I had a noob in my Chav game call his Hoody the mighty Susej. Took us a while to cotton on to that joke.

Anway he was minmaxed to hell and back with pretty much everything dumped in his Strength and Brawl.

Despite being Intelligence 1 however he was the mastermind. He came up with plans so awesomely stupid that the others bought into them without question!

3e, played a half-orc Bard (his mother was the orc, she captured his father in a war) who left a life of drudgery on the family farm for a life of fame and fortune. Despite his IQ of around 17, he talked like the streotypical half-orc. He and his companions (travellers from all over the lands) would invariably get thrown out of inns and taverns for starting brawls, and adopted the name "Banned From Many Places" (get it, bards, etc.). He wore black leather and chains, and his weapon was an axe.

His main goal in life was to save enough money to open a bakery.

When I ran Al-Qadim one of the players convinced me to let him play a goblin as a PC. He rolled up a barber/rogue character named Bharu the Gabbler. He would constantly natter on about whatever was on his mind at the time. The weather, his debts at the local gaming den, the kind of fruit essence favored by Hadash the Cleaver (local strongman, criminal overlord) after his weekly shave (essence of orange - it makes his skin smooth and lovely), etc. etc. etc. If you had a secret Bharu knew it and was probably passing it on to his next customer. Bharu had a great knack for finding the one fact that would cause the most chaos and telling it to anyone who could use it to cause chaos.

In one particular adventure the other players were so worried that Bharu's tongue would get them in trouble they made a muzzle for him and put it on him while he was asleep. No luck. Bharu's will to communicate was too strong so the player spent the rest of the adventure playing a very complicated game of charades.

Hehe, I'm liking Bharu the Gabbler already.

A friend of mine once played a gully dwarf (Greyhawk) who was convinced he had found a magical, rusty nail of healing. Every time someone in the party would get seriously injured he would rush to their side and begin stabbing them with the magical, rusty nail of healing. Gully dwarves, btw, can rarely count beyond two.

Another series of events that made me and the guys laugh was a guy who always wanted to play a druid in AD&D. One druid was killed by a treant at some point, which was ironic, but the GM thought it was so funny that he made it a reoccurring theme with this guy's characters. As long as he insisted on playing druids, they somehow ended up being killed by trees. His own growing paranoia fueled this a great deal and after a while he was starting out 'fresh' characters who already had a healthy fear of trees for no particular reason.

There was another guy in the group who was a marine biologist and dive instructor as well as a huge heavy metal fan. He always played dwarves or short, gruff humans. The irony there is that he looks a lot like a dwarf. Anyways, he had a character lose an eye, an arm, and a leg (I think in Ravenloft) through the course of a campaign, and had them replaced with a patch, a hook, and a peg leg. We then shortly after found ourselves out at sea as privateers.

In a Darksun game I ran, some of my buddies made a pair of halflings and another made a half-giant. The three of them broke off from the main group to venture out on their own. The halflings names were Baite and Fodder, and the half-giant's name was Tank.
In that same campaign, another player wanted to try out being a defiler. He made a big show of secrecy while making his character and everyone thought him a psionicist until we decided to go around the room to give character descriptions for a late-comer to the game. When it was his turn he gave his character's description complete with "defiler robes" as clothing. He sort of lost interest after that and ended up with a pair of inix tails tied to his head like giant rabbit ears and desk drawers on each foot before dying in the belly of a silt worm.

Another funny thing about the college days and gaming is that I used to voluntarily sketch everyone's characters, but somehow shortly after I finished each sketch the character would die horribly. Personally, I think the GM just did that for laughs, but it started a superstition that no one wanted their character drawn. Looking back it was a huge reversal on the norm.

Quote from: Harsh;447268A friend of mine once played a gully dwarf (Greyhawk) who was convinced he had found a magical, rusty nail of healing. Every time someone in the party would get seriously injured he would rush to their side and begin stabbing them with the magical, rusty nail of healing. Gully dwarves, btw, can rarely count beyond two.

That's not so much funny as fucking unbelievably annoying, and a good example of why gully dwarves, kenders, etc. shouldn't be PC races.

Frankly, any fantasy race/class that created to BE a joke is not usually very funny at all, so much as it is a vehicle for a player to act like a retard and "get away" with it.

RPGPundit

I agree to some extent. You should never justify an entire race's existence as a one joke thing.

However there is a long tradition of insider humour in fantasy games. Especially about Dwarves, Elves and Halflings.

I kind of have a play with that in Wizkid although full blooded fantasy creatures aren't availible as PCs.

Fuck knows how the Fantasy hack for Courtesans is going to turn out though!

I feel like I should note that there is a difference between having an entire game that is comedic (which can be good or bad), and having a race that is basically comic relief in what is ostensibly an otherwise serious game.

RPGPundit

I can't fault that logic, Pundit. I suppose for us, at the time, it was funny because it was so ridiculous and new to us as nearly new gamers. And now it's more of a fond memory of a good time with friends.

From my own recollections, I think back when I and all my gamer buddies were younger, we were far more tolerant of "funny" characters that would today be completely disruptive to our game.  Some may look at that with nostalgia, but I know for sure I wouldn't want to re-live that now.  Whatever the OSR-types out there might say, a lot about how I was gaming when I was 16 was a lot crappier than it is today.

RPGPundit