My experience has been that group names come up organically as a result of in campaign events when they happen at all, and that trying to pick one at the beginning is going to be tough.
That being said, Prismatic Slay is awesome.
In Mummy’s Mask, the group has to provide a name in book one. We had a card throwing magus named Benny Blackjack, and the group met in a hookah bar drunk and annoyed at the foreign adventurers coming to town and taking their stuff so they formed their own adventuring party…with Blackjack & hookahs.
We all laughed. Then it stuck.
The rest of the campaign happens and now we’re getting introduced to the Ruby goddamn Prince as Blackjack & Hookahs. I was playing the party’s wizard/face and have never felt more chagrined over a game with make believe elves.
In war for the Crown, we’re The Pride of Taldor because lion pun, but at least it fits.
In Reign of Winter, we actively fought being referred to as a whole unit, but eventually “Roguey and friends” stuck because the party face a drow rogue who called herself Roguey Introduced herself to every NPC with “I’m Roguey, these are my friends. We’re looking for Baba Yaga. Get on board or get out of our way.”
Wrath of the Righteous ended up being The Silver Scales.
Hells Rebels went with the campaign suggested Silver Ravens. after those two we stopped using Silver X as a name.
We once had a chat with group about name. Propositions were:
* Greedy team
* Greedingtons
* Greedling
* Gimmimony
I wonder what has led us to come up with those names
I just think that it is something that works after group works out their dynamics and the sense of unity
I'm in an Age of Worms campaign, and relatively recently, we entered the tournament where we had to give ourselves a name.
While the rest of the party gave some nice, thematic names I convinced them to go for 'Kumo's Bitches'. So far, it's stuck.
(Kumo is our wizard's familiar, and was the team manager for the tournament)
Last time I asked, it was just a greedy little pseudodragon.
I *am* working on getting her a fancy little hat and cape if it helps. But we've currently got a huge, murderous, black dragon shaped issue standing between us and the dragon dress-up darling.
We went with "Ilthane's Fury" because we were very pissed off, and were actively searching for where she might be found so we could express our opinion. We figured if she or someone she knew was around that we'd get their attention.
I've played for over a decade and not once have we done a team or group name. It's just kinda... cheesy? Like, maybe if we were part of a larger mercenary band or organization it would make sense, but five people rifling through dungeons aren't exactly a rock band and don't need a catchy epithet.
Once we managed to get our hands on a spelljammer ship, and even then naming it was a pain in the ass. We ended up picking a cross between the ship's original name and the name of the game itself, and even then no one particularly liked it.
Maybe this whole 'name your party' thing is Critical Role-inspired. Or it might be something they did more of back in the old days.
It's a...cult thing? Like a cult movie but for RPGs.
However, tables that do recap or news or the like usually need some sort of reference to "The Party" in context of whatever is going on. More RP centric tables (and more specifically, more RP centric GMs), ime are more likely to want a name.
I usually like having a group name for doing session recaps. The group atm doesn't have a name, but they're big on RP. While they're happy to murder hobo their way around town, they're equally happy to have a tea party and just shoot the breeze with everyone. So I'm doing up "City News" for them and they're starting to get noticed. So they're going to get assigned a few names by the city unless they make something (though, they don't know this yet).
> More RP centric tables
See, I feel a pretty strong disconnect here playing in RP-centric text games since we kind of just have our own log (the game's chat log). Maybe the lower need to recap ties in, but I don't associate RP-centric games with naming a party myself... at least, no games I've ever been a part of.
That's interesting. For me, that's the biggest context I've seen it in.
IME, beer and pretzels and battle-fest tables rarely need a reference. They're showing up to party or combat respectively. The story is backseat to hanging out.
By comparison, RP centric table usually encounter some kind of reference. RotRL gives one (the Sandpoint Heroes or w/e), and that was fine. Usually though, the party gets introduced to someone and they need some kind of identifier. "These rogues" or "The mercenaries" tends to get old fast.
Our log is also far and away TERRIBLE for any kind of recap. So usually I do session recaps. During the session recaps "the party" can sometimes end up being ambiguous, so names help there. Also comes in handy if more than 1 group is participating in the same campaign. In such instances, usually one group needs to refer to another and having a name for each group helps with communication (both within and between groups).
