Adding Comedy to Your Game

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teluria
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Adding Comedy to Your Game

Post by teluria »

I’ve been GMing for 30 years off and on. One of the things I enjoy most about the role of GM is keeping my players not only engaged in the story I’m telling, but entertained as well. Humor is an important part of that. The good thing is, you don’t have to be a great actor or a great comedian to add humor as an element in your game. If you’re someone like me, who likes to run a light fantasy campaign, those skills are probably mandatory, but if you just want to season your encounters with a chuckle or two, it’s easy to do.
There are four principles I want to pass on:
1. Always play it straight. Nothing is funnier than someone who reacts to a ridiculous situation as though it’s dead serious. For an example, see Lou Costello in the classic “Who’s On First Routine”. Base your comedy in character motivations or quirks to begin with. You don’t have to write punch lines or jokes to add humor to your encounters.
2. Learn how to build set ups. Use your players’ expectations about things to your advantage by breaking those expectations at the right moment. Use the rule of three. Set up a pattern or expectation by repeating it twice, then present a surprise on the third instance. Most comedy is based on surprise, by someone saying or doing something unexpected.
3. Involve your players. Most people enjoy being able to make others laugh. There are lots of ways to get your players involved in a funny situation without making them feel foolish or silly.
4. Use narrative. Adding humor is sometimes hard to do, but if you use narrative to your advantage, you can make it work.
Let me give you an example that I used in my Teluria campaign to demonstrate these:
You are almost to the village walls of Three Roads when you start to notice a putrid smell wafting your direction from the village. As you get closer, you discover that the stench is coming from a huge pile of dead goblins stacked outside the village walls. A constant buzz of flies is punctuated by the occasional squawks of scavenger birds as they fight over choice morsels of intestine and mutilated flesh.
A work crew, wearing what look to be large beaks on their faces is piling the bodies onto a bier to prepare them for burning. One looks up from his work as you approach, and sniffs “Adventurers, huh? Pity you weren’t here when you were needed. Luckily the Barbarian took care of this lot.”
If the players ask more questions they will find out that the goblins tried to mount a raid to attack the village when a single barbarian leapt from the walls and laid about with his double bitted axe, slaying the entire horde single handedly. The beaks are similar to the one’s medieval doctors wore during the Plague, with packets of herbs helping to tone down the stench. The men of the work crew marvel at the feats of the Barbarian, each interrupting the other to tell about his exploits with the goblin horde.
You pass through the streets of Three Roads. As you walk through the marketplace, you see several rough looking men who have obviously been beaten to within an inch of their life sprawled out on the ground. Bystanders shout “You got what you deserved, you thugs!” and throw rotten vegetables and the contents of not a few chamber pots at them. A city guardsman walks by, sneering, “Adventurers, huh. Too bad you weren’t here earlier, the Barbarian took care of them.”
If they ask any questions, both the guards and the villagers will compete to give the most colorful account of the Barbarian’s single handed vanquishing of the gang of thugs.
If the players happen to walk into the village inn, they will see someone fitting the Barbarian’s description sitting at the bar.
The man sitting at the bar is huge, muscles rippling under the scarred surface of his tanned skin. He is dressed in a simple chain mail shift, with a long loin cloth draped over the edge of the stool he is perched upon. His face shows the scars of many a bloody battle, his black hair falling over his eyes in a dark curtain and down his back in a single braid. Beside him, leaning against the bar, is a huge double bitted axe, its edge still red from the goblin blood it shed only hours before.
You greet the Barbarian, and he turns slowly toward you, his black eyes smoldering under dark brows. You’re unsure how to proceed until his countenance suddenly brightens, and he says in a high squeaky voice “Hi! What can I do for you?”
This is an example of several of the principles I laid out above. The guards and workers perform the setup, using the rule of three (repeat something twice to set a pattern, then the payoff happens on the third). The appearance of the Barbarian plays to an existing trope of the Conan type setting up player expectations based on past experience. Obviously, the Barbarian’s squeaky voice is the payoff.
Now what are the Barbarian’s motivations? Perhaps he became a mighty warrior to make up for the fact that he had a high squeaky voice. Perhaps he is on a quest (the more outlandish, the better). Or maybe despite his appearance, he’s actually just entering puberty (his race being late bloomers). Or maybe he’s just looking for a friend, which is the setup for the next part of this encounter, which got my players involved in the fun.

