How serious is your d&d?

Iry · Mar 23, 2019

8/10. We’re in character most of the time, but straight faced Buffy style humor certainly does happen.

Jacob Lewis · Mar 23, 2019

On and off again, but we're mostly seeing other people/games. So just friends?

Bitbrain · Mar 23, 2019

At the game I DM, the atmosphere is somewhat serious. We play at a local baptist church, so we try to be on our best behavior.

At my Dad's game, we wouldn't know what the word "serious" meant even if it smacked us across the face. We play his game at our house, so everything descends into hilarity and anarchy almost immediately.

Inchoroi · Mar 23, 2019

I'd say 80 serious 20 not-serious. I've had a few joke adventures during this long-ass campaign, but the majority of the not-serious content has come from the players. For example, one NPC hit on an archer character, and wagered an expensive poison versus a date over a game of darts. So, naturally, the bard realized that the NPC had zero chance of winning, so used bardic inspiration to make sure the NPC one so the character would have to go on the date, as that character had literally never been on one.

Henry · Mar 23, 2019

Robin Heier said:
So, no poll for this one. Just curious where people are at. How serious is your current game? Beer and pretzels, hard gritty LOTR or something in between? Do you start serious and it becomes Monty Python, or does it get there from session 0. I played both, I ran both, currently in Marvel meets Cthulhu. Love gritty but enjoying off the cuff humor and zany antics. Just wanting to here your story.

This may sound funny, but a Critical Role episode plays about like one of my groups’ normal D&D games - at times serious, mixed with a bit of humor, foul language, and totally inappropriate humor.

The occasional epic role-playing moment manages to find its way in there as well.

robus · Mar 23, 2019

Henry said:
This may sound funny, but a Critical Role episode plays about like one of my groups’ normal D&D games - at times serious, mixed with a bit of humor, foul language, and totally inappropriate humor. The occasional epic role-playing moment manages to find its way in there as well.

This is why I find forced attempts at humor in published adventures unnecessary. Most groups will find humor coming organically from the game, sometimes to break the tension, sometimes due to the absurdity of the situation (or a silly character name.) The adventures themselves should play as straight as possible, the players bring the zany (if that’s what they want).

Imaculata · Mar 23, 2019

My campaigns always include a great deal of humor. We have our moments of suspense, romance and drama. But there is always room to laugh as well. My players aren't in-character 100% of the time, and there's plenty of room for OC-jokes and remarks at the table.

But then there are the epic moments as well. The moments where one of the players comes up with an amazing speech, or does something incredibly cool. The clutch moments where a big battle has the players clinging onto the ropes and barely coming out alive.

We have sessions where no dice are rolled at all; nothing but roleplaying and exploration. And then we have 2 or 3 consequetive sessions with just a dungeon crawl or one massive battle. I try to mix it up a lot. I don't want to exhaust my players with nothing but combat, so I throw in plenty of room for social encounters and exploration. Yet I know plenty of players in my group really like the strategic elements of the game too, so I try to also have plenty of that in my campaign.

GothicEmperor · Mar 23, 2019

5/5 serious/silly, though it's not intentional. I guess humour is a sort of defence mechanism for our collective inexperience.

AkaKageWarrior · Mar 23, 2019

The game itself is deadly serious.
But playing for 30 years now with some guys and knowing each other quite well... we often fall back into 15-year old behaviour - and have lots of fun, silly, dirty, stupid jokes and language included.
Some reasons for not taking my 16-year old son to our games... good manners would kinda spoil the fun.

DND_Reborn · Mar 23, 2019

At our table, if you smile, the DM kills your character and doesn't even grin while doing it. (j/k)

Like most were are fairly serious but jokes happen. Our DM puts a lot of time into the game and makes up most of the adventures himself, so he appreciates it when we play seriously much of the time.