unrelated people could by dint of large numbers share a name.

Well, no, not as such.* However, names don't exist in a vacuum. If a given name exists, it brings with it a culture and language. Which is not a problem in a world that is not yet defined and relies on players to fill out the gaps, but is jarring and difficult when the world is defined, complete with cultural naming patterns that are quite different from what the player proposes.

*Though cases when not only the PC, but also his Allies or Dependants are taken straight from the same fictional source increase the unlikelihood considerably.

Originally Posted by Kromm

I should add that none of the names I listed provoked even a snicker in actual play . . . people were aware of what I just said and simply took unusual names in stride. The only forbidden name in my group is "Boba Fett," owing to a certain (non-Star Wars, gaming-related) video that I shouldn't link here – and note that it's forbidden by consensus, not by GM fiat.

My experience has been that 'unusual'* names not only occasion comment by other players, they tend to ruin my motivation for GMing. I don't want to spend time detailing a world on which parties composed of Peter Pan the barbarian, Tinkerbell the knight or Dong McWeiner and his lovable crew of misfits boldly seek adventure.

Furthermore, I find that a PC name that is self-consciously silly or flat-out breaks the fourth wall tends to be a huge warning sign that the player in question is not prepared to roleplay anything beyond an impulsive murder hobo in a vaguely defined world. After all, if he doesn't take his PC seriously, why should he take the setting seriously?

*Well, a more accurate term would be 'deliberately silly'.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I couldn't abide playing in a setting where entire cultures spring into existence, regardless of surrounding geography, economic conditions and neighbouring cultures, by a throw-away decision to pilfer a fictional name for a character.

Sorry, but I don't see it – why must a name imply any of that? The modern world has no corner on the market of throwaway names with no links to the surrounding culture; you can find those in every culture ever, right down to a Chinese guy two millennia ago whose phonetic name would sound out as "John Doe" for no reason better than somebody liking how the written symbols looked. I work on the premise that PCs are abberations to begin with – people with remarkable abilities and destinies, making far more of a difference than everyone around them. When the PCs are all 150- or 250- or 400-point powerhouses in a world of 25- and 50-point folks, having big adventures while everybody else is working at a generic job . . . well, weird names almost make more sense to me.

Which isn't to say that I don't let players introduce cultures and such, because I do! However, they are required to do so within a framework – it isn't random. I just prefer to design the frame and let the players solve the setting Sudoku, so to speak.

But heroes' names aren't constrained because I have too much real-world experience that suggests to me that far more people are named weirdly, randomly, and culturally atypically than you might at first think.

Originally Posted by Icelander

However, names don't exist in a vacuum. If a given name exists, it brings with it a culture and language.

This is not actually the case. You can find examples of completely made-up names with bizarre phonetics all over the place. My father, a historian and genealogist, likes to remind people of this, because the idea that all names have meaning and come from somewhere is a gross oversimplification. Plenty of people have just decided that some made-up phonetics that rhyme well are worth using over and over for whacky names. The idea that everybody is called something like Descriptive Name, Son of Profession Name, of Clan Region Name, is a valid zeroeth-order premise. However, the perturbations are quite large, and insisting on consistent naming from everyone in a region is actually more belief-shattering than allowing that a guy in the Congo might by fluke be called Hamish.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Furthermore, I find that a PC name that is self-consciously silly or flat-out breaks the fourth wall tends to be a huge warning sign that the player in question is not prepared to roleplay anything beyond an impulsive murder hobo in a vaguely defined world. After all, if he doesn't take his PC seriously, why should he take the setting seriously?

Again, I think this is an over-strong assumption. Why is a quirky name a sign of a poorly committed, bad roleplayer? Three of the best roleplayers I've ever met, really immersive types with a huge investment in the world, used goofy media-inspired names because they admired the characters in question, even though their PCs were nothing like those characters and not from worlds where those characters would fit. Given that I've met people whose parents named them after heroes from different cultures that existed 700 years ago on faraway continents, just because they liked the story, I have no problem with players doing basically the same thing.

This might be cultural in a different sense . . . It's possible that naming in Iceland is fairly consistent and traditional, I cannot say. I just know that in Canada, I can walk down the street and meet people whose legal names are, well, not traditional anywhere.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Kromm

This might be cultural in a different sense . . . It's possible that naming in Iceland is fairly consistent and traditional, I cannot say.

Actually, from what I know, that's the case. Legally regulated, even.