Quote from: CRKrueger;925912Eh, that's only if you assume the genre itself you're playing is "Gonzo Genre".  You don't mix in non-Arthurian adventures in Pendragon, or non-Middle Earth adventures in TOR.  But, you can easily mix in different kinds of CoC adventures that aren't all "Antiquarian personally encountering Sanity-Blasting Eldritch Horror".

The stupidest thing people do with Gonzo is never turn it off, never turn it down, JUST ALL GONZO ALL THE TIME, WOOHOO ISN'T THIS FUNNY, WACKA WACKA, I'M HERE ALL WEEK!!1!!!11  

It becomes a very, very bad 70's Sitcom with a never-ending laughtrack.

Gonzo isn't innately funny or even wacky. Gonzo can be pretty damn dark. Defining gonzo as endless wackiness is the same kind of gamer nonsense as thinking pulp is all about gorillas in lab coats building doomsday weapons.

You can have an all gonzo campaign and still have a lot of tonal shading.

Quote from: Harg of the City Afar;925800I like to include a Zone of Relative Normalcy which provides contrast to the batshit bonkers stuff. Modulating the tone is important. If everything is gonzo...

"Zone of Relative Normalcy" - I love the phrase, and I think it is important in all games and genres.  I use it all the time.  It is one reason why I love historically based games and settings.  A contrast with a strong foundation in "normalcy" and reality is what supernatural weirdness supernatural and weird.

All gonzo, all of the time, just comes off as arbitrary, nonsensical, and silly.  Gonzo is cool for a little escapism and humor, but in my experience, consistent gonzo without some strong grounding in "normalcy" doesn't hold up well for more than a couple of sessions.

Quote from: Baulderstone;925904I don't buy that. Gonzo can already include a number of tones to provide contrast with horror, high adventure, comedy, science-fiction and fantasy. You can easily avoid if feeling one note. When I sit down a play a gonzo game, I don't want to sit through a session of wandering through the Kingdom of Mundania so that I can more properly appreciate the gonzo. I want the game I came to play. My real life leading up to the game session will provide a suitable contrast to the gonzo of the game.

I think the important word here is relative normalcy.  Relative normalcy doesn't have to be boring or un-adventurous.

QuoteIt's like saying that when you run Call of Cthulhu, you need to make sure to mix in adventures with no horror element so people appreciate the horror.

I don't know, I'm interested in your perspective, but I kind of think that a constant string of in your face supernatural horror and weirdness becomes bland.  The law of diminishing returns kicks in. If summoning Azathoth becomes routine, you have lost something, haven't you?

One problem, as I see it, is that an unpunctuated string of gonzo becomes arbitrary from the players' perspective.  For example, DCC modules are great, but they are full of pocket dimensions and alternate realities.  Each is unique and interesting which is cool and all, but if you string them all together, then the players never know which way is up. How do we overcome this challenge: do we fight it, talk to it, engage it in a poetry contest, change dimensions again, put the magical doohickey in its eye socket, can I fly the spaceship, or ride the tentacle to the next dungeon level, or what?  "If I touch the magic skull will it kill me, age me, or give me Kewel powers, I have no idea?" Does this magic skull have anything to do with the moon monsters or dinosaurs from three sessions ago? Probably not. If there is too much anything and everything all of the time, the physics and dynamics of the universe are constantly changing and there is no way to know what makes sense in any given dimension or new Gonzo device without GM approval and fiat.  It becomes a game of guess what's in the GM's head. It can all be fine and fun to watch the weirdness unfold, but if it is constant, the players become powerless spectators grasping for a foothold.

Quote from: Baulderstone;925919Gonzo isn't innately funny or even wacky. Gonzo can be pretty damn dark. Defining gonzo as endless wackiness is the same kind of gamer nonsense as thinking pulp is all about gorillas in lab coats building doomsday weapons.

You can have an all gonzo campaign and still have a lot of tonal shading.

Hmmm...  Maybe you are operating on a different definition of Gonzo than I am.  Can you give an example of "all Gonzo with a lot of tonal shading?"

Quote from: Baulderstone;925919Gonzo isn't innately funny or even wacky. Gonzo can be pretty damn dark. Defining gonzo as endless wackiness is the same kind of gamer nonsense as thinking pulp is all about gorillas in lab coats building doomsday weapons.

