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James McMurray
The "they call him Tombstone" thread got me thinking about common names for runners, mafia enforcers, etc. How many runners and wannabes are out there named things like Tombstone, Cutter, Razor, Spike, etc.?

Have you ever had a character with a common (or uncommon) name accosted by another underworld character looking to establish that he is the one true Shadow (or Ghost, or whatever)?
Demerzel
Hahaha, I think the Slyder in my game is going to get a visitor.
NightmareX
To the OP, "Nightmare" was originally the name of a rigger in Rigger Black Book - when I finally renamed my character "Nightmare" back in the day I made it a point to mention to the GM exactly why, as this unfinished piece of fanfic illustrates:

"So tell me, who do ya want dirt on, Dancer? Who's the target?" She finished her wine and locked Xerxes in a stare that most sharks would envy. "He's an elf. A mage. Goes by the street name Nightmare." Xerxes took a long sip of his vodka as she continued to stare him down. Putting his glass down, he closed his eyes and let out a long, low whistle. A moment passed before he met her gaze, "My brother worked with him on a few jobs in Atlanta a couple of years ago. Aristotle played back up to him, along with one other guy. I don't have any details, but I do know they were a few very nasty pieces of wetwork. Your elf friend" She interrupted him with a killing glower, "He's NOT my friend." Xerxes blinked at the vehemence of her statement, took another drink, and continued. "Anyway, your guy was the hitter. Aristotle and the other guy just did helped with the logistics. My brother was in close on one of the hits though. Retrieving some files or something from the mark's desktop. She was a mid-level exec at some baby corp down that way. Had two kids, or so my brother said. He said she's on her knees, begging him to let her live for her kids' sake, when the fragger puts a round through her head in mid-sentence. Arctic cold, according to Aristotle. I mean, both me and my bro run the shadows, y'know, and I've done some wetwork in my time too, but never anything like that." "That sounds like the fragger." Dancer growled after downing her drink. "Yeah, that's the problem." Xerxes continued, "Lots of things sound like him cause of the simple fact that no one really knows who the hell they’re talking about." She studied him a moment, trying to will the information she wanted from him. "What are you saying? You told me a while back that you did a job with a magician who called himself Nightmare." "Yeah, I did. A big motherfraggin' Amerind ork. He was a shaman, but he seemed to like handguns a hell of a lot more than any treehugger I've ever met. That struck me as weird, so I did some digging on the guy before we did our biz. The slitch of it is, according to Shadowland and a couple of other sources, there's a grand total of eight known 'Nightmare's operating in North America, four of which in the Seattle area alone. And we can only rule out one of them, a rigger that runs the T-bird routes down to Denver every so often." "The one I want is a causcasian elf, but he's a mage. I know he's good with illusions, so he could still be the one you worked with." "Are you sure he's a white elf?" "What?" a look of confusion flashed across her eyes, then deepened as he continued. "He could have been masking his appearance when you saw him, y'know." She never thought of that angle. She placed her elbows on the bar and rested her forehead in her hands. A sigh of frustration escaped her lips. It was already hell trying to find someone who, for all intents and purposes, was a ghost, but the thought of trying to hunt down someone who never existed in the first place was almost more than she could bare. Moreover, what did that say about the feelings she once had for him? "I have to work on the assumption that what I saw was his real self, Xerxes" Her voice sounded tired to him all of a sudden. "Alright." He finished his vodka before continuing. "I can give your the address to the doss of the guy I worked with, but it'll cost you, and I didn't tell you. I wouldn't be doing this for anyone else, Dancer."
lorechaser
QUOTE (Demerzel)
Hahaha, I think the Slyder in my game is going to get a visitor.

Spyke, Rayzor and Kutter, you mean. Those are unique! wink.gif

I try to come up with uncommon monikers, generally. If I have someone with a normal name, it usually has a reason behind it.

However our GM likes to throw us up again gangs like The Rayzorz to amuse us as we have to try to take them seriously.

It would be pretty amusing to see the "No, *I'M* Spike" fight, though.
eidolon
I wondered if it was going to come up in a game where I was playing a guy that went by "Doc" in the shadows, but the GM never really made an issue of it.
Butterblume
QUOTE (James McMurray @ Jan 19 2007, 09:53 AM)
Have you ever had a character with a common (or uncommon) name accosted by another underworld character looking to establish that he is the one true Shadow (or Ghost, or whatever)?