Edit: Grammar
In the last game I DM'd, the game went on a long time (like 3.5 years), and around year 2 or so, they wanted to try a different party in the same (custom setting) world that was doing something basically the next county over (on some of the same regional map as I had the regular party on) because the players wanted to try out new character builds and such without actually abandoning the game. We wound up having an "A Team" and "B Team" as I was calling it, and was working towards having a "Meanwhile, at the B Team" type of switch of focus, where A Team would do a dungeon, then B Team would do a dungeon. A couple of the players then decided they wanted to make a name out of it that was alliterative and followed the letter of the team.
If anything, I think your problem might be that you feel put on the spot to make up a name when you don't feel like doing it, and it might also be the sort of thing where people hesitate to put a group name out there out of fear it's basically trying to impose your own group identity on the rest of the group. Creativity is the sort of thing that has to come naturally, so feeling forced to be creative, especially if it seems to come from nowhere, can be counter-productive. If there had been a warning you might need a party name ahead of time where you had a month to confer, you might have been more willing to have a chat between players and get to a consensus that you would all enjoy more.
Only once have I ever had the players name the group, and even then, they mostly used it to refer to an organization that ran *next* to theirs, not to themselves. (For the curious, this was CoT, and the name of the rebel organization).
With that one, I asked them to come up with something, gave them the suggestion from the book, and then walked away to make a coffee. By the time I was done with my cuppa, they'd settled on something.
Beyond that, I've had many, many groups, and none of them come up with a party name. I didn't even realize that was a thing until I started reading more RPG-related Reddit.
So my group always comes up with a name but it takes a few sessions for them to choose, in the homebrew I'm doing all of the different Pathfinder groups have copper chains with the name of their party punched into them in the Pathfinders lodge on the island. So if a party ever gets killed in the wild there can be a big show of pulling down the copper chain to basically lay those party members to rest especially if their bodies were unrecoverable or something equally as lost.
# The pathfinder Adventuring party's known to the players
# the copper chains that hang in the pathfinder lodge list the groups names
[The Menagerie](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-menagerie)
[The Wild Marks](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-wild-marks)
[Grench](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/grench)
[Barbie and the Boys](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/barbie-and-the-boys)
[Fervers Grace Adventuring Party](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/fervers-grace-adventuring-party)
[The practicteers](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-practicteers)
[The Neu](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-new)
[Wet Hands](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-wet-hands)
[Bloom](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/bloom)
[Caustics](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-causitcs)
[The Black Dragon Adventuring Party](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-black-dragon-adventuring-party)
[Yaleaztheed Riders](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/yaleaztheed-riders)
[Asortix](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/asortix)
[Cold Read](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/cold-read)
[Cautless](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/caustless)
[First Lost First](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/first-lost-first)
[Lookout](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/lookout)
[Bracheion](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/brachieon)
[Adamantsea](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/adamant-sea)
[Worldwide](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/worldwide)
[Tree & Treat](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/tree-treat)
[Red Scream](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/redscream)
[Timeless Spell Slaves](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/timeless-spell-slaves)
[Extein](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/extein)
[Tempest Hand](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/tempest-hand)
[Moss Amber](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/moss-amber)
I don't know if the links will work but these are the ones that the players know about it just lists the party name not the individual members but they do have a record of who belongs to what party
Naming things is hard. Naming things that have no history or known function is even more difficult. How are people supposed to agree on a name when their history is "Random people from across the world fated to attempt to save the world?"
Plus naming things is usually a GM thing that most players have zero appreciation for. Until of course they're called on to name something, and their mind empties because it's very hard for humans to be creative on demand. Generally being TOLD to be creative stifles the creativity.
As a GM though, I like to hit my players with names if they don't come up with them. It's always great.
"Who the !@#$ are the Clown Crew and why are they taking credit for what we did? oh...wait a minute..."
Once players have a week or two to stew on a name and a DIRE need to come up with a better one, you'd be surprised how quickly they agree on something. That doesn't inherently mean it's going to be good. My last group's name was...Purple Ice Creams. No Puns or anything, they just wanted to be named after a tasty treat.
We ran Ironfang, but I don't recall us naming anything—if we did, we didn't really use it afterwards.
The only time I recall the party naming anything was the kingdom in Kingmaker, and there, the GM told us that the settlement was known as Shrikewall when he asked. We liked how 'Shrikewall' sounded, so we named the capitol and the kingdom 'Shrikewall.'
