Is your game silly or serious?

[A'koss]

When I'm running the game it's generally serious but I'll try and throw in a few timely comedic moments now and again. When I'm playing though I tend to play against the standard heroic mold. Often I'm the rogue of the group so expect serious character flaws and questionable morals... I tend to run characters who are amalgams of Spike Spiegel, the Red Dwarf crew, Ash from the Army of Darkness all in one.

Cheers!

 

[RichGreen]

Hi,

We played this afternoon, and although the adventure itself is serious -- it's Hell in Freeport, and the PCs are in the Forge (an infernal prison), we ended up in hysterics several times. We had a great time!

Cheers


Richard

 

[PrinceofLowLight]

As a firm believe in method acting, I believe in letting it go character by character. Having a comic, provided they act like people and not total gimmicks, adds to realism and only enhances a serious feel. Why? Because that's how people act in real life.

And I'll say that as someone who's played more than one "Straight Man" in a party, it wouldn't be half as fun without the silly characters to play off of.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Another vote for 'Serious campaign, silly players'.

I mean, we're in Ravenloft. It's about as serious as a setting gets! But as players, most of our OOC comments about in-game events are silly and tongue-in-cheek.

Though the last one-shot I ran was in a setting with a heavy Discworld influence, and despite the werewolves and necromancers, the game itself was more... black comedy than serious. We were in stitches for a lot of play-time.

-Hyp.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

Ours is a mix of serious and comical. We use the game to "de-stress" from work and also are friends so there can be quite a bit of silliness at times.

 

[Immak Antunel]

My games are mostly (80-90%) serious, at least in character, with a decent amount of OOC comic relief... but I do tend to giggle maniacally once the PCs start dying. Does that count as humor?

 

[twofalls]

We run a serious game, comical things rarely happen in game for the sake of comic relief. That being said we are all long time friends (one of these guy's I've been running in games for over 26 years) and we all have moments where we are giggling over our dice for many reasons. One player is known for never rolling well, one is known for loving redheads and chasing them in game, one is known for his extremely undiplomatic way with NPC's... etc.

 

[Altalazar]

I prefer serious games, but with comic relief in context - after all, real life is serious, but has its comic moments. What I wouldn't like is a game that has no one taking any of it seriously at all - that to me loses the suspension of disbelief. That said, there have been some very very silly moments in some of the games I've been in - sometimes made all the more funny because of the seriousness of the situations...

 

[ThirdWizard]

Our game is serious - for the most part. Some of the characters are somewhat comical, espeically when they're taking downtime and can relax, hang out at the pub or things like that. And, sometimes we get comical out of character, but I'd say 85% of gameplay is serious.

EDIT: I even played a crazy NPC last session (who wasn't crazy last time the PCs saw him poor guy) complete with fidgeting, breaking out into laughter, and muttering to myself and none of the players laughed or joked about it, and roleplayed along with it. I give them credit for that, as I was really playing the crazyness up and it would have been easy for them to ignore the seriousness of the situation and laugh at me playing up the insanity. They were good friends with the NPC so I credit a lot of it to that.

 

[Steverooo]

Deadly Serious Comedy...

My PCs are usually deadly serious, but can be comical or even silly, at times, and don't mind the comical ones (although I guess a silly one would get on my PCs' nerves). So, I took the sixth option... just a step above "I'm serious and everyone else had better be, too!"