A Christmas Adventure for Savage Worlds

Cthulhu Claus image by Jody Lindke

I originally posted this adventure on my Savage Worlds Character a Day blog...a blog with a far too ambitious name.

The adventure takes place in the Savage Worlds Necessary Evil setting and requires either that rulebook or the Super Powers Companion.

Operation Toybreaker -- A Christmas Themed Necessary Evil Savage Tale

Background:

The V'sori have successfully conquered the Earth. Very few are powerful enough to oppose their occupying forces to free humanity. Many of the world's villains have been gathered by Dr. Destruction to resist the occupation and inspire others to join the fight against the alien overlords.

Up until last year, most people had completely lost hope and have become "good citizens" of the V'sori empire. Few noticed that their neighbors were disappearing, while the numbers of drones grew. Few realized that the Earth wasn't merely being conquered, its residents were being "altered." No one was fighting back. It's hard to be inspired by news of Dr. Destruction's recent terrorist assault against the local television network.

That all changed last year on Christmas morning. Children across the world received Christmas presents for the first time since the V'sori invasion. The V'sori had come to expect a few underground Christmas celebrants, but they were not prepared when all the world's children received gifts...gifts that included cards reading "Merry Christmas to All! S. Claus."

As news spread of the magical gift giving -- gift giving that had evaded V'sori surveillance, many of the people of the world began to experience a new emotion. They began to Hope. Here was someone, or potentially someone, who could evade/outsmart the V'sori who hadn't historically been bent on global domination.

The V'sori had to stop this S. Claus at all costs. And so began Operation Toybreaker. If the V'sori could capture this Claus, and transform him into a Super Drone, they could ensure that the toys delivered from here on out contained appropriate "citizen conditioning messages." They could take this figure of hope and transform him into a figure of domination.

Two weeks ago, while battling Omegans at a site where the frozen bodies of WWII heroes had been located, V'sori radar picked up an odd signature -- it appeared to be a flying reindeer. They followed the signature to its final destination and the location of Santa's Village had become revealed. It took the V'sori seven days to overcome Santa's defenses and capture this bastion of hope. It took another five days to convert all of his remaining elves into drones and to reprogram Santa's Toy Soldier Defense Androids. It will take two days for the V'sori to convert Santa into a complicit drone.

The Adventure:

Dr. Destruction has intercepted a broadcast outlining the V'sori's capture of S. Claus and their plans to convert him into a Drone. Dr. Destruction desperately wants to use Omegans to rescue the figure of hope as Santa would make an amazing gun runner for the Omegan underground, but he knows that Omegans are unlikely to rescue this saccharine sweet icon without some deception.

His plan is simple. Convey to an Omegan cell that the V'sori have captured the worlds "Last Figure of Hope" a person capable of supplying the criminal underground with a steady supply of weapons. The person has technology that can evade V'sori communications satellites and can make large simultaneous deliveries.

(At this point, most players will get what's going on, but their villain PCs should remain clueless).

The villains are sent to rescue this individual who is being held in a specially built temporary prison facility on Baffin Island in Nunavut, Canada. Once at the location the PCs will face 2 encounters.

The first encounter is an outdoor battle against the converted remnants of Claus's cohorts. The PCs should face 1 Toy Soldier and 2 Elves per PC.

After the PCs finish this battle, they will wander through what remains of Santa's Village. Don't hold back on the description. There should be dead elves everywhere, as well as dead snowmen, and the carcasses of Santa's Reindeer. Play up the V'sori cruelty. Feel free to have another small skirmish here, or roleplay moments where the PCs find Santa's list only to find out that they were indeed supposed to receive that Atari 2600 for their 10th birthday...or some other humorous moment.

Upon completing the visit to Santa's village the PCs will approach a specially designed prison containing 1 K'tharen Warrior per 2 PCs and 2 Drones per PC, as well as the unconscious body of Claus. Claus's body is encased in a DuraSilicon Container (Toughness 15) where robotic devices are slowly converting him into a Super Drone.

Once the PCs arrive at the prison, they will have 15 rounds to defeat everyone and free Claus before he is converted. Use the Toughness statistics in the initial Jail Break for the Claus prison, but modify the map to contain only one cell.

If the PCs rescue Claus, they save Christmas and have recruited the world's most efficient weapons smuggler to the resistance.