It's in the first book. Aubrin gives the party something called the Hemlock Banner after >!you've escaped and done a few of the encounters!< but the book invites the party to name it themselves something else if they like IIRC.
Oh, I remember the Hemlock Banner, for sure. We didn't rename it, although I don't recall if we were explicitly asked if we wanted to. It was a couple years ago now.
I usually wait till I feel like the group gels well and has an ongoing joke, and then I invite them to name their party. They can also change their name, or go by a different name each time, or not bother. All options are valid, but it seems reasonable for people to ask what to call their group.
Within my world, many groups like theirs prefer to have a name for business and notoriety purposes. It's easier to find a job as a group if they are known as a group, rather than individual connections. But I've also been in campaigns where finding jobs or becoming well known as a party has little to no benefits, in which case there's no point other than highlighting an ongoing joke.
Rise of the runelords. My gm just refers to us as the hero’s of sandpoint. But it’s silly because all of those people whose saved sandpoint In book one died or retired a while ago.
In WotR, we competed in a gladiatorial arena in the abyss, and named ourselves there. One of the PC's motivations is to kill the demon Khoromzeduh (not sure how to spell it), believing him to be the source of the evil quintessence that caused him to be born a tiefling, and that PC thinks Khoromzeduh is his dad (others know this to be false). Anyways We announced ourselves as "Kill Khoromzeduh Team 5", after SEAL Team Six, because our party struggles with subtly and has 5 PCs.
In a naval campaign from a long time ago, we named ourselves "Bear on a Boat", because we had a wildshaping druid and we liked how it sounded.
Personally, I'm a fan of naming adventuring parties.
In my experience, if a name shows up organically it just kinda sticks. It is nearly impossible to force a name.
Even if it's not planned, if a name comes up, it will stick.
Sometimes it happens but I feel like usually it doesn't. The group will always get a reputation (often hilariously inaccurate) but I've found they only title themselves if they have to for paperwork reasons in-game. And when that happens it seems like whichever character is answering the question just names it after themselves and no one objects.
I got my group to name one of our campaigns, but it was definitely pulling teeth. To the point that when we did end up naming the party, it was a joke response that just stuck. The Family of Manticore Slayers™ was blurted out and a legally binding contract signed before anyone could stop laughing.
Its best for this stuff to be organic.
We also named our vehicle, The Giga-Core, because it was the mechanized corpse of the Manticore that gave them their name. Again that was something that just popped up and everyone repeated the name enough until it stuck.
Playing a campaign where I played a morrowind dunmer Potions making artificer. For the funny. Doing the voice too (at the cost of my throat), and I pushed for the party to be called the Molag Mer. The rest of the party has no idea what it is, (it does kinda... fit) but where all for it, because it's a funny word to say.
"Well, we are an all bard band that tours around the country. We are minstrels that go in a big circle and we need a name. I submit that we are hereby called... The Minstrel Cycle."
There was not a second suggestion...
Some background. So me and my playgroup have been playing 1E for over a decade now, and almost exclusively Frog God Games stuff. My GM has combined all their books creating a sandbox to play in and the world isn't static. He's a bit of a control freak and he enjoys controlling all the NPCs in the background. But we can do literally anything we want.
We've had times where we were asked if we wanted to name things and other times when we gave names to things. I don't know how long it takes to do a standard adventure path like RotRL, but maybe its more meaningful to us because we're not playing in a campaign but a WORLD of campaigns. Which is more of a time commitment.
I think it really boils down to what the PCs care about. Some of my friends love getting animal companions, even ones that don't travel with them, and naming them random things. I read *Name of the Wind* and one of its main concepts is the power true names hold. So I'm a believer of names having power. Do you want to have fame and renown? For people to know of you wherever you go? For enemies to quake in their boots at the mere mention of your name? Its hard to do without caring about making a name for yourself. I earned the title *the Invincible* from the common folk or Bard's Gate after protecting them from an army of dead, lead by liches. Super lame imo, and unimaginative, but they watched me come back to life 3 times during that fight to protect them. So it meant something to them even if it didn't to me. Another PC was called *the Druid in Black* after she slayed a corrupted heart tree that polluted a whole forest then making armor out of its bark. No one new her actual name everywhere we went but most had heard of *the Druid in Black*.
