Comedy relief in games?

[Taloras]

What do you guys do for comedy relief in your games? Either as a DM or as a player. Usually when im playing, i leave that up to the others, as im somewhat of a serious player. However, the group im running for seems to like jokes, so I thought I was going to throw im a little something just to make everyone laugh. Heres the basis:

A +1 flaming rapier. Thats intelligent. And a flamer. The weapon has a fascination with fashion and since none of the PCs right now seem to care how they look, he is going to have a field day. Besides the fascination, the blade is also quite gay (this is a mature group, so no problems there). Since at least one of the characters likes rapiers, this should be interesting, as hes the fighter/swashbuckler of the group. For the special abilities, I gave the rapier 10 ranks in Knowledge(fashion). And minor image 1/day (to show the character what he thinks he should dress like). Does anyone think this is a bit overboard, or too much? The idea popped into my head last night, and im pretty sure the party(with one exception, my brother) will get a laugh out of it....

 

[Crothian]

gnomes start out as comedy, until the players realize thereis a real serious reason for them to behave the way they do. that's how many of the comedy in my games is, funny at first but still serious and completely fitting in game. i never do comedy for the sake of cemedy, it must in some way serve the game.

 

[The Shaman]

...this is a mature group...

If you say so.

You know your group - if this is something they'd find funny, if you're willing to roleplay it, and if you want this level of levity in your game, then put it in. If not, don't.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

I like the flamer rapier idea. Intelligent items should have distinctive personalities, even if they're a little over the top, but this has the potential to become annoying, and mood-breaking for that matter, very quickly, so be careful.

My first DM used over-the-top comic relief quite a bit: silly-voiced NPCs, pratfall combat descriptions, everything. It often pushed the border of too much, but the reason it worked so well is that we played almost exclusively in Ravenloft.

Comedy, in my opinion, is there to heighten horror, outrage, and sadness - or to alleviate them.

 

[Taloras]

Well, the story behind it is that a young nobleman told a wizard he wanted a flaming rapier. He was quite a bit of a dandy, and very rude to the wizard, so the wizard created this....both to fit his personality, and to make the young nobleman the most laughed at young dandy at court. The party will be gifted with it(not knowing what it does).

 

[The Shaman]

Well, the story behind it is that a young nobleman told a wizard he wanted a flaming rapier. He was quite a bit of a dandy, and very rude to the wizard, so the wizard created this....both to fit his personality, and to make the young nobleman the most laughed at young dandy at court.

Flaming. Flamer. Effeminiate homosexual. I get it.

 

[delericho]

I think most effective humour in D&D is likely to take the form of character-based comedy. Slapstick is very difficult to pull off when all you've got is your ability to describe scenes, and most wit requires you to be really quick on your feet, which is fairly rare. (However, if you're running a swashbuckler-style game, you might want to introduce some sort of "comedy fumbles" rules, probably to be used only when the PCs aren't in any real danger.)

It's important also to remember that there's a very fine line between not enough and too much when humour is concerned. The flaming rapier described, for instance, can be funny if mentioned once or twice, but will rapidly become extremely annoying if overdone.

Probably the best 'comedy' character I used was Meepo, the iconic kobold. I had actually lifted him out of the Sunless Citadel to play a slightly different role in my campaign. Little did I realise that the party were going to abduct the poor kobold, and adopt him as a kind of mascot/spear carrier/henchman.

Anyway, I really hammed up the character. Basically, he adopted the same mannerisms as Gollum in the films, but without the tormented angle (so he was funny rather than tragic). He spoke to himself, always referred to himself in third-person, and was generally pathetic. Until a few adventures had passed, when he started to get ideas, and began referring to himself as "Meepo the Mighty". Well, until that annoyed the barbarian... and then it was back to "poor, poor Meepo."

It did get old after a while. So, I pointed out to the group that they had essentially enslaved him, which wasn't really consistent with a Good alignment, so they let him go. In the middle of the next session, they were wiped out in a TPK. I guess he must have been a lucky talisman or something.

Meepo appeared again some months later, when the next group began to tie together the plot of the campaign, which brought them back to the area inhabited by the first group. There, they had to negotiate with a tribe of kobold warriors, the king of whom was a "mighty adventurer".

Ah, great days. My players still mention Meepo the Mighty fondly. I'm well pleased.

 

[Quickleaf]

Ah, a topic near and dear to my heart.
I had considered producing a free "Incomplete Guide to Comedy" but never got around to it. More "serious" projects came up.

What you describe - the flaming flamer rapier - is a gimmick. You know your group best, but even the best gimmick only has the allure of novelty for a couple sessions before getting old.

