Am I just a grumpy fuck or do other folk enjoy playing their analog goodness with a modicum of seriousness?
In RPGs everyone always does dumb shit and acts like derpy faggots, same with any board games where there's any kind of campaign.
My Kingdom Death is coming soon and I'm almost debating on disappearing for a few months and playing it solo since everyone who is interested is among the ones who make their names "Timmy Stonecock" and acts like a retard.
Humor is a necessary tactic to survive the horror of existence. Without humor life in the game isn't worth it. Don't worry, the jokes won't last forever. As long as you laugh along with your people, they will come to respect you and stop making dumbass jokes when you ask.
when timmy stonecock gets pulverized and his wife's pregnancy is terminated, the jokes will stop.
Having some light humour makes the serious times more serious, and also more bearable.
>Am I just a grumpy fuck or do other folk enjoy playing their analog goodness with a modicum of seriousness?
Yes on both counts.
Fair enough.
I guess only time will tell how the group takes it. Maybe I'll just do a solo campaign on the side if the fart jokes and dick puns continue after 3-4 sessions.
When you try to have some survivors fuck, and somehow the sex results in both the man and the woman both dying horribly, you can't let that slide without some sort of joking. It's just so absurd of an outcome.
The game lends itself to both humorous and depressing outcomes, though. Expect some initial silliness when it comes time to name your survivors and settlement, and taking bad situations in stride due to how unusual or odd they seem. Then your best settlement's best survivor gets their head hacked off by a stray blow, you have several years of plague and acidic rain, the next best fighter gets bird cancer, some dickhead breaks your best innovation for a laugh, and some backup character goes mad and eats half your crafting items. By now your group should have sobered up a bit upon realizing they will be hard pressed to survive the next mini-boss just two lantern years from now.
I do kind of feel you, though. Some games and campaigns, I love the banter and dicking around. Other times I want a more serious campaign, and it's hard to really get lost in the setting when most of the other players default to trying to make everything funny or wacky.
I like my games as grimdark as possible and I have the same problem. I'm usually okay with joking around as long as it doesn't ruin any interesting scenarios and the characters aren't completely ridiculous.
Figured I'd go ahead and take time to recall one of the reasons I find lowbrow humor in muh tabletop lame and unfunny. It's about Stonecock.
>playing Gloomhaven with the boys over the course of months, one session a week
>we progress a bit and unlock new characters over time
>one guy, we'll call him D, doesn't pay attention and makes every attempt to be funny
>"dude haha we bent that monster over and raped it haha"
>"wait, I haven't played my cards yet"
>"haha guys look at this video of an industrial grinder destroying stuff"
>he unlocks the human medic but chooses the Cragheart rock dude as his new guy because lolhealers
>he names him Stonecock
>in between the pokes and prods of my group telling him to get off his phone to choose his two action cards, he does this thing anytime he ever deals damage
>STOOOOONECAWK
>dude says this loudly and laughs
>every.single. time.
>nobody else ever finds it funny
>eventually drop the campaign to focus on other games
I still hear it in my dreams.
I'm not saying I would still be playing weekly if D played more seriously, but it pairing with the 45 minute drive certainly didn't help.
Who keeps inviting that asshole to the games? Replace him.
I feel you man. I fucking feel you. I've got TTS and ever KDM game I enter is played for shit's and giggles. Survivors living in Whoreville, using the same female for every intimacy roll and calling her Breeder. Calling chars Dickchin and shit.
Tabletop stuff too. ""Seducing"" succubuses, end things in bloodshed for shits and giggles.
Fine, I can't tell them how to have fun. But is it so much to ask for a game where we care? Where we try? Come on.
I avoid this by making my players go through a couple of false sessions before introducing them to the real campaign as a foolproof screening method. On top of this I ensure they write me at least a 2000 word document detailing their character's past, aspirations and personality as well as why they the player feel they should be allowed to join one of my campaigns. Meme humor? Dropped. Anime references? Dropped. Sex jokes, politics or gossip? There's the door. Now you're probably thinking something along the lines of "lol bro you must have no friends or something" well that's where you're wrong. I've feathered my nest well and have a consistent group of about 4-6 people (5 is best) to run a game with at any given time. My players know my standards and hold to them, furthermore I'm very well respected as a DM by every store in a 60km radius and have contact with any DM worth his salt within 40km. If I deem you a poor fit to the TTRPG community I can have you blacklisted from every group worth a damn. Maybe something like Critical Roll or or D&D would be a better fit for you if you just want to sit back and expect to be entertained with a pair of keys jangling over you instead of investing yourself and working for your fun. Want to play with the big boys? Then grow the fuck up.
And you feel important.
Waiter, this pasta is stale.
>Am I just a grumpy fuck or do other folk enjoy playing their analog goodness with a modicum of seriousness?