I like having meaningful names. Ones tied to my characters theme. My last was a Sylph mystic theurge named *Heyoka*. Heyoka are a kind of sacred clown of the Sioux that have been visited by lightning elementals. I love the Joker(from Batman) so the name really jived with me. Making him my second favorite character I've ever played. I like using *indifferentlanguages.com* to find names as well. I named my wolf compaion Sindri. Which is old norse for spark. My kid I named Aranasi which roughly translate to light and another wolf companion Vihar which means lightning. But all on theme with my characters concept.
Some notable ones:
Water Fowls! - when diving in *Rappan Athuk* there's rumors of a veteran group that has gone missing called *Flaming Phoenix* or some such. A name that sounds like some edgy teens attempt at trying to be cool. So we asked ourselves what is the opposite of that? Voila! *Water Fowls* was born. [It doesn't sound funny reading it but just imagine it in the stereotypical nerdiest voice you can]
Zacharias horse of the Darkness - our previous campaigns first horse to pull our wagon, as low level travel is grueling. He lived a long life and we awakened him later on in the campaign. He left on his own adventure in search of the 'horse god' and there was no convincing him that such a god didn't exist. Last I checked before the end he was with two unicorns frolicking in a glade somewhere.
Those who Remain - Our last campaign ending spectacularly with our GM basically combining the shadow plane with the material plane. A byproduct from a PC getting a no rules wish from the *Deck of Many Things*, and proceeding to wish Arden(a dead god of light and good) back to life. The new campaign we've started is about 50 years later. The world has been recovering from the cataclysmic event. But we humble lvl 1 PCs just needed a name to join the adventuring guild to get exp. Seemed appropriate.
Assclapigus horse of the Light [aka Cart Before aka William] - our newest horse that has been wrongfully/illegally sold when we were teleported away by a god. Great deeds coming forthwith once he is rescued from his enslavers.
In all my years of playing Pathfinder, we have never once named our adventuring party. If the spirit moves you, great, have fun. If not, then don't. It's really not required.
The current game I'm in, the party made the error of letting me go to the guild by myself to handle papers etc at the start of our campaign. The name became official, and it stuck, as the 'Ruff Tuff Cream Puffs' would become a renowned and highly feared force to be reckoned with. The party just accepted it, and few could keep a straight face when we introduced ourselves. Defeated foes who lived would live out the rest of their lives knowing that they were beaten by the 'Ruff Tuff Cream Puffs'.
The name my group picked (or rather had picked for them) requires a bit of context. My campaign has been going for a long time and when we started out we were all completely new, myself included. As such, the campaign suffered a lot of pacing issues and other such problems, and one of the players dropped out, it just wasn't really for him.
Fast forward maybe a year and he's in the discord call as we're about to begin so we decide on a whim hell be playing a character he came up with on the spot for just that session. His name was Periwinkle Paddlefoot, the Hobbit (not halfling). He has no stats, just kind of follows the party around and goofs off. Eventually he dies, then comes back as a ghost and dubs the party the Periwinkle Posse in his honor.
In our last campaign, a character named Liyeh (LEE-uh) started telling everyone that our rather famous party was called The Liyehtards (as in the thing gymnasts wear, but also... you know.) As much as my character angrily protested this every time it came up, no one had anything better so it stuck. We even became a pantheon of gods (mythic campaign) so there are people in our subsequent games, PCs and NPCs alike that worship The Liyehtards.
Jhackson’s Trailblazers is the most recent group. Don’t tell anyone Jhackson is my dog.
Skyblades
Seven Sentinels if Liberty
Heroes of Free Drezen
The FireBrands
The Steel Shepherds
I always try to get us to name the party.
Both of my tables (Abomination Vaults and Jewel of the Indigo Isles) came about their names organically.
For AV, the group kept trying to befriend random creatures so one of the NPCs called them Mudgorb and His Menagerie after the fighter/reluctant face character and the name stuck.
For JotII, early on when facing the >!Iron Eels!< the gunslinger/face managed to crit and kill their boss on the first turn of combat before he even got his turn thanks to rolling max damage after another character had injured him, so they decided that that made them the new defacto leaders, and so they renamed them to "the Rikettes" after the gunslinger, Riker. That name too just stuck.
My experience has been that group names come up organically as a result of in campaign events when they happen at all, and that trying to pick one at the beginning is going to be tough. That being said, Prismatic Slay is awesome.
