Based on my experiences on both sides of the screen:
1. 99.9% of games benefit from at least the occasional humorous moment, even the ones where you cry and dress in black. (I can conceive of the 0.01%, but I’ve never played them.)
2. When any group of gamers gets together for a session, laughter is inevitable.
Have you also found both of these laws to be true? Is there a third law (or a fourth, etc.)? Does the first one take place naturally when you GM, or do you need to plan for it?
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Our games are typically laughing from beginning to end.
We’ve had people quit our games becuase the games “weren’t serious enough”. (we laugh at them)
We figure that if everyone is laughing, then everyone is having a good time. If everyone’s having a good time, we must be doing something right.
Besides very good character play (which often involve laughter as well), the laughs are the moments I remember the most from my games.
Last week I tried to play Ninja Burger with my fantasy group and it was a 4 hours continious laugh. Even though the system and story is completly silly, the group agreed that a game that makes you laugh so much, only can be a good game.
I would’nt be able to play in a group that are disturbed by laughs during game sessions.
As a group aged 30+ playing fantasy games and rolling dice, I would be embarrased if we didn’t laugh. After all it is a game without winners (I can easily play competitive game without smiling once) and the good time together is the reward.
I think both laws are true; humor goes well with almost every game. Not at key, tense scenes– well, not usually– but we’ll find a reason to laugh most sessions.
As a GM, I rarely aim at including something specifically for laughs– the players will find something funny no matter my setup. I get to be the straight man…
Every group needs thier resident funnyman.
You got your serious player doing his thing, and the other players have to wait for him to finish, with half the players ending up stareing blankly into space or nodding off.
Crack a few jokes here and there that involve what happening in the game, players are alert and awake and paying attension so that they don’t miss out on the next funny or miss the chance to make thier own.
Gaming and laughter go hand-in-hand. Certainly, there are moments when laughter in game isn’t appropriate, wanted, or warrented, but I’ve never played an ENTIRE game with that feel.
Roleplaying is essentially playing “let’s pretend” with a set of rules. If you watch kids play any sort of pretend game, they’re usually laughing, joking, and having a good ol’ time. Why should we adults be any different?
And a quick tip: If someone says something side-splittingly funny or just plain great, write it down on the inside cover of whatever rulebook you’re gaming with. If you’re stuck for ideas later, you can look back on these and remember what really got the players paying attention to the game. Even if they’re cracking a good joke, it shows that they’re paying enough attention to the game to do so.
My group’s most recent game-derailing inside joke comes from a Saturday Night Live sketch with Kevin Spacey doing Christopher Walken auditioning for the part of Han Solo.
If anyone says “Fast…ship,” we’re out of action for several minutes. 😉
I had a DM in my high school years hand out xp penalties for cracking wise during a game. Especially to me. I think I got “preferential treatment” because I kept rules-lawering him.