09-06-2011, 08:57 PM | #81 | ||||
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy 7: Attack of the Healbots
Speaking as someone with "behind the scenes" lore, I can probably say that the level of humor has been toned down a bit. This is for a number of reasons; here are a few picked out of a hat:
1) Writers will hardly ever be rejected for not having a sense of humor. Given a choice between "humorous author who has other writing problems" versus "straightforward author who writes flawlessly," we'll go with the latter every time. 2) Our style guide specifically cautions against "bad" humor. Our "common errors" list has two related "don't do this" items: Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
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This is a trivial example, but it hopefully sheds some light on the issues that writers and editors face. We place a high value on readable and interesting text, but "clarity" and "brevity" usually trump "funny." I have a bit more I could say, but I'll leave it at that for now. :-) |
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09-06-2011, 09:33 PM | #82 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy 7: Attack of the Healbots
Thank you!
At least I know it was not totally my imagination or senility. |
09-06-2011, 10:23 PM | #83 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dobbstown Sane Asylum
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy 7: Attack of the Healbots
Quote:
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09-07-2011, 03:51 AM | #84 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy 7: Attack of the Healbots
Quote:
One sighs. Clarity is a virtue, especially in RPG books, and the playtests help a lot with that - but honestly, there are times when I feel like hauling some playtesters aside and yelling at them "It's a JOKE! If you haven't got a sense of humour, can't you at least manage some common sense?" Except they'd probably start arguing with that from the Basic Set definition of the Common Sense advantage. Worse, this problem tends to kill the subtler jokes. As SJGames has an admirable bias against un-subtle jokes (or at least, I do), this leaves a narrow window of stylistic opportunity. (And yeah, DF7 does indeed have some jokes. But quite a lot of it is lists of spells available to different cleric types, so the average density may be lower than in some books.)
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09-07-2011, 08:20 AM | #85 |
Fightin' Round the World
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: New Jersey
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy 7: Attack of the Healbots
There is quite a bit of humor in the books I've written. There are a few little in-jokes (mostly, character names or word choices for descriptions). Others are punchy but funny descriptions, others are buried references to obscure things, and some are straight-out jokes.
Witness the Peter Graves quote in Gladiators, Strongbad quotes in GURPS Martial Arts, the entire description of the otherwise seriously annoying horde pygmies in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1, and more elsewhere. I just try to avoid putting in stuff that's blatantly stupid, or worse, seems serious until you use it. That's not funny to me and I resent it as a GM when I unveil to my players and realize the joke's on me. So my work doesn't include it. Except perhaps the Shokosu Gi, but that seemed obvious to me. But I do try to keep it light enough to let you know, hey, it's a game.
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Peter V. Dell'Orto aka Toadkiller_Dog or TKD My Author Page My S&C Blog My Dungeon Fantasy Game Blog "You fall onto five death checks." - Andy Dokachev |
10-01-2011, 06:11 AM | #86 |
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: In a phone booth, but a little classier than Dr. Who's.
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Re: Dungeon Fantasy 7: Attack of the Healbots
The Horde Pygmies brought back memories for a character generator I made a long time ago while playing DnD. A small programming glitch kept made it that I was always printing pyromaniac, insane halflings. Well, until I was able to find the glitch, with several printings) I had about 30 different pyromaniac, insane halfings laying around. Which made for a very humorous encounter as I didn't want them to go to waste.
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clerics, dungeon fantasy |
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