Something I posted on Story Games…
I’m completely turned off by “comedy games.” Perhaps I have no sense of humour. If I do I have a sense of humour, here is my reasoning behind it:
There are very few universal comedians, ones that cross international boundaries, and most of them don’t write comedy RPGs.
However, I do laugh a lot when I play roleplaying games. I laugh a lot when I play games that could be funny, but that don’t hit the laughs on the nose. For example, I’ve been playing Apocalypse World recently, and I’ve enjoyed how my favourite characters are starting to pantomime themselves. I’m also playing Annalise and, while it’s dark and nasty, comedy happens. It’s us, the players, who laugh. We’re having fun (the real life, oooooh, hahahahaha, you cock, kind of fun).
I’m getting off topic. So…
1. Do you know games designed to allow funniness while keeping the seatbelt on?
Fiasco, Posin’d (controversial), Lady Blackbird, Durance, Spirit of the Century
2. How would you design a such game?
I wrote Hell for Leather and I think I can use that to make my point. It’s a game of dark comedy. People who like it like it because it makes them laugh. In that game, I tried to create a system of tension balanced by an exaggerated award/penalty response. In Hell for Leather, the tension is created using a tower of dice. An actual, physical, visible stack of dice. These dice are placed within a circular target at which you throw other dice. If the tower falls or you miss the circular target when trying to overcome a fictional challenge, horrible things happen (it’s players vs. system, there is no GM, so individual failures bleed into the group).
When the game is going well, there is a giddiness in that simple tension. Nevertheless, if you read the Hell for Leather rules, the comedy is pretty low key. It doesn’t look like it’s a funny game. That’s probably a failure of my marketing. But hey, it was my first game. Gimme a break.
People who enjoy Hell for Leather laugh a lot. The tension is relieved by acts of ludicrous, Hollywood violence, as they watch their asshole characters dig themselves deeper and deeper holes. But the thing is, one groups’ Hell for Leather comedy is another group’s Hell for Leather nightmare. I saw one game where it was all manga characters in robot suits, and super gonzo mayhem. I enjoyed watching their passion, but it didn’t make me laugh. Another time, I watch a guy talk about his old priest eating the kidneys out of a dying prophet, and it had me giggling for ages. Wow. I said it. You had to be there, etc. It was done in a funny way, with exaggeration and shouting obscenities for no reason. It was really well done.
It’s important to me that the author either writes comedy gold or gives me enough room to write my own. So if I were designing another comedy game, which I won’t, I’d stick to my guns. Write it like it’s not comedy, provide a decent hook for a crazy story, provide rules to increase tension, tools to control absurdity and then let the players make it funny.
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