Dungeon Fantasy 7: Attack of the Healbots

[Steven Marsh]

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:

Inappropriate attempts at humor. Game writing should be clear and entertaining. This does not mean it should contain jokes, inside references, cute comments, and the like. It is perfectly all right to set up a humorous, even slapstick, situation – but let the readers see the humor; don't try to rub their noses in it.

Colloquial writing and slang. This problem is often tied to the misusage of humor. Slang is appropriate in vignettes and character dialog, and maybe in cases where a slang word is a term for a setting-specific item. Even then, be cautious -- you can easily confuse a reader with a term which you think is known, but is in fact regional. Explain, and always check your dictionary when you are unsure.

And later on we list under humor:

Use it sparingly. There is a fine line between wit and self-indulgence. When in doubt, take it out. Cute, clever remarks will be edited out with prejudice.

3) Related to the above, editors and playtesters might be inclined to scrub humor in the interest of clarity, "pre-errata," and brevity. For example, consider this (slight) bit of humor from the Basic Set, under Pyromania (p. 152):

You like fires! You like to set fires, too.

This (light) example has stretched back in the Basic Set for decades. However, as an editor, I might be inclined to rephrase those sentences to something like:

You have a compulsion to set fires.

Not only is that 22% shorter, but it also avoids the pre-errata of, "Can I take Pyromania if I don't actually like fires, but merely have a compulsion to set them? I could hate and fear fire, but (say) feel a need to release it from flammable materials."

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. :-)

[Refplace]

Thank you!
At least I know it was not totally my imagination or senility.

[PK]

Originally Posted by Refplace

I didn't say no jokes but somehow it feels different then it used to.
But maybe its the format and jokes are easier with a book in my hand ten on a computer screen. Or maybe I'm just getting old and losing my sense of humor.
I remember my friends reading my GURPS books that I loaned them (trying to get them to convert) and the two things they liked the most were the solid research and the sense of humor in them.

Well, sense of humor will vary depending on the author, and on how serious the author takes the work in question. But if you can read through the latest Dungeon Fantasy book (14: Psi) without finding plenty to smirk over and occasionally chuckle about, I'll be surprised. By way of contrast, there isn't much humor in Reign of Steel: Will to Live, but that's rather intentional -- the whole point is that it's a grim, dystopian setting where humans are struggling just to survive, so obvious humor would feel rather out of place.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Steven Marsh

3) Related to the above, editors and playtesters might be inclined to scrub humor in the interest of clarity, "pre-errata," and brevity.

Or to put it another way - I'm afraid that humour sometimes gets killed in the playtest process. First drafts often contain perfectly good jokes, but then some po-faced playtester protests that this part isn't clear or doesn't make sense... And by the time the problem has been sorted out to enough people's satisfaction, the joke has been wiped, or lost in a clutter of clarification.

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.)

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

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.

[Dr. Whom]

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.