Dynamo

I once built a powerarmor character who took double Stun from electrical attacks and double knockback (house rules variant of Vulnerability) from magnetic attacks. Little did I realize that the hitech mercenary we were pursuing into a hydroelectric complex had a double knockback magnetic blast setting on his rifle. You just know I got knocked back into the generator. The knockback had a downward vector, and the generator itself absorbed enough inches that I didn't go through the reinforced concrete mounting block and stayed inside the wreckage, which was still in circuit with the other generators. Man, that was a lot of Stun. We calculated that if the Recovery Time table were continued down the Time Chart rather than resorting to GM Option, I'd have gotten one recovery a year. Adding insult to injury, to represent an ill-fitting prototype I'd also taken a 1d6 Susceptibility to knockback.

Luckily, wiseassery seems unnecessary.

Roundup Edit: List deleted. New roundup posted

Re: Too General/Nebulous or Specific Part 6 Agree about Redoubt, but I hadn't axed that one. Hate Round Robin. In the States, Sap means one who is easily fooled. Scholar just doesn't sound right. Yeah, Shangri La has to go back in. Science Assassin isn't so much weird as dorky.

Re: Too General/Nebulous or Specific Part 6 From your list, I've re-admitted: Rabies Jungle Queen Shangri La

Re: Just Awful Power Rangers?! *twitch*twitch* (checks enraged 11-, rolls 12)

Re: Too General/Nebulous or Specific Part 5 Mob Mentality just doesn't cut it for a good sound. Mentality is OK but is already on the list. Mind Crime goes back on the list, but it strikes only as a name for a petty criminal who couldn't come up with something better. OK, Molotov works. Hmmmnn... Dumb name, but just the right sort of dumb for a two-bit villain who thinks the name is intimidating. I'll put it back, but I'd never actually use it, because just about every group I've known would just call him Needle D**k. Yeah... in reference to poop. One Man Army made it beause it's an established and durable turn of phrase. The others just sound dumb. Rock and Stone stand by themselves. Scissors sounds like a Pulp mobster with an MO or a fetish and got chopped by the Genre filter. Paper works only as part of a gag combo. Sorry, Dumb Name filter. See my comments about Lemur and Chipmunk in a recent post. Justice is an ideal vigilante name. Poetic Justice is an ideal spoof name. You're right, Profit Motive would make a good team name, but I don't think it makes a good individual super name. Prophet Motive would be good for spoof pulp or modern (e.g. Father JT Motive's weekly TV show Prophecy Hour) but still doesn't cut it as a super name. Bring 'em on. >cue SFX-chainsaw< Agree that they would be daft super names. Disagree that together they make a team name.

Re: Re: Re: Too General/Nebulous or Specific Part 4 Batwhat? Hold on, lemme check Yesterdayland... You've got to be kidding me. That was pretty unconvincing. A few words about assuming that anything appearing on television is necessarily cool, or even remotely worthy, for having done so. Well, really just one word... WRONG!!

Re: Too General/Nebulous or Specific Part 4 Intellectual does not sound as good as the others, and I do not feel it makes a worthy proper noun. Many martial styles and guns were filtered out for not sounding like names. There's a rhythm and feel to a good super name. Hwarang has it; Judo and Kung Fu do not. The properties of Lawrencium are indeed impressive, the word Lawrencium sounds dorky. Lemur has about as much to recommend it as Chipmunk does, cute but hardly impressive. Nope, doesn't sound good. American Lotsastuff also works, but American doesn't. Supreme Justice sounds good and and carries connotations that Lord Chief Justice and Supreme Court Justice do not. Lord Justice sounds good though, so that's in. Skill-based epithet, yes. Good super name, no. In each of these cases, adding Military to the beginning makes the name sound stupid. Modern militaries are very aware of the PR impact of their visible activities. If you're working from an old roundup, then you're not catching anything I missed. I kept copies of all the roundups on my harddrive, and anything that disappeared from one roundup to the next was purposefully hacked. If you copied any submissions posted after the last roundup on the old boards, post those.

Re: Too General/Nebulous or Specific Part 3 Do you really want to give me tool to reject more names? I'm already familiar with most of the characters appearing in GURPS supplements, though as I said, I credit almost any claim of originality, so I'm rejecting those names only if they are particularly distinctive (e.g. Argurous Astraph and La Fusionne) or submitted along with too many other names from the the same publication (making it a lot less likely that any of them are original). I don't own any of Palladium's Heroes Unlimited line, partly because I disapprove of Siembieda's litigous history, and partly because I like a little quality in my RPG supplements. If this lack of IP pollution means I allow too many name copies directly from HU products, Kevin can flippin' sue me. Fighter/Hero/Heroine: Yeah, I hate these. Fighter sounds dumb, and Hero or Heroine are honorifics given by others in response to your actions. F.A.S.T.: I yanked all the acronyms with no extended version provided unless it was obvious or something came quickly to mind. Fellow Traveller: Decent euphemism, lousy super name. Flash Harry: See Fellow Traveller. Hottentot: History aside, it sounds dumb. Imposter: OK, I'll put this one back in.

That's up to everyone else. I throw in a few every time I do a roundup, about enough to replace the ones I screen out for various reasons, but the bulk of the new names come from other contributors. As soon as death tribble gives up trying to talk me into replacing names I've already rejected, he'll start throwing new ones. Hopefully, that will spur others into a fresh spate of creativity. Onward to 10K.

Roundup edit: List deleted. Fresh roundup posted.

Re: A few more... Thanks. Fixed. I know how to spell those two. It must have been getting late.

