Recently, I have come to notice an ever growing trend In character on EFU. It seems to me, that it is becoming common practice for numerous characters to make poorly thought of jokes during serious situations.
When I first arrived on EFU, I was impressed by the level of fear and infamy a PC could hold, let alone a characters. Within the first year of playing I dont think anyone dared make a witty comment in person to a truly terrifying PC without fear of brutal consequences.
The server had a certain level of respect, not only to the character, but too the player and what they had achieved.
At some point this changed, and characters who have spent months growing into something truly incredible are subject too some of the poorest excuses of roleplay I have seen.
I understand, it can be fun to create a character for such a purpose. Unfortunately, the comedy effect somewhat loses its effect when you notice an abundance of it occurring on a daily basis.
I think, the thing that truly irks me about this, is that it has now moved from PC's onto the NPC's. When you stand looking at the warden, after he has just butchered a pretty well known and terrifyingly strong PC, the moment is somewhat cheapened when an abundance of characters start too make jokes.
Maybe its just me, but I feel this is disrespectful too the DM team and the player base.
If at all possible, could we please tone it down a bit?
This is annoying most of the time, making random snarky comments and stupid puns constantly throughout big events is probably the most immersion breaking thing I ever see. If you really feel the need to do it, just go on IRC or something, seems to stem mostly out of the fact that people know they won't get a retaliation from being a jackass. Agree with OP.
I will concur to a degree. Comic relief can be a great part of EfU, but my own personal take of this is that it's not very classy to see snide comments/jokes flood out whenever there is some sort of hickup during a DM event.
Mistakes can happen, because there are many variables and things that need to be handled at once by our DMs and sometimes NWN just doesn't play along. What really breaks my immersion in these situations though is when everyone insists on pointing them out.
Not to be too grumpy or anything, but we're playing an imaginative game and overlooking these things for the sake of the story isn't that hard.
I dis-
[hide=MY IMMERSION](http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg116/ace65_photo/dorf5_zpsddf3ab41.jpg)[/hide]
I endorse this post and fully agree that semi-OOC snark during more "serious moments" is tasteless and highly irritating.
The nature of major events is that it's very easy for us to completely miss PC dialogue. So, after the event, I'd encourage players to let me know about comments from PCs that seemed to be immersion breaking and I can take an opportunity to speak with the offending player privately and politely request they lower the snark next time.
Gloomwarden for King of Ymph. I miss him :(
Agreed. Comedy is extremely tough to get right and is best avoided.
I couldn't agree more.
I tend to save lightheartedness for lighthearted events/BoM quests.
I'm guilty of this from time to time, though my last PC was dead serious. I just try to remind myself that the majority of attempts at comic relief make me associate the perpetrators with Jar-Jar Binks.
On some characters (gnomes, ehehe) I engage in comic relief, but I never do it at the expense of badass PCs or NPCs.
If you want to generate comedy, do it at the expense of your own PC. Your PC making a bumbling boob of himself is perfectly alright, so long as you are willing to deal with the IC backlash that stems from it.
As far as dumb snarky comments goes - some players are saying it is disrespectful and people are taking advantage of there being no retaliation.
So take away the circumstance that they're taking advantage of. Someone makes a stupid joke about warlord Gadyw? Punch him in the face and put him in the stockade for a while for being disrespectful. Someone makes a dumb joke about the big bad your group is facing? Kick him out of the party for not taking the mortal peril he and his companions are in seriously.
If people are bringing stuff that is funny OOC but ridiculous IC, then ICly deal with the characters for being ridiculous IC.
Quote from: Yalta;335745Agreed. Comedy is extremely tough to get right and is best avoided.
I vehemently disagree with that. There's a place for it even on a grim-dark server like EFU. Maybe not when you're marching on H'bala's tower or captured by drow slavers, but the occasional silly detour is harly detrimental so long as it doesn't detract from the gravity of the main storylines.
Super hate this. I see it all the time. If they were actually funny, it works.
Most people are not funny.
There's the proper IC manner of being funny and creative in ways that fit the character. Then there are the OOC and RL hinting jokes that make you either laugh, or grimace and sigh deeply, taking the next five to 10 minutes to get back into the moment after being shaken by such cheapshot.
I do endorse that even if it's a game to have fun in, for people playing the fun is to be somewhat "serious" - roleplaying that character.
Quote from: Paha;335760There's the proper IC manner of being funny and creative in ways that fit the character. Then there are the OOC and RL hinting jokes that make you either laugh, or grimace and sigh deeply, taking the next five to 10 minutes to get back into the moment after being shaken by such cheapshot.
I do endorse that even if it's a game to have fun in, for people playing the fun is to be somewhat "serious" - roleplaying that character.
This is my feeling as well. Nothing wrong with funny moments or reactions, even in serious situations. It's when the joke or snarky comment is meta that it becomes unwelcome.