Always wanted to, but only once had a PC have problems, someone mistook him for another one with the same name.

We always joke about how many Shadowrunner named Blade there really are.
Demerzel
QUOTE (eidolon)
I wondered if it was going to come up in a game where I was playing a guy that went by "Doc" in the shadows, but the GM never really made an issue of it.

OMG! The Slyder in my game is playing Slyder because I killed his dwarf named Doc... Hahah...
lorechaser
Too amusing.

My current nom de guerres:

Whiskey
Hoodoo
Yun
Beatdown
Dragon (Yeah, yeah)
Skip (As in Skip Tracer)
Kapow
Magnus
Patches
Raven (A character for my daughter - she wouldn't accept my original offers of Hamster or Tricksy).
Wakshaani
Oh heck yeah. Had an Ork Sammi in New Orleans by teh name of Gator ... hwo many Shadowrunners named 'Gator" do you think that NO has? smile.gif

In general, as long as there's a specific indicator, you can get by with someone having the same name (Not Hawk the Human Merc, Hawk the hot-as-Hades Elf Shaman chick!), but if it gets too ugly ... well, one of you gets to be teh Tick, the other's stuck with being Barry.

-- Wak

(PS, Tombstone thread still needs love.) smile.gif
HappyDaze
QUOTE
Whiskey

We had our one-and-only native american shaman character: Dances with Whiskey (aka Wipes with Hands). We were so politically incorrect...
Ancient History
They had a joke about this waaay back in the day. 27 elven runners named Nemesis duking it out for the rights to the name.
Kyoto Kid
...got an email from someone also calling themselves Kyoto Kid. Turns out it came from a completely different game system. They must have been browsing different forums when they came across DS.

Also have seen Kid Kyoto a while back on this forum.
Fortune
QUOTE (Kyoto Kid)
Also have seen Kid Kyoto a while back on this forum.

Not in the member's list. Maybe the very first version of Dumpshock, or possibly Deep Resonance.
Konsaki
QUOTE (Fortune)
QUOTE (Kyoto Kid @ Jan 20 2007, 11:53 AM)
Also have seen Kid Kyoto a while back on this forum.

Not in the member's list. Maybe the very first version of Dumpshock, or possibly Deep Resonance.

The hacker did good with covering his tracks... nyahnyah.gif
Mistwalker
We usually try to go for something a little out of the ordinary.

Mistwalker
Smoke on the Water
Four
Mr Wong
Cargo
Runt (for the very large ork)
SilverFang
Red Rose

biggrin.gif
Well, at least we think that they are original and out of the ordinary.
If your going to burst my bubble, please do it in a kind way nyahnyah.gif
Fortune
QUOTE (Konsaki)
The hacker did good with covering his tracks...

Damn hackers!
Sir_Psycho
Raven (A covert ops specialist, not a shaman)
Master Blaster silly.gif (female decker - Jane McMaster)
Nines

My partner in wasting time had:
Ragnor (minotaur mage)
Fast Eddie
Jack (His name was actually Daniel)
ornot
NO! I'M SPARTACUS!
PlatonicPimp
I'm Batman.

I don't think any runner I've ever worked with has gone by a handle. I mean, they've all had multiple Identities, and so just used the name that came with the sin they were using. The dumbest one was my runner who actually had a SIN. All the other runners knew his real name. Most of them had a real name different from their runner name, but their runner name was a real sounding name.

I mean, do you think you could honestly refer to me as platonicpimp in casual conversation? All the time? without laughing?

In the last game I GMed, all the players were friends in a circus before becoming runners, so there was no need for anything other than their real names among them anyway. Most of the Johnsons also figured it out eventually, but if you don't have a SIN to begin with, how is your real name any less secure than a handle?
Demerzel
When you die and become a Free Spirit of Man someone can say your real name three times and make you appear.

Biggie Smalls
Biggie Smalls
Biggie Smalls
Butterblume
QUOTE (PlatonicPimp)
I mean, do you think you could honestly refer to me as platonicpimp in casual conversation? All the time? without laughing?

Every nickname with more than two syllables will automatically be cut down mercilessly by your chummers. So you could be Plato if you're wise, or Tonic if you drink gin tonic, or just Pimp. My guess would go to Plimp, though.

