Funny games (and the Temple of Ass)

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Crap. I let this diverge way too much over what games are funny, especially Hackmaster. I should have just said, "Mike, you have not played Hackmaster, and thus, your opinion is irrelevant."

To continue, though, I call bullshit on the idea that whether a game is funny or not is a matter of opinion. We've slogged through bucketfuls of theory here (most of it pointless) to come to one conclusion (not pointless): what a game rewards is what it promotes.

Hackmaster does not promote humor.
HoL does not promote humor.

For a game to promote humor, it must reward players (either with bonuses to die rolls, or character improvement currency) for making the game more humorous. My proposed ideas at the top of this thread for Hackmaster do promote humor.

With that clarified, what mechanisms seem most effective to promote humor in RPGs? (This is a much clearer question.)

[xiombarg]

With that clarified, what mechanisms seem most effective to promote humor in RPGs? (This is a much clearer question.)

I'll tell you one from Toon that I know from experience works: Keep it fast. It's actually a rule in Toon that if you don't respond quickly enough when the Toonmaster asks you what you're doing, you're "boggled" and you lose your action.

This means that after being "boggled" a couple times, a player will ususually do *anything* rather than do nothing. Which leads to mistakes.

Why does this promote humor? Because mistakes are funny. And you're rewarded for doing what you did with laughter. Often mistakes are funnier than success, so encouraging mistakes is good. And by keeping things rapid-fire, you prevent things from bogging down, keep people in the moment, and keep the laughter coming -- which rewards everyone.

It takes a lot of energy to run Toon right...

[Matt Machell]

Another point to consider, while many of these games are funny to read, few give actual advice on say, how to set up funny situations or how to construct a joke from a situation in a roleplaying game.

Improvising good humour isn't easy, if it didn't require work then we'd all be successful stand ups. Providing mechanics that reward comedy would be a start, but it only produces the reward mechanism, not the how to. Many games go out of their way to discuss how to build drama and create narative tension, comedy games should spend a good amount of time on how to make things funny.

Just my thoughts.

Matt

[Valamir]

My does that bring back fond memories.  

I remember playing a Toon Lafalympics game once.  I had an opportunity to order athletic equipment from ACME but when it came to me I had no ideas...so off the top of my head I ordered a portable hole and a panic button.

During the game I used the portable hole in a pretty cliched sabotage of another characters pole vault attempt.

Then during a race I announce "I hit the Panic Button".

"What do you do"

I had no idea...I'd just made it up.  Knowing he was enforcing the 3 second rule...I screamed...REALLY REALLY REALLY loud.

Everyone of the players jumped about a foot out of their seats.  The GM Boggled everybody as a result...I won the race.

Only problem was it was we were about 14 or 15, it was 3:00 in the morning and my folks sleeping soundly upstairs were NOT amused :-)

[Jared A. Sorensen]

I have the same problem with "humor games" as I do with "horror games." That is, who is the game supposed to amuse? Do you have to be funny to have a good time? Does the GM? Is it just a funny book to read? Do you have to "get" RPGs in a severely geeky way to find the material funny?

Zak's point about InSpectres is WHY I wrote it the way I did. InSpectres are not funny characters. The situations they get into are funny to us, but not to them...and situations they may find hysterical would be kind of confusing for us. Like an in-joke when you're not "on the inside."

Look at Paranoia. Possibly the BEST example of a humor game that fails and succeeds, depending on one's view. The big problem is the presentation. Paranoia is funny to read but it's written as if we were citizens of Alpha Complex. Which doesn't make any sense...our characters are not reading the book, we are not playing ourselves in the game.

Paranoia works best with the following addition to the play structure:
Paranoia is a horror game, but only to the characters.
Paranoia is a comedic game, but only to the players.

The player-character divide is extremely interesting...but few games really seem to "Get It."

- J

Oh, and I don't think Toon is either that funny to read or funny in play. It's just simulationist "roll 2d6 under a number" type stuff. It's "about" cartoons only as much as Deadlands is "about" westerns.

[Walt Freitag]

Hah, terminology payback time! Let me introduce you to my counterintuitive idiosyncratic guaranteed-to-be-misused definition of "comedy."

Comedy is the nature of a world that gives its inhabitants rewards and punishments they don't deserve.

Comedy is not equivalent to humor. But it's a prerequisite for humor. "It's not funny if it's happening to you" is aimed in the right direction but misses the mark. A better rule is "It's not funny if it's your problem to fix it." A lawyer will find lawyer jokes funny as long as he doesn't feel personally responsible for or in control of the foibles of, or the poor public image of, the legal profession. This describes most lawyers. But a lawyer whose job is PR for other lawyers in the firm will not find lawyer jokes funny. The guy who has to clean up the dining room won't find the pie fight funny, whether he gets hit with a pie or not.

