Really the DM ought to toss out names, reacting to the actions of the party, and just see what sticks.
My NPC’s will start recognizing the party by their recent exploits, such as “The Heroes of Phandelver” — or “The Butchers of Phandalin,” as the case may be.
If the players want to “rebrand” the party, that’s just another quest goal. Always attainable, but you can’t murder-hobo your way to being beloved by the countryfolk.
One PC I play is one of “The Orange Cart Heroes” (the DM’s invention) after a minor but very public encounter. That’s fun. It doesn’t matter that our later exploits ought to be more noteworthy.
The meme is right: Asking the players to name their team typically ends up like the end of Mystery Men where every idea is worse than the last. The good idea comes from the journalist talking to them.
I had a DM wanting us to come up with a party name after a dozen or so sessions together. Our first big quest - and a couple reoccurring themes - had to do with escorting NPCs, so we decided to call ourselves “The Escorts”. All the players not only liked it but were actually excited about it. But DM flat out refused to allow it. (Important context, we were all adults between 25 and 40). We never came up with another name, and the campaign started falling apart no long after that.
Our DM had us name ourselves in order to enter a plot relevant tournament. Of course being the gamers we are we immediately settled on a lazy play on the title of the adventure
My strategy was to give the group some notoriety after they had done some stuff in the local region and have the local populous come up with really bad names and descriptions for them. Eventually they came up with their own name that fit them really well. They still have a few in jokes based on the names they were given. It felt fun and collaborative so I’ll probably keep that strategy.
Bunch of people gather around a table. One person is the 'Dungeon Master'. Everyone else are 'Player Characters'. The 'Dungeon Master' makes up a heroic-fantasy scenario ("City under attack by goblin hordes"), and the 'Player Characters' all attempt to resolve it, or frustrate the DM with their antics ("I seduce the goblins"). To determine success or failure of actions, dice are rolled.
From one non-player educated through memes, podcasts, and Baldur’s Gate to another: You and the boys try to collaboratively write a book while one sadist and fate fuck it up.
Building on other replies you’ve gotten, if you’re familiar with games like Skyrim, D&D is a bit like that.
Except instead of a computer programme with hard-coded responses for all the NPCs and hard-coded quests and ways for the player to solve quests, a human being called the Dungeon Master plays all the NPCs and adjudicates all your actions. This is the key to tabletop RPGs, because it means you can truly try anything. You’re free to really think outside the box. Need to get past a guard into a castle? A computer game might give you the option of stealth or kill. In D&D you might seduce him, put on disguises, bribe him, climb up a window and bypass him, or anything else you can think of. Some videogames might give you that many choices some of the time. But TTRPGs like D&D give you all the choices all the time.
Usually you play with 3–5 players plus a DM.
In terms of how it actually plays at the table, instead of the computer determining if your stealth succeeds, how much damage you do, etc., you roll dice and add numbers based on your character abilities.
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