I'm starting to dread the fact that "funny games" are coming back into vogue. I recently had a discussion at my local game store about this: a patron and the owner were talking about Hackmaster, and the new adventures coming out for it. Apparently, the new adventures mock old D&D adventures called "The Keep on the Borderlands" and "Against the Giants." (The new names were something like "The Sheep on the Borderlands" and - shit, I can't remember. Anyway, they were weak jokes.)

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.

I saw Dav post earlier today (here) about a game called Charts and Charts. The name is funny, and charts are funny to read - but is this actually going to be funny during gameplay? There's a limited number of times you can roll differing results, and these sort of jokes play out quickly.

I like the idea of funny games - Donjon was originally meant to be funny, and can still be played that way - but I want games that are actually funny to play. The "parody" game has been done enough - HoL said everything needed to be said, and Violence nailed the coffin shut with its "dark parody of a parody."

What mechanisms can we use to make a game humorous in play, as opposed to humorous to read?

Heh, good thread.

I guess I register in on the other end of the spectrum. Aside from the occassional late night lark, I dislike funny games, and REALLY dislike silly ones. Its probably due to my sense of humor. I find Dennis Miller funny. I can't stand the Three Stooges.

Note that I'm distinguishing "funny game" from "game containing some humor"

I think silly games have come into vogue, but I don't think its a new thing. I can trace it back to the dawn of Cheap Ass. Some of those I can enjoy because the mechanics are pretty clever, but the humor wears thin very quickly. There's only so many times that "Look, a monkey" can be laughed at.

Ultimately, I think silly games become popular for the same reason as the German games have. They require less comittment in terms of time to learn, time to play, and effort to play. Plus with silly games you don't have to worry about screwing up because...well...its silly.

I don't fear being overwhelmed by sillyness however. Its a niche, but everyones idea of humor is too different to become a dominent trend.

Ralph,

It sounds like you and I have the same taste in humor - I think the Three Stooges is about the most boring thing on earth.

Do you think your dislike of humorous games comes from the fact that few, if any, of the humorous games published so far actually are funny?

By my definition of humor...very few are actually funny.

Paranoia for example I found hysterical...because I was playing with a group of people who recognized it as a satire on political factions, McCarthy witch hunts, and 80s corporate culture. Just the kind of thing that George Carlan could turn into a whole routine.

This is going to be a toughie, as everyone varies in what they find funny and to what extent. I find almost everything funny, but then we all know that I'm easy to amuse. I love both Paranioa and the Stooges, Hackmaster and Hol, whatever. Many are more discriminating.

So, if I were you, I'd just make it funny to myself, and hope that others shared my sense of humor. Otherwise you may end up with the Least Common Denominator, which might only be funny to folks like me.

I seem to remember a thread about how to make a comedy game, but I think it was way back on GO.

Mike

Mike,

Have you actually played Hackmaster? I ask because I'm addressing the question of a game being funny in play. I've read it (very funny) and made a character (kind of funny and very time-consuming).

If you have, please tell us what was funny about it.

I can definitely say I've had some of the funniest and most fun gaming sessions of my life with 'TOON. Now thassa funny game, and an excellent one. I always thought Paranoia was a hoot as well, for the same reasons that Ralph mentions. InSpectres is funny in play too! And tho I've never played it, I've never laughed so hard while reading as game as I did with HoL.

The problem with a lot of the other 'funny' games is that they aren't 'just' humourous, i.e. funny to most people, they're 'gamer funny', i.e. things that only a gamer can find amusing (impossible systems, marathon chargen, charts galore, goofy skills, stats or other dice rolls). If you tried to explain the concept of HackMaster to a non-gamer, they'd probably look at you like you were dropped solidly on your head at birth. While if you explain 'TOON or InSpectres to someone only partially interested, they go 'that sounds pretty cool, I'd try that sometime'.

Like Ralph said, very few are actually funny. And like Clinton suggests, the ones that are funny to read don't port it over to the play.
Sean

Clinton R Nixon wrote: Mike,

Have you actually played Hackmaster? I ask because I'm addressing the question of a game being funny in play. I've read it (very funny) and made a character (kind of funny and very time-consuming).

If you have, please tell us what was funny about it.

Hackmaster is not funny in play. It's not supposed to be. And it's not a parody, though it does parody some of the non-game elements of 1e AD&D, such as its designers penchant for pretentious screeds. There are individual rules that are not exactly conventional and tend to produce funny war stories after the fact (such as a certain character class's ability to apologize, which causes everyone who fails to 'save vs. apology' to have to forgive whatever crime the character is apologizing for), but during play they're real rules with real and serious consequences. It's surprising that gamers who would never question the competitive seriousness of marching a hat in a square orbit around Atlantic City so often seem bewildered by the presence of a few minor abstractions in the Hackmaster rules. I know the GNS essay condemns "it's just a game" as an invalid excuse for incoherency, but Hackmaster is perfectly coherent and it is just a game. It's the RPG equivalent of all those "what would the world be like if the dinosuars had survived and developed intelligence?" scenarios. It's "what would D&D be like if it had evolved through several editions while keeping its original pure-gamist premises?"

