Great Ork Gods gets a lot of credit.

Don't dismiss Paranoia. It's very cleverly set up: lots of status things going on in there. . I've played it lots of times and it's very reliably funny.

Toon, too.

Graham

The biggest disadvantage lots of comedy RPGs have is that they are funny to read and not to play. The writer obviously has a talent for creating funny situations when writing, but is unable to distill that talent into a process to give to other people.

It's actually really hard, of course, as you have to learn to be funny first, then learn how to give that to other people in game form.

The best example I can think of for a good comedy RPG is Inspectres. It reliably delivers. Largely because it's core conceit is the comedy gold of ramming the ultra mundane (running a franchise business) and the non-mundane (supernatural shit) together and taking it to the logical extreme. But even there it can lose something if people try to be "wacky", which is another failing of many comedy RPGs.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Many comedy games do indeed become one-shots, but I don't think that diminishes their value. One-shots are useful for filling in the gaps between longer campaigns.

Paranoia I find almost always devolves into pure comedy no matter how straight you try and run it, and it is indeed a naturally funny game, so as has been said I think that's one of the best examples of how comedy and RPG work together to make a game that is both fun and fun-ny.

I have a soft spot for Pokethulhu, though that's a bit of a one-off.

Low Life I've never had a chance to play, but it looks like it has good long-term potential despite the comedy styling.

Kobolds Ate My Baby has an interesting means of perpetuating the comedy, by requiring player participation in a number of ways (such as barking like a kobold to get a bonus, or the rule by which every time King Zog is mentioned by name, everyone has to stand up and shout 'All Hail King Zog!')

I was never actually a fan of Toon myself. I found the games went by too quickly and lacked depth. Tales of the Floating Vagabond was pretty darn good though, especially the Rogers and Hammerstein schtick!

Ash

Tbilisi is an rpg that can be played more than once. It's not so much a comic rpg as a joke about rpg theory.

I've played loads of GURPS Goblins which is funny and allows for lots of play. My campaign was set in the Royal College of Magic in Southwark (and predates Harry Potter) it had lots of jolly stuff about redemption men, mummies, evil foreign sorcerers (the very Carry On Mustapha Poo) and custard.

I think one of the problems that comedy RPGs have is that whenever someone says 'this is funny' there are a sizeable chunk of people who will set their funnybones to 'numb' and retort with 'oh really?' and proceed to tell you exactly how UNfunny it all is. People need to be in a funny mood to make something funny and if they are in that mood they can just about make anything funny! We nearly lost a group member during a Cold War session to a laughing fit that went too far!

To help a game be funny I think it has to have a premise that players can buy into as funny (the LOL cat thing is perfect btw) and have simple mechanics that allow for silliness (ie. like Toon). It also needs to lend itself to situation that can be funny. Its do-able, but its very hard, especially if your sense of humour is a bit ... out there.

One rpg which I think would love to be funny but fails magnificently is GURPS Discworld. We've played it funny but that was all GM and players and nothing to do with the game itself. Trying to replicate funny from something that exists can be excrutiatingly difficult (cf. Red Dwarf RPG...)

Good luck wit YR projkt!

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

GURPS Discworld is one of those games that could have been so good and (much as I like him on a peronsal level) should not have been given to Phil Masters to write. GURPS Goblins is indeed a riotous read and I'd love to get some serious GURPS heads together to play it because it really isn't a pick up game.

There are a few there I haven't heard of and thinks, I'm going to go have a look.

A note on Paranoia, please let me explain, I love the game. I have owned many versions of the game in my life including XP. My main point was the first edition especially whilst having a brilliant premise was over burdened with rules complexity that slowed it down.

Which was of course noted by the creators in later versions. Personally i still think HIL Sector Blues was a wonderful book. Happy days.

Meanwhile tonight I shall look to writing another few thousand words. Thanks folks.

Simon Proctor
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Pokethulhu ... I find it great fun but I know that not everyone I played it with did, and that is because it only works if you really appreciate what you are parodying, not just CoC, but also Pokemon, and in a fair amount of detail.

I think that's key for any comedy game based on parody (and most of them are), everyone has to buy into the subject, and know enough about it to know what you are parodying. I agree with Neil, LOL-cats are a great subject for that, because almost everyone has seen them and almost everyone thinks the are funny.

What you need to remember when writing the rules, is to remember that they only need to be there at all to help facilitate the sort of play that is going to be funny. Your LOLcats game doesn't need rules for combat, because combat is not a feature of LOLcat pictures. It *does* need rules for getting into crazy places, stealing stuff, and eatin cheezburgerz, because that *is* part of the theme. (Okay, if you are making it into a game of Ninja LOLfighting then you need combat rules sure, but that's a different game).

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

As a slight aside, assuming this thread is in some way refering to Lol-Cats, d'you have any plans of lampooning the infamous video game bad-guy Cats, whose main claim to fame is the world's best-known poorly translated line "All Your Base Are Belong To Us"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

Ash

I believe that is going to be the catch phrase of one of the alien races. The ones that will be used in the sample adventure.

Right now I'm working out the ideas for eXtension Potential and spending it.

Simon Proctor
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