Mind-Controlled Elf

Race: Elf

Agility: d8 Smarts: d6 Spirit: d6

Strength: d6 Vigor: d6 (d12+2 on drugs)

Pace: 8 (d10 to run) Parry: 5

Toughness: 6 (11 on drugs) (2)

Charisma: 0


Skills

Fighting d6 Repair d10 Notice d8 Stealth d8 Shooting d8

Throwing d6


Marksman

+2 to ranged attack if Elf does not move.


Pain-Killers

If the elves have eaten their cookies or egg-nog, they fight fearlessly (+2 vs. fear checks) and feel no pain (+2 to recover from shaken, and can take two wounds instead of one before going down). Because of the unsafe levels of drugs in the cookies, the elves must make vigor checks at -6 when the drugs wear off 1d4 minutes after consuming. They take 6 levels of fatigue (death) on a failed roll.


Gear

Gay Apparel Kevlar Vest (+4 armor vs. bullets, negates 4 AP, covers torso)
Candy Cane-shaped Vibro-Knife Damage: Str+d6 Heavy Weapon, AP 2

Pop-Gun (Disguised .50 Cal Rifle) Range: 30/60/120 Damage: 2d10
RoF: 1, Ammo: 7 (Hero-killer Rounds), AP 2

3 Presents (Disguised Grenades) Range: 5/10/20
Damage: 3d6 Medium Burst Template


Notes: The V’sori have given the elves Christmas Cookies and Egg-Nog laced with vigor-enhancing combat drugs, un-safe levels of pain killers and other mind-altering substances. Since they V’sori don’t care if the elves die, they have put near-lethal dosages into the cookies, and instructed the elves to eat the cookies if they are attacked.

Life-Sized Toy Soldier

Race: Robot

Agility: d4 Smarts: d4 Spirit: d4

Strength: d10 Vigor: d10

Pace: 4 Parry: 5 Toughness: 13 (6, Heavy Armor)

Charisma: 0


Skills

Fighting d6 Notice d4 Shooting d6

Size +2

Toy soldiers are very large, about 7 feet tall.


Construct

These toy soldiers are robots and therefore get +2 to recover from shaken, immune to disease and poison. Arrows, bullets and other piercing attacks do half damage, and they do not suffer from called shots. Constructs do not heal wounds normally, and cannot recover wounds from the Healing skill or power. Repair is used instead. Each Repair roll requires tools and spare parts (-2 modifier without tools, another -2 without spare parts) and 1d6 hours work.


Fearless

As robots, these soldiers are immune to fear effects.


Darkvision

These toy soldiers have infrared sensors that can see in the dark.


Gear

Plasma Rifle (A Toy Soldier’s Fusion Reactor regenerates 1 shot every 2 turns)

Range: 12/24/48 Damage: 3d10 RoF: 1, Ammo: 12, Heavy Weapon, AP 2

Vibro-Bayonet Damage: Str+d10 Heavy Weapon, AP 2


Notes: Made of heavy iron plating, these robot soldiers are super-tough, but very slow-moving. They are powered by large internal fusion reactors, which also power their plasma rifles.

Pinnacle Announces Their Projects for 2015 and Beyond

I'm a huge fan of Pinnacle Entertainment Group's Savage Worlds role playing game. It combines the simplicity of play of early games in the hobby with the customization and player choice of the modern game. It is easy to learn, but has a depth I've yet to tap out. I've run a number of campaigns and am looking forward to getting an East Texas University game running in the next couple of weeks.

This week, at the rpg hobby's largest convention GENCON, Pinnacle gave a presentation discussing their upcoming projects for the year. They are revisiting some of their best settings and are expanding their offerings. One key new offering comes in around the 7 minute 30 second mark that I think presents a good marketing strategy for the company. Pinnacle has released some excellent "genre" sourcebooks over the years, but when it comes to adventure support that has tended to either be "setting" specific or digital only. It now appears that they'll be doing an adventure compilation for each genre with less setting specificity. Their first one deals with...well...maybe you should just watch the video to see all the exciting things they've got planned. Make sure to watch the last minute of the video as well. It's a doozy.

A Savage Worlds Christmas Adventure for Necessary Evil

I originally posted this adventure on my Savage Worlds Character a Day blog...a blog with a far too ambitious name.

THE NIGHT THAT HOPE DIED -- A Christmas Themed Necessary Evil Savage Tale

Background:

The V'sori have successfully conquered the Earth. Very few are powerful enough to oppose their occupying forces to free humanity. Many of the world's villains have been gathered by Dr. Destruction to resist the occupation and inspire others to join the fight against the alien overlords.

