Barf Forth Apocalyptica
barf forth apocalyptica => Apocalypse World => Topic started by: Spiral Jacobs on April 01, 2011, 09:31:47 PM
-
Hi. I'm a new Apocalypse World player, just started my first game with Robert Bohl as the MC. I had a question about something that came up the game, and wanted to run it by folks and see what the general sentiment was.
I had my character concept fixed in my mind, including his name. Rob indicated that generally, people pick their character names from the provided list. That felt wrong to me, as names have power and confer ownership, and my character's name felt really right to me. Rob's POV (if I can speak for him, though I hope he will comment on his own) is that the names are archetypical, and by picking one off the list, you are buying into the world.
Was I wrong (not wrong, but maybe not quite approaching things in the best spirit of the game) to pick my own name?
If you're wondering, my character is a Maestro D' and the named I picked was Dickson. He's the proprietor of a high class retro-Victorian brothel.
-
You were wrong. Rob's rational is correct: it's about buying into the setting and the character.
As an MC, I don't come up with names either - I cross them off the list.
In life, we don't pick our names.
-
When I read the book, I didn't realize it was mandated that you MUST pick a name off the list. My impression was that the list provided the prototypical names, and you could pick one or come up with your own name in the same vein. If I had known it was a rule, I wouldn't have let myself get attached to my own choice.
Is it truly violating the spirit of the exercise to deviate from the list? For instance, the Battlebabe list contains many gemstone names. Why would Sapphire be OK but Topaz wouldn't? The difference to me is quantitative, not qualitative. The exercise of buying in then lies in coming up with your name and making sure it fits in with the pre-gen list.
I'm not sure it's totally true that in life, you don't get to pick your name, but it IS true that you also don't get to pick your stats IRL, yet I picked my character's and made up his history. It's a game, and if I'm creating this person, is it "wrong" to want to name him?
Maybe the way to do this, if you really want to give the feeling of lack of choice, would be to have the MCs name the characters after you describe them.
-
To provide a different perspective, I would say that you were neither right nor wrong. Because the setting is something created by both the MC and the other players, the names are as open to your creative impulses as anything else is - which means that it's fine to come up with new stuff as long as other people can buy into it as well. That includes the MC, of course.
As I would play it, this means that details of setting (including character names) will change from game to game depending on whether they feel right or wrong. Could be that there are a pile of different names in one game, and in another they all come from the lists. Who knows?
What it comes down to for me is that I can buy into Dickson as a name in AW, so I don't see a reason not to let someone be named Dickson. But in the end I would say that you should go with the MC and your group.
-
Thanks, henrythewhite, I think your perspective jibes with mine and Rob's. Rob was totally cool about it, explaining his rationale but also accepting mine. Everyone was fine with how it went and it is not a problem. This is just a theory question, one to mull over and keep in mind for future games. Also, I enjoy discussing philosophical questions like this, so I appreciate the insight folks offer, as I am new to this game world.
-
Spiral,
Apocalypse World's character creation flourishes when you approach it with no preconceptions, and just pick stuff off the lists.
You're supposed to pick a name from the list, as well as a body type from the list, as well as a stat combination from the list. Could you make up your own name or body type or stat combos? Sure. It's just not how you're told to play the game. But, then, you're also told that AW is a game that's meant to be tinkered with custom moves and little exceptions.
The best situation is when you grab a playbook without any preconceived ideas, and let the lists inspire greatness. When you've already got an idea in your head, obviously something has to give: the details of the list, or the details of the vision. I don't think anyone can tell you which one "should" be sacrificed at the altar of the other.
-
I think I had too much time beforehand to read and think about stuff. I read the book over the course of about 2 weeks, during which I had this vision for my character. Perhaps a better way to do it is to not think at all about your character until you sit down for Session One. I guess I could have just chucked my name and it would have been fine (though I'm not sure why Boiardi or Emmy is so much more in the spirit of AW or a Maestro D' than Dickson-- frankly, some of the pre-gen names are kind of annoyingly bad). Or is the mere act of being forced to choose off the pre-gen list that creates the intended feeling?
