I’m glad it’s not just me. In this episode of the Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice podcast, Messrs Cule and Bell-West talk about how irritating it is when players break out of character for jokes and facetious banter.Most definitely I’m not against joking at the table. In-character humour is not only essential and lots of fun, it’s pretty much the Turing Test of roleplaying. If you can see things from inside your character enough to crack a joke like him or her, you’re doing it right.
That's like the first Thor movie. All the humour there was great because it came from character. Later the film-makers saw that they’d get more tweetage if all the characters spoke like Joss Whedon was writing their lines – which in many cases he was. What even Joss forgot was that flip, high-school comedy shtick made sense for Buffy and the Scooby gang because they were high-schoolers. Coming from Thor or Captain America it’s just dumb. If it were a roleplaying game not a movie, that would be their players just not bothering.
But what do you do? Michael Cule asks if you should bang on the table. But you have enough on your mind running the game without taking on the role of kindergarten teacher as well, and as Roger Bell-West points out, once the suspension of disbelief is broken it's a bit late to get it back. Maybe instead we need to look at why players might want to break character. It means either they’re bored or else they’re embarrassed by the make-believe and need an escape. Listen to the podcast, it’s all discussed there.
Maybe part of the problem is the trend in modern drama for every character to behave like a teenager with ADHD. And maybe that is caused by the tweetability of 21st century life. People talk all the way through movies, TV shows and roleplaying games now because they’re accustomed to providing the world with a streaming commentary of their entire lives. Sitting still and concentrating on one thing for a chunk of time measured in hours must seem like Swamp Thing waiting for a judgement from the Parliament of Trees. I’m a lot less connected than the average person (you should see my cellphone) which may be why I’m mostly happy to stay in character for the evening.
Incidentally I'm not discussing this because my own players are offenders. We do have a lot of humour in most sessions, but it's almost always in character and we don't, thank goodness, have one of the compulsive comedians Mr Cule describes in his groups. That said, I've noticed that when side discussions spring up between a couple of players, time was they'd be talking about something in the game (very often in character, too) whereas these days it will likely be something they're watching on TV or saw on Facebook. Attention spans are rotting away the world over, or so the anecdotal evidence goes.
Cnut couldn’t stop the tide. All you can do is make your games more engaging so that players don’t feel the need to step out of character and make jokes. Throw in more outrageous surprises, and be less forgiving if players were nattering and missed what just happened. Or you could have NPCs react to all those funny meme references as if the character really said them out loud. A little time with the Inquisition (or your world’s local equivalent) is a surefire cure for compulsive hilarity.
And if that doesn't work, switch to playing boardgames, where there's no suspension of disbelief to break. In which case, here's just the thing.
The few times I've had a problem with excessive OOC stuff I approach it with "Look, guys, not for nothing but it's a bit of work getting this game ready for play every week. If you're just going to cut up and joke through, I'd rather do something else."
ReplyDeleteMany years ago, one of my players asked why I didn't charge for running games. He was serious, too. At the time I just laughed, but there is the kernel of an important point there: people appreciate something they paid for. You don't buy tickets to the theatre and then spend half the play showing your friends stuff you found on Facebook. An RPG session can have a lot of bespoke preparation behind it, but it's free so it isn't valued as much.
DeleteHmmm, I think this very much depends on the social contract of the group playing the game. A very satisfying aesthetic experience can be achieved where the group puts themselves into the positions of a bunch of characters in a fantasy world, at the same time being conscious that they are really a bunch of players in the real world taking on roles. This has been described as "playing monopoly with squatters", http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.ie/2010/03/playing-monopoly-with-squatters.html.
ReplyDeleteKnow the protocol of the table you're playing at kids.
Your point about in character humour being a litmus for whether you're doing it right is very smart.
I remember right back in 1976 that D&D groups would talk about how "Monty Python" their games were, with "clerics from the Isle of Dogs" etc. it's probably why to this day I refuse to play D&D. But of course, if players like that piss-taking fnar-fnar stuff then they are entitled to run their games that way. I'd almost say it's the only logical way to play a game with D&D's underlying ethic and rules,
DeleteI generally dislike the jokey humour and comic one liners you get in the Marvel films because they're so out of character, they just ruin the whole thing. When Thor's fighting Ultron in the last Avengers film and drops out of character to make some wisecrack, I just cringed. It's more believable when Tony Stark does it because, well, he's Tony Stark. He's a smart ass. He makes smart ass comments all the time because that's the kind of guy he is. But when you have other characters doing it for cheap laughs, it's wrong on so many levels.
ReplyDeleteSaying that, I didn't find the humour in Thor Ragnarok out of place because the entire tone of the film was that of a very light hearted comedy. In fact, it wasn't really a superhero film with some comedy elements, but a comedy film which just happened to be about a superhero.
I agree, it works perfectly in Tony Stark's case. Unfortunately the creative committee have said to themselves, "Stark is a popular character. Let's make them all wisecrackers." But it works for him because his jokes are in character, and he's played by Robert Downey Jr.
DeleteI'd be up for a superhero movie in which Thor reclaims Asgard from an invading army. If I want a comedy I'll watch Veep or The Detectorists or Curb Your Enthusiasm. 'Nuff said.
