D&D General How serious are your D&D games?

[Bagpuss]

I voted Lord of the Rings, as keeping the humour at GotG level isn't achievable, but then it does go to farce on occasions. So it's hard to say.

 

[Shiroiken]

Sometimes I feel like the earlier D&D movie: GoT level villains, while the PCs are from Monty Python

 

[Seramus]

I tend to run the game itself pretty seriously, while the players crack wise. But we do have long moments of serious drama, and moments of explosive comedy where nobody can stop laughing for 10+ minutes.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Like some others above, our game and story tends to be serious (which makes the characters tend to be serious). The players, however, interacting with each other at the table outside the game's narrative are goofing around, making jokes, and having fun.

 

[collin]

I play with a group in which we've known each other since college. For us, that will be 40 years this year. To keep humor from entering into our games would be like keeping a vampire away from a blood bank - way too difficult and a waste of time. We enjoy not only catching up but also seeing who can make the group laugh more often. I have nothing against serious games, but it definitely depends on the group and individual players who create an environment that dictates how much humor is going to permeate the gaming sessions.

 

[iserith]

D&D is inherently silly in my view and we lean right into that at every level and opportunity.

 

[payn]

I went for the middle. Too funny and I check out, too serious and I also check out.

 

[Iosue]

For my group, the shenanigans is the juice.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

D&D is one of the systems which most easily and repeatedly turns to farce, in my experience. I think this is largely because of the high chance of just outright failure on most rolls due to the d20 RNG and total lack of degree of success, together with some inherently silly rules and concepts (falling lol particularly).

When I picked up Dungeon World, which is basically a D&D vibes PtbA game, I assumed it would be less serious than D&D, but every time I've run it, it's gone way more seriously (Conan on this list).

If it was up to me, when I run/play D&D it'd be at LotR level, but in reality it never fails to be GotG level.

 

[ph0rk]

Probably closest to Guardians of the Galaxy, as there are some stakes.