Probably both.
Session zero, talking with your game group like adults about tone/themes/interests is legit helpful for this kind of thing. There's going to be variation in your group because people be different but everyone knowing what other people like and what things you're focusing on makes things a lot less likely to fall into lolrandum unless that's the point.
Sorry man, but calling our safe breeding stock Spermbank and Broodmare will never cease to be amusing to our puerile minds.
Also, it's hard to take the game too seriously when you can be forced ti rename a character Scatman, get pulled into a time traveling anus, or have characters walking around with a goofy grinning flower for a head.
I disagree strongly.
There are games, groups, systems and crunch that are conductive to a serious roleplay environment and maturity, no memes, asinine comments or jokes. These are cancer to any atmosphere besides a light hearted one.
There are systems, games, crunch and more dedicated entirely to light hearted jokes and immaturity.
If somebody has geared up a hard bitten, grim and serious game, you have no right to ruin it with jokes you think are funny.
Likewise, if somebody has a light hearted, relaxed and funny campaign you have no right to impose a grim brand of seriousness on it.
As in all things, fit the players to the campaign.
That's why over the years I have ditched all my friends and replaced them for alternate personalities of my own choice. In the end I got sick of my original persona and ditched that sour faggot too.
Try not playing grimderp settings for teenagers.
Know this:
I once played D&D with a new player who regarded all magic as silly nonsense.
So they treated every moment of the session as a derpy joke, every ineraction as a goofy excuse to be silly.
Since it was magic, it was fiction, and not important.
I gently banned that player from ever playing another rpg with me again.
That player was my father.
In short, yes, other folk enjoy playing their analog goodness with a modicum of seriousness.
What's the policy on cargo shorts?
I enjoy a mix of seriousness and humour
Too much of one or the other ruins it for me though.
I can't stand the dramatic roleplayers who get stupidly serious and the players that can't take anything serious prevent any possibility of immersion.
I want to believe this is real
The sadness it radiates is so sweet
I instantly kick anybody that has any of the following, anime avatar, retard name, inability to join a session 0.
It screens 90% of the undesirables.
This.
What the fuck gives anyone the right to ruin other people's fun?
The fact that "It's better this way"?
If you want to set the tone, you gotta run the zone, so GM up and stop fucking with the setting he took so long to build.
Cargo shorts are comfortable and have enough pockets to carry a lot of shit around
If you make less then a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars a year? Blacklisted
>My entire RPG group is blacklisted
Shit
>I have a smug anime girl avatar
>I'm the forever GM so people can deal with it.
I think reasons for the situation OP decribes could be:
>The emergence of comedy DnD casts such as Harmon Quest, Adventure Zone & YogsQuest flavouring the popular perception of TTG amongst new initiates as a arena for goofy fun. This also ties in with...
>People have spent a lot of time trying to shed the 'TTG is for aggressively serious, no-fun turbonerds' and the result is a lot more people are getting into it. This is no good if you're an aggressively serious no-fun turbonerd.
>You all just know some really shitty people.
I'm really lucky that all my groups are socially well adjusted individuals. We get a few yuks from off the cuff banter, but the setting is relatively serious, has stakes and the players are invested in characters so they aren't just 'lol, I stab her and steal her magical shawl'.
I'm sure there's ways around it. Try speaking with players and outlining what you want and do / don't expect, the tone of the setting etc. Session Zeroes are also a very good idea.
It is what you let it be.
Learn to have better humor in more appropriate timespace fag
Humor in gaming is often necessary to blunt the edge of cringeworthy faggots who take it waaay too seriously.
Kingdom Death has a lot of hardcore shit, but also a LOT of black humor. If you don't get that, congratulations, you're one of those 40k fags who unironically ultramarine.
>Am I just a grumpy fuck or do other folk enjoy playing their analog goodness with a modicum of seriousness?
Me too. I hate lolzrandom shit. I blame it on Big Bang Theory and Stranger Things bringing hordes of normies, roasties, and /v/irgins into the hobby who just want to fuck around because they read a nat20 greentext on Tumblr so they think that's what D&D (and thus all RPGs) is about.
That's not even humor, just general retardation.
Well, you go too far, but your heart is in the right place.
Humor is how people mask that they dont know how to do something. When you lack confidence, you just act like its not a big deal. Talk to your players about it, reward them for good roleplay.
>2000 word document detailing their character's past.
Fuck off. You're gonna end up with all the wrong sorts of folks with that kind of a requirement. Maybe you can get away with that in highschool or college, but adults have jobs, and writing 2000 words of anything well is work.
>but adults have jobs, and writing 2000 words of anything well is work
lol
Honestly, even in highschool I wouldn't write a fucking essay to play a fucking game. I would tell that fucking retard to go fuck yourself and find a non autist DM.