The modules released so far are "Quest for the Unknown" and "Little Keep on the Border Lands." No sheep in sight. And at 48 and 144 pages respectively, these are designed to be played. The Giants module isn't in press yet so its title is speculation.

- Walt

Paranoia and Toon have both provided me with a lot of laughs. Lately, my group has used Kobolds Ate My Baby as a breather between more serious games. While I like my serious systems, I have to admit I'm a sucker for small micro (I still have my old Melee/Wizard and Labyrinth stuff) and "Cheapass-esque" little games, which are more often than not pretty silly. Just picked one up called "Lemmings in Space" that's a parody of Starfleet Battles and I still drag out TWERPS every once in a while. Anyway - when it comes to "silly", for me its the size issue. Less is more. Give me a quick set up, easy to understand lingo, some parody and a punchline. I've looked at Hackmaster, and while I thought it funny to flip through it in the store, it looked too complicated and detailed (that and the price tag put me off). I mean, it gave me the impression of a joke that was explained in so much detail that it ceased to be funny anymore. While I admit I haven't looked at Hackmaster too closely, it seems the "BERPS: Warhamster RPG" in the Dork Tower comic did pretty much the same thing genre-wise with far more simplicity.

Mike Holmes wrote: Sustainable funny? Not sure it's possible. Is that what you are looking for?

wfreitag wrote: Hackmaster is not funny in play. It's not supposed to be. And it's not a parody, though it does parody some of the non-game elements of 1e AD&D,

Le Joueur wrote:
Um, anyone even heard of Teenagers from Outer Space? The episodic structure (I only have the first edition, with the micro dice that the author lovingly taped into each one) turns each session into a 'one-shot' if you will, yet making it "sustainably funny." I assume similar is potential in BESM (but never got past the first edition of that either). Series cartoons of Japanese flavor seem perfect of both sustainable and funny games.

Clinton R Nixon wrote:
What mechanisms can we use to make a game humorous in play, as opposed to humorous to read?

As per usual, I'm replying to several posts at once... I'll start with Mike and get more general...

Mike Holmes wrote: Or are you suggesting that people should try and play Hackmaster as a straightforward Gamist RPG? I think that they'd be missing the point if they did that.

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.)

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

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

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 :-)

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.

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

Jared A. Sorensen wrote: Paranoia is a horror game, but only to the characters.
Paranoia is a comedic game, but only to the players.

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

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.

unodiablo wrote:
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.

Roger Ebert (from his review of Slackers) wrote: "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.

unodiablo wrote:
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

Jared A. Sorensen wrote: 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.

Jared A. Sorensen wrote: 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.

"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

Clinton R Nixon wrote:
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.

Mytholder wrote:
Mornington Dungeons, basically...

Mike Holmes wrote:

Mytholder wrote:
Mornington Dungeons, basically...

I'm missing the referrence.

I'm posting something quick w/o reading the other nine pages of this thread. Hopefully this is still on topic.

In a Clive Barker story (Frog of Babylon or something like that. It's in his collection In The Flesh) there's a quote that describes the difference between comedy and tragedy. It when something like, in comedy the characters must act as if they believe every ridiculous word. It is tragedy that requires laughter.

This, I've noticed, is true. Think of a sitcom when something silly happens to someone. They act as if they take it seriously. In a drama, if a similar event happens, the characters may laugh at it.

Or something to that effect.

Now, I'm not sure how this applies to RPG but RPGs are tough in that the actors are also the audience. The audience gets to laugh, the actors don't. Closest I can think of is Ron's description of his game of Wuthering Heights. The characters took what was happening seriously. But I'm not sure about that.

Someone had suggested that most humor in RPGs during actual play usually is of the MST3K variety. The players cracking jokes about the in-game events.

Hopefully I've brought something to this thread.

Just to brag, I'd say that TFOS has allowed for some great sitcom style laughs because that's exactly what the game is. The foreign guy at school is from another dimension and really has no clue about earth culture. He tries to fit in but only gets accepted by the social misfits. Hijinks ensue. Two years before the Seinfeld episode aired, our characters had the contest.

It worked in Ursei Yatsura and in That 70's Show. And it works as a game. Also because it is played by a clique of friends with some shared experience it offers ample opprotunity for in-jokes which most gamers seem to love. Best of all, it never relied on "talking to the camera" which is another things that other gamers seem to dig more than me.