So for events in a game to be funny, those events and their implications must be (and be perceived as) outside the control of the player-characters. If you could have avoided slipping on the banana peel by remembering to ask the GM "are there any banana peels in front of me?", then slipping on the banana peel isn't funny. The less control the protagonist has (defining "control" as the ability to gain deserved rewards and avoid undeserved punishments), the more can be funny. Effective comedic worlds are full of things you just can't do nothin' about. (The real world, for instance.) Comedy is the first cousin of horror: in both, the protagonist has little or no control over the situation. In comedy, but not in horror, the consequences are limited too. Horror is comedy without the sense of fairness. But both are difficult in role-playing because they contravene the usual assumption that the characters are in control of their own fates.

- Walt

[Walt Freitag]

Paranoia is a horror game, but only to the characters.
Paranoia is a comedic game, but only to the players.

Exactly. Note that both players and characters have little control over their fates. But for the players, the consequences are limited (their characters are replaced by clones), while for the characters, they're not: they die.

- Walt

[unodiablo]

What you say about player-PC is interesting... When Rodney Rat accidentally got mowed down by Rat-A-Tat-Cat (a wonderful Edward G. Robinson inspired char "I got the dirty rat with my chopper, see?!?") in our 'Toon games numerous times, he probably didn't find it very funny... Should you 'care' about the fictional chars you play?

(That kinda bums be out. Now I'm starting to have sympathy for all those chars the zombies killed while people have played Dead Meat. And all the mooks that have been slaughtered in our 2PAM sessions. The Humanity! Er, wrong game.)

I think my favorite games are ones that tweak that pc-player relationship - that's why I like InSpectres so much (jumping from the 'standard' RPG form to the first person parts). I'd probably like it even more if you wrote it like it was a corporate training manual.

Anyways,  BACK TO THE SUBJECT... And to answer the question above.

They're just characters, like characters in a book or movie. It's not funny to the guy when he zips his unit in his zipper in There's Something About Mary, but I sure the hell laughed. You need to torment them in some way to get a good story, funny or horrific.

I have to respectfully disagree with Jared about Toon... I think 'Toons system totally supports cartoon mayhem - 'boggling' (what sim game would make you miss your turn?), 'falling down' taking the place of being bumped out of the next scene, getting mad crazy with your Schticks (which can be a crude form of Director power for the chars). I will admit I've played in a few dud 'Toon games, but generally it was a very funny game for my old group to play... (I would call it an 'energetic' read tho...)

Perhaps we added elements that the rules really didn't include, like trading off with the narration, but I don't think that's a big jump with a game that easily plays so fast and loose. I didn't really run any sim scenarios with it, we just ad libbed a beginning or rolled on one of the many charts and were off to the races.

I'll have to refresh my memory on Attack of the Humans and Brains! Those were both funny in play, but I think it was due more to the setting / Color than any rules. Though couldn't the setting also provde this mechanism? I don't remember the rules to Paranoia supporting the games theme, but I think it promoted humor.

Sean

[Zak Arntson]

Mechanisms effective to produce comedy:

Strong difference between players & characters. See Paranoia, InSpectres. Like I said above, I ran across this by accident. Entirely homebrew game, where the Setting was completely bizarre but also gritty and harsh. Post-apocalypse where sheep jerky was the unit of currency. The party included a massive robot designed to herd man-eating sheep. Things like that. But I explained to everyone, "Your characters take their situation seriously. What's funny is how absurd it all is."

Humor supported through System. Paranoia does a great job through its clone system and mandatory secret societies. InSpectres has the Confessional (is that what it's called?).

Player vs. Player Competition. While not required for humor, it's been used for humorous games. When combined with Color it becomes humorous. Paranoia nearly requires backstabbing and devious plotting. Jon Morris Sketchbuk has player vs. player competition as the only mechanic. SLURPS has two mechanics: One solely used to screw the other Players. Most Cheap Ass games (though not RPGs) use hilarious Color in all their games.

Color, color, color. Paranoia would've flopped as a funny game if it were presented as purely Orwellian. InSpectres wouldn't be the same without it's cavalier attitude and association with Ghostbusters. And Jon Morris Sketchbuk is pretty much 99% Color, 1% System. Even though the HoL System isn't super (except the Anguish Factors, that cracks me up), it's Color is unbelievable.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

They're just characters, like characters in a book or movie. It's not funny to the guy when he zips his unit in his zipper in There's Something About Mary, but I sure the hell laughed. You need to torment them in some way to get a good story, funny or horrific.

