Character Names (selected)

Recently I’ve been casually considering the vast difference between potential character names I create for role-playing games and character names I create for plays.

My rpg character names are extra (largely a byproduct of listening to Friends at the Table) whereas many of my plays’ character names are… the opposite of extra? (I’d like to say they’re Brechtian but it might just be laziness. Ask me five years from now; they’ll know a lot more.)

I don’t think there’s anything incredibly deep here; I just find it interesting and am a bit too busy this week (finishing my newest tabletop role-playing game which will be available this weekend!) to spend much time on the newsletter.

Role-playing character names (selected)

  • Ardent Gentry

  • All Night Long

  • Baby Shark

  • Blue Sidebar

  • Chasing Vermeer (stolen shamelessly from the children’s book Chasing Vermeer, which I have never read but did see while unpacking my father-in-law’s books for his classroom)

  • Idling Penitence

  • In the praising of life, we immolate the torment of nightfall (you can call her Praising)

  • Just Visiting

  • Mackenzie Coping

  • Ring-any-bells Johnston

  • Something Traverse (is the “something” supposed to be a stand-in for a different given name I’ll come up with later? did I really plan on calling a character Something Traverse?? I can’t remember!)

  • Sunny Frost

  • Thany Garre

  • Troubled Always

  • The Universal Affirmative

  • Unsubtle Multiplier

  • Voltaire Wise

Theatre character names (selected)

  • Baker

  • The Body

  • Fanny Pack (a person wearing a fanny pack)

  • Fed-up Woman (she’s fed up, y’all)

  • Figure

  • Friend 1

  • Friend 2

  • Innocent Bystander

  • Lab Coat (a person wearing a lab coat)

  • Partner

  • Sherry

  • Sister

  • Spouse 1

  • Spouse 2

  • That Guy (you know, THAT Guy)

  • Tim

  • Wet Wipes Man

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