Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Golden Bee" data-source="post: 9582210" data-attributes="member: 7041055">What’s yours is MAYAN!Wealth beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.How do you run a game that's funny? While most sessions are going to have laughs when players switch from silly to serious, there are ways to get them far more consistently.The first way is to have exaggerated characters. This session, we had a returning player play a new character… 12-year-old mathematical prodigy, Janie Voss*. Devika started out as a mentalist and kid sidekick, whereas Janie is… good with numbers. In fact her Trouble aspect is "Utterly Underestimated.” So we have a shy girl with a genius intellect who won't stop carrying around an indestructible dolly named Bella.(Another great way to get comedy is to give someone a prop. Throughout the session, everyone would address the doll differently. Some would ignore it, some would roll their eyes, and the real weirdos like Steel Eagle asked the doll questions and treated its non-answers with great severity.)Anyway, the tagalong was accompanied by extreme rich egotist Rafe Lancaster, excitable Japanese hipster Zelda Saeki, and fastidious and jealous sniper Javid Kulfi.Want another source of yuks? Give players autonomy. Rafe kept having flashbacks, but in them, his villainous plans had succeeded and he had murdered all his (current) friends. A bit of investigation revealed the cause. Someone whose business Rafe had crushed had sent over a cursed gem. How to get revenge? Well obviously… have the Japanese detective and the 12-year-old go to the guys house, disguised as a Girl Scout and her father. Because of course.It's important to know who the straight man is in a scene. An elderly guy who owned an orchard is probably the normal one, compared to disguised liars entering his home under false pretenses. The players successfully investigated and found … that the man had gone to a magic store, bought something, and then sent it in the mail. (When prompted with what they were actually going to do with the stone, they decided to hide it in his toilet tank. Pity the poor plumber who starts hallucinating during repairs!)Sometimes though, it's the characters’ jobs to be normal. Shopkeepers are good for this, but fellow customers are great for this. When the players investigated the magic store, it was about to close, and the only other person besides the owner was Tibetan party boy Steel Eagle. Not only did he let the owner know that Rafe was his rich buddy, he also kept alternating between believing and pooh-poohing the expensive treasure map the storekeeper was trying to unload. Once they agreed to buy it, he immediately left (to hang out with some NPCs who otherwise might've gone on the trip).Sometimes though, salesmen are so slick that even the characters are enraptured. The treasure map started at a small village in Venezuela, where a friendly Australian had the greatest supply shop south of the equator. Of course, everything was really expensive… It's not like he had a lot of customers. But no one who went up river ever came back to complain, so he promised a complete satisfaction return policy! And although he knew that the entire operation was a scam, he never technically lied. The most charming people can deceive with the truth! A surprising combo with mirth? Danger. Javid argued with the native guide, a quarrel that was interrupted by a river crocodile! Despite being outnumbered by the group, the fear of being dragged into the water and devoured brought back an intensity and kept the game from descending into flippantness. Any improviser will tell you though, if you want to be funny, don't tell jokes, pay attention. The group basically ignored their native guide when she fell in the water, and by the time she got back to the boat, it was too late to warn them that they were headed towards a waterfall! Rafe managed to pilot his boat to the shore, but the other one had no good crewman in it. The only person on shore was Janie Voss… So she threw a rope from the supplies over to Javid and Zelda.The players, now forced to go upriver in one boat and a makeshift raft holding their equipment, pissed off their guide so much she quit. Which mucked things up, because the angry Mayans in the temple were actually actors.The group seemed extremely tickled by how grateful the "Mayans" were. After finding how much he paid for supplies and the treasure map, they told Rafe that he was not only a great explorer, but a patron of the arts.But just because you've solved the mystery, doesn't mean there's no more tension. It turns out someone else had solved the mystery too… when they revealed their "ancient Mayan artifact” at a society dinner and found out their rivals had the exact same one.The only appropriate response was to revisit the village… with a tank. GMs, feel free to escalate.With a sneaky approach, it’d be possible to… Oops, the players botched that. But Rafe was extremely good with schmoozing, and the tank team were former clients… oops, that botched too. The player side didn’t want to take on a battle tank head to head… And it's not like it was an actual village anyway…Javid, who had dedicated his life to taking down tyrants…bit his tongue.Elated that things had gone so well, the bad guys offered to let the players shoot at the tank with small arms. In a comedy, the bad guys enjoy their success.*Janie was introduced as another ‘remarkable young woman’ in The Girls of the Greenbrier. She became a lot more competent when elevated to player character.Janie:</blockquote>

Verification