Thanks, altamaros. No Doug, no Sigmund Freud puns. Fresh roundup this weekend. Genre-Inappropriate filter for almost all of these. Consul: Now this variation I like. Consul General doesn't work for me, but Consul would be good for an arch-villain. That might explain why it's still on the list. Corporate Raider: Plural, it would make a halfway decent team name, but singular, it's more of a job description than a good monicker. Criminal Emperor: Good job description, dumb name. Shadow Emperor or Emperor of the Underworld would be better. Criminal Emperor in Latin might sound cool. Anyone want to look it up? Diamond Jim: Entirely inappropriate to the genre. Pulp yes, superheroes no. Double Cross: Very cool character concept. Neat campaign role. Calling this guy Double Cross would only get him killed in any campaign featuring villains with at least three brain cells. ("Hi Double Cross, glad to meet you. I'm going to shoot you now, just in case you're named for your signature move.") However, I will include it, because while I was typing, I realized I could picture a vigilante sporting a crusades cross as an emblem and leaving them as calling cards. Heck, sharpen the post and throw them like stilettos.

IIRC, Champions II or Champions III had a power called Reflection. My copies of those books are boxed up in preparation for moving, so I can't look it up (that is, I'm unsufficiently motivated to go through all those identical laserjet paper boxes I collected from work), but I believe it was kind of like a Damage Shield that could affect ranged attacks.

Hey, it's cool. This is good stuff, and I will definitely refer to it when I assemble the next roundup. On more question. European speech, French and German in particular, seems to use determiners much more frequently than American English. Just how necessary is it to include le, la, or l' to make a name sound right to a native speaker? For example, my Cannibal Comics campaign features a Parisian speedster, La Vitesse. Would she be referred to informally as Vitesse, or would it always be La Vitesse?

Would make a good Champions Minus item, though. One player brought me an uber-hacker character with Transfer 3d6 Wealth to Gadget Pool, Ranged, No Range Penalty, Indirect, Extra Time (hours), OIF Available Computer, Delayed Return Rate (years), Concentration 0 DCV, Gestures, RSR Computer Programming, and number of other limitations piled on. For very few points after the limitations, he wanted free semi-permanent points for his VPP. To top it off, he tried to convince me that the maximum effect of an adjustment power was per target, so he could add literally hundreds of points to his VPP over time. We'd argued before, so I told him we weren't using the optional wealth rules to minimize my desire to kill him.

Re: Too General/Nebulous or Specific Part 2 Most of these lost out to the Genre-Inappropriate filter, though I relented on Cold Blood and Cerval (corrected to Serval, an African wildcat; I couldn't find a reference to a cerval as an Asian feline of any sort). Bogatyr: Submitted along with a bunch of names from a published product. Non-Original filter. Bronze Age: You're right. I've yanked Middle Age and Old Age. Bunyip: If now >< 1980s then Autralian >< cool. No one is going to call themselves Bunyip (or Yowie for that matter). Dumb Name filter. Carpathia: Genre-Inappropriate filter. Just a region with no other name-part simply doesn't work for me. Cerval: Put back in as Serval. Cerval seems to be a popular misspelling of Serval. I had heard similar stories about coffee beans fed to goats, which seems more believable, since cats are carnivores and are thus unlikely to eat coffee beans. See Exotic Coffees of the World. Consequences: Genre-Inappropriate filter. Truth stands alone as a decent super name, but Consequences works only as part of a gag combo.

The Tome of Character Names That Don't Bite Dragon #306 (Apr 2003), Dork Tower on pg 90.

Re: Too General/Nebulous or Specific Part 1 I tossed out these names for a variety of reasons. A few hit the Dumb Name filter, a few the Silly Name filter, but most hit the Genre-Inappropriate filter. To answer your specific points: Alcibiades: I can't explain the Asian Shangri-La thing. Doing a web search now results in no similar hits. Beats me. Must have been late. However, it's still genre-inappropriate. I cite the dearth of supers named for similarly obscure historical figures with difficult to pronounce names. Historical name inspirations typically fall into 3 categories: well-known figures that carry their own contemporary cultural connotations, cool sounding names regardless of origin, and throwaway comic-relief characters we're happy to forget. Anti-Drugs Crusader: A fine epithet, but otherwise a lousy superhero name. I could see maybe Anabuse the Anti-Drugs Crusader, but I'd probably just shorten it to Anabuse. Anti-Vigilante: It's a job description, not a super name. Arch Foe, Bad Guy, Bad Man, Big Boss, Big Chief: These haven't sounded good since the 50s. They're valid campaign NPC roles (every super team needs an arch foe, a rogue's gallery of bad guys, and a big boss to try and take down), but they just aren't super names. Black Rod: Hooboy... You mean aside from the phallic connotations? Outa dere right along with Gaul.

It's my policy to accept any reasonable claim of originality, including:"I came up with it first." "I hadn't heard of the original when I came up with it." "I created that published character." I can vouch directly for Rubber Duck, since I created and played him for a few months in a Fuzzy Champions game in college.

Thanks for spotting the extra Ripper. It's out of the master file and won't be in the next round up. Surreal McCoy got the axe for a compound reason. First, it's more than a bit silly, so it was already red flagged. A moderate degree of genre-inappropriateness pushed it over the edge.

Fully developed setting elements ready to drop directly into a home-brewed campaign? No, not very many of those. But the alternate take on many genre tropes really gives one some food for thought. I particularly like the unified origin ideas and have heisted many of those, but most of all, I've drawn inspiration from Aberrant's exploration of the experience of being super powered.

Roundup Hacked out a few names and altered others based on advice from our Parisian consultant. edit: List deleted. Fresh roundup posted.

Re: Question Consider Messerschmitt submitted. Got more?