Quote from: Grognard;406395Walking around and slaughtering monsters only takes so much effort. Being funny while doing so takes some effort (think one liners here and there). But actually being funny most of the time? Even professional comic writers can't manage that all the time.

This can't be stressed enough.

Stand-up comedians take months, even years, to get their 1 hour routines down.  And even then, there's always some parts that don't go over well with some crowds.

TV shows use entire teams of writers that spend days or even weeks to come up with enough jokes to fill a single half hour show (which is only 22 mins or so after you take out commercials).  And again, half of those are lacking.

Conventional wisdom says a comedy film should be 90 min or less (Judd Apatow clearly disagrees, but is in the minority and the length of his comedies is a frequent complaint).  Again, teams of people writing for months to get that right.

So yeah, a group of non-profressionals trying to come up with new material (that everyone in the group likes no less) for 3+ hours at a time week after week just isn't very realistic.  And as others have pointed out, humor is best in small doses (there's a reason comedies are short).


Then you have the issue of what the heck do you do in a comedy game.  Do you really want to role-play out new episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond or whatever?  

Obviously the best way is to go with more action-comedy (like Ghostbusters) or the RPG meta-comedy (like Paranoia).  Maybe someone could do a Police Academy RPG?  That'd give PCs something to do while adding absurd comedy (though I can't help but think that the comedy idea is pretty limited; it wouldn't take long before you ended up with sessions worse than "Mission to Moscow").

In the humor-driven games I've run, I think it really boils down to expectations. If people expect humor to be part of the game, and the people at the table have a good sense of humor, there will be comedy. If people are laughing, then in my view it is a success.

Where I think the GM can play an important role is the set up. If you take the situation comedy model and apply that to the adventure, that is one approach. I've met with some success with it. I think the thing to do is still have the characters be serious people with serious tasks to perform, but to introduce sharp complications and utilize NPCs with somewhat exagerated goals, motives or personalities. The contrast of coping with mundane tasks while performing uber important ones is also something you can have fun with.

I guess it comes down to what you think is funny though. If you don't like the Holy Grail, that kind of wacky comedy probably won't work for you. If you don't Seinfeld, observational humor may be the wrong approach.

Quote from: jgants;406497This can't be stressed enough.

Stand-up comedians take months, even years, to get their 1 hour routines down.  And even then, there's always some parts that don't go over well with some crowds.

TV shows use entire teams of writers that spend days or even weeks to come up with enough jokes to fill a single half hour show (which is only 22 mins or so after you take out commercials).  And again, half of those are lacking.

Conventional wisdom says a comedy film should be 90 min or less (Judd Apatow clearly disagrees, but is in the minority and the length of his comedies is a frequent complaint).  Again, teams of people writing for months to get that right.

So yeah, a group of non-profressionals trying to come up with new material (that everyone in the group likes no less) for 3+ hours at a time week after week just isn't very realistic.  And as others have pointed out, humor is best in small doses (there's a reason comedies are short).


Then you have the issue of what the heck do you do in a comedy game.  Do you really want to role-play out new episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond or whatever?  

Obviously the best way is to go with more action-comedy (like Ghostbusters) or the RPG meta-comedy (like Paranoia).  Maybe someone could do a Police Academy RPG?  That'd give PCs something to do while adding absurd comedy (though I can't help but think that the comedy idea is pretty limited; it wouldn't take long before you ended up with sessions worse than "Mission to Moscow").

The thing to keep in mind is you aren't trying to make a blockbuster comedy. You are trying to entertain friends. I don't know about you, but when I hang out with my friends, jokes and laughter just keep coming. Is it stand up material? Probably not. But we are still genuinely amused with ourselves.

The same goes for an RPG.

I once ran a Masque of the Red Death session as a sitcom. The players still had very important things to investigate, but they were sidetracked an entire night trying to hide their uncles embarrassing supernatural condition from dinner guests at their estate. We many several campaigns like this, and it never became tired. Just like we ran several straight horror campaigns, and never felt the mood wane much. But we weren't fretting over it either. If it wasn't funny, or it wasn't scary, no big deal.

It seems like people are setting different standards.  Yes, writing comedy for millions of people on a weekly basis is hard.  However, in my experience, it is not hard at all to hang out with your buddies and generate a bunch of laughs over an evening.  Not every moment will be side-splitting laughter - but then, not every moment of an action campaign will be a pulse-pounding adrenaline rush.  

