So a weird little question came up in my game last night.
All the playbooks have a spot for Alias, and there’s a list of suggested aliases on character creation page. So we, at least, ended up with a team who all have aliases and use them. Seems to make sense so far.
Then you read the game, and NO ONE mentioned in the rules anywhere has an alias. So you end up with PCs who think of themselves as Crickets, Quince and Frogman talking to NPCs with “normal” names.
This struck us as weird. Is this “working as intended?”
Also, on a related note – the character creation page no longer tells you to choose a name or an alias. While this may seem obvious, it still seems like it should be a step in the process.
Seems like a gang thing. I wouldn’t expect non-gangers to have aliases. At the same time, how do we know something like Nyryx (or other names on the GM ref sheet) aren’t aliases sometimes?
Adam Minnie
Sure. But there are all kinds of people who seem like they probably should have them? Lyssa? Baszo Baz?
Also you have Flint, the spirit trafficker on the Whisper character sheet, Slate and Loop of the Wraiths gang, Bear and Goldie of the Fog Hounds, Lady Dusk and Sister Thorn from the purveyors list
Mike Pureka Leaders may just be “Boss” or “Captain”, “Sir” etc. like “Boss Baz” in practical use. Or they may earn the metanym of the whole gang: i.e. maybe Lyssa gets to be THE “Crow”, Baszo may be “Baz the Black” Mylera may be “Red” or “Sasha” or “the Sashless”, and maybe a regional commandant of the inspectors is “Commandant” or “Inspector”. Making slight derivatives on the gang name is fun. 🙂
Adam Minnie
Sure. I could make up tons of stuff. But right now, the feel I get is that the quickstart contains a bunch of real names.
“Don’t any of your street rats have real names, Albrecht?”
I understood that reference!
Relatedly, we recently finished a long running PF campaign where the other players never discovered that my character was going by an alias. Aliases and nicknames can be tricky in TRPGs when characters are often known by only one name or a title (i.e. the Alchemist, the Librarian, etc). Often it’s hard enough to keep the NPCs straight when they only have one name.
Jeb Boyt
I’m not really worried about keeping the NPCs straight. My feeling is that if they had aliases, they’d be used largely in place of proper names – at least, as far as the PCs are concerned. And it’s actually often easier to remember “Knuckles” than it is to remember “Vaszi McTimmons”