Ok we have a guy in our group who is just terrible at coming up with aliases or NPC names on the spot, which is ammusing whenever he is GM'ing (for NPC names) or gets put in a situation in a game where he tries to lie about his name. Some examples, his 7'8" Wakiyambi (sp?) Elf Variant mage is trying to fool the Star when he gets stopped, he claims he doesn't have his ID with him so they ask his name, he answers Jose, the Cop then asks ok Jose what's your last name <long pause> um Franklin. Worse are his NPC's who he seems to subconciously always name after celebrities, products, or cartoon characters (example one of my characters once had a fixer named Janet Jackson because of this)

Anybody else have something like this in their group?

Try this

That's awesome. I'll be sure to pass this on to him, though it's fun to put him on the spot for aliases from time to time just to see what comes out.

Guilty here:

One our players has contacts like a guerilla resistance leader named Carlos Santana...and his attorney is none other than Kirsten Dunst.

I have to admit I got on a binge where names like Seymour Butz, Mike Hunt and Amanda Hugginkis got used.

One of our guys has a bad habit of ripping off names from video games he likes for his characters (admittedly he doesn't do this anymore, unless it's something obscure that's out of my loop). This is a huge pet-peeve of mine. Sure, you can model your character after somebody, but sheesus, come up with an original name.

It is widely understood that characters with rip-off names will have a very rough time in my game...usually meaning they'll die pretty quickly. Dick? Yes. Hypocritical? Yes. (I've hit brain farts and named NPCs after famous people) Do I care? No.

edit: If it's part of the character, like "No, I'm not that Maria Mercuriel!", that's a dfferent story.

I make it known immediately with any new players that if they give their characters a name with no thought/personality to it, they will be killed out of hand. I expect the same of the NPC's that I create so that it's no problem. That being said, one of my favorite runners I've seen as a PC was named Johnny Hardcore, a big, weighlifting type street sam. Guy lived up to the name (leaped off the back of a speeding truck in a high speed pursuit onto the hood of the Lone Star car in pursuit. Sure he almost died, but so what).

There was one guy named Bob too, but that was because his acutal name was too complicated for anyone else to say, so the rest of the group just called him Bob.

Best aliases ever used by my players: Jonathan Tobias, and Finneus McGilicutty.

One player had a Halloweener Burned Out Mage named Lemon Head. Not a bad name but very colorful. Always made a point to carry around those little lemon lollypops from the bank. Once cast Hellblast on a guy in a bar who asked him for a light.

He also had a dwarf physad named Kneebasher. Guess what his special martial arts maneuver was?

Oh and had a guy name an Spanish Ork Gangbanger Brian Piccolo. Yeah... Oh yeah that was his street name.

Although I do like to rip names for my characters' Fake SIN.

Have used:

Tyler Durden
Charles Hathcock
John Matrix
Ben Richards
Col. James Braddock
Douglas Quaid
Neil McCauley
Vincent Hanna
Lenny Brisco
Kareem Said
Hamid Khan

to name a few

We did have a great psuedo-fixer (officially we called him a "criminal lackey"), named Roarke who specialized in low-grade fake SIN's and new identities. He provided a few for our PC's such as:

Huge ork sammy with a surfer's dialect: Fernando Hernandez -from then on, always answered his phone "Bueno!"

Young white-boy rigger from the CAS with southern drawl: Jean Deglis -not sure if that was the spelling, but it was french.

Human pothead sammy: Sergei <something russian for a last name> -"Sergei" quickly became known by teamates as "Sir Gay".

I have a character who's worthless hippy-fuck fantasy freak parents were just thrilled to have given birth to an elf baby.

Legolas Willow Gilthanas Swan Tanthalasa Moonsilver Elbereth Bladesinger Drizzt Bard Jones insists everyone just calls him "Leg."

that's awesome! I thought my character that was born human to an elven noble family, and used the adept powers like facial sculpt and low light vision (along w/ elf poser flaw) to try to fit in was neat.That;s just great!

I once made a Gangster called Red Bodicker.


Part Red Foreman and part Lawrence Bodicker from Robo Cop

Fixer: "So what's your handle, kid?"
Newbie: "Nightshadow Deathstalker!"
Fixer: (Checking PocSec) "Umm, can you use something else? I already know two of those..."

Ever had characters who came up with different code/street names for each run?

"Hamburger, this is Milkshake. Time to move."

I almost used Remmington Steele once, but changed it because I didn't like it. Then last week I find out that it was also the name of some tv show.

I ve got a greenwar Steward (order of etain double agent)
when i m working with unknown assets I call myself schiphol(from sidhe folä), exolasher or just Keith

when u re on the run and your Chummers aren t around it s imo a bad idea to get sold by a wannabe bounty hunter.

How does the name generator work? Does it just have a huge library of pre-generated names?

And wouldn't you have a really normal real and probably fake name? Your street name could be much more grandiose and weird, but your real name can and should be really mundane.

Lessee...