Having two syllables won't always work. I recall someone we called Yoghurt. I can't really remember what his original name was, since we always used the Yoghurt version.
Lilt
The most generic probably-copied names I've seen used in SR games I've run/played in were:
Hunter
Rusty (that one's mine)
Fingers
"Black Widow"
ornot
I kinda feel that a character's handle should make some kind of sense. I remember a character who was named 'Joanna Blackwood', and her runner handle became 'Ebony'. There was also once in an SR3 game a troll adept who'd lots of ranks in running and became known as 'Flash'. This led to lots of "Flash! Aaahaah, saviour of the universe" jokes.

One character I had actually acquired her runner handle in the game. Being rather naive she didn't realise she needed one until the runners that adopted her (for their own selfish reasons, it must be said) insisted. The rest of the group had great fun coming up with all manner of really dumb names, while we all got progressively drunker (IRL and IC).
Konsaki
All the runner handles that my characters have has something to do with the character.

Angel - my technomancer who had just submerged and in the process her avatar changed to one of a six winged techno angel. Angel is also shadow speak for a benefactor who works from afar, perfect for a hacker. (You can find a picture in the link in my sig)
Neko Mahou - a half-japanese shaman who underwent SURGE as a young age, coming out as a cat-girl. 'Cat Magic'
The Wanderer - an ex-lonestar bounty hunter who had lost his family to a gang. After dealing with the gang in the backstory, he felt like he had nothing left in life but to wander the city, pulling in enough money just to survive.

I have a few more, but it might spoil some stuff.
Kyoto Kid
...Actually the name "Kyoto Kid" sort of came out of the runner group she was with. The original SR 1 character had an entirely different (and pretty cheesy) street name, but everybody in the group simply kept calling her "The Kid" (she was a street kid of 15 at the time). Since she practised Kendo her name first morphed into Kendo Kid and then finally Kyoto Kid after she was revamped when SR 3 came out.

Since then I tended to use pretty simple street names, often common names such as Gracie, Jill, Violet, and Kat (short for Katya).

Leela's intended street name as a runner was to be "Ace" (originally she was based on the character of the same name from the Beeb's Dr Who series). One night while finishing the character I was watching The Fifth Element. I immediately was taken with the concept of the lead character Leeloo and her child like personality. Thus, "Ace" hit the discard pile and Leela Groznek (the last name taken from an episode of Enterprise) was born. I still used the old street name on occasion, since as part of her MO she would always leave an Ace of Diamonds card near the scene of a successful demo job (part of her "Distinctive Style" flaw). Everyone else in the group pretty much referred to her by her real name.

The only times I used more "colourful" names which stuck was my decker "Diamond ICe", my seductive spy girl, "Night Angel" my archaeologist "Lady Sterling", and my Cajun Pugilist "Hurricane Hannah".

The oddest one I came up with was Dr Zanzibar, for a dwarf medic and paranormal "big game" hunter. No particular reason other than it sounded good.
Sir_Psycho
We rarely used our handles during runs, usually copying reservoir dogs with the Mr. (colours) for names.

Raven always ended up as Pink. ohplease.gif

Other than that, we had pretty easy names to refer to eachother, Loki and Raven had little trouble.
Xenith
Tiger Frost - Otaku with a magician twin bro (ahh... 3rd edition)
Wyvern - Submach Gun-fu adept (3rd again)
George - Wacky Scitzo Mage (MY favorite 4th edition character... so many jokes from a single session of mayhem.... heh heh....Rascal"*whisper*Think he's gay?" George"But I like Unicorns!" Fixer"I'll show you a horn." George"Yes...")
lorechaser
QUOTE (PlatonicPimp @ Jan 20 2007, 10:08 AM)
In the last game I GMed, all the players were friends in a circus before becoming runners, so there was no need for anything other than their real names among them anyway. Most of the Johnsons also figured it out eventually, but if you don't have a SIN to begin with, how is your real name any less secure than a handle?

It really isn't, except that using your real name gives Mr. Johnson a bit of a leg on finding you, if you do have data in the system.

Street names are for cred. Hiring a group of runners named Janice, Yolinda, Bob and Emilio isn't all that intimidating. Ice, India, Bob and Smiler seems a bit more 'pro'.

Besides, even today, bad guys get the cool nicknames - The Jackal, Son of Sam, Jack the Ripper, etc.