Personality Quirks
Most personality quirks, like gimmicks, are only good for a laugh or two. However, some can really catch on and become running gags. The flamer rapier falls into this category.

Exceptionally long name ("I am Mustafa al-Midjbani Ibn-Khaldoon Ibn-Firaz Ibn-Jazirat...")
Same introduction wherever he/she goes
Braggart ("You've probably heard of me from my adventures in...")
Unusual hobby (pearl diving in shark infested waters, dragon-hunters anonymous meeting, a thieves guild which hasn't stolen anything, wrestling storm giants)
Overexaggerates every wound he/she receives
Exceptionally long introduction (the key is to throw "without further ado" in at some point, and then have the announcer continue rambling on and on)
Hard of hearing (but when PCs yell, says "no need to yell, I can hear you fine!")
The repressed talker (untalkative until someone mentions something which interests them, or gives them a task, and then they can't be shut up)
Uses common words incorrectly, assuming a different meaning
The unexcepted face: a normally innocuous NPC says/does something that brings them right into the conversation, shows uncommon insight, or reveals a side of their personality no one thought of.
Catch phrase.

 

[STARP_JVP]

My campaigns are famous in my group for their whimsical tone. This isn't actually my fault - while I do include a large degree of comic relief, my players are more than happy to contribute as well. It is rare we have a totally 'serious' game, though it's happened from time to time. Often I let them do things not strictly within the rules because, well, it's so damn funny. Some of our more classic moments:

• When the son of his archrival annoyed him, one PC, a wizard, cast arcane mark on the kid's back. What did it say? Kick Me.
• I was playing a Barbarian Dwarf (always fun). My friend was a cultured, sophisticated elf wizard. We went into a tavern. The DM, as the waiter, said "What can I get you?" My friend replied "I would like your finest elven wine, aged to perfection. Made from the grapes of the Eastern Wood, stored in the magical cellars of the Winery Guild and aged for no less than three centuries." The waiter then turned to me and said "For you sir?" I replied, deadpan, with a grunt "give me a keg and a boar."
• Another player of mine once played a dwarf. This dwarf was a serious drinker. At one point, he ordered merely "a keg, a hose and a place to lie down." Another time, he paid his bar tab and financed his barman's election campaign.
• The 'goat sword'. A PC was in a magic shop and saw a sword. As a throwaway line, I had the shopkeeper say "you don't want that. Not unless you want to get turned into a goat." The PC, intrigued, bought it and used it for practical jokes. If you draw the sword in combat, you must make a Fort save and failure means you are polymorphed into a goat.
• A PC found a chest at sea, and she was determined to get the thing open. It was darkwood, locked with six different locks, three arcane locks, magically reinforced and totally impervious to just about everything. What was it? A jack-in-the-box.
• I have a recurring NPC who shows up in every campaign, a dimensional traveller called The Traveller. He travels in a green box the size of a phone booth, and usually has a companion or two. His only real purpose is for comic relief, and to have an annoying interloper present, 'observing' during serious events. Like the character I based him on (if you can't guess that you need help), he's rather eccentric and takes little seriously.
• One of the best NPCs I ever created was a cowardly wine merchant called Vinnie, who was actually a purveyor of just about everything, although usually of sub-standard quality. He was sort of a cross between Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler and Quark from DS9. he had some hilarious antics, usually when one particularly PC, whom he was terrified to death of, came calling. The PC never touched him, but constantly ruined his get-rich-quick schemes and petty criminal enterprises.
• The PCs were in a wild magic zone. Every spell had a 20% chance of going awry. When a battle broke out with an evil cleric and his cronies, the wizard used a dispel magic spell to try to remove the hold person spell on the dwarf fighter. But it went gaga due to the wild magic, and he dispelled himself, losing his magical abilities for 24 hours. With no arcane weaponry, he was forced to rely on more mundane methods to dispatch his foes. What did he do? Well, he was standing at the top of the stairs and the cleric was at the bottom, so he picked up the rigid, whimpering dwarf and hurled him down the stairs, where he hit the cleric, knocked him over, made his spell fizzle and basically won the day. It was, basically, dwarf bowling.
• In order to prove they weren't dependent on him, the three other PCs went adventuring without the party's wizard. (You know where this is going, don't you?). They did alright until they found an abandoned magical research lab, haunted by the ghost of an insane wizard who was left behind to die by the others when the lab was abandoned. The ghost possessed one of the PCs, the bard, who then proceeded to attack the others. Fortunately, he was subdued, and they returned to the surface. But the ghost followed them, and possessed the poor bard again. This time, he ran, but he was brought down - by a handy piece of two-by-four another PC found in the street. Having sustained two blows to the head, the bard was understandably cross. Then he was possessed a third time. Finally, the wizard came along and freed him permanently from the ghost, proving that the others really were dependent on him after all.
• I had an NPC who was an illusion, generated by a rod. Unlike most illusions, he was intelligent and sentient - he was aware he was an illusion and didn't like it much. He was, however, totally intangible and unable to touch anything, not even with the aid of ghost touch items. He therefore existed purely as comic relief, wisecracking and using his abilities to enter the womens' bathhouse and so on.
• NPC (referring to the enemy of the moment): These guys aren't paid to think. They're paid to hit people. Former mercenary PC: Ah, that takes me back.
• They needed to infiltrate a prison camp, run by quasi-Nazis. They dressed up as the enemy, and they had a 'prisoner' - the aforementioned bard. In order to make it 'look convincing', the wizard wanted to give the bard facial injuries. The bard accepted this, thinking it would mean some kind of illusion spell. Instead, the wizard punched him in the face.
• Later, the bard was imprisoned and shackled to the wall, being interrogated and about to be tortured by two of the quasi-Nazi religious fanatics. The wizard used his familiar to see what was going on, and I allowed him to summon a fiendish wolf into the torture chamber. The plan was it would attack the guards and allow the bard to escape. Instead, of course, it attacked the bard.
• When fighting a pack of wolves, all the PCs except the wizard finished theirs off in one round. Unwilling to waste a spell on a wolf, the wizard just whacked it with his staff. Nine or ten times. He either kept missing or not doing much damage, so after he'd been whacking the thing for about a minute it was still up and fighting. All the other PCs could do is watch with smug expressions as the 'great wizard' basically hit a wolf with a stick. At one point, after another failed attack, the wizard shouted "you will submit to my will, dammit!"
• In a Shadowrun game, we were being mercilessly hunted by Renraku Red Samurai. The GM's plan was for us to have to hide out in the Barrens for a while. Instead, we lured them to my apartment, which was laced with about 50 kg of C-12 plastic explosive, then legged it round the corner in a van and detonated it. Bringing a new meaning to the word 'overkill', to take out two red samurai, we blew up an entire apartment building, damaged the three surrounding buildings and took out the power grid for miles around. The best part was the look on the DM's face. It was priceless.

