Is your game silly or serious?

[Stalker0]

Depends on what time of night it is

We tend to get sillier late into the night.

Although my group is having a problem lately of being too silly, we often joke about funny stuff our characters did years ago in the middle of game and get too distracted.

 

[the Jester]

Can't vote on this one. My high-level group is serious with comic relief, low-level is silly as a gang of politically active halflings.

 

[Falkus]

Serious games, but plenty of humour and laughing OOC.

 

[Oryan77]

Wow, not a single vote for just being silly. Maybe the players who are silly don't realize it. They probably think they are just being comical, like their actions are perfectly normal for a "comical" character when really he's like a Roger Rabbit character and most NPC's wouldn't think "haha this guy is a riot" but instead they think, "What's this guys problem?"

 

[MonsterMash]

We have moments of light relief and comedy, but no one in particular is the group clown or comedian.
Both groups are actually serious about the game, but as I said there can be funny incidents.

 

[Razz0putin]

very insightful oryan77
I'm surprised noone else pointed out that so many people who think they're funny are just plain annoying. Now with that said I couldn't stand to play in a game that was completely serious.

 

[Algolei]

We play various styles in various games.

In our most serious game ever, we suddenly broke down into total insanity when the DM rolled randomly among 20 people to see who was targetted by six rock-throwing kobolds--they all threw at and hit Steve's character, knocking him unconscious. He complained that the DM was picking on him, so we all agreed and started listing all the things in his life that were actually the DM's fault: His face, his car, his wife....

(Hmmmm, Steve doesn't play with us anymore for some reason. )

 

[TheLostSoul]

I try to keep my games serious, but my players keep ruining it. It can be very trying at times, but this is their style. In game they are serious enough though, it is mainly their OOC talk that is anoying...

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I actually run a fairly serious game, but my players don't really take it seriously. Almost anything my NPCs say, the players will find a way to make fun of it. I can rarely seperate IC and OOC comments as 95% of speaking is OOC. So when I say "The menacing figure steps up to you and say 'How dare you enter my temple? What are you doing here?'" the players are likely to answer "We're here to kill everyone in here and take all of your stuff." They don't show the slightest bit of fear, awe, hesitance, or anything. They just assume that the guy is obviously low enough level to beat so they need to kill it.

They also turned a possibly perilous encounter with a mind flayer into a joke. The mind flayer managed to use charm monster on one of the silliest players. He told him "tell your friends that you killed me and get them to leave".

So the players turned around and said "My friend, the Mind Flayer said to tell you guys that I killed him and you are supposed to leave." Then when I gave him a look like he was an idiot he said "What? My character has an intelligence of 6. He doesn't know any better."

This player is such that no matter how serious my game was, he'd be like this. So, I put up with it because he's my friend.

 

[Psion]

Generally quite serious, and generally, clowns are not appreciated (they are rarely as funny as they think they are).

I don't mind out of game jokiness or farcical (but plausible) situations in game. But breaking the fourth wall with meta-references and the like are annoying to me.