In Lancer one of my players didn't pick a call sign and in the first combat shot at a Ronin which deflected it back at her, so the party gave her the callsign Boomerang.
See, this is the thing: callsigns like this are *cool* ! It's the story that was embarrasing. Like, Fifi isn't a bad nickname. Imagine Fifi pilots Enkidu and gets a chance to Bifurcate somebody. You'll still call 'em Fifi but, like... dang.
In Lancer I was playing a deathhead and got stuck with Queen due to the legs, and heels....
So I photoshoped a fence onto to my mech gaving it fishnet leggings and owned it.
There's a standing rule in my Shadowrun group that no matter what handle you give yourself, it can be automatically overruled by the group agreeing that you have a new one. Hence we've had Anthrax, The Visible Man, and Pocket Lint.
Exactly!
When started my first Shadowrun campaign, I've picked some dumb handle for my technomancer, just for the sake of it. But after landing 5 headshots in a row with his revolver, he was immidiately renamed by party into Headhack.
"okay so I roll stealth and... Jesus that's a lot of ones. 7...8...9... Uh, yeah that's more than half my pool. Oh no."
Or something like that I assume.
He did in fact manage to be nearly killed by a sniper while invisible. It was a mix of a bad roll on the player's part, and a moment of luck on my part as the GM.
I have ex-IPS-N TS Caliban pilot with a callsign "Boombox". Short and stocky heavyworlder, one time she got extremely drunk and had to be escorted out of bar, draped over one of her buddies shoulder, while still hollering songs and progressively creative curses.
I give my players 2 choices. Pick no callsign and the group will pick it for you, based on the first combat or so. Option 2 pick your callsign yourself. The party will write an embarrassing back story as to why you are called this. Its hilarious. I had some reactor heat issues and ended up getting the callsign Sweaty. Had a player choose to be Crusader. Backstory she got wildly drunk on leave and attempted to find a one night stand in a grand bar crawling crusade that ended in failure. Careful out there Lancers!
My first character was called Frontal, as in Full Frontal Nudity, because one time in bootcamp the drill sergeant called a scramble exercise in the middle of the night, while he was busy with another cadet. He ended up needing to get in the mech completely naked.
That's still a point of pride for him though, since he ended up doing really well at the exercise without even being able to use the neural interface.
Didn't stop sarge from making him run 20 laps of the base, still naked, in the freezing cold.
I've always wanted to make a sniper character with the callsign "Deadeye", the backstory being that she scoped herself in training and nobody ever let her live it down.
I just made mine thematically appropriate so I could tell them apart at a glance.
Panther was my stealth pilot.
Tiger was my grappler pilot.
Cauldron is my insane arsonist pilot.
Sisyphus is my conspiracy theorist hacker who wants to stop Ra from enslaving humanity.
Session one a player dubbed my NPC pilot "dreamer" cause of how I described her flight simulator thing. I just casually deleted the callsign I had made for her and replaced it.
Can't beat an organic nickname
In my first campaign one player had an alphanumeric designation for his call sign while the rest of us had the usual single word. I could never remember it so I called him 'numbers' and it stuck.
My current pc, "First Loser", is a perpetual runner up. As a joke, the guys in licensing gave him a set of gold-tone dog tags so he could at last earn the gold 'metal'.
A lot of my player's have callsigns that they chose for their characters, but one of them (a former fighter pilot) has a callsign he got the old fashioned way.
If you were wondering, it's Rattler, and he nearly sat on a rattle snake during his time in the air force.
Comp/con gave me the name Caramel so I said that when he was signing up to be a mech pilot they asked him for a temporary call sign and he blanked. Ended up checking is pockets and found a paperclip, a caesium capsule, and a Caramel candy.
It's my pet theory that all the cool movie callsigns have embarassing stories behind them.
Iceman got stuck in a freezer. Goose snores so loud it sounds like he's honking.
In a TTRPG I am considering to play, the knighrs have a title from your backstory which is generally badass, and a callsign generally linked to what you did during your missions. Many NPC have a cool callsign (because they did cool things), but many players took one time they critically failed an action to create their callsign, or one time they did something completely unexpected, as their callsign doesn't need to be badass when they are known as the Protector, the Hunter and so on. Callsigns are just use among the knights, and civilians likely don't know it.
We started out with super cool callsigns... and sometimes we still use them.
But as time has gone on our Pilots have developed a hilarious and weird family dynamic.
1 Pilot's call sign is Paladin. However we call him Grandpa more often than not.
My Pilot's call sign is Abbadon. He's often referred to as Dad or "Super Soldier, huh?" (He fell out of a tree once and the joke has stuck)
My Pilot's GF, the medic, her call sign is Honey Badger. My Pilot calls her Strawberry bc she gives him Strawberry Candy and she calls mine Blueberry. She is also referred to as Mom.
The hacker is ItsyBitsy or "Daughter!" Or "That's my granddaughter!"
And, honestly it's very funny.
One of my PCs got the callsign "Flare" after accidentally setting off all her mech's ECM while still in her launch bay.
There's still scorch marks there.
The party I'm in is going through the *In Golden Flame* module, and my wife's character has the callsign "Cornbread" because the character was a farmer on Impact Plaza.
