The Jokes On Us: Putting Jokes & Humor Back Into Table-Top RPGs

As Mike Bourke, from the blog Campaign Mastery, writes,

“Humor is really hard to do WELL in an RPG…”

We agree. There’s plenty of humorous jokes and material on the internet poking fun at gamers and the games they play; but there’s a surprising lack of resources that are aimed at adding the same “funnys” into your game. Of course, much of the humor we experience at the game table is impromptu, off-the-cuff humor. Our characters drive the humor. We do funny things. Our imaginations fill in the gaps – and everyone laughs their arses off. That’s the best kind of humor, and there’s no substitute.

However, I’m often surprised at how rarely RPG publishers intentionally  inject humor into their products.  The exception of course being games that designed to be funny. For the most part, I want to ask designers “why so serious?” Is it out of some fear that if you roll a joke into the material, and it flops, then the material flops along with it? Perhaps. Humor, after all, is hard to do well – and having an orc tell a joke to a group of imprisoned characters and then have the players laugh – is probably a bit harder.

But that is not to say we shouldn’t try, right? I mean, why not? The whole point of playing these games is to have fun! Writing adventures to be scary, gripping tales of heroism that also include some really hilariously funny parts is A’OK in my book. But sadly, in my opinion, we don’t see this mixed in enough. Heck, I’d even enjoy some really cheesy, corny jokes told by a kobold that just-won’t-die.

OK… let’s back up.

The Nevermet Press blog has been quiet for over a month. We have, in a word, failed our readers by providing you with updates on the going’s on behind the scenes. NMP is still very active actually, it’s just that it seems we have gotten out of the habit of writing for the blog, and into the habit of writing content. Currently, The Hidden Kingdom is being ironed out and finished up. Hopefully we’ll have something for you soon, but things take longer than everyone wants when you are doing it part time I suppose. Anyway – here’s the tie into this post: humor.

In THK there’s a non-player character named Carven Stoats. He’s a buffoon and, as it turns out, also the Captain of the Gaurd in Corwyn. He’s also terrible at telling jokes but loves to tell them. It’s flavor, has nothing to do with the story per se, but adds something to the playing of the story: humor. The trouble is that we initially were going to leave the jokes that Carven Stoats told up to the DM – but then this got me thinking: scripted humor is hard to do well at the game table, and most DM’s don’t have a short list of quips and jokes to roll out during the roleplaying of a character.

What we need instead is a short list, perhaps a random table the DM could use, of jokes, riddles, and humorous tales. Then it hit me – perhaps we could also include a link list of resources on the net where jokes might be found that they could use. It would send some permalink love to a variety of websites (linked from inside the eBook directly), and also stays closer to NMP’s mission of being community motivated.

So, with Google on the finger tips, I started searching… and found Nothing. At least at first. I honestly could not find any good online resources where jokes – specifically for use in RPGs, at the game table – were found. Sure there are a few articles that talk about using humor at the game table, and how to play funny characters, but far too few lists of jokes that might be used at the table. Where are they? I mean, I know that the RPG community is a small, niche market and the RPG blogging and indie-press community even smaller… but come on! Was the same true for published products? Maybe gamers are just a bunch of unfunny people? (this I know NOT to be true) Maybe game designers are just not that in touch with their funny bones? (I can’t say for sure if this is true or not…). Searching RPGNow.com for “Jokes” came up with a bunch of unrelated eBooks – the non-funny kind. Not what I wanted. So, I kept digging and ev-en-tu-all-y I found  a tiny handful of articles that hit the spot of what I was looking for (see links below).

And… Riddles. Sure, TONS of those. I credit Tolkein with the FANTASY=RIDDLES idiom. This of course means Riddles and Puzzles are ripe for RPGs, and they obviously are! I mean… it’s a game we’re playing, not a trip to the Improv. There’s even a couple articles about riddles in the upcoming Open Game Table, Volume 2.

Straight up jokes though? Not much. I’m surprised, but then this got me thinking: this is the perfect type of thing to discuss on the NMP blog! And.. here we are.

Before I ask the community though — I did manage to find these resources available (and hats off to those who wrote and cataloged these jokes or posted to the ENWorld threads):

1. http://hem.bredband.net/arenamontanus/Mage/jokes
2. http://jjtone.com/wp/archives/2004/09/16/rpg-jokes/
3. http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=101022
4. http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22161

Now … a question to you: where are the jokes at? Also, what do you think about humor in RPG games? Unless you are playing Teen Super Fudge Aliens RPG, how much humor do you see in your game? Does your GM or any of the players in your group regularly tell jokes in-character?

Leave us a comment and share your thoughts!

– cheers, Jonathan.