The whimsical element of D&D vs AD&D

[MerricB]

The Gazetteer line was pretty good for whimsy, but I don't think it held a candle to Glorantha (setting of White Bear & Red Moon and RuneQuest).

There was the Jack-O-Bear (remember Greyhawk?), Three Bean Circus, Trollball, and of course (as a friend of mine puts it)

"Those damned Ducks!"

Oh, yes... Ducks!

Cheers!

 

[Barastrondo]

If the rules and setting provide props, not necessarily for humour but for roleplaying of any sort, then more of that will happen. It's just the way it is. Yes, you can roleplay over a pure combat engine, but I guarantee that you'll see less of it than if the system gives you rules and setting props to throw around, similarly to how actors can act on an empty stage without costumes may have more trouble getting into character than ones in the opposite environment.

I dunno; it seems to me that much of the Old School Renaissance movement prospers in defiance of this theory. It's founded on the idea that you can have fantastic roleplay in a system as stripped down as OD&D, and in fact many claim the roleplay is better because people are called on to provide their own ideas and the rules get out of the way as much as possible.

It's possible that both are right, of course; in fact, I think that's the most likely answer. But it's another form of "group chemistry with one another and the ruleset is the most important thing."

To clarify, the humorous use of the Backbiter I had in mind isn't a "screw the players" use (although IMO that's a perfectly acceptable part of true D&D games when used in considered moderation*). To be specific, it's more a PC inspired way of being cruel to peasants through an impromptu equivalent of a gameshow, once they know what they have (but enough said about that). When you ditch items and monsters that might cause a setback or inconvenience, you simply throw to the winds much of the possibility of this kind of humour or drama.

I don't think so. Without cursed items you can definitely still craft jokes about PC sociopathy and how they can use deception and magic to abuse the crap out of hapless peasants, and those subjects will definitely still come up if that's what your group thinks is funny. I think the thing that's lost is more of a shared experience, in the sense that not every group has a cloak of poisonousness anecdote. And since humor is a subjective thing, that shared experience is something of variable value: if both groups have the same experience, and one thought it was hilarious while the other thought it was stupid, it doesn't quite bring the two groups together in gaming style.

I debate that - the gamebook setting, rules-supported actions and writing style can set up the very mood of the table, the content of what is happening and the possibilities for conversational wit as a result. Nevermind genre, for that matter, although I'm quite prepared to accept that people can be witty in any RPG genre. It's just that the genre is likely to influence the players, if it's doing it's job, as are the rules.

No argument there -- but again, the nature of humor being subjective does mean that what one group considers a bad joke being institutionalized in a rulebook may not increase levity when a die roll brings that bad joke up. Whether it changes the mood or not is a separate question of whether or not it changes the mood for the better. The best examples I can think of are Monty Python quotes and puns: to some gamers, they're high comedy, to others, they're repetitious or lame beyond accounting.

*: The "player entitlement" meme that's crept into D&D culture would have the DM throw away one of the masks of drama almost entirely, and make the game the D&D equivalent of Ladders and Ladders rather than Snakes and Ladders.

I just got out of a session that had plenty of Snakes, in particular a critical reversal that put us in deep trouble behind enemy lines (and we ain't out of the woods yet by a long shot). Not all masks of drama are necessary if the ones you're using are applied with any skill.

 

[Hussar]

Just on the question of game history though - if you step outside of D&D for a momen, there are loads of pretty popular games with a pretty serious pedigree, that don't go for the whimsy. It's been a while, but, I don't remember a whole lot of chuckles reading my friends copy of Chivalry and Sorcery, but, granted, it's been a lot of years since I read that.

Nor do I recall a whole lot of guffaw's reading my first edition GURPS rules.

Paladium isn't a real source of laughter in the books as I recall either.

My 007 game was written pretty straight. Well, as straight as a game can be with characters called Pussy Galore.

The list goes on.

So, again, it's hardly a new thing that games have gone with a more serious tone.

 

[Ariosto]

It's been a while, but, I don't remember a whole lot of chuckles reading my friends copy of Chivalry and Sorcery, but, granted, it's been a lot of years since I read that.

The Sourcebooks got the funny stuff, such as Drop the Rock.

Nor do I recall a whole lot of guffaw's reading my first edition GURPS rules.

Some joker spoiled that with unauthorized commentary in the wrestling rules section of The Fantasy Trip: Advanced Melee (Steve Jackson's precursor to GURPS). Prootwaddles just are not enough for some people.

 

[Lanefan]

In the most recent adventure (the one with the bullywugs - while I haven't read the description, asploding bullywugs that grant you hit points when they are critted is plenty funny for me) we come across a locked door. Being the party rogue, I step up to open the lock.

Me: I pull out my spoon, look at my biceps, mutter a prayer and rap the lock smartly with my spoon and bump the door Fonz style. ((And make my Theivery check)).
DM: The lock pops open with a sproing and the door swings inward.

Now, I can do that because the mechanics are not tied to the flavour.

And because both you and the DM saw an opportunity and made it work. Good on ya!

And, it's something I actually couldn't have done in earlier editions, at least, not by the rules.

Again, this would be largely dependent on the DM's whim and the group's style as to whether you could pull it off. But yes, RAW might have to look away for a moment...

Lanefan

 

[Barastrondo]

The original first edition of Vampire: The Masquerade was written with no in-jokes in mind at all. There were no fishMalks yet, at least in common knowledge. Yet when you add gamers to a setting like that -- things happen. One good friend, for his very first Vampire character, created a bloodsucking Jim Henson (who had only faked his death), creating robotic versions of his beloved Muppets and -- because he was Malkavian -- treating them as if they were alive.

Including the robot called "the Kerminator."

So, yeah. There's what a rulebook suggests, and then there's what happens when you add people who have a small lifetime of experiences and quirks outside that rulebook.