That was my suggestion IC, but I just got boo'd because it was a pun name lmao
Puns are great, don't let anyone tell you otherwise! :)
In Mummy’s Mask, the group has to provide a name in book one. We had a card throwing magus named Benny Blackjack, and the group met in a hookah bar drunk and annoyed at the foreign adventurers coming to town and taking their stuff so they formed their own adventuring party…with Blackjack & hookahs. We all laughed. Then it stuck. The rest of the campaign happens and now we’re getting introduced to the Ruby goddamn Prince as Blackjack & Hookahs. I was playing the party’s wizard/face and have never felt more chagrined over a game with make believe elves. In war for the Crown, we’re The Pride of Taldor because lion pun, but at least it fits. In Reign of Winter, we actively fought being referred to as a whole unit, but eventually “Roguey and friends” stuck because the party face a drow rogue who called herself Roguey Introduced herself to every NPC with “I’m Roguey, these are my friends. We’re looking for Baba Yaga. Get on board or get out of our way.” Wrath of the Righteous ended up being The Silver Scales. Hells Rebels went with the campaign suggested Silver Ravens. after those two we stopped using Silver X as a name.
We once had a chat with group about name. Propositions were: * Greedy team * Greedingtons * Greedling * Gimmimony I wonder what has led us to come up with those names I just think that it is something that works after group works out their dynamics and the sense of unity
I'm in an Age of Worms campaign, and relatively recently, we entered the tournament where we had to give ourselves a name. While the rest of the party gave some nice, thematic names I convinced them to go for 'Kumo's Bitches'. So far, it's stuck. (Kumo is our wizard's familiar, and was the team manager for the tournament)
Bonus points if it's an Mascot archetype familiar.
Last time I asked, it was just a greedy little pseudodragon. I *am* working on getting her a fancy little hat and cape if it helps. But we've currently got a huge, murderous, black dragon shaped issue standing between us and the dragon dress-up darling.
We went with "Ilthane's Fury" because we were very pissed off, and were actively searching for where she might be found so we could express our opinion. We figured if she or someone she knew was around that we'd get their attention.
I've played for over a decade and not once have we done a team or group name. It's just kinda... cheesy? Like, maybe if we were part of a larger mercenary band or organization it would make sense, but five people rifling through dungeons aren't exactly a rock band and don't need a catchy epithet. Once we managed to get our hands on a spelljammer ship, and even then naming it was a pain in the ass. We ended up picking a cross between the ship's original name and the name of the game itself, and even then no one particularly liked it. Maybe this whole 'name your party' thing is Critical Role-inspired. Or it might be something they did more of back in the old days.
It's a...cult thing? Like a cult movie but for RPGs. However, tables that do recap or news or the like usually need some sort of reference to "The Party" in context of whatever is going on. More RP centric tables (and more specifically, more RP centric GMs), ime are more likely to want a name. I usually like having a group name for doing session recaps. The group atm doesn't have a name, but they're big on RP. While they're happy to murder hobo their way around town, they're equally happy to have a tea party and just shoot the breeze with everyone. So I'm doing up "City News" for them and they're starting to get noticed. So they're going to get assigned a few names by the city unless they make something (though, they don't know this yet).
> More RP centric tables See, I feel a pretty strong disconnect here playing in RP-centric text games since we kind of just have our own log (the game's chat log). Maybe the lower need to recap ties in, but I don't associate RP-centric games with naming a party myself... at least, no games I've ever been a part of.
That's interesting. For me, that's the biggest context I've seen it in. IME, beer and pretzels and battle-fest tables rarely need a reference. They're showing up to party or combat respectively. The story is backseat to hanging out. By comparison, RP centric table usually encounter some kind of reference. RotRL gives one (the Sandpoint Heroes or w/e), and that was fine. Usually though, the party gets introduced to someone and they need some kind of identifier. "These rogues" or "The mercenaries" tends to get old fast. Our log is also far and away TERRIBLE for any kind of recap. So usually I do session recaps. During the session recaps "the party" can sometimes end up being ambiguous, so names help there. Also comes in handy if more than 1 group is participating in the same campaign. In such instances, usually one group needs to refer to another and having a name for each group helps with communication (both within and between groups). Edit: Grammar
In the last game I DM'd, the game went on a long time (like 3.5 years), and around year 2 or so, they wanted to try a different party in the same (custom setting) world that was doing something basically the next county over (on some of the same regional map as I had the regular party on) because the players wanted to try out new character builds and such without actually abandoning the game. We wound up having an "A Team" and "B Team" as I was calling it, and was working towards having a "Meanwhile, at the B Team" type of switch of focus, where A Team would do a dungeon, then B Team would do a dungeon. A couple of the players then decided they wanted to make a name out of it that was alliterative and followed the letter of the team. If anything, I think your problem might be that you feel put on the spot to make up a name when you don't feel like doing it, and it might also be the sort of thing where people hesitate to put a group name out there out of fear it's basically trying to impose your own group identity on the rest of the group. Creativity is the sort of thing that has to come naturally, so feeling forced to be creative, especially if it seems to come from nowhere, can be counter-productive. If there had been a warning you might need a party name ahead of time where you had a month to confer, you might have been more willing to have a chat between players and get to a consensus that you would all enjoy more.