-
A funny rule that I've played with once was that if you ask your MC "Can I have this name instead?" then no, you have to pick one from the list. However if you just take another name without asking, it's okay.
-
A funny rule that I've played with once was that if you ask your MC "Can I have this name instead?" then no, you have to pick one from the list. However if you just take another name without asking, it's okay.
Yeah, I've seen this advice on the forums before, too. I think it's totally hilarious and encourage it's use. I certainly do whatever the fuck I want when making an AW character. There is no actual rule in the book that says you have to pick from the list. They are not even formatted like the other lists where you get to (or have to) pick options from.
In life, we don't pick our names.
Mcdaldno did.
-
I'm running two AW games.
In the first one, we obeyed the rules and chose our names in the playbooks lists.
What about the result?
My players have chosen to live their own apocalypse in our own country, in France...
The result is... Ahem... Offbet... I'm not sure, the humorous tone was the colour first designed by Vincent (look at my appropriate use of the passive voice :P )...
For the second one, I felt more relaxed and, as the players were to choose their names, I offered them, the ones in their playbooks as examples of colour first choices in Apocalypse World. I'm sure i've done the right choice since they decided to live their apocalypse in Crimea (south of Ukraine).
My own approach is:
It's not the name list that is important, it's the colour first names which are. And the colour first is changing occording to the apocalypse you are barfing. So, feel free to change the names as it fits.
-
You and the GM talking about it? That's one of the reasons there are name lists.
The way authority is hashed out there, between you and Rob, and the role of the text and all: kind of like practice, in a way. Those exceptions hashed out beforehand ("Can my tank actually be a helicopter instead?") are an easy way for the group to find its feet and start the process of judgment calls and shared vision needed for play.
-
I'm relieved that others have played this game with chosen names instead of picking off the list, so I'm not way out in left field. Of our three players, two of us had chosen names beforehand, not realizing we shouldn't have, and one chose off the list. Maybe next time I play, or when I make another character, I will just do it the way it's intended and see how/if it feels different.
-
This is totally one of those "do you play with RAW" things. Do what works for your group!
For Maestro D' names I suggest...
Nigella, Child, Hervé, Naked, Martha
-
Well, "scarcity" IS sort of a theme of Apocalypse World, and "scarcity of names" seems like an interesting concept.
I wonder if that's what my next apocalypse will be about?
-
I like picking off the lists, no problem, and I encourage others to do so too. The constraints are there as part of the game. And also, I just introduced NPCs named Clearasil and West and Always Flowers.
-
My gut feeling on the name list is "why wouldn't you use it?" because I'm a guy that likes to be told "this is what you have to do, make something with it." For example, in the only other AW series I played in, the Hardholder name list entry "Vega" made me think of the brothers that Michael Madsen and John Travolta play in the Quentin Tarantino movies. I got an idea for an urbane, suave sort of brutal thug. That name inspired me to suggest a character who'd set up a fiefdom of class, excess, and brutal efficiency in the ruins of the Luxor casino. All this inspiration before I moved on to the second list.
But when both Paula and another player, Matt, felt to varying degrees uncomfortable with having to choose a name from a list, I tried to sift out my emotional attachments and try to figure out the purpose that that rule might serve in the design.
I think the lists are there to give your Apocalypse World a unified feel, to give the many Apocalypse Worlds a bit of a common seed, to advertise to the fiction and the other players who your character is and what he's capable of, and to suggest what kind of Hardholder (or Angel, Battlebabe, or Maestro'D in this case) you want to be.
Also (and I think I said this at the time, but if not, I'm sorry), I don't think it's an accident that the very first thing you do as a non-MC player in this game is choose your name from a limited list. It sets you up very well for the way the game will work as things play out. You'll be forced to make a limited choice that you might not always like.
Of course, ultimately, I didn't want anyone to feel like they weren't having fun. Dickson and Doc Margrave certainly felt very apocalypcian (I pointed out that if someone wanted to be something like Jake Raiford, that would really spoil the mood and there was a whole playbook for that kind of thing). Paula got a little zealous in her offers to pick a name from the list, but I said that if she had formed an attachment to the character based on that name, and that to change the name would change her conception of the character, I didn't want to force her to do that.