Yes, but you identified with him, right? Roger Ebert has written numerous reviews of bad gross-out comedies in which he targets the whole "gross out" thing.

"There is a kind of one-upmanship now at work in Hollywood, inspired by the success of several gross-out comedies, to elevate smut into an art form. This is not an entirely futile endeavor; it can be done, and when it is done well, it can be funny. But most of the wannabes fail to understand one thing: It is funny when a character is offensive despite himself, but not funny when he is deliberately offensive. The classic "hair gel" scene involving Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz in "There's Something About Mary" was funny because neither one had the slightest idea what was going on.

I have to respectfully disagree with Jared about Toon... I think 'Toons system totally supports cartoon mayhem - 'boggling' (what sim game would make you miss your turn?), 'falling down' taking the place of being bumped out of the next scene, getting mad crazy with your Schticks

I don't see what's funny about that stuff.

Besides, as a "cartoon game," Toon is...well, it's not. Joshua Neff and I talked at length with one another about this at GenCon 2001. Toon is a fairly hum-drum scenario-based game. It's old-school gaming and it shows. Instead, it should be wilder, more anarchic, more free spirited. And lastly, it should understand that there are good guys and bad guys and the whole point of a cartoon is for the good guy to constantly and consistently foil the bad guy (or rather, allow the bad guy to blow himself up). Toon ain't got that, G.

Also, re: the comment about InSpectres being written as a corporate training guide. Well, John Tynes can do that. He's a writer, I'm not. Alas...


- J

[xiombarg]

Oh, and I don't think Toon is either that funny to read or funny in play. It's just simulationist "roll 2d6 under a number" type stuff. It's "about" cartoons only as much as Deadlands is "about" westerns.

What about the rule I mentioned? What about the Shticks? They're designed to let your character do something funny. What about the fact you can't die, you Fall Down? Not worring about death certainly lightens a game, particularly in combination with everything else. What about Gizmos? The ability to pull ANYTHING out of your pocket, once a game, is wonderful. And toonish.

While I agree that Toon could be better, the "roll 2d6 under a skill" is all you need, when combined with the other elements. Beacuse it doesn't matter if the character succeeds or fails -- it can be funny either way. Sure, it's simulationist, but it's a GOOD simulationist design -- playing it is like being inside a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Toon is funny to play. I've run it and played it, well into my later years. You have to like slapstick and the sort of things in traditional cartoons, but it does do the job. Once could do worse than to steal the ideas from Toon.

[xiombarg]

Besides, as a "cartoon game," Toon is...well, it's not. Joshua Neff and I talked at length with one another about this at GenCon 2001. Toon is a fairly hum-drum scenario-based game. It's old-school gaming and it shows. Instead, it should be wilder, more anarchic, more free spirited.

Jared, have you actually PLAYED Toon? For someone to not describe Toon as anarchic... well... no pun intended, it boggles me. Any game that encourages the GM to essentially flip a coin to make a decision is hardly "structured" by any stretch of the imagination.

[Mike Holmes]

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an
open sewer and die." --Mel Brooks

Of course Paranoia is designed to make the player laugh by making his character die. Or at the very least, this should make the other players laugh.

Mike

[Mytholder]

I commented that Hackmaster isn't really funny - it's funny to read, of course, but it's not fun or funny to play. My suggestion was a game in which players get bonuses for describing in play tropes that sound like Hackmaster. "I make my Save vs. Traps, Trickery, and Trulescence, adding +5 for my Potion of Prolific Protection!" The actual system would be a simple roll, even as simple as "roll 1 d6, and try to get 4 or higher. GM grants bonus dice for good game description."

This would allow people to say funny things, without being bogged down in truly cryptic gameplay, which is what Hackmaster is (a morass of cryptic gameplay.) The owner's eyes lit up - he realized what I was talking about.

Mornington Dungeons, basically...

The system: Declare what you're doing and roll a d20On a 1-15, you fail. However, you can "remind" everyone else of a rule that applies in this situation. The other players can come up with increasingly obscure exceptions and sub-clauses to the rules. Once accepted (i.e., once everyone has declared one rule), the action resolves, and all rules must be followed.

Example of play:
Player 1: I jump over the pit.
GM: (rolls dice). You fail and fall. You die.
Player 1: Did you take in the +2 bonus for my running leap?
Player 2: You'll have to make a save vs ceiling clearance, 'cos we're in a dungeon.
etc etc.

Hmm. Not quite as hilarious as it might be.

[Mike Holmes]

Mornington Dungeons, basically...

I'm missing the referrence.

Mike