What I’m going to show you next is how to involve your players in the comedy, even if they’re not great actors or role players. A great source of material for this sort of thing is improvisation games used by improvisational comedians. http://improvencyclopedia.org/games/ is a great source of these. Throwing in an NPC with an odd quirk (think the Party Quirks game on Whose Line is it Anyway) or putting a curse on a player which requires them only to speak in questions, can really get the party involved in trying to figure out what’s going on or dealing with communicating with their fellow adventurer.

In this example, I had to work with one of my players ahead of time, but it paid off because the rest of the party soon caught on and started participating. I call this the “Copper Clapper Caper” game after this sketch from the Tonight Show. Do a quick dictionary search for words beginning with a letter or sound, then give your accomplice the list of the words. In this instance we used the letter P. It was essentially ad libbed to begin with, and soon the rest of the party started in with us.
In the course of the conversation, the Barbarian says “You haven’t heard of Pontifex, have you?
“Pontifex?” you ask.
“Yes, from Poldis.”
“Pontifex from Poldis?”
“Precisely” the Barbarian says.
“Can’t say as I have, what did he do?”
“He was a Paladin.”
“Pontifex the Paladin from Poldis? No doesn’t sound familiar. Was he popular? (This was where the players started getting involved.)
The Barbarian grows thoughtful, “Well, he was, except among the pirates and poltroons.”
“Why, pray tell?”
He sits up, proud of his friend. “He liked to pummel them.”
“So Pontifex the popular paladin from Poldis pummeled pirates and poltroons?”
“Precisely.” The Barbarian says with a smile.
In actual play, everyone started asking questions and trying to come up with “p” words, even the player that wasn’t normally as verbal as the rest of the group.
Wordplay isn’t the only way you can add humor to your campaign though. You can also use descriptive narrative to add a visual element. Work on description of characters, places, or other components of your campaign to give them extra life. Pay attention to elements that are wildly incongruous. Use the rule of three in your setups to help build your players expectations before tossing in the payoff. For example, a village that has six roads coming in but is called Three Roads. Come up with an odd reason that nobody wants to talk about. After the first two refusals, come up with an unusual way to have the next person give in and reveal the secret. This could even become an adventure hook, if you wanted to.
Character quirks can also drive narrative. In this case, you have the benefit of doing your work ahead of time. Work on character descriptions, even develop catch phrases for some of them. In one village, there was an outfitter named Ali El-Elbrahim, who called himself Honest Al, the Adventurer’s pal. Everything was overpriced, but when confronted with it, his inevitable response was always “Gotta make a profit, you know.” If you’re not good with doing voices, then catch phrases and quirks are a good way to differentiate between different characters. If you have need, an NPC can also tag along with the players, providing comic relief by their reactions to the action.
In another case, Philbert Q. Pinchpenny, the eccentric gnome inventor at the edge of town constantly creates new and interesting inventions, half of which don’t work properly or are terribly impractical. The switch sword for example, which requires an impossibly long handle to hold the blades. Or the 30’ ten foot pole, which has two powerful springs that cause the ends to extend. Easy to carry, not so easy to get back to only 10’. Either one of these can set up opportunities for narrative comedy as you describe the results of trying to use them.
I also use character reactions in the same way. Grumpleshnortz the giant gives Philbert a ruby as big as his head, and Philbert faints dead away. Alind the bard (who is not very good) starts to sing a song in honor of the players with a mistuned lute and a voice that could peel paint, soon drawing an angry crowd. Describing the crowd’s reaction is a perfect way to give your players the setup for a funny situation.
I hope some of these tips will work for you in adding comedy to your campaign. One last suggestion. Use comedy as seasoning, not as the main course. Just like salt and pepper, too much can ruin a dish, while just the right amount leaves your players wanting more, and coming back to your table repeatedly to get it.




