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So, after about 7 years of being the DM for about every tabletop group I've been a part of, I have finally found a group where I can put up my feet and actually be a PC for a while. I have to say, it's fun to actually be on the other side of the table for a while, and to not actually pay that close of attention to every single part of combat. And I have to say, I'm more than loving the fact that I don't have to go for a serious character, and can actually make as many jokes IC as I want (Because Bards are awesome like that).
That being said, this DM I'm working with has recently asked me to tone down my "zaniness" because he likes a more serious game. And this led me to wondering: When you DM a game, what level of humor do you find acceptable IC? Do you want a completely stone-cold fantasy game, or do you not mind things devolving into Monty Python and the Holy Grail level antics?
Myself, I find that I like having characters who aren't afraid to joke. That's not to say that you can be silly all the time, but that part of me that loves Spiderman, Terry from Batman Beyond, and Harry Dresden knows that humor is a great thing to have as a hero.
Silly. Very silly.
Some jokes (Like the monty python quotes) we keep out of character but we play this game from the humour.
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Every single member of an actual band of adventurers being stone-cold serious all the time would probably be the death of them eventually. I can appreciate that you want your plot taken seriously, but human(oid)s need humor in the lives.
Might explain why paragons of pure Good and Law are so famous for falling into Chaotic Evil madness. Dudes needed to laugh.
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The mood waxes and wanes. One day I'm convincing the orc of the group that some custom-written music is actually traditional orcish travel music so that his screechings are at least somewhat bearable, the next we're attempting to establish a transitional government after a ghoul attack by resurrecting the one person in town who is both a leader and that we trust wasn't involved.
chasing down my prey.
My ax swings to and fro,
none shall live the day!
HA HA HA!
Always depends on the group. I am a complete jackass for a good portion of my game sessions and it cracks my group up to no end. Not one of them has asked for a more serious game, and I've asked.
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So, after about 7 years of being the DM for about every tabletop group I've been a part of, I have finally found a group where I can put up my feet and actually be a PC for a while. I have to say, it's fun to actually be on the other side of the table for a while, and to not actually pay that close of attention to every single part of combat. And I have to say, I'm more than loving the fact that I don't have to go for a serious character, and can actually make as many jokes IC as I want (Because Bards are awesome like that).
That being said, this DM I'm working with has recently asked me to tone down my "zaniness" because he likes a more serious game. And this led me to wondering: When you DM a game, what level of humor do you find acceptable IC? Do you want a completely stone-cold fantasy game, or do you not mind things devolving into Monty Python and the Holy Grail level antics?
Myself, I find that I like having characters who aren't afraid to joke. That's not to say that you can be silly all the time, but that part of me that loves Spiderman, Terry from Batman Beyond, and Harry Dresden knows that humor is a great thing to have as a hero.
I prefer a more serious tone. Some jokes are ok, but it can't be on the level of Monty Python for entire sessions. It would take me out of the game mentally.
Don't get me wrong. Sometimes I joke around as a player, and my players say silly things IC and OoC, but as a GM I don't think I have any jokefest campaigns. <----There is nothing wrong with it. It just isn't for me.
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So, after about 7 years of being the DM for about every tabletop group I've been a part of, I have finally found a group where I can put up my feet and actually be a PC for a while. I have to say, it's fun to actually be on the other side of the table for a while, and to not actually pay that close of attention to every single part of combat. And I have to say, I'm more than loving the fact that I don't have to go for a serious character, and can actually make as many jokes IC as I want (Because Bards are awesome like that).
That being said, this DM I'm working with has recently asked me to tone down my "zaniness" because he likes a more serious game. And this led me to wondering: When you DM a game, what level of humor do you find acceptable IC? Do you want a completely stone-cold fantasy game, or do you not mind things devolving into Monty Python and the Holy Grail level antics?
Myself, I find that I like having characters who aren't afraid to joke. That's not to say that you can be silly all the time, but that part of me that loves Spiderman, Terry from Batman Beyond, and Harry Dresden knows that humor is a great thing to have as a hero.
I think there's a disconnect here. Your GM accused you of being zany, yet, while those characters are all witty and sarcastic, none could be called zany.
