The whimsical element of D&D vs AD&D

[Schmoe]

I think the reason for the perception that BECM = light and AD&D = heavy is due to the rules system. BECM was relatively simple and straightforward, with the focus on the imagination and story. AD&D was much more proscribed in terms of the rules and thus had a more "serious" feel to it.

As far as the adventures themselves, I think AD&D had at least as much, if not more, silliness as BECM. There were some fantastic BECM modules with a very serious tone, and in fact only a few jump out at me as being whimsical.

 

[rounser]

Nothing can be more frustrating to a DM than trying to set a mood in a scene and someone starts busting out South Park quotes. Getting the players on board beforehand is really important if you're trying for a more serious game, IME.

But that's the default; most DMs seem to be trying to run something steeped in drama and epic storytelling, whereas the reality is that this is a social group of friends, playing a game where silly situations occur naturally because at a fundamental level RPGs are largely silly (just like acting, ever seen a blooper reel?), and to downplay that is to potentially destroy the best game memories and a lot of the cameraderie.

The funny thing about silliness is that you can bounce back from South Park quotes to finding the assassin who slew the duke very easily, so nothing is lost. A hint is that the games built for the most whimsy (AD&D 1E and Hackmaster) are also the ones built for the most ugliness and adult themes. I mean, take away the funny and Paranoia is a dystopia, so grimdark and silly are natural bedfellows.

I suspect it's to a degree DM and game designer egos getting in the way; "Who could possibly get bored and want to quote Star Wars or make jokes about a silly magic item when playing under our masterful ruleset and campaign arc? Preposterous, it's far too sublime. Purge the silly item and dial up the angsty and serious more-uber-than-thou purple prose quotes in the PHB." But it happens consistently and naturally in my experience, whether the DM and designers take themselves too seriously or not.

I'm just saying that you don't even need to "get players on board." Instead, avoid repeating the mistake which IMO has happened in the very ruleset, which is restricting the scope of gameplay, and instead extend the scope of your campaign to accept silliness and OOC jokes gracefully, even gladly. When the tension relief is over, they'll all get back to finding the duke's killer, and perhaps you'll have a lot more great memories...fun, even...than in a po-faced campaign.

 

[JediSoth]

also the death leach on a stick with the ring of wishes, it wished to be able to communicate with all creatures living.

That was from Larry Elmore's comic classic comic Snarfquest. It and Wormy are the two things I remember most fondly from Dragon Magazine.

And I agree with the poster who said grimdark is hard to maintain when players bust out Southpark quotes (it's usually Monty Python with my group). It doesn't bother me much, though. I game to have fun, not make everyone pretend they're stage performers.

For some reason, over the past two years, I've found myself preferring the tone of the older editions (BEMCI - 2nd ed.) to 3.x and beyond. Not sure why. Losing my wife and my father in Nov. '08 and Nov. '09, respectively might have something to do with that.

 

[Wicht]

I am brought to mind with recent posts about Frank Mentzer how much I dislike his module, Needle. It is one of TSR's series of adventures that was first seen in a tournament setting, and has a really good first part, a mediocre second part, and a truly terrible and bizarre third part where the PCs end up on a moon negotiating with alien spiders that are played as much for the humour value of it as anything.

I ran it back in the 80s, and yes, we had a good time at the beginning and things deteriorated from there.

I wonder if it wasn't published in the wrong game line? Would it have seemed more correct if it was part of the BECMI line? I suspect it may have been.

As the guy who wrote "On the Care and Keeping of Gelatinous Cubes" (written for a 3e ruleset I might add) I most certainly think whimsy has a place in the game, no matter the edition. That being said, The Needle would have been a bad module regardless of the ruleset, in my opinion. Its always been my least favorite module.

 

[BryonD]

I suspect it's to a degree DM and game designer egos getting in the way; "Who could possibly get bored and want to quote Star Wars or make jokes about a silly magic item when playing under our masterful ruleset and campaign arc? Preposterous, it's far too masterful. Purge the silly item and dial up the angsty and serious more-uber-than-thou purple prose quotes in the PHB."

Yeah. Good call. And I must admit that I can see that fault in myself......


Though I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite about it, since I also tend to crack a lot of jokes. Though I'm also only very mildly and infrequently irked by the disruptions of otherwise immaculately crafted ( heh ) moods, so I gues it isn't too bad.


While I absolutely agree that silliness is a well established tradition in D&D and respect that game style, I think it is a credit to gaming in general that it is now a sub-genre rather than a presumed. Not to say that gaming has grown UP beyond that but simply that it has grown OUT into a more broad base and this is just one dimension of that growth.


I think there is a significant difference between in-game and meta-game humor. If I'm watching Saving Private Ryan and someone with me cracks a good joke, I will laugh. If I were watching Saving Private Ryan and the Three Stooges start yucking it across the background or enemy guns start producing "BANG!" flags, I'm gonna be ticked. And I think this ties into your point about going rapidly from joking to finding the assassin. A South Park one liner is a tension release that, as much as anything CAN lead to higher tension within the actual plot. Finding the assassin because his giant clown boots squeak is terminal if a serious mood is intended.

I respect the fun of silliness. But my personal preference is for "serious" story. And a lot of joking happens around the table during the serious play.

