And you shall know us by the trail of dead...

[Ranting Fool]

I'm trying to think of good names for NPC adventuring groups and guilds and other such world building crap that the PC's may or may not hear about while gathering information.... I keep going back to cool band names

So! What Favorite names keep cropping up in your games O'Great Playground-ers

Let us not forget the famous:
Order of the Stick
Linar Guild.

[Morithias]

The Band that beat up Lucifer is called "The Dracovian Band" since every member was one of them.

The 9 superbeings that protect Prince Lupin are called "Eternea Eight" (The Spy changeling is sort of a not-secret).

The 4 women who serve the Stratos Brothers are called "The Big Four".

The spy network in Eternea (well the biggest one) is called "The Shadowrunners".

The guild that studies the underdark is called the "Brotherhood of people insane enough to do this job".

The Followers of crime Lord Kane are called "The Brotherhood of evil henchmen."

[Andreaz]

The easy ones are those linked to larger organizations, especially churches. Things like Templars of Azatoth, Harbingers from the Ebon Wastes or Arcadian Joybringers.

For those with more flowery tastes you have things like the Many-Faced Barefoot Soldiers, Honored Companions of the End Times, Praetorian Truthriders...

[DoctorGlock]

Ones I have overused in my d20 fantsy games...

[insert nationality here] Wraiths

The Compact

The Gilded Suns

And in d20 modern/shadowrun/whatsits

Tomorrow Security Developements (more of a corporation/NGO with heavy subsidies)

Shadow Ops

Wraiths (again)

[some guy]

I am currently using The Eastern Acquisition Company for a rival npc adventuring party.

The Outriders of Han
The Knights of Rust and Steel
The Subterrean Gentleman's Association
The Dungeoneering Community for Ladies
The Conclave of the Learned
The Innermost Circle of the Knowledgeable
The Havoc Pack
And of course; The Brute Squad

[Averis Vol]

In my game the most common ones are the Warheart company and The Thrice blooded mercenary companies. There's a hidden order who stave of the apocalypse in secret called disciples of the seven fires. There are also some smaller ones like seventh sons of seventh sons and the order of knowledge undying.

EDIT: forgot my own merc company in a friends game: The Warriors of Dawnhall

[Erik Vale]

Warping Legion ((Heroes game, the group is lead by a mass teleporter and often works with a contingent from the mercenary guild))
The Unbound ((Warlock group))
Farstars ((High Range Group))

I'll come up with some for latter, these are just some I have used.

[Sudain]

In Name Only. (Group of Assassins)

[Winterking]

Some that I've thought up for my campaign (though they have only appeared in passing, apart from the last):

The Guild of Virtuous Endeavour
The Three Lucky Ladies
The Emerald Rose Society
Huge Hal Hammerhand and his Hellbreakers
Braxton's Braggarts

The Whitefire Mercenary Company (this one is shaping up to be a semi-serious antagonist of the PCs)

[Sipex]

I'll often reuse NPC names across campaigns, provided nobody in the current campaign knows them yet. Although that's rare and only for certain NPCs.

I have a horrible habit of re-using city and nation names for my games though because it's always a huge pain for me to figure out a new, plausible sounding name that doesn't look like I simply parsed up a word with some apostrophes.

[Vitruviansquid]

Want to make the name of an army sound more early medieval? Just use the word "host!

[Leader's name]'s Host or [Place name] Host

When making other names of organizations, I like to think about how that organization got its name rather than what that name says about the organization.

If you have a band of vicious cutthroats, it's tempting to name them "The Vicious Cutthroats" to signal to your players just what kind of scum they're dealing with, but it's an equally valid approach to simply call them something like "Taerinn's Band" or "The Eaglemont Band" and have the players encounter rumors about their vicious cutthroatry before they actually meet the group.

[HKR]

In the first campaign I played our party operated under the name: "The Evil F@%§ers"

Of course we were not evil at all. We just liked the name. Especially when we introduced ourselves to the local nobles.

[Dusk Eclipse]

The Swift Pirates (can be either normal pirates or even Sky pirates depending on setting).

Black Sun (a magic item smuggling ring)

[Ranting Fool]

Cheers guys, pinching a few for random name list so I don't have to pull a name out of my arse mid session (Harder said then done)

A few random ones of mine.

Brotherhood of the Blade (A mate who doesn't play said I should use this, as they were a real knightly order or something, he's a history buff)

had two NPC's in the PC's group once.

Corkie, An "immortal" bard (Had fast healing vs everything, so he couldn't quite die) who wanted the them to be called Corkie's Legendary Immortals.
Godwin the God's Son, A gnomish Favored soul who is SURE he is the son of a God... just not sure which one. Often chatted away to "Random angels and/or deamons, you never know dad might have a tail" though the PC's could never be sure if he was chatting to them or just mad as a hatter. He wanted the group to be called Godwin's Disciples.