I am not entirely certain what to make of this. I agree that certain kinds of humour feel inappropriate (particularly current memes, blatant anachronisms and anything that smacks of OOC). But I also feel that humour in general is not a bad thing and that it correctly applied and in small amounts in fact helps seriousness and darkness by providing contrast and small breaths of relief.
Moreover, the mentality that "if you don't know how to do humour properly, don't do it at all" is profoundly disquieting to me. We all experience humour differently. I freely admit that there have been characters as well as names that have made me wince and where I felt that their jokes weren't at all funny to me. But large and by, I have managed to remind myself that the humour is at least funny to the players of these characters and that it was highly unlikely that they were trying to be deliberately disruptive. And so I have tuned out what I thought unfunny and continued to enjoy both the seriousness and the humour that remained.
Reminding people that memes, OOC and meta-humour might be damaging to immersion especially during events is fine. But the notion that humour should be discouraged and left solely to the hands of a select elite disquiets and saddens me. It would make EfU a much darker place, yes, but to me at least it would be in the entirely wrong way.
Humour is not discouraged by any means, but there's a clear limit to everything. I am absolutely positive that people know when a joke is just making a joke out of playing, instead of taking character seriously or making indications to RL matters that just don't make any sense in roleplaying settlement. It is important for everyone to understand this.
However even if folks would feel bad about it, sometimes it's just a truth that if you can't do it, then learn how and take it as a challenge. Study a bit of lore and source books maybe. It ain't surely easy to be in character and make suitable lines or jokes, but it's far better than making quite awful RL ones that break, often, good in game moments.
This is my opinion. You can agree, you can disagree, but like the original post, it's a request and should say something when quite many voice it out. Worth thinking over.
And that's how he feels about that.
Seriously, though, don't do it. And that really simply extends to RPing your character as if he was a person in the game world and not as if he was you controlling him. I am often disheartened by not only the jokes, but just the generally inappropriate ways characters deal with things that are happening to them in game.
I get it, you aren't really getting hurt and that giant undead demon aberration is just some pixels on the screen, but it's really nice to see players RPing shock, fear, and awe. Instead of what has almost become a standard of, "Oh, look, giant monster, get it!"
Of course, some characters will be more resilient than others and some outright nonchalant... but it's an overwhelming amount of them, it seems.
(http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/4934/madnesssmalldk4.jpg)
Just to help clarify -
Humor is not bad. At all. But this is, first and foremost, roleplaying. So if you're roleplaying your character, and your character is a jokester, that's fine. But when it's clear a character has no fear or seriousness because the player recognizes that it's a game, it sort of disturbs the gentle fiction of the setting.
As an example - when you watch a cheesy action movie, and the hero says a one-liner, it may well be funny, but it also reminds you, "oh, yeah! I'm watching an action movie. None of this is really happening".
It breaks immersion!
I guess a good rule of thumb is, if your attempt at humor is appealing to players, rather than to the setting, or if it heavily references a different entertainment medium, it might break the fourth wall and just be annoying.
Oh, yeah, and if a character is snarky to an established badass, they have no right to complain when they eat dirt. Withered dirt.
For reference, James Lysik was Dangerous Dan lmao
Don't do this. One need only look to the efu memes and quotes threads to show unfunny you are.
This isn't a game after all.
I support this. This isn't a game after all.
The comic of efu should be dark, twisted, but hilarious none the less. Such as "NEVER SNEEZE"
QuoteAgreed. Comedy is extremely tough to get right and is best avoided.
QuoteI vehemently disagree with that. There's a place for it even on a grim-dark server like EFU. Maybe not when you're marching on H'bala's tower or captured by drow slavers, but the occasional silly detour is harly detrimental so long as it doesn't detract from the gravity of the main storylines.
The trouble is,
humour often does not "travel" as well as good
tragedy,
horror, or
suspense across settings, RPing, player backgrounds and stories.
Getting humour right in EFU is very very hard. Getting suspense, intrigue, fear, excitement right is far more achievable when the participants are from different backgrounds, countries and cultures.
And when you get comedy wrong, it is terribly immersion breaking in my experience.
How to be funny. (//%22http://www.squaresail.com/auh.html%22)
Quote from: Yalta;335933The trouble is, humour often does not "travel" as well as good tragedy, horror, or suspense across settings, RPing, player backgrounds and stories.
Getting humour right in EFU is very very hard. Getting suspense, intrigue, fear, excitement right is far more achievable when the participants are from different backgrounds, countries and cultures.
I disagree on several levels. First, you exaggerate the difficulty of getting humour right. Next, you make the claim that suspense, intrigue, fear and excitement somehow travel more readily across cultural barriers than humour does. But before I go too far into disagreeing with this claim I would like to know precisely what you base it on; would you mind elucidating?
QuoteAnd when you get comedy wrong, it is terribly immersion breaking in my experience.
Humour and comedy are not the same thing. It is quite possible to employ humour outside the environment of a comedy.
I don't think we need to get into a psychological debate about how to turn all of EFU into masters of comedy.