I think the tone of the Dresden Files or Firefly is probably my ideal. Life is funny sometimes, and characters say and do funny things, but nobody loses sight of the seriousness of what's happening just because they're laughing. Monty Python, meanwhile, would not work for me at the table.
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My own experience tells me that there is two types of Pathfinder players; serious ones and jokers. You literally cannot change them, hence you usually have a serious group or jokers group. I have had around 7 or 8 players in total that I have seen in my home games and most can be classified as jokers, which is completely okay. Both group types can have either cool and groovy or strictly immersive sessions. It's complete matter of taste.
I personally prefer jokers in the group which is probably my only experience in this case. They can be disruptive sometimes, but in the same way, they can lower the tension also. Also a good point to add is that horror type game might not be good game type for them.
Adam
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I'd hate to have to choose one or the other.
But there are moments where a naturally flowing MP quote in response to a situation can be funny... I can think of a couple times over the years when someone at the table has sang a line or two from "Brave Sir Robin" when a PC disengages from combat.
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IMO there needs to be balance in both directions. If you don't have at least *some* humor then your super-serious campaign will start to feel like a parody of itself. Likewise if you have a game that's *entirely* humor.
It's one of those without-light-there-can-be-no-dark situations.
Besides, humans use humor to relieve tension in serious situations, so it also feels quite unnatural if there is never any humor in such situations. People can only hold in so much stress.
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When I DM, I can say I don't mind Humor but I do like a more serious game. Jokes are just going to happen so I let them when they come. I just don't like it when the player's start interrupting the DM when their trying to describe something, start an encounter, or something equally important. When that happens, the DM is forever repeating things to the party or they end up dying because they were to busy trying to come up with something to realize that the Pit Fiend was indeed coming for them...
I prefer light-hearted action-adventure kinds of games, I guess I'd say. There's always someone ready to break the tension with a smart remark, except in the most dire of situations.
My games tend to be very natural: when characters are light-hearted, the game is more light-hearted. When the situations are serious, we're serious.
Unless we're just being completely off the wall OOC, at which point we don't get much done, anyway.
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I've played with a somewhat serious group, a "crazy" group and an entirely serious group. I enjoyed the somewhat serious group much more.
The crazy group was more "what dumb thing can we do right now" with no real focus on the objective. Two of the PCs decided to have a bit of an adult time in the corner with the castle's spymaster (after beating him half to death) while the rest of us were still trying to infiltrate the caste and confront the current lord. I backed out of that campaign.
The insanely serious group was about to leave my character behind just because I revealed I was a kitsune. Apparently showing them that you're a kitsune instantly makes you insanely distrustful because that's how their characters are. To be fair, he was very low intelligence, but he never actually did anything untrustworthy. I backed out of that campaign.
The somewhat serious group is great though. We get to tell jokes and have our characters do some somewhat silly stuff but we all have our eyes on the goal still. I definitely don't plan on dropping out of that campaign.
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I don't like silly games. A little occasional humor is one thing, but I prefer games that are a little more serious (particularly since I love horror).
Ingame jokes: OK and welcome
Outgame jokes: Not too often please
Have I told you...about my child/about my dog/ about that TV series/about that sporting event: Not welcome during the session. Please insert this before the game start or in the "pizza break".
What if my Rogue told the Paladin a joke in-character about my kid riding my dog in a hit TV series where they play football?
What if my Rogue told the Paladin a joke in-character about my kid riding my dog in a hit TV series where they play football?
Do you have TV and football in your PF game?
It is just greatly annoying if you want to play but some player keeps interrupting the game with RL stories. Those can be shared at different times.
Greatly depends.
I've had some players who put almost all their effort and attention into cracking jokes and setting up humorous situations. Occasionally - that is great! But if it is too often, then that usually means the player is not paying attention to the game and even worse is probably starting to distract other players.
Then I find myself repeating things because they weren't listening. Sometimes the group has done incredibly stupid things (likely TPK stupid) because they were distracted and missed clues or major plot points.