© 2018 Larry Blankenship
Plagiarism is the sincerest form of Appreciation
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Haronniin
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Re: Adding Comedy to Your Game

Post by Haronniin »

Thanks for sharing. I particularly enjoyed the alliteration story. I also appreciated your injunction to use comedy judiciously. I'm afraid find that most of my games end up with a good dash of player generated comedy on their own - though usually of the slapstick variety.

The following meme seems to hold pretty true (for better or worse).

Image

If I may share two stories:

Cloudy with a chance of halflings

The elf magic-user had fallen into a 30' pit, but saved well and took only minor damage. She was, however, stuck down there.

Halfling Thief: I have a rope. I'm going to tie one end around me and give Jamlin (Dwarf Fighter) the other end then jump into the pit to rescue the mage.

Me: You're going to tie one end of the 50' rope around yourself, give the other end of the 50' rope to the dwarf, then jump into the 30' pit?

HT: Yep.

Me: Are you sure?

HT: Yea.

Me: Jamlin, what do you do?

Dwarf: (With a suspiciously innocent look on his face) I hold on to the end of the 50' rope.

HT: Great! I jump in.

Me: Uh, okay. [Roll dice] How many hit point do you have?

HT: 6. Why? (The rest of the party starts to snicker.)

Me: You just took 10 points of fall damage. You're dead.

HT: What? (The snickers turn to chuckles.)

Me: You tied one end of a 50' rope around yourself, gave the other end of the 50' rope to the dwarf and then jumped into a 30' pit. Even taking away the amount you tied around yourself, and if the dwarf was standing away from the pit's edge, the rope is still too long. You just plummeted to your death.

The halfling's player groaned as he buries his face in his hands. The rest of the party busted up laughing.

A stirge in hand...

The party had wiped out a stirge nest. The thief found some stirge chicks in it and decided she wanted one as a pet. A little while later they came to a door. The party stepped aside for the thief to do her thiefly thing. Instead of the normal listen, check for traps thing, the player said, "I kick in the door!"

"Seriously?" I asked as the party looked on in bewilderment.

"Yea," she said in an offhanded way.

"Okay," I replied. "Make a strength check."

She rolled a natural 20. There was a small party of goblins in the room, so I rolled for surprise and determined the thief had gained surprise on the monsters. "With a mighty heave you kick in the door and get the drop on a small party of goblins. You have a free round. What do you do?"

Without missing a beat the player jumped up from the table and acted out the following: "I scream in goblin, 'I am death and I have come to devour your souls!' and I throw the stirge chick at the lead goblin."

Everyone else at the table, including myself, was staring at her like she had just grown another head. This was sooooo out of character for the player. "Um," I began as I was a bit nonplussed, "Roll for attack."

She rolled another natural 20. At this point I decided to roll with it and figured that if this was strange to me, it must be strange to the goblin leader. I made a reaction roll which he failed critically. I decided to break the technical round order and go ahead and make a morale check for the goblins which they critically failed. This lead to the following narration:

"You hurl the stirge chick with such force that its beak is embedded in the goblin's forehead, killing the chick instantly. The goblin's eyes roll back in it's head and it topples backwards to lie motionless on the ground. The other goblins, having just seen a seemingly possessed elf take out their leader in this manner, and hearing her dire threat, panic and flee."

The party just sat there for a bit in stunned silence. "What the hell just happened?" one finally asked. Suddenly a dejected look of grief came over the thief player as she slumped back into her chair. "Oh, I killed the chick," she said dejectedly.

So, there ya have it. My games, it would seem, are a bit more "low brown" than what you described. I don't think I've ever intentionally planned comedy into the games. Rather, I tend to use the circumstances and die rolls to spin the tale creatively.
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Hywaywolf
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Re: Adding Comedy to Your Game

Post by Hywaywolf »

Trust me. Teluria doesn't have high brow all the time. Sometimes he has a flatulent dwarf in a party
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teluria
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Re: Adding Comedy to Your Game

Post by teluria »

I would agree that most of the time die rolls or player decisions are cause for merriment.
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