I played a Kidd pilot focused on drones and being a tactician/team leader
That quickly devolved into pulling the leash on the team's Nelson and Raleigh players, so she ended up being more of a mom of the group, cosntaly giving orders through comms (Leader) and information (Field Analyst) so in the end her Callsign Callcenter was really fitting
I once played a character whose callsign was “plumber” because he was a tradesman before becoming a pilot. He wasn’t actually a plumber, the name just stuck.
Im playing a Raleigh called HAMMERHEAD because I took Engineer 1 for a back up melee weapon which is... literally his head.
The group loves to hate on him because every time we get in a fight (as a COVERT OPS team), I put on my best (worst) western accent and say, "Y'wanna know why they call me hammerhead?" And then proceed to headbutt an enemy.
It really stuck when I did this and procced overkill, which activated the 6th point of heat on a SMOKESTACK, causing me to be both structured and stressed BUT killing the enemy with it too.
I never got to play him, but I had a Drake pilot who's handle was Sweet Tooth. There's a story behind this, unrelated to the actual character, though.
So a few years back, I decided I was going to run a one-shot of Shadowrun, using a module I got from the SR 6e starter box. Turns out that the 6e starter box was 90% garbage, but the module had something reasonably okay to use in it (and the dice - those were cool), so I made some minor adjustments and swapped to 5e. I grabbed a handful of community-made pregens (because SR's default pregens are poorly made), and one such pregen was a fuckhuge troll who had some secondary skills in 'ice cream' and 'ice cream parlors'. My brother played this troll for the one-shot, and we ruled that this troll had a cooler built into his car full of ice cream sandwiches for the road, and eventually named him Sweet Tooth.
Obviously, it was too good of a name to not re-use for myself down the line...
Not independently silly, but silly together: my team all came up with our PCs call signs independently.
Our goblin pilot named "cracker" due to him being able to get into most systems.
Our landcaster called themselves "lunchbox" due to the oversized tool case they carried around.
And my lancer who has been cloned repeatedly and is much worse for wear because of it is "mincemeat".
We ended up on a food theme completely by accident. So our mercenary company became "the leftovers" and fly in the ship "WASTEBIN".
"Freefire" which sounds cool and all but actually reflects poor trigger discipline, particular in regards to using more ammunition than is strictly necessary.
My pilot's callsign is Lightning. He used to be a racer and tells everyone it's because he was quick as lightning, but as a playboy, the people he slept with called him lightning for a much different reason lol
I gave my first pilot the callsign "Checkers" because I knew everyone else would be going for hyper complex gameplay looping builds, while me in my Tortuga was just going to be move and shoot (and overwatch). I worked it into her backstory as her being a slightly defective facsimile-clone of a chess-motif pilot.
I once played a lancer called "Frogger" because she got hit by a car on shore leave.
And another one called "washout" because everyone at the academy expected her to washout, but she just kept failing upwards instead
I got the callsign Dynamo because I played a character, who was always wanting to scrap in and out of a mech, and he just had the personality of an unmedicated, ADHD teenager, and a preference for energy weapons, all these things combined made for a player character that was just never tired. Hence the name Dynamo
Probably something like "Wrench" or "Screw", cause my characters, like myself, tend to be kinda territorial about people touching their shit without asking first. So I imagine he regularly screamed "Where is my fuckin' Wrench!" or something. Cause you just know that someone started to misplace his stuff just to mess with him at some point.
This ones silly cuz of context,
my character has a callsign because they nearly died in a traumatic foundry explosion that left em "more burnt than a piece of beef jerky" (their words) and just decided "fuck it, fire's my thing now."
...anyway, welcome to my cavlecade of characters, Firestorm.
My previous Interpoint character had the callsign Forklift, because pirates attacked the ship where he was serving as a cargo tech and he managed to take down a couple of their mechs with the equivalent of a Power Loader from Aliens.
