Comedy can be a very difficult aspect to include in a tabletop game, especially as a DM. Players will generally find ways of injecting humorous interludes into your campaign by themselves but every so often it can be fun to purposely insert something quirky into the game as a DM. Generally speaking you shouldn’t try too hard as a DM to make things funny for your players, your players will probably find it tiresome and chances are you’ll run out of creative ideas quickly. Here are a couple ideas you can try next time you want to bring a little extra humor to your table.
The players at my regular gaming table have a tendency to like things that are weird, unusual, or just downright absurd. Things like this can be easily thrown in at random whenever I feel that the players energy levels are lulling a bit. For instance, I could give a detailed description of some monstrous creature that the players are facing off against but change some minute detail about the creature in order to make it quirky. An example:
"Beep Beep"
“The dragon rears up on its hind legs and spreads its wings, casting a shadow over the entire party. Its silhouette is black against the morning sun, red eyes glowing atop its head. It lands heavily on its front two feet and charges forward with a mighty ‘BeepBeep!’”
While this might seem kind of lame to some, this description would have had my players laughing and making “beeping” noises and jokes for the entire encounter. A good way to lift the player’s moods.
Another quirky trick to throw at your players goes back to an older post about roleplaying NPCs. You can have your players come across a small village or a traveling caravan where every person they meet has the same repetitive motion when being spoken to. For example your players can walk into a quiet town, far from the main roads, where everyone they speak to rubs the back of their neck when asked a question. This gives you as the DM a chance to mess with the players a bit and see how long it takes them to notice your odd behavior or maybe your players will start to mimic you without realizing it. Again this idea seems somewhat silly but after the players realize whats going on they would get a quick laugh out of it. Of course this situation could always go the other way and the players become suspicious of everyone in town, but hey, that just gives you an easy hook.
These are just a couple of ideas for how to bring a little energy to your table the next time things get too quiet. As long as you know the people you’re playing with then coming up with a few situations that they would find funny shouldn’t be difficult.
-Ironclad Penguin.
Comedy is definitely one of those things you have to discuss with your players before introducing into the game – at least discussing how much you want to introduce.
My most recent adventure on my blog (not counting the one I’m part-way done) is a “comedy” adventure – where the characters are stuck in a series of tesserract caves full of bizarre (and endless) “shroom goblins” and their goblin king, complaining carpets, arguing mirrors and rude statues.
Definitely not designed for a serious game.
Some times playing off gaming troupes is fun. Like finding ANOTHER +1 long sword. Or going in a bar and finding it full of adventuring parties all sitting around waiting for an adventure to start.
I like to turn common fantasy stereotypes on its ear. Like once in a one shot the players wandered into a village of halflings. Thinking halflings were safe they let their guard down. And found out that they were a village of cannibalistic halflings.
Ah yes, the comedic adventure. The hardest part about running one is that if you reach critical mass the game completely breaks down into bad puns and old jokes. I have found that adding “funny bits” directly before or after a major event (combat or social) can change the overall feel of a game. Running groundhog day as a D&D campaign kept the party guessing and not know what they could do to get out of it drove them crazy. Tv makes for great inspiration for games as well especially if you are an older guy (im 43) running for a bunch of younger guys (in their 20′s) who have never seen the show. I once ran a 4 month summer campaign about a technologically and magically superior race that was considered a legend as they have wiped out millennia ago. They used numerous unusual non violent weapons and high speed mine cars to get around their abandon cities. They seemed to be gnome or halfling sized and it wasnt till the last 2 games that they figured out they were searching for Disneys Gummi Bears. They though they would be pushovers till they started taking MASSIVE subdual damage. (you ever get hit in the face by 100 pounds of high speed bouncing ursine. It hurts a lot) Introduce the comedic aspect as a straight man delivering his lines and they sometime become part of the joke. THe end result is no matter what format you use keep an eye on the players if they arent having a good time then you are probably not getting the joke across. If you are the only one laughing then its probably not funny.