 

[Stoat]

After they defeated the sex golems, the PC's went on to fight a haunted bedroom full of tentacle monsters. Alas for me, none of them fell prey to the Haunted Bed of Sleepyness (tentacle monsters get a bonus to hit sleeping PC's).

Then they killed a bunch of dinosaurs and burned down a building full of snakes.

 

[Hussar]

And because both you and the DM saw an opportunity and made it work. Good on ya!

Again, this would be largely dependent on the DM's whim and the group's style as to whether you could pull it off. But yes, RAW might have to look away for a moment...

Lanefan

But that's my point Lanefan. I'll totally agree that 4e is written in a far more serious vein than 1e. Particularly if you look at the adventures. AFAIC see, there aren't a whole lot of "in" jokes in 4e, while 1e is rife with them.

But, as Bastarondo says, it's not really required for the rules to mandate whimsy. Players are perfectly capable of adding their own.

 

[rounser]

Without cursed items you can definitely still craft jokes about PC sociopathy and how they can use deception and magic to abuse the crap out of hapless peasants, and those subjects will definitely still come up if that's what your group thinks is funny.

Oh come on, enough with the cheap shot, "you're low brow", psychobabble name-calling snootiness. If we were interested in exploring "sociopathy" we'd be playing something like V:tM (and that's not being fair to V:tM players, I object to your use of such terms when applied to your opponent in an argument rather than to insane criminals, IMO it's just not called for and trivialises a serious term in a shallow attempt to demonise someone).

And just for the record no imaginary peasants were hurt (it was just a joke, and you had to be there). Besides, I'd argue that evil PCs can be harmless fun, and generally have very limited life expectancies due to the other PCs resenting being betrayed and stolen from, the wrong assassination attempt on a prominent NPC leading to repercussions etc. so good generally does triumph in the end.

Back on to a variation of the topic. As far as the Disneyfication of D&D goes, it's not even up to the times with that maneuver. Consider Knights of the Old Republic, Grand Theft Auto or other CRPGs where you get to play a bad guy, or innocents get caught in the crossfire. At your table, do you offer morally grey adventure hooks like that of a loan shark, mercenary or bounty hunter, or outright evil ones like assassination, unjustified sabotage or ill-intended espionage? It's easier to roleplay a good character when you are able to identify such shadiness for what it is, and reject such hooks (or even get sucked into one, realise too late who you're working for and to what end etc).

I suspect that this at least partially comes back to issues of trust. You can trust Bioware not to do anything vulgar with a Dark Side plot hook in KotOR, but not the general public at large, but take that away and it's gone from the game by default unless put back explicitly by players who overlook what the disneyfied rules suggest and notice it's absence. So RPGs are on something of the horns of a dilemma.

These elements can be part of a world just for depth, and not supporting them, in say, the PHB, DMG or MM for politically correct objectives is by default going to remove that depth. I realise that you are just arguing that they shouldn't be built into the rules, and that it's up to individual groups to decide for their inclusion, but I think this trivialises the grip that the books and rules have on the culture of D&D, and resultingly how it gets played. One of the things that attracts audiences of all ages - from teen up - to AD&D 1E is that it had this depth. And please don't argue that these elements haven't been intentionally removed from the scope of the game, as it is written and in terms of what the rules suggest.

The best examples I can think of are Monty Python quotes and puns: to some gamers, they're high comedy, to others, they're repetitious or lame beyond accounting.

They're also about 40 years old, and extremely tired, which make them very useful for pretending that all humour in games is tired. I mean, come on...

 

[Ariosto]

Whimsicality specifically as humorous is a perfectly legitimate usage, but a narrower one than the "strange and bizarre" that I got from MerricB's first post.

Whatever sense one intends, it is certainly "in the eye of the beholder".

Dave Hargrave -- whose Arduin Grimoire trilogy came out in the same years as the first Advanced D&D books -- saw D&D as becoming dreadfully staid. That his protest often involved humor strikes me as natural. The sense of humor after all depends upon an appreciation of what is out of the ordinary, and "fantasy" must be something else if it is shorn of the fanciful.

My understanding is that in the 1980s, the AD&D line was the prestigious one in house, the one for which the people on salary in the TSR offices flocked to fill pages. The D&D line was thus left by default largely to free lances, under an editorial aegis with a distinctly different attitude.

Over the decades, I think fantasy in all media got increasingly reduced to genre. D&D from the start was rather a genre unto itself, imprinting its own character on whatever it imported. AD&D was by Gygax's own profession an attempt to define what the game was and was not.

To my eye, the effect became a bit too much when (for instance) the influence of TSR's second RPG, Empire of the Petal Throne, got mashed into the pseudo-Tolkien mold to produce Dark Sun. What's "edgy" is as much in the eye of the beholder as what's whimsical.

"Dark" and "grim" (and "punk" and "Gothic") was rather a fad in the game field of the late 1980s and on into the '90s. From Greyhawk to the Third Imperium, classic settings went to wrack and ruin. (Dragonlance had from the start presented a shattered world.)

I don't remember any novel series associated with the BECMI line, whereas AD&D brands -- e.g., Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms -- were almost(?) tails wagged by the profitable fiction lines. Tolkien's sagas of Middle-Earth, works of much seriousness, were (and remain) the beaux ideal of genre fantasy novels.

All these threads came together in Planescape, which certainly was not lacking in the weird but was (from what I have seen) quite consciously "serious" and literary in intent.

The BECMI products -- especially the Known World/Mystara ones -- seemed to cultivate an ethos informed both by mindfulness that D&D is a game and by a drive to incorporate references alike to cultures historical, fictional and "pop". As much as Planescape was a culmination of AD&D, the Hollow World was a culmination of TSR's D&D.