Let's just agree that too much comedy during intense, dramatic scenes can, when executed poorly (either through OOC memeish jokes or through poorly contrived comedic, snarky comments that do not respect the levity of the situation) cheapen the RP of everyone involved.
Imagine if when the emperor was thrown into the power tubes during Star Wars, Luke had piped in with some irrelevant, snarky, EFU-IRC-style comment of "THIS IS SPARRRRTAAAA111111! LOLZ"
When I see players doing this (and I THINK I try hard not to do it myself too often).....I find it difficult to want to continue being around their characters at all; current or future.
winter is coming
Thomas himself is a good example of a running gag
I'm playing a dead serious PC right now and i'm offended by this whole thread.
Edit: For clarification, i'm being serious. People need to get over themselves if they seriously get upset because people are daring to goof off while playing a videogame, ostensibly during their time off.
There is a place for serious drama as there is a place for comedy. And I can't help but feel like the community is getting a little too snooty for itself if this mentality is being seriously endorsed by so many people.
If you have a problem with how a character acts - bust their chops. treat it IC. "We can't depend on X or take him questing, he's terrible at his job/he offended my religious sensibilities/he annoys the hell out of me."
As there appears to be some confusion, allow me to clarify.
Humor is fine. Comedy is fine. Silliness is fine. I'm a big of ridiculousness and silliness and try to build plenty of it into EFU.
But there's a difference between this stuff when it's done tastefully and on the other hand when players (rarely) break the fourth wall of EFU and try for the kind of humor and comedy during more serious situations that just breaks people's immersion and leaves DMs feeling like our efforts to spin a dark tale isn't being treated seriously.
I don't think this is elitist, but simply being respectful of other players and DMs.
Perhaps I missed the OP, with all the other posts! Sorry DMs.
For the people who are obviously not catching on- DM's, every time you witness someone ruining immersion with meta references and otherwise inane commentary during serious situations, simply deduct 1000 XP from that person and tell them why. Eventually they will either figure it out and stop being a moron, or leave. Huzzah!
Example of good, setting appropriate comedy:
The Prince of Thopsee Shee.
That bastard >_>
Examples of bad "humor" -
- During big events, meta-jokes about lag
- During big events, snide references about when a DM screws up and leaves a NPC on immortal or something
- During big events, completely failing to take a very major scary NPC seriously and generally disrespect DM efforts to give some NPCs grandeur
- During big events, jabbering away with unnecessary, snide commentary when DMs are trying to convey some dialogue that moves a plot along
- During big events, meta-jokes about crashes
- Insertion of RL memes, tiresome references to the real world, breaking the fourth-wall in general, etc.
... surely we all can agree that these kinds of things are best avoided?
As other Dms have said, as we notice and have time to address we'll happily enforce these things.
*big events being events in which dozens of PCs are crammed together in one area
Personally I've found that the snide meta-commentary usually only starts to appear when people are absolutely lost and have no idea what is going on anymore. Which isn't really that common, but if you don't understand the situation, it's usually hard to RP a response.
Yikes. I know I've been guilty of this in the past, will personally try to dial it back as I see it now that it's on the mind, good thread.
I have certainly been guilty of inappropriate comments myself at times, whether due to frustration, tiredness or just general silliness. I am trying to keep it in check during large events and hope I do better nowadays. I am fully in support of dialing back inappropriate humour -- it is just that I feel it is going overboard to try to declare some sort of moratorium on all humour in EfU.
How about just telling someone through a PM/tell message in NWN that you just don't appreciate that? It's as simple as that sometimes, before to let it escalate to this height. If he continues, alright, but I don't think the player thought ''oh I'm so going to ruin the rp experience! OMGLMFAOBBQ!'' (That xp penalty thing just sounds like the result for waiting too long and not ''trying'' to tell it)
Anyway, the example of ''bad humour'' here has been summarized in several posts : don't make a joke about something your charcter cannot feel/know/ignore : lag, game of thrones, being emotionless in front of that giant red dragon...otherwise it is more about some commentaries about how humour should be done that isn't appreciated. (Which brings me back to my first paragraph.)
The heir of Clan Aberdenn, the king of dwarves reclaiming the crown...what a CLASH OF KINGS!
The long lost art of reading comprehension.
Some points are pushed to the extreme in what has just been said, I do not think anybody plays here just for the game itself, or anybody (or most people) had in mind to do any damage to what is built here. But yes, there's the notion of respecting others' preferences.
(By the way, let's say it once and for all, what was considered elitist was to avoid humour when you're not necessarily *insert an humorist you like*.)
I feel like some folks are kind of missing the idea we're trying to portray here.
Funny characters are great. Comedic characters are great.
Excessive OOC winks, use of real-world memes, or generally out-of-character actions (like, for example, being unfazed and giggly when a dracolich is chasing you) kill the immersion for folks.
That's really all we're saying. So long as the humor is IC for the character, and not an OOC mockery, by all means, have at it!