In the Red Dwarf thread, I wrote:
Comedy rpgs heavily under represented compared to serious ones when compared to other meida such as movies and books. Obviously, people like humor. There is even a great deal of humor about rpgs. But few humorous rpgs. Sure, you can have moments of humor in any game but that's not the same as a campaign dedicated to humor.
I can't think of many comedy rpgs. Here's what I can think of (not counting free or pdf only):
Toon
Ghostbusters
Paranoia
Red Dwarf
Tales of the Floating Vagabond
Teenagers from Outerspace
Gurps IOU
(feel free to throw out any I forgot.)
The first 3 are cult hits but nothing big. The others have fans but disappeared from the market as soon as they came out. I personally own most of them and think most of them do a decent job but their sales say otherwise. It's not fair comparing any rpg to D&D level sales. But I don't think any humor game as had even the sales of Rolemaster and none have come close to stuff like Traveller or CoC. To me, it seems like comedy is heavily under represented in rpgs.
There's also gonzo games like Gamma World that can be humorous but it's not their sole focus.
So, why is this? I don't have answers but I can speculate.
1. Maybe people don't like mixing humor and rpgs. That seems unlikely as people mix humor with most things and there are a ton of rpg themed comics that attempt humor.
2. Perhaps most groups don't know how to approach a comedy game. This is possible. Sure you can run a dungeon crawl but can you run an alien beauty pageant and make it a successful game session. Maybe comedy games need a bit of hand holding to walk you through the funny, like Paranoia does. It also might help to have familiar elelments like Toon and Ghostbusters to quickly fill in the "what do characters do?" question. But even then, empirically, it might be a tough sale.
3. It might be harder to design comedy. Comedy in general is hard; doing it within a ruleset sounds much harder. I maade a couple of homebrew humor rpgs and it really is hard to get the structure, the right level of absurd, and the player buy in. Alogn these lines, people's tastes in comedy might vary more than their tastes in hacknslash.
4. It could be that single theme games tend not to be played for long. It's hard to maintain the same tone forever. With D&D/Traveller/Gurps/etc. you can do humor, drama, horror, and romance within the same campaign by adjusting the story line. CoC is the only single theme game I can think of that has done well for long; but even then it tends to be played the most as one shots.
Thoughts?
I think what to understand what our expectations from comedy. I don't think roleplaying games are going to do "Airplane!" style comedy very well. What they can do is comedy which is much more grounded in well defined characters and situations. "Chuck" the TV series comes to mind as a comedy series which is still works as an adventure story (and if despite the silliness still makes a lot more sense than Alias ever did). Ghostbusters is another good example, as is Men in Black (both of which have had RPGS amde of them though something about the Men In Black game turned me off baddly).
Toon and Paranoia in my view are bad examples of comedy games. It's not that they aren't fun, but the object of the games is not immersive play.
But in a sense I don't think you really need special rules to run a comedy game. Just to do what you normally do, only with a lighter touch and a twist of whimsy. That is why I don't think it's hard.
Why isn't it more popular in rolepalying games? I don't know. There not many successful police prodecural, romance or medical drama roleplaying games either. I'm not sure what means just saying that comedy is not the only thing under-represented. Also in movie-land, not a whole lot of comedies end up wining Oscars for Best Picture.
I'd add HoL to that list. Human Occupied Landfill. Fiasco is also ostensibly a humor game.
Quote from: Nicephorus;4063921. Maybe people don't like mixing humor and rpgs. That seems unlikely as people mix humor with most things and there are a ton of rpg themed comics that attempt humor.
Tragedy is easy. Comedy is hard.
Quote2. Perhaps most groups don't know how to approach a comedy game. This is possible. Sure you can run a dungeon crawl but can you run an alien beauty pageant and make it a successful game session. Maybe comedy games need a bit of hand holding to walk you through the funny, like Paranoia does. It also might help to have familiar elelments like Toon and Ghostbusters to quickly fill in the "what do characters do?" question. But even then, empirically, it might be a tough sale.
Walking 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.
Quote3. It might be harder to design comedy. Comedy in general is hard; doing it within a ruleset sounds much harder. I maade a couple of homebrew humor rpgs and it really is hard to get the structure, the right level of absurd, and the player buy in. Alogn these lines, people's tastes in comedy might vary more than their tastes in hacknslash.
If the game, or session, were focused on a particular brand of humor, say something like, "Okay boys, tonight it's Monty Python." But yeah, tastes vary.
Quote4. It could be that single theme games tend not to be played for long. It's hard to maintain the same tone forever. With D&D/Traveller/Gurps/etc. you can do humor, drama, horror, and romance within the same campaign by adjusting the story line. CoC is the only single theme game I can think of that has done well for long; but even then it tends to be played the most as one shots.
Everything I've read and heard and experienced related to CoC leads me to believe it's the original one-shot session game. It's designed that way. If the PCs live they should be insane, if they live and are sane the Keeper is doing something wrong.
I know you're talking mostly about system here, but in my experience they're best when the session is very short. Whenever I've played a comedy-style RPG, there are huge laughs in the first two hours, then people start getting tired and desperate to keep up that level of energy.
That's why I think Risus works extremely well for comedy-style games. The cliche system encourages silliness and inventiveness, and the very simple rules mean there's less mechanization and more opportunity for improvisation.
I think the problem with Comedy RPG's stems from the simple fact is that most of them, in particular the examples you listed. Define comedy as being silly and/or absurd. Which is fine, but continuously playing that kind of game gets tiring for most people. Same as watching hrs upon hrs of airplane and police academy. Funny in small doses, good for a few gags but after awhile the joke just isn't funny anymore.
