RPG A Day 2020: Day 24--Humor

RPG A Day 2020: Day 24—Humor

I couldn’t play these things without humor. It seems even in a serious game I often cast myself in the comic-relief role. I try not to be too annoying although I tend to play most of my characters like Kenders which is admittedly a bit strange when playing a Call of Cthulhu or Deadlands game, but nevertheless.

Puns are often called the bottom of the barrel when it comes to humor, but if you lift the barrel you may find punny names to be even lower on the list, but it’s what I do. I think I posted some of those punny names during another RPG-A-Day, so I won’t regale you with the list again, but even in Pokemon I stooped as low as to name my sandshrew ‘Sandy Claws’.

As I’ve gotten older the level of humor in my games has only increased while the seriousness has become less and less. I don’t want a lot of “Teen Titans Go!” style “bathroom humor” because it just makes me cringe. Unfortunately, humor is so subjective sometimes you have to even let something like that go for the good of the table. Even if you play the grimmest of the grim-dark I think you have to have some humor in there somewhere just for a release—even if it’s out of character.

This is also a good time to mention the ‘X’ card. I already said that I hate all those “woke” mechanics like bringing “pronouns” into a game. I’d be quick to turn someone who identifies as he/him as ‘soy boy’, one who identifies as she/her as ‘soy girl’ and a they/them as ‘soy non-binary’ and tell each and everyone of those snowflakes to find a safe space away from my table. However, I really don’t want to legitimately hurt anyone’s feelings. In one game we were stealing dragon eggs and one of the characters dropped an egg. My knee-jerk reaction was—looks like the short bus for him.—not knowing that my GM had a special needs child. I meant absolutely nothing by it and my friend the GM knew this and didn’t make a big deal out of it, but had I known it was a touchy subject, I’d have never made that joke at all. Having that ‘X’ card to show should be a signal to the GM and the fellow players that the humor is going too far. No need to elaborate, just flash it and if the group of friends are at the table they should respect that and back off. Most of the time people are being offensive they don’t even realize it.