I have many, many more examples.

 

[Luthien Greyspear]

I've been DM-ing for a long time, and I've found that most humor comes from the players. Rarely have I ever had to introduce something that was inherently funny to lighten the mood, as my players have rarely passed up the opportunity to mock, cajole, and embarass anyone they think is against them.

Recently, I forayed into a classic superheroic altercation between two separate good-aligned parties who were convinced the other side was evil or bad or just plain in the way. The NPC's were all based on easily recognizable super-hero archetypes (the heroic patriot, the archer, the elementalist (two of them), the bruiser (a grey render barbarian named GRAHHH!!), the psion, and the shapeshifter). The party immediately got into the spirit of trading quips and mocking their opponents, who were ENTIRELY SERIOUS. They were trying their best to drive these foreign mercenaries from their country. The players, however, knowing my love for four-color superheroics, dove in and had fun with it.

In fact, this party has one of the only instances of lowbrow punslinging of which I've ever been guilty. One of the party is a professional sidekick, sort of like Sancho Panza. His whole concept is based around being an ordinary guy who happens to team up with and help extraordinary heroes. So his magic item list (he's 10th level) is fairly mundane, with one exception. To further the 'Sancho-ness' of his character, I gave him a low-power figurine of wondrous power: an ass. He has a small block of wood, crudely carved into the shape of a donkey, that will become a mostly normal ass for up to 12 hours a day. The two cheap saddlebags that come with it each act as a small bag of holding, and the animal can drag a cart as though it were one size larger than it is. Nothing exceptional, but within the character's concept, right?

It didn't take long for the party to comment on his a** of holding, his magic a**, and other such crudities. I almost couldn't run the fight that session.

Something else that adds immensely to the humor of a campaign is a professional straight man. I had the honor of being one in my college campaign, and it was a blast. One of the other party members was a jester, and I was a semi-suicidal, Frank Miller-written, angst-ridden necromancer. Our DM couldn't have wished for a better comedy team. One of the funniest quotes from that campaign was my simple answer to his simple question:

"Hey Luth, what are ya doin' over there?"

Icy glare, exaggerated exasperation at his bouncy glee, and the response:

"PUTTING DIRT... IN A JAR."

The game actually stopped for a few minutes while the DM got his bearings again. It was great.