A PTA game that went horrible south, but not for the expected reasons...

[Andy Kitkowski]

I declared that I wanted a drama. We batted ideas around, and settled on an exciting Roman epic in the decline of the empire. As the producer, I demanded that one of the three players take on the role of the Antagonist.  We drew cards on it, and one became the self-serving statesman, the others two as local in-and-out rogue types just trying to get by.  We start writing up our characters, contacts...

Then we realized, after building up all this momentum, that none of us knew any Roman names.  We went through the entire cast list of "Gladiator" before we were done with even our contact lists.

Moral of the story: If you go for a historical piece, keep an internet connection handy. :-)

-Andy

[IMAGinES]

Ouch!

So is the concept salvageable, or is your group leaving it for a while and doing something else instead?

[Bill Cook]

This kind of thing happens with my group, too. We give awards for the first person to come up with a name, making a game of it. We often choose names that make fun of our inability to come up with names (e.g. "Tish Gull" = "This Girl") or based on that character's function or the situation they represent (e.g. Dumb Thug). For Roman names, you can take famous names or common endings and create varieties. (e.g. Predicus, Chrisius, Arephanie, Small Dickius, Ameen Bitchione, etc.) I guess you might want to reign it in a bit for serious drama:)

[Andy Kitkowski]

So is the concept salvageable, or is your group leaving it for a while and doing something else instead?

Oh, totally salvagable.  We just had to break for 15, I ran up to the PC, did a quick google hunt, and printed out about 13 pages of Roman names.

The game got on again, and all was well!

-Andy