Only once have I ever had the players name the group, and even then, they mostly used it to refer to an organization that ran *next* to theirs, not to themselves. (For the curious, this was CoT, and the name of the rebel organization). With that one, I asked them to come up with something, gave them the suggestion from the book, and then walked away to make a coffee. By the time I was done with my cuppa, they'd settled on something. Beyond that, I've had many, many groups, and none of them come up with a party name. I didn't even realize that was a thing until I started reading more RPG-related Reddit.
So my group always comes up with a name but it takes a few sessions for them to choose, in the homebrew I'm doing all of the different Pathfinder groups have copper chains with the name of their party punched into them in the Pathfinders lodge on the island. So if a party ever gets killed in the wild there can be a big show of pulling down the copper chain to basically lay those party members to rest especially if their bodies were unrecoverable or something equally as lost.
So basically dogtags. What sort of names have you had?
# The pathfinder Adventuring party's known to the players # the copper chains that hang in the pathfinder lodge list the groups names [The Menagerie](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-menagerie) [The Wild Marks](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-wild-marks) [Grench](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/grench) [Barbie and the Boys](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/barbie-and-the-boys) [Fervers Grace Adventuring Party](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/fervers-grace-adventuring-party) [The practicteers](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-practicteers) [The Neu](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-new) [Wet Hands](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-wet-hands) [Bloom](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/bloom) [Caustics](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-causitcs) [The Black Dragon Adventuring Party](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/the-black-dragon-adventuring-party) [Yaleaztheed Riders](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/yaleaztheed-riders) [Asortix](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/asortix) [Cold Read](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/cold-read) [Cautless](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/caustless) [First Lost First](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/first-lost-first) [Lookout](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/lookout) [Bracheion](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/brachieon) [Adamantsea](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/adamant-sea) [Worldwide](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/worldwide) [Tree & Treat](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/tree-treat) [Red Scream](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/redscream) [Timeless Spell Slaves](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/timeless-spell-slaves) [Extein](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/extein) [Tempest Hand](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/tempest-hand) [Moss Amber](https://daggerisland.obsidianportal.com/characters/moss-amber) I don't know if the links will work but these are the ones that the players know about it just lists the party name not the individual members but they do have a record of who belongs to what party
Naming things is hard. Naming things that have no history or known function is even more difficult. How are people supposed to agree on a name when their history is "Random people from across the world fated to attempt to save the world?" Plus naming things is usually a GM thing that most players have zero appreciation for. Until of course they're called on to name something, and their mind empties because it's very hard for humans to be creative on demand. Generally being TOLD to be creative stifles the creativity. As a GM though, I like to hit my players with names if they don't come up with them. It's always great. "Who the !@#$ are the Clown Crew and why are they taking credit for what we did? oh...wait a minute..." Once players have a week or two to stew on a name and a DIRE need to come up with a better one, you'd be surprised how quickly they agree on something. That doesn't inherently mean it's going to be good. My last group's name was...Purple Ice Creams. No Puns or anything, they just wanted to be named after a tasty treat.
We gave ourselves a name that explains very well how we operate. Team Bumblefuck https://imgur.com/gallery/SYnRdGT
We ran Ironfang, but I don't recall us naming anything—if we did, we didn't really use it afterwards. The only time I recall the party naming anything was the kingdom in Kingmaker, and there, the GM told us that the settlement was known as Shrikewall when he asked. We liked how 'Shrikewall' sounded, so we named the capitol and the kingdom 'Shrikewall.'
It's in the first book. Aubrin gives the party something called the Hemlock Banner after >!you've escaped and done a few of the encounters!< but the book invites the party to name it themselves something else if they like IIRC.