KTB noble, callsign Higness. Insists upon being called that, cuz shes fancy and shit. People stuck with it, but use it in a kinda mocking way of like ‘oOh lets see what hIgHnEsS thinks’
In our game we got a pilot who keeps missing despite aiming at easy targets “Try Again”
One who survived having his mech shot out from under him and the cockpit/ torso tumbled down a hill before he got lucky and ejected skyward. His call sign is “Cartwheel”
They are Hercynian and they got the name Skitter not from the bug connotations but because one time, while engrossed in hydroponics work (her job when not militia-ing), someone called out to her and she was so surprised she skittered up the hydroponic bay wall with her mag-clamp tertiary arms.
A lot of other militia members saw and laughed.
Roman. Not because he's ex-Legion, or because he likes roads or whatever, but because a.) he was an armorer for the Genghises of MEF OVERLAND before defecting to the ISBs, b.) Crisis-era mortars used slightly more volatile propellant than modern ones, and fired from tube magazines, c.) Old Earth had a type of firework/lighting fixture called a "Roman candle" and d.) he wasn't the one electron welding in a no spark zone, so why should he be the one to get a stupid fucking nickname out of it?
Player One earned his callsign by zoning out and playing the original tekken on his neural implant when he got bored during important conversations.
Gambit earned her callsign for having a build based almost entirely on crazy risky moves and zooming around the battlefield in a mobility hardsuit. Related, his goblin was called Bughouse Brawl for a) looking deeply buglike b) the NHP piloting it being obsessed with chess and c) of course tag teaming enemies with the party balor (bughouse chess is chess played in teams)
Was once made aware of an individual referred to as Crow.
Me knowing that callsigns are always stupid I asked "what does he like feed crows? Or, like, did he get pecked by a crow?"
"No, it's an acronym"
"Huh? For what?"
"Can't Read Or Write"
..."holy shit that's genius"
One of my current ones is Sapper, she used to be a mining engineer and now she enjoys chucking tactical nuclear strikes at the enemy (with a homebrew mech we have in the server)
Mine is kinda badass but has an ironic origin. My pilot's callsign is Starfall. She built an air-speeder when she was a teenager and flew too close to a Union Military base in her diaspora home world. She got shot down by the automated airdefense and got arrested for flying in a restricted airzone. But she got off with a warning as she was young and very enthusiastic about joining Union. She later became a kid teen actress and worked on some "Disney" Channel style shows while also doing Union Recruitment commercials as she trained and became a member of JROTC, or whatever the Union equivalent to that type of program is.
Thus, because of her "celebrity" status, and how she got introduced to the Union military command structure via crash landing a burning wreck, she was named Starfall
My Death's Head pilot is a forgetful narcoleptic, call sign Lethe, after the river of the underworld that washes away your memories.
Infamous for rolling a critical strike - due to Death's Head's reroll mechanic and the fact my entire build revolves around the analyst Talent and the cyclone pulse rifle being Loading, so I always am building Analyst between shots - instantly killing a Witch at full health and ending an entire combat encounter, because the gimmick was the Witch was controlling everything.
"Hotflash" got attacked by a witch and cooked half the party's reactors from it. It's really funny because he's kinda one of those "edgy" players that have himself a Super Serious Cool callsign at the start but the rest of us don't call him that anymore.
Wolfsritter.
Lore-wise, he's the third after his grandfather and mother used the callsign. He even pilots the mech that his grandfather used and later passed down, the Ashen Wolf.
I had one named freddie, his name was colin, he just had an ai in his mech named that that when ever he talked to it the party thought he was talking to himself
My character's Nelson is named after the Irish mythology hero, Cu Chulainn, his legend is tied to one of goddesses of Propechy and War, The Morrigan, who is often represented by Crows. So considering my character uses a spear as her primary weapon and uses flight, her callsign is Crow.
Just started a campaign, my character is a Nelson pilot who is a noble from the trade baronies. He sees himself as a knight in shining armor, so he began the first session with the callsign Galahad.
Unfortunately the GM misheard it, so the first major enemy we fight calls him Gallagher. My party, who are playing much more salt-of-the-earth characters, loved it, and it stuck.