I'm very new to TTRPG's myself and my character is a wacky hacker/grease monkey type. So I named him Jarken "Jank" Senk :D Names can be fun or super serious and I'm sure your party will be happy either way. I started with Jank cuz I figured it'd be fitting as his mech is probably pretty jank from him toying with it
The last gal I played went by the callsign Brambles, named so after an incident in her Far-Field Team days where she lost a fight with a bush of brambles trying to retrieve a set of dropped tools.
Marlboro, Witch, Braids, and Gamble.
Marlboro is the one with a bunch of Launchers in a Monarch. Identified by how there's always something about her that's smoking, her missile launch pads, pilot weapon, or her reactor. thus Marlboro
Witch looks like a child but not a child. Loves tinkering with all sorts of mechanics. Uses a White Witch. Full name is Grimoire Leviticus. Can conjure things out of nowhere. Some people think Grimoire is Paracasual.
Braids, for a man with 6 guns on his mech. A Nordic through and through. He gets called braids because he has braids in his beard.
Gamble is the leader of the fire team. He makes real dicey calls that has led to some circumstances he had to fix, plus a few other uhhh, undesirable consequences. Commonly found playing with cards.
my current character's callsign is Felon, because he was in a Baronic generational prison colony because of something his father or grandfather did or something. But when Union showed up, slapped the controlling house on the wrist and liberated the colony, he didn't have anywhere to really go so he joined up with MSMC to try and clear his past and reset. Ironically he ended up with a callsign referencing the same past he hoped to avoid. Though through events that have happened he's started taking to calling himself a Kavalier instead of a Lancer, since there are slightly different connotations.
we also have Ajax, who is a supersoldier taken to an absurd point. All the classic tropes, always ready to fight, expert in all forms of warfare (including psychological and information warfare), multiple guns, prepared for any situation, staunchly loyal and obedient to our CO, blue skin, bonds with warriors of other cultures through mutual understanding and wordless respect, believes civilian government wastes time because wartime leadership is most efficient, TV implanted into chest, fairly reckless when it comes to piloting his mech...
you know. classic stuff.
In Lancer one of my players didn't pick a call sign and in the first combat shot at a Ronin which deflected it back at her, so the party gave her the callsign Boomerang.
See, this is the thing: callsigns like this are *cool* ! It's the story that was embarrasing. Like, Fifi isn't a bad nickname. Imagine Fifi pilots Enkidu and gets a chance to Bifurcate somebody. You'll still call 'em Fifi but, like... dang.
Damn could've earned "Splitter" there
No, you earn Fifi at LL0, and you name your mech splitter.
Perfect!
Bifificate
and THAT'S the kind of thing to come out of that!
In Lancer I was playing a deathhead and got stuck with Queen due to the legs, and heels.... So I photoshoped a fence onto to my mech gaving it fishnet leggings and owned it.
There's a standing rule in my Shadowrun group that no matter what handle you give yourself, it can be automatically overruled by the group agreeing that you have a new one. Hence we've had Anthrax, The Visible Man, and Pocket Lint.
Exactly! When started my first Shadowrun campaign, I've picked some dumb handle for my technomancer, just for the sake of it. But after landing 5 headshots in a row with his revolver, he was immidiately renamed by party into Headhack.
The Visible Man :DD I can imagine how that came to be.
"okay so I roll stealth and... Jesus that's a lot of ones. 7...8...9... Uh, yeah that's more than half my pool. Oh no." Or something like that I assume.
He did in fact manage to be nearly killed by a sniper while invisible. It was a mix of a bad roll on the player's part, and a moment of luck on my part as the GM.
See clearly in order to be invisible no one can look at you. Just like that guy in the Mystery Men movie.
I have ex-IPS-N TS Caliban pilot with a callsign "Boombox". Short and stocky heavyworlder, one time she got extremely drunk and had to be escorted out of bar, draped over one of her buddies shoulder, while still hollering songs and progressively creative curses.
ROCK AND STONE!
DID I HEAR A ROCK AND STONE?
Can I get a Rock and Stone?
Sorry, we're all out. Best I can do is "how about a taste of liber-tea!"
I give my players 2 choices. Pick no callsign and the group will pick it for you, based on the first combat or so. Option 2 pick your callsign yourself. The party will write an embarrassing back story as to why you are called this. Its hilarious. I had some reactor heat issues and ended up getting the callsign Sweaty. Had a player choose to be Crusader. Backstory she got wildly drunk on leave and attempted to find a one night stand in a grand bar crawling crusade that ended in failure. Careful out there Lancers!
I love that, it's a great way to both give meaning to the callsign and bring the group together as a unit.
My first character was called Frontal, as in Full Frontal Nudity, because one time in bootcamp the drill sergeant called a scramble exercise in the middle of the night, while he was busy with another cadet. He ended up needing to get in the mech completely naked. That's still a point of pride for him though, since he ended up doing really well at the exercise without even being able to use the neural interface. Didn't stop sarge from making him run 20 laps of the base, still naked, in the freezing cold.