So we kept the names and the game didn't feel unlike AW. In the future I'd still like to roll with "pick from a list" for the names, but I think I'll handle it like this next time if it comes up again.
-
I think John's nailed it. I don't think anybody's playing this wrong, certainly not Rob and Spiral.
"Can my car be a helicopter?" "Can my hardhold be a caravan of trucks, buses and vans?" "Can my infirmary be, like, a meditative state I go into, to go with my healing touch?" "Can my name be Dickson even though it's not on the list?"
The MC gets to say yes or no. All's well.
-
I tend to make player authorship (which is what that is) based on their inclusion in the process. In other words, if you want a new name for yourself come up with a themed name list I can use for other NPCs. If you want something to exist in the game that your character knows about then let's see a custom move et al. And often that's not off the cuff or at the table rather between games.
-Don
-
Don, I like your idea. I would love to come up with some names of my own for NPCs or even playbooks.
-
I think that's not only entirely in the spirit og the game but I'm sure it'll help out Rob as well.
As an aside I have an odd issue with the current MC name list. I connect to the APs and equate the names to characters in other games so it really colors the NPCs I choose for those names. I added a list of names from Dogs because we're in Amish country and I suspect every 6 games I will add a new name list and discard the old one. We'll see.
-
Having run this exactly one time, my inclination is to say yes to whatever the players want unless I have a darn good reason. Of course, when the players introduced their characters in a clockwise fashion, the third of six players used two names, and then everybody else's character after his suddenly had two names. To them, multiple lists meant multiple names. Pick one of each. Jesus Dolarhyde and Inch Grip, I believe, were all the better for it.
Now, of course, I wonder... what would a *non*-AW name sound like? Fantasy names like Lorithien seem right out, but if popular enough might've been cobbled from the relics of pop culture (A Gunlugger Named Legolas, a straight-to-DVD release)... seems like you'd have to really work to find a name that *wouldn't* fit in, or seem ironically appropriate, in AW.
-
For our 'Decimation City' game, we've pretty explicitly established that everyone born after the Apocalypse, including the PCs and NPCs, all have names out of the book, but that figures from the Golden Age of Legend are not so constrained.
Hence Adele the Savvyhead trying to get some "Tony Stark" DNA to open the battered old briefcase of his that Hammer the Chopper scrounged up.
-
Names have power. To name is to bind, as they say.
Rob's comfort with the AW naming conventions (which is to be found in most members of this forum) has to do with a broader "best practice" of subsuming individual creative impulses to those of the group, particularly given the incredible individual agency AW grants to a PC both over the fiction itself and their interactions with other PCs. We all have to die, pay our taxes, and choose our damn names off the damn list: that's the way it is. We're all in the same boat. It's the fucking apocalypse, y'know? This helps some people by immediately intervening at the hardest stage in character creation – naming the guy/gal/thing – and others by restricting selection away from Crazyville, creating an easy, unified game naming aesthetic from the get-go.
Of course, the caveat that "your group may vary the naming thing if so desired" has also been acknowledged above.
Spiral Jacobs' discomfort with choosing names off the list, however, comes from our vague unease that by surrendering our very characters' names to a "system," we have somehow lost something important.
From my gut, I agree.
After reading numerous AP reports on this forum, and encountering there numerous incarnations of the same named individual – Jones, Burroughs, Hammer, Dremmer – I am suddenly stricken with a sense of semiotic ennui. The signifieds matter less, because the signifiers can neither attract my attention nor concern. After all, the hero not only possesses a thousand faces, but a thousand names as well. We live in a world rich in language and possibility, and possibility through language. A place where a crowd-sourced name book (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/story-games-name-project/3594462 (http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/story-games-name-project/3594462)) is a real commodity, and where players can inhabit specific cultural fantasies under the auspice of a few uttered syllables.
I know there are many who would make the argument: "Hey, isn't it cool that a set cast of characters can have such radically different experiences?" Sure, but also lost is the sense of the literary lurking behind those experiences... especially in comparing between different AW games. It all blurs together into a semio-miasmic soup of the Same. Heck, even archetypes like in The Journey (http://jeepen.org/games/thejourney/ (http://jeepen.org/games/thejourney/)) – The Man, The Woman, The Daughter and The Stranger – are somehow more palatable because they tie into traditions of medieval Everyman plays, etc.
