Nice to see a decent amount of diversity humor-wise.
As for my recent campaign, I think that I will have the PCs stumble across Trogdor (all in his green-scaled, tiny-winged, floating-eybrowed, beefy-arm-coming-out-of-the-back-of-his-neck-glory). I may even have the PCs meet a peasant wearing short pants called Rather Dashing, and some critter called Kerrek.
A fair amount of Zork elements wind up creeping in my games: spell names in Zork often are used for activation words for wands with similar powers (wands of rezrov [knock], for example); the prerequisite elven sword and lantern; a brogmoid or two; items made by the Frobozz Co.; Dungeon Masters; etc. As for Monty Python, that more often just manifests itself in quotes/lines during play, and not really elements in the game.
Fair amount of invented humor pops up as well. More often than not, whenever the PCs come across a set of runes/writing/signs/etc. that are written in an unknown language/are generally undecipherable, I wind up having my PC "translate" them. Some of my "astute translations" have included:
- "No... fishing."
- "Do not remove this tag under penalty of law...."
- "Copyright 2003 Wizards of the Coast. All rights...."
- (on a magic sword) "Made in Taiwan."
- "This space left intentionally blank."
I think you can see where I'm generally going with this.
Superhero games have been areas where humor has just blossomed, from the GM & PCs. One PC in a campaign was the Shoveller. Another character, by the same player, was a martial artist called Green Chi (wait for it, you'll get the pun soon enough). Not to mention a character able to copy powers & make copies of himself called Xerox.
There's been a villainous group called the Sinister Coalition for Unlimited Mayhem (or S.C.U.M.): its feared members consisted of such infamous Marvel villains like Humbug, Batroc the Leaper, Stilt-Man, Mentallo, Jack o' Lantern, Oddball, 8-Ball, & similar members of super-villainy.
A recurring group of less-than-effective heroic NPCs IMC are the Spectacular Six. At various times its ranks have included the likes of:
- The Cosmic Spectre: An obvious Space Ghost knock-off.
- Birdman. Yes, that Birdman.
- The Slugger: Imagine Hawkeye/Green Arrow, but using a baseball bat & trick baseballs instead.
- Seaman. Could breathe underwater. Otherwise, it's just the name.
- Uncle Samurai. I'll just let you visualize that one on your own.
- Bluejay. Secret Identity: Jay Blue. The berserker of the group.
- Tabby Cat. Secret Identity: Tabitha Katz
- Frogman. Able to leap & breathe underwater. That's it.
- Goldbrick. A big, gold-plated strong guy.
- The Flame. Imagine a version of the Human Torch covered in pink flame. With an eye for fashion. And who sees himself as the superheroic icon for "alternative lifestyles" (who, in turn, want nothing to do with this guy at all).
- Marvel's own Capt. Ultra
Overall, it's a fair mix of new humor & metahumor, or the ungodly train wreck that results from mixing the two.
