Being a whimsical DM

[MerricB]

How serious are you as a DM? I admit that I have a lot of trouble maintaining a totally serious tone when I run games. I can run Call of Cthulhu on occasion, and I can maintain the horror in the final stages, but before then, moments of comedy keep intruding.

I have a couple of tribes of feuding orcs in my Greyhawk Vikings game (AD&D): the Bloody Tongue and the Severed Hand. My group ran into the Severed Hand orcs yesterday, and instead of having them seriously parlaying with the group, I invented "Martin the Orc Scribe", who wanted them to fill in forms in triplicate - until he realised they were adventurers, and thus were functionally illiterate - before the orcs would hire the group to deal with a basilisk.

The basilisk was serious. Deadly serious... and the group spent most of the session avoiding it before Paul just pulled out a mirror from his backpack and reflected its gaze, turning it to stone. However, a lot of the lead-up were moments of comedy. Orc scribes, daft old priests, eccentric wizards... it's a strange, strange world when I run D&D.

How do you run your games? Does your style change with the subject matter, or do you default to a particular way of running games?

Cheers!

 

[billd91]

I like a bit of comedy as well. Not too much, a wry line here and there, a personal quirk, an eccentric gnome ([notranslate]Pathfinder[/notranslate] setting gnomes have embraced this pretty well), a self-important petty noble or bureaucrat. I don't like when most games get too serious. I save that for particular games that I want a more serious atmosphere.

 

[Sunseeker]

Me and my group are a bunch of jokers when it comes to the RP and npc interactions of our sessions. Puns, innuendo, you name it. Combat is pretty serious except for when I run a BBEG who I like to run in classic comic fashion of monologueing, self-name dropping and such. We can be serious when we need to be, but that need is rare.

 

[Water Bob]

Depends on my mood. Sometimes I'm cracking jokes. Sometimes I try to fit my commentary to the drama of the moment.

For example, if someone gets hit with a crit threat that results in extra damage, I might look at the player, with mock worry on my face, and say, veeeerrrrry slloooowly, "Ooooooohhhh Nooooooo!"

Then again, when I get swept up in the moment, a player could tell me, "I'm going to sneak down the corridor." My voice will drop. Very serious. Almost a whisper. Like a conspirator: "You're taking steps, very slowly, near the wall. Your ears are peaked to catch any sound. Your eyes are wide, constantly scanning all directions. One hand is spread in front of you, your fingers barely touching the rough brick wall. Your other hand holds your poinard, arm bent, ready to strike. It's getting brighter up ahead. Your body is tensing. You are straining to see. And, as you cross around the curve in the corridor, it is revealed to you that...."

Depends on my mood. Depends on the atmosphere of the game that day. Depeneds on the situation we're playing at the moment.

 

[VariSami]

I try to keep things serious, having failed to do so during the beginning of my GM'ing career with WHFRP 2nd edition.

I still try to use less than obvious or harmless references. For example, in a fame I was running this summer, there were a few Gintama-related names such as:
1. Balmung Fezarion: A Fey'Ri Warlock that acted as the protector of the fiendblooded in a lawless zone. Main antagonist.
2. Jugem: A Tanarruk that acted as Balmung's right hand man.
3. Isaac Schneider: An Aasimar Paladin of Freedom that worshipped Zura, the Young Noble of Fury. Balmung's nemesis and a helper for the player characters.
All of the above are parts of the name of a monkey in Gintama. Luckily my players hadn't watched the show.
4. Zura, the Young Noble of Fury: A CG deity of freedom fighters in a city of absolute law. Outlawed.
5. Elisabeth: Isaac's Healer friend and a hot-blooded follower of Zura. Used a white, hooded dress.
Zura (Katsura) and Elisabeth are a terrorist and his alien pet/friend in Gintama.

In my current campaign, there is a Musteval called Martin, referencing Redwall. There is also a Kender called Melira (a reference to MTG). Using a Kender felt whimsical to my players but last time we played, that Kender ended up being teleported in an unknown place where a few customers of the inn owned by their patron had been lost. The player that propmpted the Kender really panicked.

Then again, one of my players in that campaign is an Anarchist that poses as a Xaositect. They've ran into some Xaositects which has forced me to make up quirky characters. One Anarchist, when posing as a Xaositect, only uses strings of "pe" to communicate (another reference to the monkey in Gintama). There was an antagonistic Xaositect Air Genasi called Windy Windbag that basically threw lightning bolts in the general direction of the characters on a whim. He had cursed a Mimir to spew profanities at anyone asking it anything (mostly your mother jokes related to planar destinations). The first quest the characters received included finding a pair of Xaositects with a copy of a booklet called the Amorous Adventures of Factol Hashkar. And they randomly bumped into factol Hashkar (whom they didn't recognize at first) while asking about it. There was also a Bariaur merchant called Bor that told the characters that he sells dirt from all around the Great Ring

So yeah, there are whimsical parts in my games. However, I try to give them more depth if possible. Melira (the Kender) is actually a surprisingly knowledgeable researcher for the Fraternity of Order despite her AD/HD. Windy was a really creepy individual that demonstrated dangerous whims. Bor had a good explanation for being a dirt merchant: different soils offer necessary nutrients for different planar plants.

 

[the Jester]

Some sessions or parts of sessions are deadly serious; others are full of whimsy and silliness. It just depends on what the group is doing, who they are and the general mood.

 

[Nikosandros]

Normally we have plenty of OOC joking and silliness, but events in the game world are serious most of the time.

 

[Stormonu]

I try to keep a serious tone, but often fail miserably.

Usually it's with slapstick NPCs, playing against a PC whose trying too hard to "better than all these little folk."

I think the latest was the two ghoul NPC brothers who kept trying to "turn" their elvin adopted sister (it's very hard when the elf is immune to the ghoul's paralysis and can't be turned into a ghoul anyways - not that it didn't stop them from trying). They were essentially Laurel and Hardy around her, always bumbling their attempts to "turn her to the dark side." - and giving away the Master's latest plot.

Though they gave her (and the rest of the party) quite a scare when a late-night after-the-dungeon celebration almost ended up with the two of them running off with the paralyzed party cleric and fighter...

 

[MerricB]

I think the latest was the two ghoul NPC brothers who kept trying to "turn" their elvin adopted sister (it's very hard when the elf is immune to the ghoul's paralysis and can't be turned into a ghoul anyways - not that it didn't stop them from trying). They were essentially Laurel and Hardy around her, always bumbling their attempts to "turn her to the dark side." - and giving away the Master's latest plot.

Though they gave her (and the rest of the party) quite a scare when a late-night after-the-dungeon celebration almost ended up with the two of them running off with the paralyzed party cleric and fighter...

Glorious!

 

[haakon1]

I keep a serious tone . . . but not a dark tone. You'll meet a lot of NPC's in my campaign who aren't intended to be killed and can be helped by or aid the PC's. Running lots of NPC's with plots of their own (I'd include the monsters in that) is where I get my fun as a DM.

My over-email campaign is serious on the player side too. The live in-person game has its share of OOC joking, but no screwing around in character. I even played Meepo straight. Not a fan of the comical gnome, either, so I rarely use gnomes, because they don't seem to have much of a unique, non-comical role.