You can have an all gonzo campaign and still have a lot of tonal shading.

Well, not seeing a whole lot of tonal shading in DCC gonzo modules, and Zero in the gonzo art.
Doom of the Savage Kings and Chained Coffin were absolutely incredible modules...but not gonzo.  When there is gonzo at all, it's large and in charge and monotone.

Quote from: Madprofessor;925924Hmmm...  Maybe you are operating on a different definition of Gonzo than I am.  Can you give an example of "all Gonzo with a lot of tonal shading?"

Red and Pleasant Land, more surreal than wacky.  A DCC specific example I haven't found yet.

"Tonal shading" is something that's really important to me, and by Jove I wish I had come across this idiom sooner.

I think (e.g.) high-concept science fantasy D&D works best when you start out with only the ordinary fantasy tropes in place and only introduces the weird, genre-discordant stuff as PCs go down the rabbit hole. The much-maligned Dwimmermount is actually fairly good at this, slowly but surely framing the sci-fi substratum to the fantasy trappings. Anomalous Subsurface Environment pretty much throws the sci-fi stuff on people's faces the moment they cross the dungeon entrance, and that's cool too, but it does make for a more everything-goes sort of game. Tékumel and Numenera are sonewhere in between.

Maybe gonzo means different things to different people. Or there are many variations of gonzo. I add a lot of these elements to my games in the old school spectrum. Usually starting with small things creeping in and branching out from there. The odd extra intelligent species running around, a spell effect going horribly wrong. Some of my gonzo is implied and not even seen, left mysterious (a location moving someplace else overnight for no reason, for example). Start the gonzo small, build it up, then bring it back under control over time. Then next game bring another aspect of gonzo and work with it, let the players interact and alter it.

There's no wrong way to do it, I just like to pace things more like a double LP than a 45. Some guys in the blogosphere with a penchant for the bizarre pen scenarios that come hellbent screaming out of the gate, and there ain't no brakes on the crazy dayglo microbus. I do love reading that stuff.

If I had 3-4 games going, maybe I could see keeping one in lysergic overdrive. Just push it till it falls spectacularly apart.

Quote from: CRKrueger;925933Well, not seeing a whole lot of tonal shading in DCC gonzo modules, and Zero in the gonzo art.
Doom of the Savage Kings and Chained Coffin were absolutely incredible modules...but not gonzo.  When there is gonzo at all, it's large and in charge and monotone.

I only own a handful of DCC modules, and I just used those for parts, so I can't really judge how well they do in general.

QuoteRed and Pleasant Land, more surreal than wacky.  A DCC specific example I haven't found yet.

Good example.

What makes DCC gonzo?

Quote from: CRKrueger;925912The stupidest thing people do with Gonzo is never turn it off, never turn it down, JUST ALL GONZO ALL THE TIME, WOOHOO ISN'T THIS FUNNY, WACKA WACKA, I'M HERE ALL WEEK!!1!!!11  

It becomes a very, very bad 70's Sitcom with a never-ending laughtrack.

Only if you do it badly.

My DCC campaign has been "Gonzo turned up to 12" for four years now, and it just keeps getting better.  Almost everyone involved feels its the best game they've ever been involved in, myself included. And I've run quite a few really epic awesome campaigns.

Quote from: Nexus;926042What makes DCC gonzo?

I think there's a lot of basic rules that are very gonzo. Some of them are aesthetic, like the wizard corruption rules and mercurial magic.  But some of them if taken as written demand that you create a very strange default-setting. For example, the rules on clerical magic and disapproval only make any sense at all if the Gods are completely insane.

well, in the campaign I'm planning on running, Bill the Elf will be a god / patron...

Quote from: remial;927910well, in the campaign I'm planning on running, Bill the Elf will be a god / patron...

Oh man; I hope Bill's player doesn't read this. We'll never hear the end of it!

Quote from: CRKrueger;925783Oh no you didn't!

http://goodman-games.com/dungeon-crawl-classics-rpg/

Heh, before I read this thread I knew DCC was an OSR and that was about it Aaaand a few hours ago I walked into my FLGS and bought a copy. I saw this in Pundit's DCC thread.

Quote from: Pundit...cannibal riverweed looks like a walk in the park compared to a Vicious Giant Wiener Dog.

I would totally use a Vicious Giant Wiener Dog in a game.