(It sounds like I'm verging on a literary analysis of AW here, which means I should stop and go back to my dissertation and maybe boil my head.)
-
Someone (I forget who) once said that if players ask if they're supposed to pick names off the lists, the answer is always "Yes", but if they just choose a name on their own that isn't from the list and run with it without asking, then that's cool too.
I've found this to be an exceedingly well-thought practice and have always acted accordingly.
-
I am suddenly stricken with a sense of semiotic ennui. The signifieds matter less, because the signifiers can neither attract my attention nor concern.
Boil your head or not, I actually agree with this -- but really only insofar as I am a reader of AW Actual Play threads. When playing the game itself, a second campaign with similar names tends to produce additional interest, novelty, etc. -- it is not too hard to hold two characters under one name and appreciate the contrast, when you have been relatively invested in both characters, but the same investment doesn't really exist for a random AW thread.
I am curious if it is possible to play enough actual AW campaigns that the same effect would start to manifest in play. Certainly an (entirely subconscious, but obvious in retrospect) effort was made in my second AW campaign to choose relatively non-overlapping NPC names.
-
I don't think there's any logical reason for going one way or the other. The book has a few themes and one theme is scarcity, so it makes sense for there to be zero-sum lists of names, but the book also strives to be extremely customizable. You can make either argument; it's just about your vision for Apocalypse World.
How intensely will you pursue the theme of scarcity? Personally, I think it's cool to limit everything and be a hardass about it. Unless a player is severely put out (and I silently question the validity of this perspective, given that we're supposed to be role playing), I make them choose from the list.
-
I'm going to throw my two cents in here as well:
Every game I've played or run, I've never had the players choose from the list. The first few times we played, we didn't even realise you were "supposed" to choose names off the list, and even when we saw the various opinions being bandied about on story-games and wherever, we still decided to stick with a choose your own name system. Partially this is about ownership - a lot of the game is about asking other people and players their takes on things, their interpretations, where they live, and then for some reason not allowing them to choose their names? That doesn't really fly, with me. The names struck me as being flavour fuel, like the ones on the NPC lists, something to draw on and add to as appropriate.
This really comes down to my own personal taste, which is a real dislike of the names offered themselves. I can't justify a lot of the names with what is said in the book! People name their children whatever they want because they don't have cultural references, but for some reason every Driver is either a Golden Age movie star or a car model. Every Hoarder is named for a shoplifter/rich guy from modernity/fictional dragon*.
Someone once commented in an old story games thread that a Japanese name is inappropriate for an ethnically Japanese character, and I couldn't disagree more. A Japanese name is as valid for an ethnically Japanese character as it is for an ethnically Lebanese character, or an ethnically Argentinian character - if we're assuming a world has zero cultural references, a word is a word is a word, and there's nothing more to it. If a word exists, it can be made into a name for anyone, regardless of background. Isn't like there's a birth certificate with your REAL name on it anywhere.
This is all opinion, of course! Your mileage may vary.
*Come on, Smaug, really? Anyone who has read the Hobbit is going to be the first to die in the apocalypse.
-
People name their children whatever they want because they don't have cultural references, but for some reason every Driver is either a Golden Age movie star or a car model. Every Hoarder is named for a shoplifter/rich guy from modernity/fictional dragon*.
They're a-cultural for characters, but for the players they are heavy with references. Player-wise, it can be a tool for a quick immersive feeling.
-
They're a-cultural for characters, but for the players they are heavy with references. Player-wise, it can be a tool for a quick immersive feeling.
Oh, no doubt, and I don't want anyone to get the impression that I don't appreciate that the names are a good tool for introducing the idea of a world without reference. I just personally would never hold a player to use the names presented, since I would never (and have never) hold to them myself.
-
I think everyone forgets that, like greg said, the names don't just communicate things into the world, to the other PCs and NPCs, but also to the players around the table.
The fact that the gunlugger has a list of dog names communicates very little to the other characters in the world, but it communicates a lot to the other players and most of all, to the player of that character himself.
