Forbidden banished exiles. Especially in MMORPGs, I've found that the most common overall in-setting guild theme is "we don't belong in the society that this setting established." It's not just in MMORPGs, of course. It's often a crutch (or training wheels, if I'm being generous) for some roleplayers to participate by not participating. I'm not saying that a character (or a player for that matter) has to bend the knee to Lord So-And-So, but it's kind of hard to find plot excuses for the the forbidden banished exile to even be in the same picture, let alone get the quest to do the thing.

Plot armor dependents. Yes, it's quite likely that if I'm running the game and telling the story that I won't have the guards kill a player character on sight even if they do something exceptionally stupid just to see what happens, like stabbing a random citizen. Those kind of players don't tend to last long if their only contribution is "try to knock down the props just to see what happens on set."

People that directly lift an established character in well known fiction, often just changing the spelling, and often not even trying to resemble or act like that character. In an older MUD, I recall a "Frrodoh Bhaginz" that was a Half-Ogre hunter. Again, it didn't ruin the game, but it was annoying. I admit it can sometimes be a red flag warning, and a helpful one, if the lifted name is from chud fiction, like if they have "Rahl" in their name. It can show me what to expect, either in a tabletop group or in a MMORPG guild.

  • bigbologna [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Joke names and joke characters. Not just for the obvious, but also: I'm sure it's funny now, but is it going to be funny three sessions from now? Is it going to even be funny after character creation? What happens when someone gets bored with their own joke? I had a player deliberately kill off his own character so he could roll up a new one because it was entirely structured around some one-note joke and he got bored of it. The character didn't even last two full sessions. And yeah, when it's just a stupid name and you stop finding it funny all you have to do is say it's something else, but you might as well have done that from the beginning. It all just ends up being a waste of time

    • spring_rabbit [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      One of my players named his character after a sword in Bleach. He's now been playing the character for over two years so we all just kind of forget about the beginning.