Hanging out and having some laughs over dice and snacks and beer is an achievable goal, even over a long-term campaign.  I had a Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG campaign that went for 3 years, and every episode had some sort of comic schtick - from the supernatural coffee house chain, to body-switching antics, and so forth.  No, it wasn't jokes every minute - but most comedy films aren't jokes every minute either.

It's hard for me to have a game that isn't comedy. The more hilarity I want, the darker I pull off the shelf. Kult is one of the funniest things I've ever run. But that's my guys. They're all pretty hilarious, and they love to crack me up.

Having a hilarious session and designing a comedy thing are two different things, because rpgs are not a writing form conducive to humor. There are many games that inspire humor, of course, but rpgs are by nature all setup and no punch line.

Narrative is driven by tension and release. The GM can build tension--in a scary game, a funny game, a suspense game, whatever--but it's up the players to release it. How and when they do that determines how funny the game is.

Most GMs that try to be funny are usually just annoying, gonzo, intrusive, and stupid. It is really, really, rare to find a good GM for a comedy game just like it's rare to find someone funny at an open mic night.

That said, I used to have one GM who was funny as hell and was able to rub it off on the rest of us. We played the ever living shit out of Teenagers from Outer Space and it was a blast.

It is just really rare. I'm funny sometimes when I run. With the right group, I can even run horror and people FEEL scared, but I've never tried comedy. You got to be on a high level to pull that off.

The trick to running a comedy session is to be serious. The humor does not from the concept, but the execution.

Let's say you are running, say, Ghostbusters. Think back to the original Ghostbusters movie. The actual plot of the film is rather serious. New York experiences a spike in paranormal activity due to a building that was designed to attract and concentrate occult energy. A team of ghost hunters must stop a ritual at this building that will summon an ancient god who will destroy the world.
That could easily be a serious horror film. The humor comes from the characters. Even the biggest silly element, the marshmallow man, came from the head of one of the characters.
Basically, come up with a serious story, then don't step on the silliness when it occurs naturally.

Quote from: BillionSix;406590The trick to running a comedy session is to be serious. The humor does not from the concept, but the execution.

Let's say you are running, say, Ghostbusters. Think back to the original Ghostbusters movie. The actual plot of the film is rather serious. New York experiences a spike in paranormal activity due to a building that was designed to attract and concentrate occult energy. A team of ghost hunters must stop a ritual at this building that will summon an ancient god who will destroy the world.
That could easily be a serious horror film. The humor comes from the characters. Even the biggest silly element, the marshmallow man, came from the head of one of the characters.
Basically, come up with a serious story, then don't step on the silliness when it occurs naturally.

That is a million dollar post.

Quote from: Cranewings;406592That is a million dollar post.

*takes a small bow*

Quote from: BillionSix;406590The trick to running a comedy session is to be serious. The humor does not from the concept, but the execution.

Let's say you are running, say, Ghostbusters. Think back to the original Ghostbusters movie. The actual plot of the film is rather serious. New York experiences a spike in paranormal activity due to a building that was designed to attract and concentrate occult energy. A team of ghost hunters must stop a ritual at this building that will summon an ancient god who will destroy the world.
That could easily be a serious horror film. The humor comes from the characters. Even the biggest silly element, the marshmallow man, came from the head of one of the characters.
Basically, come up with a serious story, then don't step on the silliness when it occurs naturally.

I think this is a great point and it also addresses some of what Cranewings said about funny GMs being intrusive. I think where you can run into trouble is if you (as the GM) try to be funny. The humor comes from the player characters. As the GM, at least when I am trying to run a funny game, I see it as my job to help set things up for them. But I don't need to deliver the punchlines.

And again, it does come down to expectations. If a few good laughs and a good time with your friends is the aim, it won't be that hard to achieve.

Quote from: BillionSix;406590The trick to running a comedy session is to be serious. The humor does not from the concept, but the execution.

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Basically, come up with a serious story, then don't step on the silliness when it occurs naturally.

Very true, very good advice. I think that another point to remember is that in comedy, the characters are often overly serious. You will tend to get funny situations arising of their own if the NPCs have really strong motivations and are very stubborn about them, even if it's against their own best interest. Some of the main motivations of traditional comedy are hunger, greed, lust, and avoiding work. I think that you also tend to get funnier games if the stakes are pretty high - deadly games, and challenging games seem to generate humor more often even if it's just a tension breaker. This is why horror games have a reputation for turning out hilariously.