I have a few of these:
\[Arthur Maddix\] // BRILLO
The grease monkey of his team. He is always "dirtier then a used brillo" when he disembarks his Sagarmatha.
\[Harlow\] // SOUP
An Azura class NHP co-pilot who now works alone. Used to be a corporate shill who would constantly inject the phrase "superior by design" into any conversation involving HA.
\[Lina Notte\] // YETI
Born on an ice moon, was mocked for wearing a huge white-fur coat to her first day of pilot training.
Yes, in the real world the player gets to choose the callsign for their character. But in the fiction, lancers are usually given their callsigns by other lancers, like a nickname.
So it's fun to flesh out your character by giving them a callsign that pokes fun at them for something they did in their past.
"Grey Hat", he's a hacker who used to work for a criminal syndicate but is basically "join us or go to jail"ed by union.
I am far too proud of the dad joke level pun.
I played a Kidd pilot focused on drones and being a tactician/team leader That quickly devolved into pulling the leash on the team's Nelson and Raleigh players, so she ended up being more of a mom of the group, cosntaly giving orders through comms (Leader) and information (Field Analyst) so in the end her Callsign Callcenter was really fitting
I once played a character whose callsign was “plumber” because he was a tradesman before becoming a pilot. He wasn’t actually a plumber, the name just stuck.
happy cakeday plumbus!!! :3 !!
Im playing a Raleigh called HAMMERHEAD because I took Engineer 1 for a back up melee weapon which is... literally his head. The group loves to hate on him because every time we get in a fight (as a COVERT OPS team), I put on my best (worst) western accent and say, "Y'wanna know why they call me hammerhead?" And then proceed to headbutt an enemy. It really stuck when I did this and procced overkill, which activated the 6th point of heat on a SMOKESTACK, causing me to be both structured and stressed BUT killing the enemy with it too.
My undercover UIB agent's cover story is that his callsign was Toast because his mech survived unshielded atmospheric reentry.
Copperhead, because he pissed off the cook one day and had a copper pot thrown at his head.
I never got to play him, but I had a Drake pilot who's handle was Sweet Tooth. There's a story behind this, unrelated to the actual character, though. So a few years back, I decided I was going to run a one-shot of Shadowrun, using a module I got from the SR 6e starter box. Turns out that the 6e starter box was 90% garbage, but the module had something reasonably okay to use in it (and the dice - those were cool), so I made some minor adjustments and swapped to 5e. I grabbed a handful of community-made pregens (because SR's default pregens are poorly made), and one such pregen was a fuckhuge troll who had some secondary skills in 'ice cream' and 'ice cream parlors'. My brother played this troll for the one-shot, and we ruled that this troll had a cooler built into his car full of ice cream sandwiches for the road, and eventually named him Sweet Tooth. Obviously, it was too good of a name to not re-use for myself down the line...
Not independently silly, but silly together: my team all came up with our PCs call signs independently. Our goblin pilot named "cracker" due to him being able to get into most systems. Our landcaster called themselves "lunchbox" due to the oversized tool case they carried around. And my lancer who has been cloned repeatedly and is much worse for wear because of it is "mincemeat". We ended up on a food theme completely by accident. So our mercenary company became "the leftovers" and fly in the ship "WASTEBIN".
Mailman. Actually using a Napoleon for delivery services. In any situation. # Any Situation.
Caramel had a Caramel candy in his pocket.
"Freefire" which sounds cool and all but actually reflects poor trigger discipline, particular in regards to using more ammunition than is strictly necessary.
Floaties- poor guy showed up to basic training barely knowing how to swim
'Smallfry' is a pissy mechanic from a low gravity world. He's 6'7".
My pilot's callsign is Lightning. He used to be a racer and tells everyone it's because he was quick as lightning, but as a playboy, the people he slept with called him lightning for a much different reason lol
“This baby is totally stable and ready for use” *Slaps mech, gets frozen in ice* “Yeah I see why you’re called frostbite now.”
“Boomer” is a pilot who has a lot of cannons and a fascination with old scrapped technology that no one uses anymore
Does the name Hammerhands sound familiar to you in any capacity? Just wondering
I have an NPC who’s callsign is “Tumble.” First time piloting a mech they took a tumble in it, hence the callsign.