Monty Python is too much for me in most of my campaigns. (Though we occasionally do silly stuff in a one shot or mini-arch.) Though I also don't like constant all grim and serious. If it isn't fun, it's not entertaining, then why am I here rather than spending time with my family?
Like ElterEgo above. I blend - sometimes serious, sometimes a bit silly (and usually a little creepy, like the Joker). I did run an entire Monty Python-esque segment of a campaign, which was great because we were all Python fans so they got the references (and hence clues). But as a typical thing? No.
OoC happens often. But in-game, not as much. I may have a funny character, so the humor arises out of that vs not taking the game seriously.
You can have fun WITH the game, or you can make fun OF the game. I prefer the former.
I'd probably fall on the more serious side, though not entirely.
In-character: please stop referring to things that don't exist in game, k thanks bye.
Out of Character: people want to chat, people want to tell a tangentially related story, somebody had too much sugar and can't pay attention for an hour, food happens, ect. I try and keep this stuff from overwhelming the game session, but it happens and everyone I know does it to some degree. Too much of this and you might as well just hang out and do something else, too little and nobody ever relaxes enough to get good stories told.
I throw the puns in when I can. They DID want me to play a bard. However, the game is mostly serious. I think if it got Zany it would get on several peoples nerves.
This is a night for everyone to relax and some have to work the next morning.
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Serious, with a load of humour sprinkled all over it. Sometimes IC, but mostly OoC.
As I tend to DM grim games and mature themed adventures, the properly timed joke and light hearted moment works wonedrs to give variety and not bore with uncompromising grimdark fron start to finish of the session.
When the humour is too much IC, players chastise each other for spoiling the mood - feels good as the DM.
When OoC, it's most often of the gross kind, with back-and forth exchanges that quickly devolve into something too disgusting to carry on. And that ends the moment with a shared laugh, that signals that the group is ready to carry on with the serious stuff.
Too serious, not fun. Too IC humour, spoiled mood. Too Ooc humour, sillyness of the worst type.
A good mix - based on the type of game that's played - is what works best.
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I DM silly games, but only because I know my player's well. I've put them in harrowing, life or death situations against unnameable monstrosities, and they turn it into a silly-fest anyways. But that's fine. My goal as a DM is to facilitate their fun, and I have the most fun watching my group have fun, so as much as I might WANT a group of involved, diligent, and motivated roleplayers, I guess just sitting with my friends and playing a fun game will have to suffice.
As a player, the few times I've gotten to be one, I tend to take the adventure seriously, because I feel like anyone, even a jokester, would look at the fate of the world with at least a hint of seriousness.
The way I DM depends on the player group in question.
If they want a serious campaign, I'll run it as a serious one.
If they want a lighthearted campaign, then I'll run it as a lighthearted one.
Of course, I'll make it clear what is and what isn't okay in my books, while also respecting their wishes to a degree.
I go various ways depending heavily on the campaign and players involved.
For us, it has to be a mix. A good balance of humor and seriousness. We wouldn't enjoy too much of either.
I prefer more serious overall, with humor tossed in. If it is constant comedy from a player, I get annoyed quickly. Someone who takes it super serious all the time gets annoying as well. I don't want it "I cast magic missile at the darkness!" and "If there's any girls there I wanna do them!" type stuff all the time. Every now and then is fine.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32
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My ideal session of Pathfinder would occur without a single Monty Python joke being made.Is that humanly possible?
Only in my wildest dreams.
EDIT: This doesn't actually happen in my other medieval fantasy games. The main reason is that I mostly play PFS, and so the majority of the table are Olds.
Youth culture forever! (Until I'm no longer the Youth I guess.)
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My ideal session of Pathfinder would occur without a single Monty Python joke being made.Is that humanly possible?Only in my wildest dreams.
EDIT: This doesn't actually happen in my other medieval fantasy games. The main reason is that I mostly play PFS, and so the majority of the table are Olds.
Youth culture forever! (Until I'm no longer the Youth I guess.)
You should come play with us. My group almost never makes those.
I like stories where flawed people make the best decisions they know how to in dark times. It is a fairly serious mood. I also find that it allows for the truest and most enjoyable humor.
