The Title of the Project

What is the name of this comic going to be?

Rag Doll is good, but my concern is that it is too "Firefly" in as much as it is not readily evident that its a sci fi piece (good or bad thing?) and that it may not have enough punch. When I first heard "Serenity", I thought it was a movie for/about old people or recovering alchololics. The title doesn't have to be "Megazords of the 89th Century LASER BATTLE!" but I am sure we can throw ideas around and come up with stuff, or at least options. Dave, if youre set on Rag Doll, then its Rag Doll, but I want to make sure we come up with an entity that you're happy with. Is the ship called the rag doll because it gets tossed around like one?

Idea:
What about continuing the "tradition?" of naming free traders after heroes of myth? (Breaks out Deities and Demigods)

Possibles:
"Free Trader Gilgamesh"
"Free Trader Enkidu"
"Free Trader Cu Chulainn" (too hard for americans to pronounce)
"Free Trader Kullervo"
"Free Trader Vainamoinen" (too Long)
"Free Trader Ilmarinen"
"Free Trader Achilles"
"Free Trader Perseus" (Medusa Livery)
"Free Trader Theseus" (minotaur livery)
"Free Trader Raiko"
"Free Trader Yamamoto" (too much like Space Cruiser Yamato?)
"Free Trader Yoshi-Iye"

This of course is not an exhaustive list of cultural folk heroes, and then we assume that the main ship is a Free Trader, in role.

I am not at all precious about the Ragdoll name (Its only there because it's the name of my cat! & was only a temporary measure that kind of stuck) so I welcome something new, so the heroes & demigods are a good move, I've just been through the Ring cycle & Beowulf characters looking for Scandinavian & Norse saga heroes (a la Beowulf) but nothing grabbed me there, I would maybe be inclined to go down the greek myth route, Perseus, Theseus & Achilles all sound OK to me. There are some good Celtic ones too but we would have to find one that rolls of the tongue better than the one you mentioned. I also really like the idea of matching the livery to the name.

I've long just made up good sounding names for ship classes, Beowulf class being no different. Remember there are a lot of worlds out there each with it's own mythology.

Did you see my reference to the mythology of The Ragdoll in the audition bit? Or did I forget to include it?

Anyway I think it the story was it was a lazy rendition of Ra G'dol from the hero myths of (insert system) the home port of the Captain. I made it up. Works for me but it's your show David

Hmm, that more answered what to call the ship rather than the strip...

Let's see, something like...

"The Travels of The Ragdoll"

"Free Trader Ragdoll"

"Adventures of the Ragdoll"

...I need some sleep

far-trader wrote:Anyway I think it the story was it was a lazy rendition of Ra G'dol from the hero myths of (insert system) the home port of the Captain. I made it up.

Actually I do not mind this as an explanation, but perhaps it should only be known as the Rag Doll to the crew as a term of familiarity but the ships papers etc should be down as the more exotic Ra G'dol spelling.
Having thought about it I have always had a bit of a problem with too many of our relatively recent historical and cultural references continuing to exist in the OTU (maybe used by the Solomani but not by characters from the other side of the imperium) so rather than have the free trader Theseus, Hawking Mandela, Reagan or whatever it might be quite good to invent another system's cultural hero - another bit of back-story.
Oh and the 'tossed around like a ragdoll' is quite right too I envisioned our guys to be slightly out of control, bouncing from crisis to crisis with very little overall plan than just to survive/make enough money etc.

As far as the title of the strip, I do not know, maybe it does not need the name of the ship, 'the adventures of, or the log of etc' may be a bit obvious. It would be good to find a short Traveller related title like "Mayday', 'Spinward' or 'Imperium' but then again it needs to relate to the story somehow. (Sorry tired & and have no idea what I am talking about here )

Well my cold/flu addled brain earlier today was toying with variations of "The Ragdoll Marches" of which that was about the best I came up with. Spin (heh, more torturous puns from my fever) that around a few ways and see if it works. Or maybe inspires some other twists. To bed with me

Maybe with more establishment of main charaters and overall premise we'll be able to get a handle on the title more.

I suggest avoiding the usual Traveller suspects in the main title, as there is a lot of that going to be around with other traveller releases and such, plus it has been done. If we did a split title, The byline is fine for that, but the main title needs punch to get people to click.

Free Trader Ragdoll: Beyond the Spinward Marches

Free Trader Achilles:

Other bylines:

Toward the Frontier
Call of the Core
Search for the Cortex Crown

some Keywords:

Beyond
Infinite
Core
Frontier
Zhodani

Sounds like you got the brain fever, Dan!
Is it a cold or something? I know that half of my work is out with some kind of germ

Baron Saarthuran wrote:Free Trader Achilles: Beyond the Spinward Marches

I like this the kind of set up for a title & I am really getting to prefer Achilles as the ship's name now.
We could change the secondary title per story arc:

Free Trader Achilles: Beyond the Spinward Marches
Free Trader Achilles: Call of the Core
Free Trader Achilles: Search for the Cortex Crown (sound interesting - quite Indiana Jones)

And Dan, get better soon you do not sound at all well.

Thanks David, working on it A week to 10 days, puts me about 24 to 72 hours from recovery

I do feel a little better today, except for the sinus headache.

Yeah Chuck, some kind of super cold. Or mild flu with a cold chaser. General aches, sinus, cough, fever/chills, etc...

Overall generally unpleasant mix of symptoms. Weird thing is nobody I was with got it and I wasn't out much to pick it up in public. It's like it fell outta the blue. And still it is going around here too. Other people have noted the same thing about not knowing where they could have caught it since nobody they know got it and they weren't out much either. Maybe it's some kind of alien experiment...