What to name an adventuring party.

[Agrippa]

Let's so you have an adventuing party, a company of ambitious young men and women of a certain degree of morality. They might be good people out to protect the innocent and make the world a better place through grand larceny and scavenging. Or they can be a party of self-serving bastards who use, manipulate, abuse and discard innocent people for their own gain. Maybe they're just mecenaries and smugglers, just looking for the next big haul to survive. In same cases they're well meaning extremists out to change the world for the better by almost any means necessary. They could even by ruthless fanatics, so bent on their own concepts of justice and virture that they end up terrorizing and abusing the very innocents they seek to protect. But there's just one problem. What do you call them? So if you want you can just post a brief description of your party and the good people of these forums can try to name it for you if you can't name them your self.

[rabindranath72]

I have never liked the idea of giving a formal name to parties. It seems however the concept is not new; you might want to have a look at the Forgotten Realms campaign setting stuff (e.g. the Grey Box) where this idea is often used by Ed Greenwood.

[bighara]

The "Anything to avoid a day job" Team!

[petespahn]

I do it. Especially with non player character parties. It helps give them some sort of identity And make them more memorable rather than just a bunch of fighters and a magic user and a thief we fought way back when.

In my Amherth setting and my published LL adventures I have used the following:
The Wilder Company
Kohn's Explorers
The Slayers Brotherhood
The Golden Helm Society
The Crossed Swords Company
The Tomb Raiders Brotherhood
The Brotherhood of Wrath
Brede's Raiders

My players call themselves the Company of Wolves since they travel with a pack of trained wolves. Of course they do not know they are about to be accused of being werewolves.



Pete

[The Venomous Pao]

I've never actually done this "in game" myself. But I did start doing it for some of the Labyrinth Lord Rogues Gallery parties I've been putting together on my blog. Check out the The Legion of Mossy Stone, The Company of the Crow, and The Purple Herbalists. The other parties have names, but they're more identifiers than actual banners under which these freaks raid dungeons

[Black Wyvern]

In Four from Cormyr the parties were required to be part of an official "named" party to get their adventuring charter. We spent a lot more time trying to think up a name we never used that we did creating the characters. However, I do remember it being unique to my gaming experience and the only reason it didn't pop up was because the DM chose not to make it.

[bmonroe]

I've always liked "the Proud Company" myself (PCs). Or a variation thereof.

[Rogahn's Bluff]

"Robilar's Roughnecks;" aka "Scum", "Them," and "Tell a story about gold in a nearby hole and they'll go away!"

[Ruarigh]

I have always thought of adventuring parties as being a bit like the condottieri in medieval Italy, mercenary bands that roam the land looking for jobs to do. As such, a name gives the group a corporate identity and can help possible employers work out if they want your group to do the job, but it also helps the players identify with the group itself and can enhance the role-playing experience. Admittedly, not all of our party names have been particularly sensible (who could forget "The Thrappled Lemmings"?) but we enjoy that side of things. Then again, there is always the possibility of a rival group using your name too and getting you into trouble. That is always fun for the DM.

[Old Guy]

Adventuring groups have been naming themselves for quite some time yet the whole concept still seems foreign to me. Groups I've playing in have never felt the need so it was never done.

But it seems to me that throughout various stories I've read or movies I've watched, groups were always referred to by their leader. Coastal towns were raided by "Blackbeard" or "Morgan". Merchant caravans were ambushed by "Hilton's men". The bank was robbed by the "Jesse James gang".

In that vein, I think I would use similar naming techniques to come up with names for NPC groups, naming the group after the leader.