Up until last year, most people had completely lost hope and have become "good citizens" of the V'sori empire. Few noticed that their neighbors were disappearing, while the numbers of drones grew. Few realized that the Earth wasn't merely being conquered, its residents were being "altered." No one was fighting back. It's hard to be inspired by news of Dr. Destruction's recent terrorist assault against the local television network.

That all changed last year on Christmas morning. Children across the world received Christmas presents for the first time since the V'sori invasion. The V'sori had come to expect a few underground Christmas celebrants, but they were not prepared when all the world's children received gifts...gifts that included cards reading "Merry Christmas to All! S. Claus."

As news spread of the magical gift giving -- gift giving that had evaded V'sori surveillance, many of the people of the world began to experience a new emotion. They began to Hope. Here was someone, or potentially someone, who could evade/outsmart the V'sori who hadn't historically been bent on global domination.

The V'sori had to stop this S. Claus at all costs. And so began Operation Toybreaker. If the V'sori could capture this Claus, and transform him into a Super Drone, they could ensure that the toys delivered from here on out contained appropriate "citizen conditioning messages." They could take this figure of hope and transform him into a figure of domination.

Two weeks ago, while battling Omegans at a site where the frozen bodies of WWII heroes had been located, V'sori radar picked up an odd signature -- it appeared to be a flying reindeer. They followed the signature to its final destination and the location of Santa's Village had become revealed. It took the V'sori seven days to overcome Santa's defenses and capture this bastion of hope. It took another five days to convert all of his remaining elves into drones and to reprogram Santa's Toy Soldier Defense Androids. It will take two days for the V'sori to convert Santa into a complicit drone.

The Adventure:

Dr. Destruction has intercepted a broadcast outlining the V'sori's capture of S. Claus and their plans to convert him into a Drone. Dr. Destruction desperately wants to use Omegans to rescue the figure of hope as Santa would make an amazing gun runner for the Omegan underground, but he knows that Omegans are unlikely to rescue this saccharine sweet icon without some deception.

His plan is simple. Convey to an Omegan cell that the V'sori have captured the worlds "Last Figure of Hope" a person capable of supplying the criminal underground with a steady supply of weapons. The person has technology that can evade V'sori communications satellites and can make large simultaneous deliveries.

(At this point, most players will get what's going on, but their villain PCs should remain clueless).

The villains are sent to rescue this individual who is being held in a specially built temporary prison facility on Baffin Island in Nunavut, Canada. Once at the location the PCs will face 2 encounters.

The first encounter is an outdoor battle against the converted remnants of Claus's cohorts. The PCs should face 1 Toy Soldier and 2 Elves per PC.

After the PCs finish this battle, they will wander through what remains of Santa's Village. Don't hold back on the description. There should be dead elves everywhere, as well as dead snowmen, and the carcasses of Santa's Reindeer. Play up the V'sori cruelty. Feel free to have another small skirmish here, or roleplay moments where the PCs find Santa's list only to find out that they were indeed supposed to receive that Atari 2600 for their 10th birthday...or some other humorous moment.

Upon completing the visit to Santa's village the PCs will approach a specially designed prison containing 1 K'tharen Warrior per 2 PCs and 2 Drones per PC, as well as the unconscious body of Claus. Claus's body is encased in a DuraSilicon Container (Toughness 15) where robotic devices are slowly converting him into a Super Drone.

Once the PCs arrive at the prison, they will have 15 rounds to defeat everyone and free Claus before he is converted. Use the Toughness statistics in the initial Jail Break for the Claus prison, but modify the map to contain only one cell.

If the PCs rescue Claus, they save Christmas and have recruited the world's most efficient weapons smuggler to the resistance.

Mind-Controlled Elf

Race: Elf

Agility: d8 Smarts: d6 Spirit: d6

Strength: d6 Vigor: d6 (d12+2 on drugs)

Pace: 8 (d10 to run) Parry: 5

Toughness: 6 (11 on drugs) (2)

Charisma: 0


Skills

Fighting d6 Repair d10 Notice d8 Stealth d8 Shooting d8

Throwing d6


Marksman

+2 to ranged attack if Elf does not move.


Pain-Killers

If the elves have eaten their cookies or egg-nog, they fight fearlessly (+2 vs. fear checks) and feel no pain (+2 to recover from shaken, and can take two wounds instead of one before going down). Because of the unsafe levels of drugs in the cookies, the elves must make vigor checks at -6 when the drugs wear off 1d4 minutes after consuming. They take 6 levels of fatigue (death) on a failed roll.