I do have a couple characters that use their names as their handles. It can work out, because as you said, unless you have a SIN, Bob is just as anonymous as LordRavenBlood DarkityDark. Of course, then you're getting metasyntactic - as long as it's a phonetic construction that consistently references you, it's all the same thing. wink.gif
James McMurray
And who can forget such lovely and original runner names as Top Dollar, T-Bird, Skank, Funboy, and Tin Tin? I could see national gang wars waged for the rights to those.
Jeremiah Legacy
Sometimes, it helps if there is a theme. For example, in one campaign, the running team called themselves the Gamblers' Union. They all had handles related to gambling, and each one was for something special.

Misdeal was the decker, one who liked to cheat the system.

Boxcar was the troll sammy. He was big, bulky, and just like rolling both sixes in Craps, when you see him, you know that you just lost.

Double Zero was the magic guy. His name was derived from the fact that he was from the CAS (campaign was set in London at the time.) In Roulette, there are 36 spaces on European wheels, but 37 on American ones. "00" is only on the American wheel.

Forgot the others, but I liked the idea so much, I though about using them as NPC's.
cetiah
QUOTE (Jeremiah Legacy)
Sometimes, it helps if there is a theme. For example, in one campaign, the running team called themselves the Gamblers' Union. They all had handles related to gambling, and each one was for something special.

That is so awesome! smile.gif
emo samurai
QUOTE (James McMurray @ Jan 21 2007, 12:27 AM)
And who can forget such lovely and original runner names as Top Dollar, T-Bird, Skank, Funboy, and Tin Tin?  I could see national gang wars waged for the rights to those.

Fire it up! Fire it up! Fire it up!
Moto42 Again
The best runner names I came up with were for a story I never finished. The two original team-members were:
Blunt, a rigger that specializes in courier work, he's assisted by...
Force, a decker who excels at 'large area matrix overwatch'. (IE: Matrix overwatch from one side of town to the other.

They take a 'simple' snatch-and-run unwilling extraction of a corp wage-mage that goes south when Mr. Johnson sets them all up to take a fall. Essentialy they are patsies in an plan to make it appear that the wage-mage was a willing extraction.
After this fact has come to light with them all the wage-mage is having a breakdown as Blunt and Force try to figure out how to get back at their Johnson. They've just come to the conclusion that the wage-mage is too deeply involved to just let him go when...

Blunt: We can't keep calling him by his real name, it's just not done. If he's going to run with us he need a handle. How about 'Wager'? He is a wage-slave after all.
Mage: *Continues to suffer a mental breakdown* "I'm not 'Running' with anyone! I just want to run away!."
Force: Let's call him "Trauma"!
Blunt: Agreed.

And thus, the team "Blunt, Force, Trauma" initiated their third member, against his will.
FlakJacket
Just to date myself slightly, there's always the popular Nemesis. Although that one's apparently more popular with runners who weren't hugged as children. wink.gif
mfb
QUOTE (PlatonicPimp @ Jan 20 2007, 11:08 AM)
I'm Batman.

I don't think any runner I've ever worked with has gone by a handle. I mean, they've all had multiple Identities, and so just used the name that came with the sin they were using. The dumbest one was my runner who actually had a SIN. All the other runners knew his real name. Most of them had a real name different from their runner name, but their runner name was a real sounding name.

I mean, do you think you could honestly refer to me as platonicpimp in casual conversation? All the time? without laughing?

In the last game I GMed, all the players were friends in a circus before becoming runners, so there was no need for anything other than their real names among them anyway. Most of the Johnsons also figured it out eventually, but if you don't have a SIN to begin with, how is your real name any less secure than a handle?

people do it all the time in MMOs. they get Ventrillo or another voice chat program, and call each other by their character names. they're not even doing it to stay in-character; they do it because it's easier than trying to trade real names.

i view street names as having grown out of intarweb chat/posting handles. let's say i post on Shadowland as motorfirebox, and advertise that i'm looking for a razorboy to handle some musclework for an upcoming run--details to be discussed in-person. PlatonicPimp answers my ad, and we set up a time and place to meet. we both show up at The Rusty Nail. how do we introduce ourselves? going "i'm [Matrix/runner handle], but you can call me [real name]" all the time is tedious and unnecessary. among your regular team, sure, you use real names a lot, but for people you don't know--and might end up having to kill at some point in the near future--the anonymity of not giving out your real name is nice.
hyzmarca
Shadowrun Street Names grew out of internet handles and gang/rapper/noncriminal black dude Street names, the former of which grew out of superhero names and the latter of which which grew out of plain white-guy nicknames.
You never see any T-Dwags and P-Diddy's in SR, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't. While decker/hacker street names grew out of hacker handles, ganger/samurai street names more likely grew from gang names and/or pro wresting names.