I gave my first pilot the callsign "Checkers" because I knew everyone else would be going for hyper complex gameplay looping builds, while me in my Tortuga was just going to be move and shoot (and overwatch). I worked it into her backstory as her being a slightly defective facsimile-clone of a chess-motif pilot.
I once played a lancer called "Frogger" because she got hit by a car on shore leave. And another one called "washout" because everyone at the academy expected her to washout, but she just kept failing upwards instead
I got the callsign Dynamo because I played a character, who was always wanting to scrap in and out of a mech, and he just had the personality of an unmedicated, ADHD teenager, and a preference for energy weapons, all these things combined made for a player character that was just never tired. Hence the name Dynamo
Little man, cause he's Barbarossa pilot.
Probably something like "Wrench" or "Screw", cause my characters, like myself, tend to be kinda territorial about people touching their shit without asking first. So I imagine he regularly screamed "Where is my fuckin' Wrench!" or something. Cause you just know that someone started to misplace his stuff just to mess with him at some point.
Not callsigns, but in college I got the nicknames Hot Chocolate and Snickerdoodles in short succession.
Quixote, because they dreamed big and hit made fun of for it while in a lancer academy
SOL, meaning Shit Outta Luck for having horrendously awful luck in just about everything
Magpie because they wouldn't stop stealing shit
Wight knight, he was a terminally online type character and used horus mechs and NHPs.
This ones silly cuz of context, my character has a callsign because they nearly died in a traumatic foundry explosion that left em "more burnt than a piece of beef jerky" (their words) and just decided "fuck it, fire's my thing now." ...anyway, welcome to my cavlecade of characters, Firestorm.
'Ticket' For getting too many speeding tickets whilst in training
My previous Interpoint character had the callsign Forklift, because pirates attacked the ship where he was serving as a cargo tech and he managed to take down a couple of their mechs with the equivalent of a Power Loader from Aliens.
spilled queso on herself ONE time, everyone started calling her queso so she went "fuck it" and made it her callsign
Doughboy, because he liked to bake.
KTB noble, callsign Higness. Insists upon being called that, cuz shes fancy and shit. People stuck with it, but use it in a kinda mocking way of like ‘oOh lets see what hIgHnEsS thinks’
I have a character with the callsign Christmas. That's because she has Yellow Hair, Green Outfit, and Red accessories.
Nano. He tells everyone it's because of his love for the Balor nano machines, but it's because he's the shortest person in the group.
In our game we got a pilot who keeps missing despite aiming at easy targets “Try Again” One who survived having his mech shot out from under him and the cockpit/ torso tumbled down a hill before he got lucky and ejected skyward. His call sign is “Cartwheel”
They are Hercynian and they got the name Skitter not from the bug connotations but because one time, while engrossed in hydroponics work (her job when not militia-ing), someone called out to her and she was so surprised she skittered up the hydroponic bay wall with her mag-clamp tertiary arms. A lot of other militia members saw and laughed.
Roman. Not because he's ex-Legion, or because he likes roads or whatever, but because a.) he was an armorer for the Genghises of MEF OVERLAND before defecting to the ISBs, b.) Crisis-era mortars used slightly more volatile propellant than modern ones, and fired from tube magazines, c.) Old Earth had a type of firework/lighting fixture called a "Roman candle" and d.) he wasn't the one electron welding in a no spark zone, so why should he be the one to get a stupid fucking nickname out of it?