Quote from: Nicephorus;406392The first 3 are cult hits but nothing big. The others have fans but disappeared from the market as soon as they came out. I personally own most of them and think most of them do a decent job but their sales say otherwise. It's not fair comparing any rpg to D&D level sales. But I don't think any humor game as had even the sales of Rolemaster and none have come close to stuff like Traveller or CoC. To me, it seems like comedy is heavily under represented in rpgs.
Well, it's not like the genres of RPGs are evenly spread in the first place. Basically, medieval fantasy (D&D, Rolemaster, etc.) is the elephant, modern horror (White Wolf) is a distant second, and everything else is pretty small.
The comedic parallel to Rolemaster is Hackmaster - which seems to be pretty successful. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Army of Darkness are both fairly comedic as well. Also, it seems to me that Paranoia was more successful than implied. It's had dozens of adventures and supplements as well as four editions. To be a little more complete, I'd add in
Diana: Warrior Princess
Hackmaster
Hunter Planet
Kobolds Ate My Baby
Maid
Men in Black
Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot
The Munchkin RPG
Ninja Burger
Og: The Role-Playing Game
Pokethulhu
Squirrel Attack!
Starfaring
Tales from the Floating Vagabond
Basically, I'm not sure one can read too much into this. There are plenty of comedic RPGs, and some of them have been successful, but none of them have been in the top ten or so.
Paranoia is probably the most successful in the comedy genre. I have run several Paranoia games where people came to the table who never played before or ever saw the books, but already knew the basic concepts of the setting.
Paranoia works because it takes the worst aspects of Bad GMing and makes that the setting...and then gives the players 6 characters to soften the blow and tells them that PvP, backstabbing and treachery is A-OK!
In fact, the worse behaved the GM and the players, the more fun your Paranoia session is likely to become.
InSpectres
Comedy. Ironic detachment from characters experiencing misery. Foreshadowing. Expectation with sudden reversals.
It's hard to be funny. It's easy to be and have that be funny.
The real answer is that comedy should be treated as a spice or ingredient -not as the whole meal.
Think of the action-adventure shows "NCIS" and "Castle" - both are meant to be pretty much straight action-adventure. However, they keep their viewers because opf the comedy bits and how thosse bits let the characters shine.
Some of the best comedy moments arise unexpectedly in an RPG campaign and often better bits of comedy than they would be if they were forced or steered intoi by the GM or the game designer.
- Ed C.
From what I've seen the funniest shit always comes out of playing straight... no matter how ridiculous the concept. As soon as you start trying to be funny, forcing it, it all goes in the toilet.
Ran this comedy game a few months ago using Basic D&D.
The high preist Ispopanto one of the cities major cults (the Church of Ablisotophorax - He of the Scorching Gaze) predicted that the end of the world (aka the Final Conflagration) was coming on Flaurmont 25th of the current year. His priesthood made preparation as did the churches many followers. The rest of the world watched on with a mixture of amusement and anxiety.
When the 25th came and went without any fuss the church of Ablistophorax ended up looking rather sheepish and it's followers angry and disenchanted.
The Honorable Guild of Undertakers and Morticians in particular is very angry. It has lost money over this fiasco. They obviously saw the End of the World as a great business opportunity, though exactly how and where they expected to spend the profits made from this event is a mystery.
Meanwhile rival cults, such as the Church of Vandagoran, Prince of Entropy and the Shrine of Osgoterus Ascending are making the most of this propaganda coup. They have gone as far as sponsoring a the world premiere at the Royal Opera House of a piece called "Ode to the End of the World that Wasn't" mercilessly ridicules the cult of Ablistophorax and it's prediction of doom.
The author of "Ode to the End of the World that Wasn't" is a fairly obscure halfling bard called Rifflebottom. Death threats have been issued against Rifflebottom. The Church of Abilstophorax want the show banned but claims it's innocent. Meanwhile somewhere in the shadows a deadly elven assassin is hired.
The point, it's not miles away from a staight D&D adventure, it's just a matter of playing with some of the details and setting the tone.
Quote from: Jared A. Sorensen;406414It's hard to be funny. It's easy to be and have that be funny.
Quote from: Simlasa;406436From what I've seen the funniest shit always comes out of playing straight... no matter how ridiculous the concept. As soon as you start trying to be funny, forcing it, it all goes in the toilet.
I think there's something to this, along with not trying too hard to be funny all the time. The best humor game I ran was a homebrew mad scientist game. They were deadly serious about their goals, even if their goals were a new poodle skirt or helping free an experimental lemur to freedom so that the transmogrified undead octopus would be able to return to the ocean.
This relates back to what worked for Red Dwarf. They were goofy people trying to survive absurd situations with the added layer of jokes.
I agree that short and simple is helpful to keep the energy high.
jhkim thanks for the additions. Were all of those available in physical stores? I have a few of the pamphlet games but never saw pokethulhu except online.
Some people talk about Gnomemurdered as if it was a Comedy RPG.
RPGPundit
The secret is to actually be funny.
-clash
Quote from: Simlasa;406436From what I've seen the funniest shit always comes out of playing straight... no matter how ridiculous the concept. As soon as you start trying to be funny, forcing it, it all goes in the toilet.
There is a point to that. Comedy is relatively easy to come by spontaneously in a serious game, but it is very hard to sustain over entire gaming sessions and especially campaigns. In that sense, it is very similar to horror; same problems of maintaining tension, pacing, being consistent etc. You can run a comedy-
themed game or a horror-
themed game, but how much of it will be genuinely side-splitting funny or horrific? Maybe some people can do it right, but for me, a relatively eclectic style works and strongly focused gaming does not.
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.
(clip)
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.
.
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.