People often cite Paranoia as one of the few explicitly comedic RPGs that actually works - it's not the puns and in-jokes that cause much of the humor. A Paranoia adventure tends to include three factors : A) The mission is ostensibly serious - fix something broken that jeopardizes a lot of lives, investigate a serious threat, explore a perilous unknown area. B) Everyone you encounter is gravely serious, and inflexible beyond reason. C) The game is very deadly and any situation is a potentially lit powder keg - Your boss and your secret society are both putting your ass on the line for conflicting goals that have mortal consequences for failure for at least you, if not the whole party, if not the whole complex. Discworld is sort of this way too : the GURPS Discworld book points out that it's good to keep mortality quasi-realistic to keep the stakes where you want them.

Remember the classis TRAVELLER adventure Expedition to Zhodane ?

When I first read through I burst out laughing because somehow I imagined the adventuring group going through as the Bowery Boys of the 1940s and then I pictured Laural & Hardy in the same adventure, then Abbot & Costello.

Imagine the dialogue when they find the little girl in cryo/low berth and decide to help here.  


- Ed C.

Quote from: Cole;406929People often cite Paranoia as one of the few explicitly comedic RPGs that actually works - it's not the puns and in-jokes that cause much of the humor. A Paranoia adventure tends to include three factors : A) The mission is ostensibly serious - fix something broken that jeopardizes a lot of lives, investigate a serious threat, explore a perilous unknown area. B) Everyone you encounter is gravely serious, and inflexible beyond reason. C) The game is very deadly and any situation is a potentially lit powder keg - Your boss and your secret society are both putting your ass on the line for conflicting goals that have mortal consequences for failure for at least you, if not the whole party, if not the whole complex. Discworld is sort of this way too : the GURPS Discworld book points out that it's good to keep mortality quasi-realistic to keep the stakes where you want them.

Yes, there are tons of serious, straight-man characters in Paranoia - and there are deadly consequences to adventures.  However, I don't think that all good Paranoia adventures come from "come up with a serious story and let silliness occur naturally."  One of my favorite Paranoia adventures, for example, is where there is a giant intelligent battle robot - an invincible war machine - and the PCs are assigned to guard it with their puny laser pistols.  The *NPCs* may be serious when they assign this, and the consequences of failure are deadly - but the basic concept is silly from our perspective.  

It can be great to have a serious concept and just let silliness happen naturally.  However, that isn't the only way for a humorous game to work.  As GM, you shouldn't try to generate all the humorous stuff yourself (like a stand-up routine) -- but it's fine to introduce some humorous concepts/schticks/whatever.

Quote from: jhkim;406948Yes, there are tons of serious, straight-man characters in Paranoia - and there are deadly consequences to adventures.  However, I don't think that all good Paranoia adventures come from "come up with a serious story and let silliness occur naturally."  One of my favorite Paranoia adventures, for example, is where there is a giant intelligent battle robot - an invincible war machine - and the PCs are assigned to guard it with their puny laser pistols.  The *NPCs* may be serious when they assign this, and the consequences of failure are deadly - but the basic concept is silly from our perspective.  
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You're right - but the operative phrase is "from our perspective." Your basic scenario in this adventure (I've run this one, actually) is "the heroes, under-equipped and frightened, must protect this crucial military resource in a time of crisis." The humor, I think, comes more from the exaggeration, the overseriousness, etc. that from the silly elements like the communists on skates, etc. Remember how the invincible war machine has a crisis of confidence after part of it breaks? I think the scenario's going to be funnier if the GM play's the faltering war machine as if it were some kind of defense of helm's deep scenario as opposed to "silly" crocodile tears. There are TONS of goofy elements in Paranoia - but the NPCs are all too pig-ignorant to realize they're goofy.

Quote from: Cole;406953You're right - but the operative phrase is "from our perspective." Your basic scenario in this adventure (I've run this one, actually) is "the heroes, under-equipped and frightened, must protect this crucial military resource in a time of crisis." The humor, I think, comes more from the exaggeration, the overseriousness, etc. that from the silly elements like the communists on skates, etc. Remember how the invincible war machine has a crisis of confidence after part of it breaks? I think the scenario's going to be funnier if the GM play's the faltering war machine as if it were some kind of defense of helm's deep scenario as opposed to "silly" crocodile tears. There are TONS of goofy elements in Paranoia - but the NPCs are all too pig-ignorant to realize they're goofy.

I think we're mostly agreed here.  Comedy definitely needs straight men and consequences - but it can be good to make things that are goofy from our perspective.