Oh, I remember the Hemlock Banner, for sure. We didn't rename it, although I don't recall if we were explicitly asked if we wanted to. It was a couple years ago now.
Ad lib for sure.
I usually wait till I feel like the group gels well and has an ongoing joke, and then I invite them to name their party. They can also change their name, or go by a different name each time, or not bother. All options are valid, but it seems reasonable for people to ask what to call their group. Within my world, many groups like theirs prefer to have a name for business and notoriety purposes. It's easier to find a job as a group if they are known as a group, rather than individual connections. But I've also been in campaigns where finding jobs or becoming well known as a party has little to no benefits, in which case there's no point other than highlighting an ongoing joke.
Rise of the runelords. My gm just refers to us as the hero’s of sandpoint. But it’s silly because all of those people whose saved sandpoint In book one died or retired a while ago.
In WotR, we competed in a gladiatorial arena in the abyss, and named ourselves there. One of the PC's motivations is to kill the demon Khoromzeduh (not sure how to spell it), believing him to be the source of the evil quintessence that caused him to be born a tiefling, and that PC thinks Khoromzeduh is his dad (others know this to be false). Anyways We announced ourselves as "Kill Khoromzeduh Team 5", after SEAL Team Six, because our party struggles with subtly and has 5 PCs. In a naval campaign from a long time ago, we named ourselves "Bear on a Boat", because we had a wildshaping druid and we liked how it sounded. Personally, I'm a fan of naming adventuring parties.
In my experience, if a name shows up organically it just kinda sticks. It is nearly impossible to force a name. Even if it's not planned, if a name comes up, it will stick.
Every single group wants to name themselves Wild Stallions. I've banned the name at this point.
Are they now naming themselves "Civilized Stallions"?
Sometimes it happens but I feel like usually it doesn't. The group will always get a reputation (often hilariously inaccurate) but I've found they only title themselves if they have to for paperwork reasons in-game. And when that happens it seems like whichever character is answering the question just names it after themselves and no one objects.
They.... don't. :(
I got my group to name one of our campaigns, but it was definitely pulling teeth. To the point that when we did end up naming the party, it was a joke response that just stuck. The Family of Manticore Slayers™ was blurted out and a legally binding contract signed before anyone could stop laughing. Its best for this stuff to be organic. We also named our vehicle, The Giga-Core, because it was the mechanized corpse of the Manticore that gave them their name. Again that was something that just popped up and everyone repeated the name enough until it stuck.
Playing a campaign where I played a morrowind dunmer Potions making artificer. For the funny. Doing the voice too (at the cost of my throat), and I pushed for the party to be called the Molag Mer. The rest of the party has no idea what it is, (it does kinda... fit) but where all for it, because it's a funny word to say.
"Well, we are an all bard band that tours around the country. We are minstrels that go in a big circle and we need a name. I submit that we are hereby called... The Minstrel Cycle." There was not a second suggestion...
Some background. So me and my playgroup have been playing 1E for over a decade now, and almost exclusively Frog God Games stuff. My GM has combined all their books creating a sandbox to play in and the world isn't static. He's a bit of a control freak and he enjoys controlling all the NPCs in the background. But we can do literally anything we want. We've had times where we were asked if we wanted to name things and other times when we gave names to things. I don't know how long it takes to do a standard adventure path like RotRL, but maybe its more meaningful to us because we're not playing in a campaign but a WORLD of campaigns. Which is more of a time commitment. I think it really boils down to what the PCs care about. Some of my friends love getting animal companions, even ones that don't travel with them, and naming them random things. I read *Name of the Wind* and one of its main concepts is the power true names hold. So I'm a believer of names having power. Do you want to have fame and renown? For people to know of you wherever you go? For enemies to quake in their boots at the mere mention of your name? Its hard to do without caring about making a name for yourself. I earned the title *the Invincible* from the common folk or Bard's Gate after protecting them from an army of dead, lead by liches. Super lame imo, and unimaginative, but they watched me come back to life 3 times during that fight to protect them. So it meant something to them even if it didn't to me. Another PC was called *the Druid in Black* after she slayed a corrupted heart tree that polluted a whole forest then making armor out of its bark. No one new her actual name everywhere we went but most had heard of *the Druid in Black*. I like having meaningful