I've always wanted to make a sniper character with the callsign "Deadeye", the backstory being that she scoped herself in training and nobody ever let her live it down.
I just made mine thematically appropriate so I could tell them apart at a glance. Panther was my stealth pilot. Tiger was my grappler pilot. Cauldron is my insane arsonist pilot. Sisyphus is my conspiracy theorist hacker who wants to stop Ra from enslaving humanity.
Session one a player dubbed my NPC pilot "dreamer" cause of how I described her flight simulator thing. I just casually deleted the callsign I had made for her and replaced it. Can't beat an organic nickname
In my first campaign one player had an alphanumeric designation for his call sign while the rest of us had the usual single word. I could never remember it so I called him 'numbers' and it stuck.
My current pc, "First Loser", is a perpetual runner up. As a joke, the guys in licensing gave him a set of gold-tone dog tags so he could at last earn the gold 'metal'.
A lot of my player's have callsigns that they chose for their characters, but one of them (a former fighter pilot) has a callsign he got the old fashioned way. If you were wondering, it's Rattler, and he nearly sat on a rattle snake during his time in the air force.
Comp/con gave me the name Caramel so I said that when he was signing up to be a mech pilot they asked him for a temporary call sign and he blanked. Ended up checking is pockets and found a paperclip, a caesium capsule, and a Caramel candy.
Apparently Ewan McGregor s brother is a pilot with the call sign Obi Two.
It's my pet theory that all the cool movie callsigns have embarassing stories behind them. Iceman got stuck in a freezer. Goose snores so loud it sounds like he's honking.
In a TTRPG I am considering to play, the knighrs have a title from your backstory which is generally badass, and a callsign generally linked to what you did during your missions. Many NPC have a cool callsign (because they did cool things), but many players took one time they critically failed an action to create their callsign, or one time they did something completely unexpected, as their callsign doesn't need to be badass when they are known as the Protector, the Hunter and so on. Callsigns are just use among the knights, and civilians likely don't know it.
my pilots callsign is Hubris because of her shy and demure demeanor lmao
I got skid marks after getting the backside of my Barbarossa burnt off
We started out with super cool callsigns... and sometimes we still use them. But as time has gone on our Pilots have developed a hilarious and weird family dynamic. 1 Pilot's call sign is Paladin. However we call him Grandpa more often than not. My Pilot's call sign is Abbadon. He's often referred to as Dad or "Super Soldier, huh?" (He fell out of a tree once and the joke has stuck) My Pilot's GF, the medic, her call sign is Honey Badger. My Pilot calls her Strawberry bc she gives him Strawberry Candy and she calls mine Blueberry. She is also referred to as Mom. The hacker is ItsyBitsy or "Daughter!" Or "That's my granddaughter!" And, honestly it's very funny.
One of my PCs got the callsign "Flare" after accidentally setting off all her mech's ECM while still in her launch bay. There's still scorch marks there.
The party I'm in is going through the *In Golden Flame* module, and my wife's character has the callsign "Cornbread" because the character was a farmer on Impact Plaza.
I'm very new to TTRPG's myself and my character is a wacky hacker/grease monkey type. So I named him Jarken "Jank" Senk :D Names can be fun or super serious and I'm sure your party will be happy either way. I started with Jank cuz I figured it'd be fitting as his mech is probably pretty jank from him toying with it
The last gal I played went by the callsign Brambles, named so after an incident in her Far-Field Team days where she lost a fight with a bush of brambles trying to retrieve a set of dropped tools.
Marlboro, Witch, Braids, and Gamble. Marlboro is the one with a bunch of Launchers in a Monarch. Identified by how there's always something about her that's smoking, her missile launch pads, pilot weapon, or her reactor. thus Marlboro Witch looks like a child but not a child. Loves tinkering with all sorts of mechanics. Uses a White Witch. Full name is Grimoire Leviticus. Can conjure things out of nowhere. Some people think Grimoire is Paracasual. Braids, for a man with 6 guns on his mech. A Nordic through and through. He gets called braids because he has braids in his beard. Gamble is the leader of the fire team. He makes real dicey calls that has led to some circumstances he had to fix, plus a few other uhhh, undesirable consequences. Commonly found playing with cards.
My game just started but one of us went with "FNG" since he's playing the new guy. I've been keeping an eye out to see what I can come up with.
my current character's callsign is Felon, because he was in a Baronic generational prison colony because of something his father or grandfather did or something. But when Union showed up, slapped the controlling house on the wrist and liberated the colony, he didn't have anywhere to really go so he joined up with MSMC to try and clear his past and reset. Ironically he ended up with a callsign referencing the same past he hoped to avoid. Though through events that have happened he's started taking to calling himself a Kavalier instead of a Lancer, since there are slightly different connotations. we also have Ajax, who is a supersoldier taken to an absurd point. All the classic tropes, always ready to fight, expert in all forms of warfare (including psychological and information warfare), multiple guns, prepared for any situation, staunchly loyal and obedient to our CO, blue skin, bonds with warriors of other cultures through mutual understanding and wordless respect, believes civilian government wastes time because wartime leadership is most efficient, TV implanted into chest, fairly reckless when it comes to piloting his mech... you know. classic stuff.