WotC: "Why We Aren’t Funny"

Jesse Decker (editor-in-chief Dragon Magazine) and David Noonan (who is now part of Sasquatch Game Studios - if that name rings a bell, it's because I've been talking about their Primeval Thule setting a bit recently) wrote an article back in 2005 about humour in Dungeons & Dragons - or rather, the lack of it. It's especially relevant right now, with the whimsical NPCs found in the upcoming Out of the Abyss adventure for 5E, so I figured I'd resurrect it. As they said at the time, "Humor is pretty rare in D&D products these days—or at least intentional humor. We play it straight in our rulebooks, but many people play D&D as a series of running gags. So why are D&D books so serious when the game can get so goofy?"

​

Obviously that's not the current stance, but it's an interesting look at the past. As the article goes on to say, "it wasn't always this way. The earliest editions of D&D are full of oddball monsters, bad puns, inside jokes, and encounters designed not to challenge the PCs but to amuse or embarrass them."

Anyway, here's the article. I've already asked in another post what you think of whimsy in your grimdark, so head here to vote in that poll.

 

[tomBitonti]

your game is building to a dramatic crescendo, and just then there's an otyugh fart joke, well, that may go over like a lead balloon.

Eh, that is just bad GMing. Not particularly specific to humor. You could make similar examples for other types of content just as well.

TomB

 

[Henry]

It makes sense that they'd be less funny.

When the game was young it was a bunch of grown men writing for the game and likely knowing how unlikely it was that they were doing that for a living. It was a much more open and free time, and anything went. You could go into parody or silliness.
When the game became a business, that slowly changed. You had to at least present the illusion of seriousness. It's no longer something you do for "fun" which is less professional. And you can't risk offending someone or doing something that will cost sales.

Agreed - and for those who miss the Good Old Garage Band Days of D&D, I submit that it's the fact that something ends that makes it precious. I really enjoyed the unique thing going that Gary, Tim, Dave, Jim, Rob, Tramp, et. al. had going, but I don't care if it's gone for good, because if it was duplicable it wouldn't have been that special to me.

10 years from now, someone will be saying, "remember those funny disclaimers Mearls, Crawford and crew used to do in the books? Man, I miss those". Might even be me saying it.

 

[Umbran]

Eh, that is just bad GMing.

Not if it is baked into the adventure content, it isn't.

Rarely, with other content, do we seek to get a specific emotional response from the player. And, once you try too blatantly to do that, removing it from the content becomes a pain in the butt for the GM, especially on the fly.

 

[tomBitonti]

Yeah, I know, jokes about alphabetizing. Hoo boy. Stop it; you're killing me.

Which is, you know, itself humor.

---

But the fart jokes sound like a bad GM intrusion.

TomB

 

[dwayne]

I my self as a GM have made many a odd ball monsters Giant bees that can do a hold person ( Bee Holders) or the first level trap the soul spell (traps the soul of one of your shoes or foot) and the ring of mighty farts (Made the person immune to poison but also very skittish and jumped at the slightest thing sometimes, if he was startled he farted a cloud kill spell with in 50" he was immune but the other players were not.).

 

[I'm A Banana]

On challenges and killer-dungeons: as far as I know the OSR is still a fairly big thing, and that deliberately harks back to classic D&D play, where the dungeon is the challenge.

On empty battlefield battles: I think that M:tG and WoW have mostly absorbed that part of the RPG market. But there are plenty of players who enjoy playing D&D as a challenge but regard dynamic battlefields and opportunity-exploitation as elements of the challenge. Disintegrating the bridge on which a golem is standing is one example of that sort of play.

Keep in mind our hypothetical DM has a problem with that resolution. So already, I'm not describing anyone who is fine with that sort of play, but people who take issue with that solution.

In general, a game where "you can do anything" that requires some human arbiter is a bad fit for someone who wants to achieve a significant mechanical victory because of its unbound solution space. Simply speaking, being able to do anything isn't a good test of your skill at doing a particular thing. Taking out a bridge below a golem with a player that wants that challenge is like playing a game of chess where one player plops down an action figure in a square and calls it a "super-knight" - there's suddenly very different goals in play.

I recognize that our hypothetical DM who is upset that their challenge has been easily thwarted doesn't value the humor (or else they wouldn't be taking issue) and instead values the mechanical challenge. This is a recipe for being disgruntled with D&D, in general, because D&D has plenty of ways for clever thinking to circumvent mechanical challenges when you play it out of the box (though individual groups can certainly opt into more constraints that make that mechanical challenge more worthwhile - they agree that targeting the bridge isn't going to serve those goals, so they don't do that). D&D is OK with super-knights. You aren't going to get a straight game of chess without playing a very particular version of the game.