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I can go for both, depending on my mood. Sometimes I'm in the mood for serious. Sometimes I'm in the mood for silly. Lots of the time I'm somewhere in between.
Even WH40K, which coined the term "grimdark" has the Orks. And if you consider nearly everything about the Orks pretty goddamn silly, you aren't paying attention. Yeah, it's awesome, but it's also silly as hell!
Da red wuns go fasta!
For a one-shot scenario I enjoy the gamut. I prefer longer games to be more serious, but I like to think of myself as a witty person, so I also like it when I'm allowed to use said wit. There have been times where I've thought of jokes and kept them to myself because I didn't want to spoil the mood though. A couple months ago, one of my players in an attempt to "get the sillyness out" prior to playing asked everyone to give their favorite Monty Python quote before proceeding with play. What followed was about 40 minutes of Monty Python jokes as it became a contest to see who ran out first (we didn't run out, we just decided to go back to the game).
To illustrate some of the width of my tastes last Sunday I played/ran the following games at a convention:
1) Fiasco - Alpha Complex
The rules are still Fiasco, but it's set in Paranoia's Alpha Complex, which works very well for Fiasco. We did all sorts of humorous, insane things to each other. My UV programmer ended the game fighting for his life in a cage match against a mutant monster made entirely out of 35 hands. He lost.
2) Penny for My Thoughts
This game was very serious. It's a very light game using basic improv theater techniques. You don't make your character, you start with no memories. Then using prompts you create in the game, you start building those memories to find out who you were. I started life as a kid who worked at an amusement park where I met my first girl friend. Later in life I caused an accident while working on the crew of a NASCAR team, ended up redeeming myself by becoming a driver, and finally losing my career when I couldn't handle the pressure. Years after that, I went crazy in my house, joined underground racing and sabotaged my opponents cars intentionally, hitting rock bottom when I caused a similar accident to the one when I was working in the pit crew.
3) Mythender (as GM, or Mythmaster as it's called in that game)
This is kind of a mix. It can be serious, but I tend to run it very over-the-top heavy metal action. I like to do a couple things that hit the players right in the feels, but my primary focus is encouraging them to do ever more awesome things. I consider it my responsibility to have each character do at least one thing that could be considered "jumping the shark". Then later I encourage them to do something more like this. It makes sense in context of the game.
I tend to run a slightly more serious game, but am happy to have some joking and so on in it. The Pathfinder game I play in one the other hand, while I enjoy it most of the time, runs to the silly side of the spectrum. Sometimes so much so that it actually seriously grates on my nerves. Unfortunately the rest of the group love it, so there's not much I can do about it... we're on book four of Reign of Winter and we have a wizard riding a flying cannon and a druid riding a flying giant wolf. The other wizard and the gunslinger are silly in their own less obvious ways. Because of this, my bard who's convinced he shares his body with a horde of celestial spirits is actually the most normal of the group.
It's better than it was originally though... the GM didn't bother reading the first book at all before running it, and just started improvising stuff. Had no idea about any stats for any of the creatures, didn't realise that some of them were tiny and could therefore hide easily, had talking animals who sounded like fratboys (a deer was looking for fawn-loko and a sick kegger apparently), described characters who had info for us as having yellow exclamation marks above their head, and kept saying "Choo Choo! Everyone on the train! Choo Choo" then just teleporting us to the next combat instead of interacting with us to help get info across that would get us moving in the right direction.
The current kind of silliness I can handle, with the occasional bit of irritation, but mostly it's really fun anyway. The kind we had at the start almost made me leave the group because I just couldn't stand it.
I'm ok with looney humor. Its slapstick I can't stand. I'd have a hard time enjoying a campaign where anyone's looking for a 'sick kegger'.
I'm ok with looney humor. Its slapstick I can't stand. I'd have a hard time enjoying a campaign where anyone's looking for a 'sick kegger'.
Yeah, that's pretty much where it was at at the start. It got a bit more serious for a while, while still being very entertaining and having plenty of humour. I had to leave the group for a while due to some personal stuff, when I came back it had shifted more back to the zany, but it's at a point where I can handle it 95% of the time, and the other 5% I just grin and bear it since everyone else is having fun.