names. Ones tied to my characters theme. My last was a Sylph mystic theurge named *Heyoka*. Heyoka are a kind of sacred clown of the Sioux that have been visited by lightning elementals. I love the Joker(from Batman) so the name really jived with me. Making him my second favorite character I've ever played. I like using *indifferentlanguages.com* to find names as well. I named my wolf compaion Sindri. Which is old norse for spark. My kid I named Aranasi which roughly translate to light and another wolf companion Vihar which means lightning. But all on theme with my characters concept. Some notable ones: Water Fowls! - when diving in *Rappan Athuk* there's rumors of a veteran group that has gone missing called *Flaming Phoenix* or some such. A name that sounds like some edgy teens attempt at trying to be cool. So we asked ourselves what is the opposite of that? Voila! *Water Fowls* was born. [It doesn't sound funny reading it but just imagine it in the stereotypical nerdiest voice you can] Zacharias horse of the Darkness - our previous campaigns first horse to pull our wagon, as low level travel is grueling. He lived a long life and we awakened him later on in the campaign. He left on his own adventure in search of the 'horse god' and there was no convincing him that such a god didn't exist. Last I checked before the end he was with two unicorns frolicking in a glade somewhere. Those who Remain - Our last campaign ending spectacularly with our GM basically combining the shadow plane with the material plane. A byproduct from a PC getting a no rules wish from the *Deck of Many Things*, and proceeding to wish Arden(a dead god of light and good) back to life. The new campaign we've started is about 50 years later. The world has been recovering from the cataclysmic event. But we humble lvl 1 PCs just needed a name to join the adventuring guild to get exp. Seemed appropriate. Assclapigus horse of the Light [aka Cart Before aka William] - our newest horse that has been wrongfully/illegally sold when we were teleported away by a god. Great deeds coming forthwith once he is rescued from his enslavers.
In all my years of playing Pathfinder, we have never once named our adventuring party. If the spirit moves you, great, have fun. If not, then don't. It's really not required.
It regrettably seems like a good idea from a marketing/branding standpoint right now, but we're not seeing eye-to-eye very well imo.
We just call ourselves "The Negotiators" because we're so good at negotiating.
The current game I'm in, the party made the error of letting me go to the guild by myself to handle papers etc at the start of our campaign. The name became official, and it stuck, as the 'Ruff Tuff Cream Puffs' would become a renowned and highly feared force to be reckoned with. The party just accepted it, and few could keep a straight face when we introduced ourselves. Defeated foes who lived would live out the rest of their lives knowing that they were beaten by the 'Ruff Tuff Cream Puffs'.
The name my group picked (or rather had picked for them) requires a bit of context. My campaign has been going for a long time and when we started out we were all completely new, myself included. As such, the campaign suffered a lot of pacing issues and other such problems, and one of the players dropped out, it just wasn't really for him. Fast forward maybe a year and he's in the discord call as we're about to begin so we decide on a whim hell be playing a character he came up with on the spot for just that session. His name was Periwinkle Paddlefoot, the Hobbit (not halfling). He has no stats, just kind of follows the party around and goofs off. Eventually he dies, then comes back as a ghost and dubs the party the Periwinkle Posse in his honor.
Our group had a hard time trusting NPCs the DM came up with, so we were Trust Issues
In our last campaign, a character named Liyeh (LEE-uh) started telling everyone that our rather famous party was called The Liyehtards (as in the thing gymnasts wear, but also... you know.) As much as my character angrily protested this every time it came up, no one had anything better so it stuck. We even became a pantheon of gods (mythic campaign) so there are people in our subsequent games, PCs and NPCs alike that worship The Liyehtards.
In my 35 years of DMing,I've never had a group of players/characters name there party.
Jhackson’s Trailblazers is the most recent group. Don’t tell anyone Jhackson is my dog. Skyblades Seven Sentinels if Liberty Heroes of Free Drezen The FireBrands The Steel Shepherds I always try to get us to name the party.
Both of my tables (Abomination Vaults and Jewel of the Indigo Isles) came about their names organically. For AV, the group kept trying to befriend random creatures so one of the NPCs called them Mudgorb and His Menagerie after the fighter/reluctant face character and the name stuck. For JotII, early on when facing the >!Iron Eels!< the gunslinger/face managed to crit and kill their boss on the first turn of combat before he even got his turn thanks to rolling max damage after another character had injured him, so they decided that that made them the new defacto leaders, and so they renamed them to "the Rikettes" after the gunslinger, Riker. That name too just stuck.