RPGaDay 2020 Day 24 – “Humour” #RPGADAY2020

Today’s prompt is “Humour”.

Personally, I love humour in my games.  Some might think that would be different, given that my main game is a cyberpunk dystopian setting.  But in emotionally heavy games, humour is a great way to alleviate the tension and keep the games fun.  It’s not necessarily a good thing to be all doom and gloom for the entire session.  That just weighs down the players and if your game is a nonstop trudge through the doldrums, you’ll find your players making excuses not to show up to the next session.

One of the best examples I can think of was one of the first game of Ten Candles that I ran.  As part of the character creation session, one of the players got the character flaw of ‘Gullible’ assigned to them.  Their character was a source of levity, as he fell for every trick the other players might have played on him, which made everyone laugh, as the darkness of the world closed in around them.  At the start of the game, everyone made a recorded “If I don’t make it” type of message.  These messages are played back once all the candles are out and the characters have all died.  We’re all sitting in a darkened room, having just watched our band of survivors get picked off one by one and then the recordings begin playing.  Everyone had a dark secret and each seemed to be darker than the last.  As we sat there, realizing that our heroes of the story were nothing like heroes after all, the last message was Mr. Gullible.  His message began with “If I don’t make it through this, I made a deal with a Nigerian Prince.  I’m supposed to be getting a bunch of money, but I didn’t get it before this all started.  Go to my house and check the mail box… it should be there.”

The sincerity of the belief in the Nigerian Prince scam and they way the player delivered it was hilarious and immediately the gloom of the session was lifted.  For a session that, for whatever reason kept getting darker and darker, it was the right burst of humour when we needed it.  The session was memorable for the tension of the mission as a whole, but the final recording sealed the session off.  When I think of running a game of Ten Candles, this is the session that often comes to mind.  For a moment of witty humour at the start of the session that lifted up the end.

~ by 1nsomniac on August 24, 2020.