Hi Dave. Apologies for going off topic once again, but just to say Detectorists is my favourite comedy of the last few years. I was going to mention it to you a year or two back but there wasn't an appropriate opportunity to do so. I almost mentioned it a few weeks back in relation to Roz's new book. No direct link, both just evidence the art of humour without humour (as Bruce Lee once didn't say), if that makes any kind of sense.
DeleteIt does indeed, Andy. And did you notice (should physical disks still be your viewing medium of choice) that Detectorists s3 and the post-s2 special are being released just a week before Christmas? Don't tell my wife, though; it's a surprise.
DeleteThey are still my medium of choice, Dave, and no I hadn't clocked the release. She's a lucky lady! Best take them out of that annoying plastic wrap, put inside the machine to check compatibility and play each episode thoroughly, just in case of scratches.
DeleteI watched Ragnarok today, after having studiously avoided possible spoilers over the last couple of weeks (this blog post included). And, yes, the dialogue bothered me. It was likeable enough from time to time – but when these millennia-old Norse deities spend all their time speaking like awkward teenagers, it gets tiresome. The Guardian gave this film a good review on the basis that it didn't take itself too seriously. Me, I'd have liked it to take itself just a little more seriously. Some major events take place here, for Thor personally and for Asgard as a whole. It'd be nice if the film actually made an effort to commit to the gravitas of that.
ReplyDeleteSome fun Thor trivia, which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere yet: in the very first Thor comic book – I'll say it was Journey into Mystery #1, but don't hold me to that – Doctor Don Blake finds Mjolnir, transforms into Thor for the first time, and fights off some invading rock men. One of those rock men shows up again some four-ish decades later in the 'Planet Hulk' arc, and is named as Korg (it's mentioned that his deepest fear is facing the thunder god who so badly beat him previously). And Korg is here in this film too, which heavily borrows from 'Planet Hulk'.
So, that big blue rock guy with the inexplicable New Zealand accent? He was there all the way back in the first ever Thor story.
I do remember him. Well, not him specifically, but the alien rock men that Thor faced in his first adventure. I read it originally in the British reprint mag Fantastic, which was in black and white so you could really appreciate that Kirby art.
DeleteAs a comics fan, I've long been vexed by that contemptuous attitude among "serious" reviewers. I prefer a story to take itself seriously - not without humour, of course, but not so that the whole thing is just a silly send-up. Papers like The Grauniad have had that opinion of comics for decades, and I'm sorry to see Marvel turning all their blockbusters into just what the Grauniad reviewers expect. I guess they want all their movies to be Guardians of the Galaxy from now on -- and I liked GotG as an outlier, but not as the style-setter for the whole MCU.
I'm going to highjack this comment section to discuss a grievance I've had for awhile now.
ReplyDeleteHow am I supposed to support any future FL books when the publisher puts something like this in a public venue?
"The book is done as for the layout and interior content but it's taking ages for the artist that the authors imposed to Megara Entertainment for the cover, without any possible discussion either on his rates or on his time schedule. I heard recenlty from Paul that there is a colour version of the cover almost done."
This is from the kickstarter page. How can a professional company believe that putting this out there is in any way alright?
When they used the kickstarter page to promote a totally unrelated product that no one cared for and was launched so badly they called it back I was shaking my head regarding the bad blood they were creating with their customers.
But to actually air the unwashed laundry?
This is the company that is supposed to bring the series to it's deserved end?
The level of amateurishness is both staggering and disheartening.
To clarify a little the organisational side of things, the 2015 Kickstarter was to fund the hardback edition of The Serpent King's Domain only, to be published by Megara Entertainment. When the book becomes available in paperback format, that'll be handled uniquely by Fabled Lands LLC. Megara runs the Kickstarter page – I write the project updates that appear on there, but everything that's posted goes through Megara.
DeleteWe are currently having initial discussions about running a Kickstarter to fund FL8, and what sort of practicalities would be involved in that – but it's already been mentioned online (I forget where; maybe on the FL Facebook page) that everybody involved has decided that Megara won't be involved in that, to allow them to focus on some of their other projects: Grey Star, Autumn Snow etc.
To give credit to Megara, it's in large part thanks to them that The Serpent King's Domain has been written at all. Some time ago Mikael at Megara was pushing to run a Kickstarter to fund a Pathfinder adaptation of the Fabled Lands RPG, and the idea of writing the next Fabled Lands book grew out of that. Without Megara's involvement, the book would still likely be hovering in that branch of limbo reserved for unwritten fiction.
Yep - Paul said it all. Mikael has his own unique style of running Kickstarter projects, and it's not the way I might do it, but then I wouldn't run a country like Donald Trump or Robert Mugabe or Rodrigo Duterte either. Different strokes.
DeleteBut rest assured, Erik, the paperback editions of Book 7 re being published by Fabled Lands LLP and if there are any further FL Kickstarters we'll be running them. And we're very happy with the art by Russ Nicholson and Kevin Jenkins. I think everyone will agree it was worth waiting for.
Oh, and as for the artists' rates - those were of course set out in the "art meter" on the Kickstarter page so that every backer could see where their money was going.
Delete