Gear

Gay Apparel Kevlar Vest (+4 armor vs. bullets, negates 4 AP, covers torso)
Candy Cane-shaped Vibro-Knife Damage: Str+d6 Heavy Weapon, AP 2

Pop-Gun (Disguised .50 Cal Rifle) Range: 30/60/120 Damage: 2d10
RoF: 1, Ammo: 7 (Hero-killer Rounds), AP 2

3 Presents (Disguised Grenades) Range: 5/10/20
Damage: 3d6 Medium Burst Template


Notes: The V’sori have given the elves Christmas Cookies and Egg-Nog laced with vigor-enhancing combat drugs, un-safe levels of pain killers and other mind-altering substances. Since they V’sori don’t care if the elves die, they have put near-lethal dosages into the cookies, and instructed the elves to eat the cookies if they are attacked.

Life-Sized Toy Soldier

Race: Robot

Agility: d4 Smarts: d4 Spirit: d4

Strength: d10 Vigor: d10

Pace: 4 Parry: 5 Toughness: 13 (6, Heavy Armor)

Charisma: 0


Skills

Fighting d6 Notice d4 Shooting d6

Size +2

Toy soldiers are very large, about 7 feet tall.


Construct

These toy soldiers are robots and therefore get +2 to recover from shaken, immune to disease and poison. Arrows, bullets and other piercing attacks do half damage, and they do not suffer from called shots. Constructs do not heal wounds normally, and cannot recover wounds from the Healing skill or power. Repair is used instead. Each Repair roll requires tools and spare parts (-2 modifier without tools, another -2 without spare parts) and 1d6 hours work.


Fearless

As robots, these soldiers are immune to fear effects.


Darkvision

These toy soldiers have infrared sensors that can see in the dark.


Gear

Plasma Rifle (A Toy Soldier’s Fusion Reactor regenerates 1 shot every 2 turns)

Range: 12/24/48 Damage: 3d10 RoF: 1, Ammo: 12, Heavy Weapon, AP 2

Vibro-Bayonet Damage: Str+d10 Heavy Weapon, AP 2


Notes: Made of heavy iron plating, these robot soldiers are super-tough, but very slow-moving. They are powered by large internal fusion reactors, which also power their plasma rifles.

Make Mine Savage -- Some Observations on Savage Worlds Probabilities Before Conversions

One of the many concerns that gamers have when playing any game is "will my character be as awesome as I imagine?" In a d20/Pathfinder game where the player wants to become the world's best dual wielding sword fighter, this is a question of optimization within some pretty well known constraints. A lot of work has been put into d20/Pathfinder and 4th Edition D&D to ensure "balance" and regular play and min/maxing gets players familiar with certain guidelines. Every gamer, no matter how RP oriented, has a little power gamer in them. This can especially be the case when the player is adapting their favorite character from fiction into a role playing game character. Have you looked at some of the stats for Conan or Elric in Gods, Demigods, and Heroes and Deities and Demigods? Let's just say that there is some game breaking wish fulfillment going on there.

I have found that this call to power game gets amped up on steroids when players start adapting their favorite super heroes to their favorite super hero system. Sometimes all thought of game balance goes out the window in the attempt to create "accurate" representations of one's favorite hero/heroine. I remember when I first started playing Champions. The first superheroes I converted to the game were the X-men -- Byrne era. It was a great exercise in design. The X-men had a broad array of powers among them and statting them up really taught me the underlying basics of character design in Champions. I built the characters with Sunburst and Crusader as my benchmark characters and had a stack of 200 point X-men (it was 2nd edition Champions). Colossus had a 55 Strength, Nightcrawler had teleportation and martial arts, Wolverine had a 2d6 killing attack (3 1/2d6 with Str added), and so on. When I showed these characters to some new friends, they told me that I had the X-men all wrong. Colossus was severely underpowered, etc.

When I designed the characters, I looked at the baseline world rules in the Champions rule book and the Guide to the Marvel Universe to feed my assumptions. To me it was perfectly clear that the Hulk with his ability to lift 100 tons had a 60 Strength which has a lifting capacity of 100 tons. Colossus < Hulk, thus 55 Strength. My baseline was a far cry from the baseline of the group who were using Grond as proxy for The Hulk and who were playing experienced characters in a campaign that had already suffered a good deal of "power proliferation." How much? People were taking "double armor piercing" as a modifier to overcome villains with "single hardened" defenses. At the time, I adjusted my next character designs and fit within the group's baseline.