Cheezy contacts some of my characters have:

Billy Bob the Terrorist (got any nitrate in bulk...?)
"Frank the Decker" (that is his full name)
Sam I Am (a fixer)
Milo Minderbinder (ok, I happen to like Catch-22 & yes, he is a procurement specialist)
"Smoker" (a CIA agent & ditto for the X files)
Major Payne (a milspec procurement specialist)
Dieter Monkimann (fashion editor for Die Welt)
FatBoy (a Deckmeister - just think of the "comic book guy" from the Simpsons and you have the picture)

I once had a player who's character's street name was "Jeff".

Yes, "Jeff".

What was really funny was after a few sessions in, he decided he now wanted to be called "Cobra"...

Imagine trying to tell all of your criminal companions, who know you as "Jeff", that you suddenly want to be refered to as "Cobra"...

I was in a campaign once where a player went an entire three sessions without naming his character(!). He was so disinterested in the roleplaying aspect of the game that it bothered him very little.

"It doesn't realy matter what his name is," he said, "besides, I'm still thinking of a name that would fit him."

His character, an ogre razorboy, was just getting outfitted for a run, when the GM asked to see his character sheet for a minute. Alarmed that his character, was, indeed still nameless, he scribbled something on his sheet.

"There." our GM stated, "Your new name is 'Cleace Rougepelt'. Next time be more decisive."

The incident became our group's running gag for a while.

Here are some characters with "street names"

Troll Physad: Porter
Elven Spec Ops Decker: Barabus
Former Force Recon Officer: Lazarus
Ork Physad Gangbanger: Lord Allah

The best ever came up in a old Star Wars game .

Bush Winecooler Jedi Knight .


Course the came from the guy that a smugler named Ker Minor because there was a snickers bar on the table .

Man some of you guys are really harsh about the names.


Player:" My name is Max Payne"

GM: out of the blue you get thored.

I gave my players a fixer named "Spotty on the john" which he told them he took because "Johnny on the spot" was already taken by a more important fixer.

Now that made me spit my coffee back into the mug. Very funny.

Some contact names:

Zbyhnev Miklosko

Sigrun Utskjoer

~J

My favorite char's name was Platinum, but everyone once in a while I would change it, because I didn't want a rep that would draw too much attention. It was very plain to see that the character was a professional and acted like it, even if the name was not always a well known one. other aliases he had were chef, paragon, and sonic. He did the blue mohawk for a run or two ... then decided that it was best to not be so distinctive.

There have been some very colourful characters and npc's in the group over the years.
Some characters just got branded with new names in the middle of runs because of some event, or in one instance, got a new handle because he joined a magical group. The group was called "the system" and each member was named after a planet. their followers were named after a moon or satellite circling the planet. I thought it was well thought out.

I have the tendency to plunder movies/books so I had:

Tom Doniphan
John S. Chisum
Heywood Floyd
Martin Brody
Jacob McCandles
William Bonney
J. P. O'Hara
Pat Chambers
Phillip Marlow
Alexander Hamish
Victor Henry
Juri Schiwago
Josef Wissarionowitsch Dschugaschwili

Straight, Square, Ess, Two, Tee, Ell, and Backwards Ell, the Block siblings. Complete and blatent ripoffs from Tetris.

I included a pimp named Haywood Jablowme as an NPC once, which probably stands as my worst abuse.

Some of the contact names my GM's have inflicted on me.

The Dread Pirate Roberts - a Carribian pirate captain we were forced to sail with as crew in exchange for passage out of Amazonia after escaping from prison.

Spit - A local snitch, no clue as to how he got the name as we didn't play that campaign long enough.

Dr Feelgood - the ganja smoking Jamaican vodoo magician and fixer.

The Nazi - metahuman racist pawnshop owner/gear fixer based off of the crazy pawnshop owner from Falling Down.

I had a mage that specialized in fire spells. There were some who called him.... Tim?

I pull out odd names for NPCs and the like. I like the idea of using old movie chars for fake SINs tho I must say.

I usually, when coming up with names, just go around sites for whatver country my character is from, and pick a cool sounding first name and last name. Street name, whatever i think of.

Ive been in games where folks have been named after anything from games to movies to whatever.

For on-the-fly NPC I often use any written words, that catch my eye in the room, like the name of a softdring and just twist them a bit. The fastest name I could think of by the forum layout was Newton Pollack for instance. If I´ve got some more seconds and my laptop, I´d randomly chose names from a list (like the Namelist on the FanPro homepage).

My favourit names (as I remember them on the spot) I ever created vor SR were:
NPC: Noodle (perver matrix nudist with an uncommon reality filter)
fake SIN: Ares Jhonson (naturaly not for an Ares Jhonson or companyman)
PC: Karaokemon (Merc/Medic type, guess what his biggest hobby was)

If my players are so lazy, they do not have a name of there own way into the first gaming session. I would punish tham with crappy nicknames, there Contacts won´t stop using anymore!

The guy that inspired me to post this in the first place had another one last night. One of the characters in our group supplements his cash by pit-fighting. So this put Seth on the spot to create 2 match cards (because the PC was the second match) so get this fight 1 Rocky vs. Bullwinkle and in match 2 the PC vs. a troll named Block.