Dying is Easy. Comedy that’s Hard!!!

One of the great things I find when I role-play is the fun we often have looking back at the exploits of players and characters alike in the games we have played in the past. Its always fun to tell a new member of the group about certain things that have highlighted the careers of some of the players characters and watching them fall over laughing afterwards. For the most part the games I tend to run are normally pretty dark and moody, with little scope for humor in them. But every now and then I feel that a bit of light relief is required to give myself and the players a break from the usual in-depth investigative games that I normally run, and every now and then something happens during a game that changes the mood and the whole thing ends up as a knock around with the plot going to the wall. Its these games that are the most memorable and often talked about with fond thoughts.

So how do you go about getting a sense of comedy into your games? Well one of the greatest tools available to the games master is in almost every ones home across the globe, Television. On TV you can find a wealth of light entertainment programs to add a little fun into your games. From the zany exploits of ‘Basil Fawlty’ to those fun loving aliens in ‘Third Rock from the Sun’, the list is almost endless. Capturing the divine moment its self isn’t as easy as it sounds. For centuries writers have struggled with writing comedy and it still remains one of the hardest forms of literature to get right. But by taking an idea that you see in a TV show, and adding it to your games you can cut out a lot of the hard work from the beginning.

White Wolf’s Storyteller games are very dark and moody. The ‘Gothic Punk’ world in which they are set mirrors a much darker and deadly version of our own, where supernatural creatures seem to have a free reign over the human populace and it always seems that at any moment the whole place is going to go to hell in a hand basket. Not the place for comedy?

Imagine the setting if you will. A party of Garou {Werewolves in the game Werewolf the Apocalypse, from White Wolf} out to destroy a nest of sleeping Vampires. They are armed to the teeth, and more than willing to go. As the party piles into the waiting van, the players talk about how they are going to kick some and who’s going to get the most undead kills this session. Imagine then the look on the players faces when the NPC driver can’t start the van. No matter what he tries the vehicle refuses to move at all. As he leaves the van, the players look at each other and start to decided just who is going to make the roll to fix the vehicle. Then just as they are about to decide the driver comes running back carrying a large branch from a nearby tree, and proceeds to give the poor van the thrashing of its life. Well the result was all of the players falling around my dining room in stitches and laughing wildly, and me laughing so much I brought on a mild asthma attack.

By taking a simple scene from a TV show, and adding it to the game I got a response from my party and turned a pretty morbid event into a bit of fun for all. Even with such dark and moody a subject, a little humor every now and then can make the game a lot more fun and after all fun is the real reason that we play the games in the first place. Comedy and humor are really crucial parts to add to a role-playing adventure and they help the players feel a little more relaxed and the game flow more smoothly.

There are also many different RPG’s on the market that have been created with the specific intention of being light hearted and fun to play, but sorting the wheat from the chaff here is almost as hard as writing comedy itself. Over the years I have played many different types of RPG, including most of the comedy ones and found that its hard to get the fun element from some of the comedic games across to the players, however there are a few that do!!!

Around ten years ago Steve Jackson’s Games came up with a simple, yet fun to play RPG that captured the element of comedy very well. ‘Toon’ has the players taking the parts of cartoon characters and pitting them against one another in mini adventures. The game is very fast paced and in fact is quite manic at times {just imagine Itchy and Scratchy and your getting close} and one of the great things is that no matter what the characters do they don’t die, {they have a time out rule which keeps the character out of the action for a short period instead of killing them off}and the sheer joy of coming up with ways to try and trap other characters is most of the fun its self.

R.Talistoran. Makers of the ‘Cyberpunk’ system’s and leaders in ‘Manga’ RPG’s {Japanese animation or Anime as its known} came up with a gem of a game around the end of the eightys and we still play it quite a lot. ‘Teenagers From Outer Space’ has got to be one of the funniest games I have ever had the privilege of playing. It cast’s the players as teens on Earth after we have made contact with aliens. The aliens are now a regular part of our society and even send their offspring to our high schools. One of the funniest things in this game is the design of the characters themselves. You can choose from four different types of character to play, ranging from the normal human teenager to something not to near human {say Mr. Spock from Star Trek}to something that the rules classify as a real wierdy {from the Blob to anything that you can think of!!}.

The rules are simple and very easy to learn, and characters like in Toon cant die. The whole object of the game is to survive highschool {not an easy task in itself} get dates and party hard. A great deal of fun can be had when designing characters as you can let your imagination run completely out of the window and really go to town. My favorite character that I have in the game is a six foot tall, two hundred pound, Gingerbread man, called Ging. He cant walk or move and I have to communicate by using that bubbles that I place against my head, its so far removed from normal run of the mill gaming that the thought may lose a little in translation. If you get the chance grab a copy as the game is now deleted, its well worth it.

Writing specific comedy events can turn a little sour one you some times and are perhaps best left to use as spare of the moment things. There are a couple of things to remember about adding comedy and humor to your games. Try and keep things as simple as you can so the joke isn’t lost on the players {not easy but it can be done}. Always try and remember that most of the comedy you see on TV and in movies tends to stem from some form of tragedy { one of the basis of William Shakespeare’s success was taking tragic events and turning them on their head} and you cant go far wrong.

Have fun with the games you play no matter how dark and moody they are. Laughter is a part of life and its only right that it is mirrored in the games we play.