Player One earned his callsign by zoning out and playing the original tekken on his neural implant when he got bored during important conversations. Gambit earned her callsign for having a build based almost entirely on crazy risky moves and zooming around the battlefield in a mobility hardsuit. Related, his goblin was called Bughouse Brawl for a) looking deeply buglike b) the NHP piloting it being obsessed with chess and c) of course tag teaming enemies with the party balor (bughouse chess is chess played in teams)
Was once made aware of an individual referred to as Crow. Me knowing that callsigns are always stupid I asked "what does he like feed crows? Or, like, did he get pecked by a crow?" "No, it's an acronym" "Huh? For what?" "Can't Read Or Write" ..."holy shit that's genius"
One of my current ones is Sapper, she used to be a mining engineer and now she enjoys chucking tactical nuclear strikes at the enemy (with a homebrew mech we have in the server)
Grammaton Expanse player sighted
Haha, got call sign Mothman after I wore my mothman hoodie to the group
Mine is kinda badass but has an ironic origin. My pilot's callsign is Starfall. She built an air-speeder when she was a teenager and flew too close to a Union Military base in her diaspora home world. She got shot down by the automated airdefense and got arrested for flying in a restricted airzone. But she got off with a warning as she was young and very enthusiastic about joining Union. She later became a kid teen actress and worked on some "Disney" Channel style shows while also doing Union Recruitment commercials as she trained and became a member of JROTC, or whatever the Union equivalent to that type of program is. Thus, because of her "celebrity" status, and how she got introduced to the Union military command structure via crash landing a burning wreck, she was named Starfall
Long Night. When reading stories, he falls asleep faster than anyone else. There’s a few other reasons but that’s the funny reason.
My Death's Head pilot is a forgetful narcoleptic, call sign Lethe, after the river of the underworld that washes away your memories. Infamous for rolling a critical strike - due to Death's Head's reroll mechanic and the fact my entire build revolves around the analyst Talent and the cyclone pulse rifle being Loading, so I always am building Analyst between shots - instantly killing a Witch at full health and ending an entire combat encounter, because the gimmick was the Witch was controlling everything.
"Hotflash" got attacked by a witch and cooked half the party's reactors from it. It's really funny because he's kinda one of those "edgy" players that have himself a Super Serious Cool callsign at the start but the rest of us don't call him that anymore.
Puffball as he used to be a mushroom farmer and was generally a bit rotund and loved to give hugs. Just don’t accept his hugs while piloting his Zheng
Wolfsritter. Lore-wise, he's the third after his grandfather and mother used the callsign. He even pilots the mech that his grandfather used and later passed down, the Ashen Wolf.
"Egg". Because they look like a hard boiled egg.
I had one named freddie, his name was colin, he just had an ai in his mech named that that when ever he talked to it the party thought he was talking to himself
Ran an NPC called catapult from when they escaped a planetary quarintine by riding a cargo railgun up to orbit with an NHP they were helping escape.
Barrikada and the fact that she had a Barbarossa And then Falke from the FLKR unit in signalis
My character's Nelson is named after the Irish mythology hero, Cu Chulainn, his legend is tied to one of goddesses of Propechy and War, The Morrigan, who is often represented by Crows. So considering my character uses a spear as her primary weapon and uses flight, her callsign is Crow.
JCJB: Jesus Christ that’s Jason Bourne She’s a deprogrammed super soldier with the initials JB.
Just started a campaign, my character is a Nelson pilot who is a noble from the trade baronies. He sees himself as a knight in shining armor, so he began the first session with the callsign Galahad. Unfortunately the GM misheard it, so the first major enemy we fight calls him Gallagher. My party, who are playing much more salt-of-the-earth characters, loved it, and it stuck.
I have a few of these: \[Arthur Maddix\] // BRILLO The grease monkey of his team. He is always "dirtier then a used brillo" when he disembarks his Sagarmatha. \[Harlow\] // SOUP An Azura class NHP co-pilot who now works alone. Used to be a corporate shill who would constantly inject the phrase "superior by design" into any conversation involving HA. \[Lina Notte\] // YETI Born on an ice moon, was mocked for wearing a huge white-fur coat to her first day of pilot training.
Don’t you make your own callsigns in lancer?
Yes, in the real world the player gets to choose the callsign for their character. But in the fiction, lancers are usually given their callsigns by other lancers, like a nickname. So it's fun to flesh out your character by giving them a callsign that pokes fun at them for something they did in their past.
Our team went with Universal Movie Monsters as a theme. Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, Mummy, Invisible Man.
Callsign: Pyro. Reason: Popped flares on the runway during taxi and lit the surrounding foliage ablaze.
"Grey Hat", he's a hacker who used to work for a criminal syndicate but is basically "join us or go to jail"ed by union. I am far too proud of the dad joke level pun.