And as someone who actually runs a game in which PC backstory is a principal driver for play, I hardly recognise your attempt to describe that sort of RPGing. Maybe all the creative players you know are po-faced fun police?

Again, we're talking about a hypothetical player who is upset because the table laughed at what was supposed to be a tense scene. A player who doesn't do that isn't this hypothetical player that Decker & Noonan are discussing as the reason they weren't funny in 2005.

This didn't hurt the social dynamic,

Then it isn't actually what I'm discussing.

You basically said, "If you don't play like me, you shouldn't be playing D&D."

Well let me then state for the record that if you don't play like me, I can't and won't stop you from playing D&D. In fact: if you don't play like me, I love the fact that you're playing D&D.

But if you're you're not happy when your table bursts out into laughter, lets examine what you hope to get out of this game in more detail. There's clearly a problem there, and I'm inclined to the perspective that it's not the people who are laughing and having fun who are the problem. It could be that playing the game more like how I play it will help you to have more fun when everyone's laughing about a joke and not get upset about it.

 

[Koloth]

Both the mouse costume and y-stick for the snake are humorous. But they also show folks reading the books that many situations can be solved by 'out of the box' ideas. So maybe the mouse costumes were an INT 6 idea. But maybe the giant mice aren't intellectual giants either and maybe, just MAYBE, they are using incense that will cover the human smell! And the y-stick for the snake has a decent chance of simplifying that encounter. Sadly, modern versions of the game seem to assume that the only way to solve encounters is Bash it with BIG weapons. Entire sections of books are devoted to combat. How many paragraphs are devoted to non combat solutions? Sad because the non combat solutions tend to be the ones you remember years later. The Yet Another Long Combat encounter is soon forgotten.

 

[pemerton]

Keep in mind our hypothetical DM has a problem with that resolution.

Whose hypothetical GM?

I've never met a GM who put an iron golem on a bridge, and then was upset when the PCs eliminated the threat posed by that golem by pushing it off the bridge (or something similar). Let alone upset that the players then took pleasure in that success.

But that really seems orthogonal to the humour issue. Suppose that the players take pleasure by high-fiving one another and keeping on playing, rather than taking a five-minute break to guffaw and regale one another with tales of the golem crushing a drow village below then slowly climbing its way back up to the top of the ravine - is that anyone else's business?

In general, a game where "you can do anything" that requires some human arbiter is a bad fit for someone who wants to achieve a significant mechanical victory because of its unbound solution space.

Yet people have been doing this with D&D since the game was invented. And a whole edition of the game (3E/PF) is built around a version of this ideal, and remains very popular in the market.

I recognize that our hypothetical DM who is upset that their challenge has been easily thwarted doesn't value the humor (or else they wouldn't be taking issue) and instead values the mechanical challenge. This is a recipe for being disgruntled with D&D, in general

I honestly have no idea who your target is, here, nor what bearing any of this has on whether it is good or bad for WotC to deliberately attempt to make their D&D products funny.

we're talking about a hypothetical player who is upset because the table laughed at what was supposed to be a tense scene.

<snip>

But if you're you're not happy when your table bursts out into laughter, lets examine what you hope to get out of this game in more detail. There's clearly a problem there

If I turn up to the game and mention that my grandmother died last week, and then the table bursts into laughter, I probably won't be happy. And reasonably so.

Laughter isn't always the appropriate response in a situation governed by social dynamics.

To focus on a gameplay example - if the PCs confront the nemesis of one of them, and the player of that PC gives a vengeance speech, and the other players start laughing or poking fun, the speech-giving player mightn't be happy. And reasonably so.

I mentioned, upthread, an actual play instance that could have engendered jokes along the lines of [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION]'s othyugh fart joke: a pool of water, in arid foothills on the edge of the desert, fouled by a defecating elf. The players could have played that for laughs, but didn't, and I think it made the game better. That doesn't mean that I would have been unhappy if they'd laughed, but I'm happier that they didn't.

You seem to be saying that this is a sign that I have a problem, and am choosing the wrong passtime by playing fantasy RPGs. Or have I misunderstood you?

 

[dd.stevenson]

I like the funnies in my printed D&D content just fine; and I don't particularly mind if they include older joke monster/items that have become a recognizable part of the D&D IP.

But, good humor is hard (and expensive) to write; so generally I find that less is more, especially in this industry.

So far I'm pretty content with the balance that's been struck in 5E.

 

[Jhaelen]

I prefer to have my products not try to inject humor into the game as my group does enough of that without adding to it.

This!