 

[Sunseeker]

I think you're probably right, but on the whole, it's likely because more fantastic settings are much less dark.

In a true, medieval fantasy setting, you've got short lived lives, abject poverty, death and disease, with an added dose of monster-based suffering. At the end of the day, you end up with a world that Hobbes could not have defined better than "poor, brutish, and short." Tack on some racial inequality, and you've got a real downer of a world, one that no matter how epic your heroes become, nothing will change about the world. You could vanquish the dark lord, and the good king will still execute tieflings simply for being tieflings.

I agree that some fantastical settings take things to far, but IMO, without glossing over the finer details, you're going to generally end up with a world that makes the heroes question why they even bothered to wake up that morning. Which, by all means could be very interesting, but on the whole, without offering them the cookie of "being able to change the world", I suspect players would get disheartened fairly quickly.

So, at the end of the day, i'd rather suck up my suspension of disbelief and play in a world where I know things really wouldn't work that way, than play in a world where everything works as it should IRL and go home depressed.

 

[rounser]

If I were watching Saving Private Ryan and the Three Stooges start yucking it across the background or enemy guns start producing "BANG!" flags, I'm gonna be ticked. And I think this ties into your point about going rapidly from joking to finding the assassin. A South Park one liner is a tension release that, as much as anything CAN lead to higher tension within the actual plot. Finding the assassin because his giant clown boots squeak is terminal if a serious mood is intended.

I see the point you're trying to make, but none of the examples you gave are D&D humour. D&D humour is difficult to pin down (but I'd refer you to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Order of the Stick, and Knights of the Dinner Table as starting points), but Stooges, guns that say "BANG" and clown shoes aren't it. None of those things are funny outside of D&D, even.

But I'll tell you this for free: D&D humour does contain within it scope for stupid monsters, cursed magic items, pop culture references and puns, gratuitously graphic fumbles and crits, occasional breaking of the fourth wall or meta jokes about rules, and things not always being fair (for either the NPCs or the PCs, depending on the situation). Occasional tragicomedy and farce are fun, and highly memorable. This is why the WOTC D&D game design theory war on these things in the name of fun and fairness is perhaps ill-advised.

You can have drama and humour very easily in D&D without sacrificing one for the other. Although D&D is not the movies, I saw Flying High recently, and although not awesome, laughs and drama were both present.

At the RPG table, the main event includes the blooper reel, continually in improv mode, and unless we are reading from boxed text there is no script. Now in theatre, they call doing that Theatre Sports, and Theatre Sports are generally amusing, and intended for that end. There's another clue as to the natural direction of D&D gameplay...

 

[rounser]

So, at the end of the day, i'd rather suck up my suspension of disbelief and play in a world where I know things really wouldn't work that way, than play in a world where everything works as it should IRL and go home depressed.

I'm seeing a disconnect you could drive a truck through, here. Silliness = lighthearted, no? When you are being silly, you are generally smiling and/or having fun, therefore depression is a bit mutually exclusive. It feels awkward having to spell that out, surely you know this?

The depressing world without relief is the grimdark without the silliness, not the bipolar grimdark/whimsical setting that doesn't take itself too seriously.

 

[Sunseeker]

I'm seeing a disconnect you could drive a truck through, here. Silliness = lighthearted, no? When you are being silly, you are generally smiling and/or having fun, therefore depression is a bit mutually exclusive.

The depressing world without relief is the grimdark without the silliness, not the grimdark that doesn't take itself too seriously and is packed with whimsy.

Perhaps I misunderstood, from my reading of the original post, the statement seemed to be something along the lines of:

"Any form of unrealism is silly and not suitable for a D&D world, and every world should take every aspect of itsself with true realism total seriousness."

Silliness is, generally, lighthearted good fun, though as I said, it can go to far, though even when it does, taking sillyness too far can be more enjoyable than taking seriousness too far.

But, as I said, it's not just sillyness that keeps a game lighthearted.

Take for example the portrayal(and physical appearance) of Tieflings. In most medieval settings, these people would be murdered on sight and hunted to extinction as fast as possible. Only the greatest sums of money or political leverage could prevent this and even then, it would probably be short lived and the people immune to those things would likely be waiting for a chance to stab you in the back.

This can be applied to almost any non-human race, and even to the varous ethnicities of humans. Avoiding this generally involved glossing over humanity's "scared and fearful" nature. Which entails avoiding a lot of political, military, and social issues as well. Avoiding these things helps keep the game lighthearted, even if delving into them is interesting.

Perhaps this is all misunderstanding the OP, but it seemed to imply "true", that is, AD&D, it was more important to establish a "serious" world, than to have a fun game, which is the goal of BD&D.

 

[rounser]

This can be applied to almost any non-human race, and even to the varous ethnicities of humans. Avoiding this generally involved glossing over humanity's "scared and fearful" nature. Which entails avoiding a lot of political, military, and social issues as well. Avoiding these things helps keep the game lighthearted, even if delving into them is interesting.

RPGs as a sociology experiment, postmodern literary statement, or politically correct educational message is Forge or RPG.net chinstroker territory, and I'd fall over myself in my rush to get away from such a game table. I don't think you can get further from D&D humour than that, unless said humour involves taking the piss out of yourself.