As I've played more role playing games, I've come to the conclusion that my first instincts were right. That doesn't mean that I think my X-men were "correct," I'd have to look them over to see if they actually emulated the characters at the time. But it is to say that I think that the players in my group were suffering from a case of "power exaggeration" which led to power proliferation and eventually led to very long and drawn out combats as everyone had defenses too high (both villains and heroes) for the damage being done. No one wanted to get hurt...and so no one did. The group used their power fantasy to set the assumed baseline instead of starting with the game's mechanical baseline. Instead of asking how high a strength do you need to have to punch through a brick wall, they asked how they compared to Grond or Eurostar.

I don't mean to point them out as "playing wrong" because I don't think they were. I do mean to say that had they viewed the baseline as lower, then there would have been more room for character growth horizontally and less power proliferation. I think that the power exaggeration tendency is one of the reasons why many gamers think that game X or game Y cannot properly emulate super heroes or that the game can only do street level heroes and I noticed a bit of this discussion in my recent post on how Savage Worlds has these wonderful switches that GMs can use in game to have the same characters interact at different scales without ever needing to change the stats of the character.

Let me put it another way. How high a Shooting skill do you think Hawkeye needs to have?

1) d12
2) d12 +2
3) d12 +4
4) d12 +8

The power gamer might say d12 + 8 because "Hawkeye Never Misses." This isn't quite true, but it is true most of the time and we all know that Hawkeye can do some ridiculous things with his bow and arrows.

I would ask to start with the system's baseline assumptions. In Savage Worlds, the base difficulty for any skill and for all ranged attacks is 4. In order to get a "raise" on the action (and only 1 raise matters for the purpose of damage), the player must get a total of 8 or higher. With that in mind, we can see that at d12+8 Hawkeye will never miss, but is that really what Hawkeye is? Let's look at his probabilities at the different levels.

d12

What we can see here is that Hawkeye has an 87.50% chance of rolling a 4 or better with a d12 and a 49.77% chance of rolling an 8 and thus getting a raise. This gives Hawkeye a pretty amazing chance to hit his opponent and that he will likely only miss opponents with Superspeed or Deflection or at long range (-2 modifier). If you want to make it so that he hits 98.61% of the time and gets a raise 65.28% of the time then give him d12+2. At +4 he hits all of the time and gets a raise 87.50% of the time. I think a case can be made for any of these power levels depending on whether you are starting Hawkeye at Novice or at Legendary. I don't know that I would ever worry about d12+8, but if everyone in your game has Superspeed at -6 (the max) Deflection you might need that.

Just in case you are wondering what the probabilities for die values other than d12 are, I am providing them below. I think understanding the probability of a skill/attribute achieving a certain target number is one of the keys to creating a balanced Savage Worlds campaign. The game is a little "looser" in the balancing math than other games and requires GMs to be able to "eye" it out more than other systems. Note that all of these graphs are for Wild Card characters and include the possibility of choosing either the main or the wild die. I want to thank Any Dice for making this easy (all rolls assume a choice between exploding d6 and exploding dX with an expode depth of 3).

d10

 

 d8

 d6

 d4

As you can see by the above Wild Card probabilities, even a d4 Wild Card has a 62.50% chance to succeed at a basic difficulty task. The "GMs Best Friend" in Savage Worlds is supposed to be a +/-2 modifier with +/-4 modifier representing a significant advantage or disadvantage like hiding in heavy cover (+4) or shooting at Long range (-4).

All of these a significantly better than the chances of a d4 or d5 "Normal" who has a 25% or 50% chance of rolling a 4 or higher.

When I provide my character conversions and conversion guidelines, I want you to know where I am coming from. I will be coming from a position that a Novice Hawkeye probably has either a d12 or d12 +2 Shooting skill. At d12 he would have an 11% chance of shooting someone at Long Range who was in Complete Darkness. I think that is pretty amazing. At d12+2 this increases to over 30%. Now neither of those comes with a raise, but c'mon...he's shooting someone at 120 yards in total darkness almost 1/3 of the time...without spending a Bennie.

If my conversion guidelines end up seeming a little on the low end to you, please feel free to bump them up.

