D&D 5E Why is "whimisical and dark" humour needed to offset the dark and depressed theme of Out of the Abyss?

[Wik]

I'm afraid your conclusion is incorrect and I would kindly appreciate it if you didn't further misconstrue what I have said with regards to Tim Burton in order to make your argument sound correct.

Thanks

Whatever dude. You know what you wrote:

This AP seems too commercial and too Disney's Alice in Wonderland.

The names are an absolute joke and they are wasting an opportunity to create a very dark, very gritty, very insane, and very scary AP. I like things that frighten children, not cause them to giggle and want to watch them on television. It appears they are trying too hard and if you don't know what you are doing then it will just turn out lame and goofy.

This adventure needs to be written by basically Lovecraft, Lumley, King, and just a dash of Tim Burton. The underdark is an alien and scary place. Derro are murderous, evil, and insane lunatics who should be feared by even the hardiest adventurer. I want scary like a cross between Stephen King's "It" and Call of Cthulhu. We have a mixture of some of the evilest, alien, and most insane creatures mixed into a dark and alien realm where few dare go and trying to add humour does it no justice at all.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-Out-of-the-Abyss-preview/page8#ixzz3kSjH72Us

The contradictions in that post are massive. Sure, you didn't INTEND for that connection of Burton + Alice in Wonderland, but hey, it's there. It's been pointed out. If you say something dumb, and everyone goes "hey, that was dumb!" you can't turn around and say "no, I didn't mean it like that. You guys are the dumb ones!"

And instead of saying "whoops, my bad", you doubled down and insisted everyone was wrong about this point, and kept pushing it.

Ultimately, IT DOESN'T MATTER. This one's not for you. Sounds great. But calling WotC "Appalling" for doing so? For, as Morrus says, insisting it's your way or the highway? That's lame, and I feel perfectly fine for calling you out on it.

 

[Dausuul]

"'Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.'" - Joss Whedon.

I know not everyone likes Whedon, but he's right on for this. Dark and depressing gets old FAST.

Exactly. Humor is essential to good horror. GRIMDARK all the time doesn't work; the audience gets desensitized. You have to ease off now and then, let them relax, lighten the atmosphere so that they really feel it when the horror returns. Spike their adrenaline, then let them settle down so you can spike it again. Only when you're nearing the climax do you turn up the GRIMDARK dial to maximum and keep it there.

Read a Stephen King novel sometime; this is the pattern he follows over and over, and it works.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

I recently watched a very, very bad B movie called Army of the Dead about some very bad hollywood cops going to a house where a devil worshipping ceremony is causing the dead to get possessed by demons. It was a HORRIBLE movie, nothing redeeming about it: dark, wretched, every character was unlikeable and doomed to die, taken at face value it was just a depressing and unpleasant movie.

But it was fun. Actually a lot more fun than I ever expected given what I wrote above. Why? Because the movie realized it was too grimdark and miserable and injected a healthy dose of camp humor into the mix. Suddenly it wasn't all that bad....it was now a dark but campy movie about bad cops and crazy demons heading for a final showdown. And because of that little bit of self-recognizing humor the movie was saved from being plain old horrible and instead became entertainingly bad.

I have no idea yet how Out of the Abyss will be, but thanks to the previews I am genuinely looking forward to this one, and the dark humor is a big part of the reason.