Since the PC's wanted to shine most the fame (and danger or assisans onto the NPC's) they ended up making them agree to "Godwin and Corkie's Legendary Immortal Disciples"

I've been VERY tempted to chuck in a all Ranger Group and make a Power Ranger pun over the years
I'm going to chuck in an NPC adventure group known as "The Red Shirts"

[Techsmart]

The most common name in our group is actually an alcoholic beverage from one of my old campaigns called sneaky fish. It was a strong alcohol with a refreshing minty aftertaste. Also, if you drank it, you had to make a will save to not think you were a fish. I almost had a player kill himself by drinking too much, then trying to stay under water to breathe. He was drunk too, so when the effect wore off, he still had trouble swimming.

The other common name is Ratgrod. He was a half-orc from another campaign of mine who had the best intentions, but constantly got the party in trouble. Theirfirst meeting eith him in a tavern was when he was drunk, hugging up on the party fighter.

[vhfforever]

When playing VtM:Sabbat I almost always try to push for "Murder of Crows" as a pack name. If not that, something wildly out of the blue.

I've used Murder-ocalypse Inc before for a group of D&D PC's, "From Left Field" in Shadowrun, and the last ship in a Star Wars game was nicknamed "Just Don't Say Oops Here"

[Grundy]

An infamous party from our high-school campaigns was the Frolicksome Five, which typically had more than five members, of course:). They weren't heroic by any means, so various characters, and sometimes the whole gang, ended up being recurring villains ever since.
One favorite trick of mine as a DM is to change their names, and a characteristic or two, so that on first encounter the players don't just say "what? It's Cain Siva again? Wasn't he in the last campaign?"

[Seharvepernfan]

The knights of Cydonia (any CG adventuring party)

The (whatever) Seven

[Ranting Fool]

The knights of Cydonia (any CG adventuring party)

The (whatever) Seven

The Incontinent Seven!
The Hopeless Seven!
The Awesome Seven!
The Dwarfish Seven!

[Crazyfailure13]

One group of mine IRL went from "Those crazy fu@%s" who challenged and beat creatures with cr twice their level, to being the god-hunting "Unkillable a$%holes" to their omnipotent planar foes.

[Eurus]

I use "the Tunnel Snakes" in almost everything. A World of Darkness game also had "The Cook County Amateur Investigators Society" for a group of middle-class Sin Eaters.

But my favorite mercenary group was named No Refunds.

[Ranting Fool]

I use "the Tunnel Snakes" in almost everything. A World of Darkness game also had "The Cook County Amateur Investigators Society" for a group of middle-class Sin Eaters.

But my favorite mercenary group was named No Refunds.

hehe

I also like the fallout 3 reference

[NikitaDarkstar]

Personally I like to use generators just to avoid some of the repetition http://www.seventhsanctum.com/ is a good one, does names of organizations and things like that.

Otherwise I tend to end up with overly flowery or cliché names in a heartbeat. :)

I need to use the "The Guild of people insane enough to do this job." sometime though, just for the hell of it.

[Rockphed]

Personally I like to use generators just to avoid some of the repetition http://www.seventhsanctum.com/ is a good one, does names of organizations and things like that.

Otherwise I tend to end up with overly flowery or cliché names in a heartbeat. :)

I need to use the "The Guild of people insane enough to do this job." sometime though, just for the hell of it.

I went there and found a library generator. Behold what popped up when I told it to generate religious books.

The Obscure Facts About the Knowledge God

This book is very easy to understand thanks to careful, well-planned chapters. The book's well-done nature allows one to easily find that it has no useful information. The reader can take some comfort in the fact that the ideas within are very original.

Seventh Sanctum is now bookmarked.

[Anderlith]

Starbound
Risky Venture Enterprises
Trollskull Gaurd
Witches of the Rock
The Circle
Swordborn
Dragon Corps
Iron Legion
Blood Legion
Bone Legion
Blacklight Reserves
Seekers of Fortune
Divedawn
Winged Wolves
Bloodthirsters
Fun Inc.
Goblin Robbers
Level 1 Kobold (This is actually the name of the group)
Tolkien Dwarf, slogan is "There's always on in every party!"
The Horse & Cart
Hextor's Hounds
Hands of Del

[CoffeeIncluded]

I think we ended up naming our group The Asylum Rejects, but I'm not a hundred percent sure about that yet.

[Jay R]

I looked at the first rule of Fight Club and concluded that it violates the first rule.

So my assassin's guild doesn't have a name, because it is their official policy that they do not exist.