Re: Special NPC Names
 

You must be dreaming ;)






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Re: Special NPC Names
 

Many of our evil wizards, mad scientists, Hannibal Lecters or cloistered vampire lords have a misshapen minion named Vygoslav. He's a bit like Igor except he knows he's ugly and takes it with an awkward optimism.

Re: Special NPC Names
 

I've got a few 'special' names I keep in reserve, for the 'throwaway' characters, although I'll use them for important characters sometime, just to trip the players up:

The renowned scientist, Sara Bellum

The Baron leChristler

A Native American electrician, Many Hands. (Many Hands makes light work.)

The party-animal Dwarf, Bjorn, Bjornson

Billgatti of Bjorg (From an IOU campaign where IKEA ended up buying out Microsoft, I decided to keep the name floating around.)

Sun Yu, Marcus Hella, and The Great Hooda, three mages from antiquity, mostly forgotten except for the spell of identification that bears their names. (You may need to think about this one for a moment.)


And then there's always the rich resource of the Hercules/Xena shows, plenty of fun names there.

Re: Special NPC Names
 

I seem to have a case that's similar, but very much not reoccurring... Sam.

For such a common name, you'd think it would show up more often. But it doesn't. Mainly because after the first appearance, it was universally considered that the name was cursed...

It was a nice dark-fantasy setting, full of dangerous monsters, unpleasant governments, and general all-around nastiness. Sam was a farmer. His family had a sword (And a couple other weapons) and a set of mail that belonged to his father, back when he spent some time as a mercenary. So he "borrowed" them (Without permission) and sought out these great adventuring heroes he'd been hearing (Much inflated) stories about. Much-inflated thanks to a particularly loud-mouthed braggard in the group who liked to embelish his tales.

So this farmer, with no combat experience at all, approaches them, tells them how much he looks up to them and what they do (They're one of the few powerful groups of people who don't just bully around the peasantry! That's almost unheard of!), and wants to join them. They take him on, without even figuring out that he's never done anything like this before.

Sam has a harsh and altogether short life.

He gets beat about on the first few fights. Nothing serious, but not too pleasant, either.

He runs from the minor god Defiler with the rest of the group, after taking a nice face-full of mind-blasting telepathic horror that left him quaking in place, only to have the massive, horrific being look at him (A stunned, terrified man with a sword), then turn to fight a different person (The psionic in the lizardman body with magical artifacts). And when he does become active again, and runs past Defiler to get away, it swings at him and misses! The terror leaves him with a new delusion: "Demons can't hurt me!" After all, there was no way he could have survived if it could, right?

This is later "confirmed" when the group's mage accidentally summons a demon while casting magic (One of the dozen or more times he's done so), who beats about several members but doesn't manage to hit Sam, as well as when they fight a "corrupted" black dragon, who spends so much time chewing (Literally) on one member of the group that it doesn't have the time to lay into Sam, despite him standing in shock just a couple yards away from the giant creature. After fighting the dragon, he was starting to think his protection must extend past just demons. He wasn't just some farmer with a sword, in the company of heroes, he was a hero himself, and a blessed one at that!

Sam died soon after this, naturally. It happened when the group awoke a half-dozen steel golems in a room that sealed itself around them. He heroicly faced off against the steel golems, only to be cut down as fast as one would expect a unskilled man facing several tons of animated steel. And as if that wasn't bad enough, his bleeding body was incinerated when the mage used enough fast-fire to melt not just the golems, but the stone floor they were on (And nearly cooking another party member in the process).

The group all took this as a warning. Don't play a Sam.

Re: Special NPC Names
 

Something similar, is a small barony located in a corner of my campaign maps, a small barony called Greymatter.

It exists for the sole purpose (mostly, never had an adventure get near it yet) of allowing me to have a PC officially dubbed Baron of Greymatter.

(Semi off topic since it is a PC title, but it fits in with the theme of 'special' names.)

Re: Special NPC Names
 

I tried to make an elf cook named Falafiel once, but my GM wouldn't allow it. I never get to do anything fun... :(

A friend has made a troll pornstar (for a Shadowrun campaign) named Pierce Pole

Re: Special NPC Names
 

A friend of mine named a character Long Wang and giggled like mad until I pointed out that it, in fact, meant Dragon King. Then it wasn't funny anymore, but cool, and he was sad. Mission accomplished ^_^

Re: Special NPC Names
 

Why would that reduce its amusement?, if anything it should make it funnier.

He was playing the Dragon King, known to all as Long Wang....

I usually know what most of the names I'm using mean and the funniest ones are when we can get multiple meanings out of them, with the funniest and most fun ones being the raunchy double entendres.

Re: Special NPC Names
 

exactly...

I named it King, as in "When I've got my shorts off...I'm draggin' King"


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Re: Special NPC Names
 

From a group that I joined only briefly...

any time a generic friendly NPC is needed (someone to guard a prisoner while the PCs go out investigating, etc.) the man for the job is Reg Hurt.