For some reason, Harlequins and Ghostwalkers don't have this problem. Those are always good street names because so few people use them.

Motherfucker (or motherfragger) is probably the most common street name. I mean, someone is always trying to kill one motherfucker or another but they are rarely talking about the same guy. However, Goatfucker doesn't seem to be taken.

There are also very few Bonesmokers, probably because the Bonesmocker name, while sounding dangerous, also sounds homosexual in a derogatory way. However, one should worry about gay Free Fire Elementals which might be using this name.



One thing to do is use the True Name of a powerful free spirit as a Street Name, that way anyone who plots against you is likely to accidentally summon it.
emo samurai
That last idea is awesome, it just doesn't work in SR4.
WhiskeyMac
I'd make up weird name for my characters and contacts. One of my decker contacts was named Big-Balled Billy or Triple B for short. I had some buddies in my group who had a decker character named Flames (after his icon) and a troll street sam named Panzer the Hand (after a fighting style in 7th Sea but we just called him Panzer). One of my ADHD players called a master swordsman Blade, I said it was lame so he renamed him Bladen. How many of those are there?

I can definitely attest to the shortcuts for nicknames/handles. On my WoW game I was WhiskeyMac but to everyone on Ventrilo I was Whiskey or Mac, very rarely WhiskeyMac. There was a guy named Gutentak but we just called him Gut all the time and several others too.
Strobe
In a game I play in we have a street sam who speaks Japanese and I can't pronounce his name. Now I call him Jap Sam. It has kinda stuck.

-Strobe
Mistwalker
Ah, speaking of unwanted street names.

An elf sammy joined the group, pretty well involuntary from both sides. Cause that sammy ignored the group a lot, they started to call him Moonbeam, cause the first time it was used, he almost went balistic.

So, he is often called Moonbeam..ah...sorry Killswitch..
lorechaser
I'll agree about the nicks.

For instance, in my WoW guild.

There are people I only know in game. There are people I know in game, and from our forums. There are a couple people who I vaguely know in real life.

To call some of them by their character name, some by their forum name (the forum name may or may not match WoW, as the forum has been around much longer than WoW), and a couple by their real name is confusing. So we just sorta pick one.

For games, esp, it's hard to translate quickly. If I have 3 people on my team, and I need Kill-o-matic to duck, I can say "Kill! Duck! Everyone else, converge on Kill's location!" or I can think "Kill is .... Jimmie. Does everyone know he's Jimmie? Hmm." "Jimmie, duck! Everyone else, converge on Jimmie's location - he's playing Killomatic right now."

Which is easier and faster?
ChicagosFinest
LOL,

Jimmie Duck! I can see that one flying. I try distictive names that fit with the characters personality. Back in the day I had a female elf sripper by the name of "16 Singles". She would have been the face of the group if i translated her to SR4.
God it pissed my GM off that I was playing and elf stripper with some of my over the top shenanigans. Let's just say sex as a weapon and a few convincing arguements lead to her become a "dominating" force. She was based off this girl my GM had a crush on but could never get. He was about to kill her until I conviced him to turn her into an NPC.
Pendaric
I like the SLA industries take that there are hundreds of lesser known runners using the same name but the more famous the name fewer who use the name. Till there is only the elites like Fastjack who define their art (and own the copy right).
ChicagosFinest
Yeah that makes since. Every rapper claims to be as good as biggine and pac, and allthe bballers claim to be the next jordan.
Kyoto Kid
QUOTE (Jeremiah Legacy)
Sometimes, it helps if there is a theme. For example, in one campaign, the running team called themselves the Gamblers' Union. They all had handles related to gambling, and each one was for something special.

...In one group., everyone had the same Fixer "Sam I Am" so they decided to use variation of the name Sam for their characters like:

Sammy
Samuel
Samson
Samantha
and of course, Sam

(and no one dared use Samwise)

QUOTE (Lorechaser)
Street names are for cred. Hiring a group of runners named Janice, Yolinda, Bob and Emilio isn't all that intimidating. Ice, India, Bob and Smiler seems a bit more 'pro'.


I don't know... "Bob" can strike fear in the hearts of men, especially if he's a Troll.

I disagree somewhat with a more common sounding alias not being professional. My bounty hunter Jill was very respected as a professional. She even had her own biz cards.
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