In any random group of people, I am highly likely to have the most dry, understated sense of humor, or at least a close second due to infrequent outbursts of whimsy.  In my main gaming group, I'm about average, maybe even a little on the silly or whimsical side.  We've got people that are at Sahara levels of dry.  There's sometimes undercurrents of humor going on that I'm not sure would even register to others.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1031566How comedic is your game?

And is the comedy intentional? Ad lib? Incidental?

Yes:).

Let me give an example of "bad execution" in my games. Had a player in a Traveller game create a comic relief vargr, this wolf-man had the money grubbing personality of Quark from DS9 without any redeeming qualities. Sometimes it would work, like when they had a drunk NPC and he gave him a tuft of his fur saying that, "Humans claim to find this useful, but I think its just weird."

Other times, it was adventure altering detriment. After a very rough multi-adventure arc where the PCs defeated a small mercenary force to protect a colony, I was going to let the PCs find the mercenary's ship and keep it as a prize. Now the mercs had hidden the ship and since their vehicles had been destroyed or captured, the surviving mercs had to get to the ship on foot - taking about three days. Plenty of time for the PCs to find the ship and take it. Comic relief vargr hacks the mercs computer and finds the location of the ship, but hides the information and doesn't tell the rest of the party while mumbling that, "he found it, so it is his ship" for almost three days. The party locates the merc's ship just in time to see it lift off and run for the safe jump limit while comic relief vargr is crying that "they stole his ship". It pissed me off as referee to know that this attempt at humor really screwed the whole party.

So did the other players feed him feet first into the atomic pile to show their appreciation of his little essay of wit?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1031767So did the other players feed him feet first into the atomic pile to show their appreciation of his little essay of wit?

After that, his character was never trusted to do anything alone, another PC was always around to keep an eye on him. Nobody was very happy.

A couple of sessions later, when everyone was at the Traveller equivalent of Casablanca, he split from the party while they were being chased by Zhodani agents, got captured, interrogated, and then tasered into a coma. The rest of the party didn't bother to go looking for his PC, deciding instead that he was more trouble than he was worth.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1031566How comedic is your game?

And is the comedy intentional? Ad lib? Incidental?

About as comedic as ALIEN is, I suppose. Any players with nerd jokes to tell, have to wait until after the game session.

We take the content, gameplay and roleplaying quite seriously for the most part. But there's also a lot of humor and comedy about it, built in to the settings, cultures, customs, characters, situations, behavior, place & character names, incompetently drawn maps, corrupt officials, idiocy, savagery, etc. And we will laugh OOC about things the characters might not see exactly the same way, especially combat antics like the time the gargoyle fell on the fat guy in plate armor and they crashed through the wagon he was on and then got run over by the wagon, or people who end up falling off cliffs or overboard during combat or other misadventures, or suffering other fates that strike us as hilarious OOC.

Quote from: jeff37923;1031752.... It pissed me off as referee to know that this attempt at humor really screwed the whole party.

Come on, say it, you know you want to--it really screwed the pooch.

A character concept might also provide ample humor, if a player wished to run basically as a trickster.  In one of the games at my club, a GURPS starfaring sort of game, Trickster Player took something like "delusional" to get extra points--the delusion being that the character believed that he was a nuclear engineer capable of running the spaceship. Of course he had only an abysmally low ability at it.  His dice were, however, hot enough (probably radioactivity) that he succeeded occasionally, and got a little better, and to keep the charade up, the player showed the other players excessively high rolls.  I don't think they ever tumbled to it while the game was running.

Some.  I mean, I game with old friends for the most part, so it's inevitable.  On those rare occasions I play instead of GM, I try to make it germane to the character but when I'm running I'll do things like throw in "Kung-fu Skeleton!" and have him accompanied by a band of skeleton bards playing his theme music.  But not all the time; it can be tiresome to do that more than once every few sessions.

Almost all my games have comedic elements; but in most of them they're incidental. In a few campaigns, like my Last Sun DCC campaign, the comedy is built-in (though there's also tons and tons of incidental comedy happening).

Quote from: wombat1;1031873A character concept might also provide ample humor, if a player wished to run basically as a trickster.  In one of the games at my club, a GURPS starfaring sort of game, Trickster Player took something like "delusional" to get extra points--the delusion being that the character believed that he was a nuclear engineer capable of running the spaceship. Of course he had only an abysmally low ability at it.  His dice were, however, hot enough (probably radioactivity) that he succeeded occasionally, and got a little better, and to keep the charade up, the player showed the other players excessively high rolls.  I don't think they ever tumbled to it while the game was running.

"Trickster" does not mean " fucking moron.". The trickster god archetype is a very specific mode of teaching, and the way modern fandom has turned it into "fishmalk" pisses me off.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1032242"Trickster" does not mean " fucking moron.". The trickster god archetype is a very specific mode of teaching, and the way modern fandom has turned it into "fishmalk" pisses me off.

Indeed it is. Most people don't appreciate or understand Zen/Sufi/ancient gods humor, though:).
So I just clamp down on all fishmalk concepts when approving characters;).

I set it to 0, since players, even invested ones, crack jokes and such.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1032242"Trickster" does not mean " fucking moron.". The trickster god archetype is a very specific mode of teaching, and the way modern fandom has turned it into "fishmalk" pisses me off.

Yes. A million times yes.

Actual trickster-gods are super-intelligent and not actually insane at all.