Have you ever rolled a toon ONLY because you thought of a cool name?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-10-01 09:33 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Sometimes the cool name suggests the AT for me ... or vice/versa
LucyFyr ... fire/dark corr
Araknophobia ... crab spider
JazzHands ... KM/WP brute
DeathMime ... KM/SR stalker with minimized effects
oh yeah, Kal Amary, the warshade
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Quite often.
| Have you ever rolled a toon ONLY because you thought of a cool name? |
"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho
Man, I wish. The name is always the hardest part of the character for me.
Closest I ever came, I was creating an SG filler back for one of the holiday per-member prestige grants, and I came up with a neat Silver Age-style costume and the era appropriate name of "G-Whiz", and dug it so much that I decided to actually play the character pretty frequently for a while.
All the freaking time.
Last night, for instance. Inspired by a piece of art by imagesbyalex when he was on for the freekend, I misread one of the words in his comment as "Fire Blender" instead of "Fire Bender" and... yes, I had to make Fire Blender, a fire/kin tank. 
There are doubtless dozens of others on my accounts, oh - oh yeah, my favorite icky one, "Screaming Meatsack" which was another Deviantartists' description of their new nephew.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
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This. If I come up with a really cool name, I roll up a character to go with that name. I won't say I play every one of those characters religiously, but I do try them out. If I end up not liking the concept or the powersets, I delete the character and typically post that I've freed up the name.|
Originally Posted by BBQ_Pork
If I come up with what I think is a cool name, I have to come up with a concept or at least AT+Powersets before I hitthe character creator.
Otherwise, it just feels like name-squatting. |
In a couple of cases, I've made characters with jokey names that I came up with as background for other character bios. In those cases I am name squatting, but it's mostly names I don't see anyone else wanting (i.e. Spell Czech, The Cinemaniac, Ol' Dirty Blaster).
(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon
Absolutely:
Defense Mechanism
Atomic Volcano
Suburban Samurai
among others...
Forgot about one of mine, a zombie stalker called "Give my love to rose".
The Johnny cash song of the same name is the inspiration, this is part of the lyric:
Mister here's a bag with all my money
It won't last them long the way it goes
God bless you for finding me this morning
And don't forget to give my love to Rose
Give my love to Rose please won't you mister
Take her all my money, tell her to buy some pretty clothes
Tell my boy his daddy's so proud of him
And don't forget to give my love to Rose
The premise of the toon is that the stranger ran off with the money, and the dying man is back from the grave to hunt him down.
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
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Nope, the name is always the thing I think of last and with a few exceptions I tend to end up picking a first name and then stringing together random syllables until I get a surname I like. I tend to make characters based on powerset combos i want to try rather than theme.
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Originally Posted by Angryellow
I've rolled many toons just because I thought of a cool name, with no regard to their backstory or concept, and barely any regard to their archetype. Has anybody else done this?
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Sometimes, yes. I started a pact with a friend, for example: Helter Smelter and The Oresman. Too good to pass up, even if the power set choices turn out to fall a little flat.
Do I roll up characters because of a great name? Very frequently.
Over the years I've come up with some very quirky characters because of it.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
With me it shifts between an idea of a character and background first, then name, and a name first, then background.
I was watching Military Channel one day. One show talked about the tanks of WWI and WWII, another show talked about German planes in those wars. Thats when I got the names for Tiger Tank and Junker(pronounced Yunker). I then connected their stories to an old(and still active)alt of mine(also connected to Germany, but in more of a Magneto way).
Then I got to thinking of the Occult(different day, not connected). In creating the 6 that would be connected, I wound up connecting one of them to Tiger Tank, Junker, and his connections.
I just love making characters and backgrounds. I'm an alt-aholic.
I quite often think up a good name, and just have to create a character that I have no real intention of playing. I try to find appropriate powersets for them though.
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This is how I wound up with my non-test/beta DS/Dark mastermind. Indiana Lovecraft.
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Originally Posted by Angryellow
I've rolled many toons just because I thought of a cool name, with no regard to their backstory or concept, and barely any regard to their archetype. Has anybody else done this?
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Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Variant.
Was thinking of names for a character...came up with Variant.
Was going to be the name of my WP/SS Tank but I liked the name so much that I thought of a backstory for the name Variant.
That led to Project: Variation. The process to surgically implant metahuman DNA into an individual giving that subject control over various powers.
Went with a DM/Regen scrapper with concealment for invisibility and phasing...flight...body mastery for laser beam eyes and energy projectiong.
Everything came together perfectly and Variant is now the only reason I play CoH.
There is a reason I'm sitting on Jailbait and Anasazi, so yes.
Currently playing:
The Domestic: Broom/WP
Shadowhex: Dark Control/Dark Affinity
Defenestration Lass: Grav/Kin
"See, this is what happens when you have to shove all this stuff into your pockets: it's easy to misplace a suborbital warhead." -Arcanaville, on how crowded our power trays are getting lately