Yeah, I try to discourage names that have too much baggage because people are blocked from seeing your character by the wall of associations your name has created.

I can's resist a little silliness in my character's name but it's usually buried in a longer name so I get a little chuckle out of introducing myself and then get on with the game. I played a bard named Friggan Dezibel Ecksess but everyone just called her Dezi.

My naming conventions are all over the map. My first Living Greyhawk character I named with the help of that character creation CD that came with the 3.0 PHB, he became Kerrick of Nyrond. His entire backstory then came out of how he got from Nyrond to Keoland. Then there was a Bakluni called Eccan al-Nahr'eysh, this being rough Arabic for 'Water of Life'. My first Perrenland character I named under time pressure. Perrenland uses Dutch for a lot of place names and all, so I called him Van der Valk after a 70s detective show set in Amsterdam.

After that my gaming group suggested thatwe all create wood elven characters and call them the Fiercecheese clan, like Brie Fiercecheese and Gouda Fiercecheese. I made a ranger called V. B. Fiercecheese (the V. B. stands for Venezuelan Beaver). Then came a dwarven monk called Duncan Dönitz, and a halfling marshal called Napoleon, Lord of the Undergrowth. I also had plans for a dual bastard sword-wielding fighter called Julien Fryze (his bastard swords would be called Sexy and Magnificent, respectively), and a half-orc monk named Mother Farquhar.

I'm back on more serious names now, and have a wizard called Pericles Architeuthis and a dwarven barbarian called Canaan Granitehand.

Ya know, that's like the third paladin of the Raven Queen I've come across in actual play stories. Interesting how that's gotten to be such a popular choice.

it was the natural choice to fit into our adventure as we've already encountered some followers of Orcus.

My favorite naming plan dates from about 6 years ago: psychopharmaceuticals. Zoloft was the evil sorceror, Celexa was the female elf ranger, Ritalin was the assassin-flavor rogue. The cleric was Cialis, even though that's not directly a psych med.

My favorite naming plan dates from about 6 years ago: psychopharmaceuticals. Zoloft was the evil sorceror, Celexa was the female elf ranger, Ritalin was the assassin-flavor rogue. The cleric was Cialis, even though that's not directly a psych med.

It could be if you switch it with a placebo. "I don't-- I don't know why this isn't working." "Psych!"

That's funny. I played 1st Edition with a rogue named Dexedrine.

New games arrived yesterday:

- San Juan, the card game version of Puerto Rico. PR is a brilliant game, but we often don't play it because it has a really fiddly setup. So maybe the card game will get more play.

- Power Grid. I'm unsure about this one.

- Ticket to Ride. The DH is hoping that Mallory will be ready to play board games, oh, next week I think.

- Amun-Re. Purchased completely because of the brilliant play report billytea linked to here. Plus, plastic pyramids!

Power Grid. I'm unsure about this one.

A friend of mine got Power Grid a few weeks ago and they like it.