A character named Steve and a character named Vonk the Sculptor are two very different characters and I defy anyone to play them the same.
That said, I'm sure Baker doesn't claim to have a patent on cool post-apocalyptic names. The playbooks are designed so that someone who has never played the game and has no character concept in mind can make an appropriate character for Apocalypse World. So my rule has always been "If you can come up with a name that everyone thinks is better than one on the list and is setting appropriate, go for it. Otherwise, the list it is."
-
I think I'd be more scared of meeting a gun-toting hardarse named Steve than an identical one named Vonk the Sculptor.
The only thing worse would be a gunlugger named Sue.
-
I think I'd be more scared of meeting a gun-toting hardarse named Steve than an identical one named Vonk the Sculptor.
The only thing worse would be a gunlugger named Sue.
:)
I doubt that.
"Pack up your shit and run for your lives, people. Steve's coming to town!!"
But Sue would be a good name for a Gunlugger. It has cultural implications in the direction we're looking at.
-
You kidding?
Steve walks warily down the street
the brim pulled way down low
Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet
Machine gun ready to go
-
I like to choose names off the list myself, it makes me feel like I'm a part of things bigger than myself. However, when my wife who has been pregnant for nearly ten months agreed to play with us I was not about to tell her that she couldn't choose her own name. I'm not that suicidal.
-
^ Smart man. I wish your wife an easy delivery.
-
Thanks, much appreciated.
-
Because I'm bored and trawling through old posts...
The list of names is nice as a list of suggestions, but that's about it. People do pick their own names (believe it or not), and the books give lists of names that make the implication that there is not, in fact, a scarcity of names (what with the wide variety of kinds of names there are, from cars to movie stars to religious-hierarchy positions to plain old everyday-modern-people names), and being expected to stick to the names for your playbook is kind of silly given that the name you're given doesn't have any realistic bearing on your profession (some of them sound like they would have been acquired after coming into the profession, granted), and yada yada. Example, just because it's so close at hand: My name is supposedly that of a hardholder, yet I'm clearly a brainer or driver (barring the special for the latter, admittedly; my issues are a kind of polar-opposite can of worms).
But, yeah. I just went ahead and named my characters as I pleased (a modified gunlugger, the muscle, named Daryl, and an angel named Vivian, and a one-shot brainer named Allison), and assigned looks as I pleased, and that was that.
-
I like bringing in new names that are in keeping with the names in the book, i.e. the new Battlebabe in our group is named Hazel. She started as an NPC, then one of the players snagged her for a PC. Her name is in perfect keeping with the other Battlebabe names. As an MC, having names that fit type helps me keep things in order in my head.
-
I allowed them to use the names as is, or translate them. Nobody argued - I probably would have allowed something different, had someone made an issue about it.
-
I think I'm seeing a pattern here.
If you don't have a name in mind and need one, the lists are great.
If you already have a name in mind (and it's not, like, completely out of place for the setting), use that.
-
A funny rule that I've played with once was that if you ask your MC "Can I have this name instead?" then no, you have to pick one from the list. However if you just take another name without asking, it's okay.
For me, when I'm MCing, when it comes to the names, I just say, "Yes!"
"Do I have to pick from this list?" - "Yes!"
"Can I change the spelling of one of the names?" - "Yes!"
"Can I make my own name?" - "Yes!"
It's worked quite well... especially when people don't catch on and repeat question #1 when they're looking at their playbooks... *laugh*
-
New player here. We just started to play AW and when we created our characters I was surprised to see how the playbooks names can inspire character concepts.
I had no character in mind and when I looked at the names I was seeing very different characters (for example, I was hesitating between Barbecue, Colonel and Madame for my hardholder).
Same thing for the other players, I noted that their character name choice colored their character.
-
Chroma, excellent!
Gwion, that totally happens to me too.
-
That inspiration element is why I was mildly pushing for choosing from the list (and probably would do so in the future).
I tend to be that way as a rule. I like to go where the system constraints force me.
-
PS: Speaking of "would again," I wanna MC AW for our group when we're done with the current Human Contact (http://glyphpress.com/talk/shockhuman-contact/) game.