We are rapidly approaching our first session of Pathfinder. Our group has RP'd now and then over the last few years but we are 'returning to our roots' sort of speak for some nostalgic D&D - Oop! I mean Pathfinder!
One of my players, a fun-loving and great guy really, brings a light-hearted and casual attitude to his games. He's a great friend and fun gamer but has the tendency to have, well too much fun in my opinion.
Everything is a lark to him and he looks for the humorous in every situation. That might be ok but he tends to build on it, taking actions while roleplaying that add to the hilarity. The more serious players are often pulled in and the flow of the game broken for sometimes several minutes (or longer) with commentary, suggestions and considerations of what would happen if this or that or whatever were to occur.
On a few rare occasions Ive tried to inhibit this behavior I get the look of dissapointment and the complaint - "arent we hear to have fun? Excuse me for having fun!" and he will then pout for a few minutes until another such occasion arises, and they here we go again.
Advice? Am I just being grumpy?
Do you make it clear from the start that it's meant to be a more serious game? I recently ran into a problem where I'd asked someone to run Reign of Winter for me so that I could have a break from being GM for a little while, and we had a major misunderstanding due to lack of communication. Having played in his seriously run (though still very fun and having their moments of humour to prevent 'Grimdark fatigue') World of Darkness games, I was expecting a game to be run in a similar manner, which suited me just fine as I love the Slavic folklore elements of Reign of Winter and wanted to see them done justice...
Cue the first session, where my elation at playing for the first time in years instead of running a game slowly turned into disappointed horror as we encountered majestic talking stags that spoke like drunken fratboys, NPCs with nameplates containing their class and levels above their heads, as well as yellow !'s to show they had quests for us, non-stop Guild Wars jokes (I think they were Guild Wars jokes anyway, I don't play any MMOs) and intense railroading (I realise that stories for prewritten campaigns often run on rails, but the trick to running them successfully is to give the players enough control that it feels like they're deciding to go in that direction, not just yelling "ALL ABOARD THE TRAIN, CHOO CHOO!" after every encounter). Encounters weren't prepped at all, because he hadn't read the adventure in advance, and he hadn't even realised that there was a description of the starting town in the back of the book, so he was just making stuff up on the fly for that and throwing wacky characters at us.
Turns out that he considers D&D and Pathfinder to be "silly" games, because some of their rules aren't realistic, and thus thought it was cool to just run the thing as a giant joke. I on the other hand, was a little upset by this attitude, since this game has been a major component of my life since I was 12 (nearly 13 years now). Once we talked about it, and worked through the misunderstanding, things went a lot smoother. He realised that I don't mind a bit of joking, but I like to actually have an opportunity to roleplay and get into character. I also pointed out that just like he considers these kind of games silly, I could say the same thing about World of Darkness, a game where the entire world is a perfect example of the Crapsack World trope, I can literally one-shot kill a dragon with a pistol if I get a little lucky on some rolls, and my werewolf walks around wearing more totemic fetishes (read: magic items) than a fully decked out 20th level Fighter has.
TL;DR version, talk it out with him outside of the game, before the campaign begins. You might find it helps. On a side note, yeah, the "Excuse me for having fun!" thing sounds incredibly childish. Not a great sign to start with.
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- "arent we hear to have fun? Excuse me for having fun!"
"Yes, WE are here to have fun. WE, as in all of us, including me. Your non-stop clowning is making the game less fun for everybody else. An occasional wisecrack or digression is fine, but when you disrupt the flow of the game for several minutes at a time, you've simply gone too far. Please rein it in."