Colossus -- Savage Worlds Style (A Beginning)

Way back in 2004, I started a blog with the bold title "Savage Worlds Character a Day" with the audacious desire to convert one character from comics, history, or television into the Savage Worlds game system per day. Needless to say, I didn't accomplish the goal. What I did do was to stat up quite a few characters I enjoyed and spark some discussions with friends. I've decided to move those write ups over to this blog in the hopes of both centralizing my "writing" and spurring more discussion.

I do not present these write ups as the only way to represent characters in the SW system, rather I hope to see your ideas and enter into a conversation with you about how you would write up the same characters. These are starting points. Let's chat and come up with a "merged" write up so I can create a page of "finalized" characters. The statistics below were adapted using the original Savage Worlds supers rules as presented in the original Necessary Evil campaign guide. Let's update this using the full Super Powers Companion.

Colossus (A Savaged Version)

Security Level: Novice

Race: Human (Mutant)

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit, D6, Strength d8 (d12+5), Vigor d8 (d12)

Skills: Fighting d10, Guts d6, Intimidate d6, Throwing d8, Knowledge (Art) d4

Charisma: +0, Pace: 6, Parry: 7, Toughness: 6 (10/Heavy Armor)

Hindrances: Mutant (Major as Minor Wanted and Outsider), Heroic (Major), Loyal (Minor), Enemy (minor)

Edges: Arcane Background (Super Powers), Brawny, Power Points

Super Powers:

Living Steel Form: [Super Attribute (8pp) +7 steps Strength and +2 Steps Vigor requires activation; Toughness (4pp) +1 and Heavy Armor requires activation]

Attack Melee (3pp) +2d6 requires activation

Security Level: Seasoned

Race: Human (Mutant)

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit, D6, Strength d10 (d12+7), Vigor d10 (d12+2)

Skills: Fighting d10, Guts d6, Intimidate d6, Throwing d8, Knowledge (Art) d4

Charisma: +0, Pace: 6, Parry: 7, Toughness: 8 (11/Heavy Armor)

Hindrances: Mutant (Major as Minor Wanted and Outsider), Heroic (Major), Loyal (Minor), Enemy (minor)

Edges: Arcane Background (Super Powers), Brawny, Power Points x2 (20 total), Take the Hit

Super Powers:  

Living Steel Form: [Super Attribute (11pp) +8 steps Strength and +3 Steps Vigor requires activation; Toughness (4pp) +1 and Heavy Armor requires activation]

Attack Melee (5pp) +2d6, Knockback, requires activation

Security Level: Veteran

Race: Human (Mutant)

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit, D6, Strength d12 (d12+8), Vigor d12 (d12+2)

Skills: Fighting d10, Guts d6, Intimidate d6, Throwing d8, Knowledge (Art) d4

Charisma: +0, Pace: 6, Parry: 7, Toughness: 8 (11/Heavy Armor)

Hindrances: Mutant (Major as Minor Wanted and Outsider), Heroic (Major), Loyal (Minor), Enemy (minor)

Edges: Arcane Background (Super Powers), Brawny, Power Points x3 (25 total), Take the Hit, Hard to Kill (2pp), Arcane Resistance

Super Powers:

Living Steel Form: [Super Attribute (10pp) +8 steps Strength and +3 Steps Vigor requires activation; Toughness (4pp) +1 and Heavy Armor requires activation]

Attack Melee (9pp) +2d6, Knockback 4 AP, requires activation

Reverb Gamers 2012 #7

How do you pick names for your characters?

I covered this briefly yesterday with the story of Hal Duran, here. For that I just chose two names that I thought sounded cool and made the characters first name and the second their surname. It only turned out to be a cool "in joke" name after the fact. Depending on the genre, the game length era its from I choose different names.

For four color supers its important to have rhyming or sound alike names or aliteration. My supervillain for Necessary Evil is called Darklight. Darklight because he is a lantern weilder in the style of Green Lantern and Sinestro. Where does the rhyming come in? With the civillian Identity of Dr. Marcus "Marc" Wright. For our Gamma World game I made a fiery leader with a temper named Paul Cano which sounds like volcano when you say it fast.

One way I like to name characters is to brainstorm random words, write them out on a sheet of paper and sound them out string them together put different emphasis on syllables and recreate sounds you like with new spellings.

For D&D one-shots I use the random name generator on DDI until I find something that matches my character concept.

Another way I like to name a character is through play. Come up with a title or a nickname and then through play find the characters history by connecting yourself to other NPCs. is there a family in distress who needs the party's help. Take their surname and say that your character is a distant relative arriving in time to save the day. Thus creating backstory on the fly and a name approriate to the setting.