So This Is All About Zany Madcap Humor, Then?

Unlike any number of other humor games, the flavor of Gygaxia’s humor is decidedly nonspecific. It’s an open-ended game, and the humor reflects that, so everything from bad puns and slapstick to parody and satire are welcome, and the humor can be gallows or light, ribald or proper, campy or dramatic, dry or aqueous, regular or mint-flavored. The game can be satirical or just silly, full of scathing societal criticism or just lighthearted homage. Or it can be pretty much whatever else amuses you. That said, there are a couple of things to remember about the way the comedy tends to go down in Gygaxia.

First, within its own admittedly ludicrous context, even the craziest events that happen here have structures and causes. Further, those causes themselves have, in turn, their own twisted causes, as do their causes, and so on down back to the beginning of the universe. In other words, pure nonsense and randomness are rarely factors here. For that matter, a good many people in the world are relatively normal in many ways, although just about everyone has a few eccentricities and individual characteristics. Totally wacky beings exist, and your players might be examples of them, but not everyone is incredibly weird. You’ll certainly run into people who are put off by odd behavior. And although seemingly random, apparently nonsensical events can happen in certain areas or at certain times, there’s always a reason — maybe the structure of gameality is breaking down, or commies have been messing with the game mechanics, or something. This is because consistency is a more satisfying comedic and dramatic device than incoherence, and a healthy dose of normality sets a standard against which the bizarre can be contrasted.

Another important idea is that humor often comes out of creative combinations of numerous unexceptional things. Thus, in this wiki, while there are a lot of suggestions for creating amusing stories and various bits of bizarre equipment, strange characters, and so on, not everything in it is funny. It also contains a variety of ordinary objects, rules governing typical activities, and so forth. Raiding a dragon horde isn’t an especially funny concept, and even the idea of doing it in the middle of the day while roaring drunk isn’t necessarily hilarious. But if you tackle such a mission with the right mindset, or if you have a character with a few strange ideas, you’ll undoubtedly find plenty of reasons to fall on the floor laughing as you go along. The fact is, even the simplest things can be hilarious when they interact properly. Castles aren’t funny. Casting an illusion spell isn’t funny. Sneaking around in the dark isn’t funny. But if you didn’t have a way to do these things, you wouldn’t be able to sneak into the royal castle, pose as the emperor long enough to enact legislation establishing an expensive fine for the public consumption of cheese, and sneak out again before breakfast. The manual will give you plenty of ideas for how to derive humor from the ordinary and supply you with oodles of inherently humorous things to get you through the dry spots.

Finally, comedy is not the end-all of every story. The premise of the author is that good stories (from pop fiction to so-called high art) from any genre are usually quirky and have a substantially large amount of humor. However, if comedy is the only focus of the game, you’re likely to get bored. Drama is crucial. Beyond that, action, heroism, tragedy, romance, horror, and whatever else tickles your fancy can all snuggle up right next to each other on your character sheet to whatever extent you want them. To that end, it’s probably a good idea to supplement the tools here with details from other games, such as spells, equipment, and monsters. Also, since Gygaxia is intentionally multi-genre, almost any other setting has elements which will fit right in (even when, and sometimes especially when, they may have nothing whatsoever to do with fantasy roleplaying). Add elements from games about the old west, the orient, science fiction, or vampires. Or put organizations, spells, and so forth from Gygaxia into other games. It’s also worth noting that you don’t actually have to call your campaign setting “Gygaxia.” The designers of this game, in fact, prefer to refer to their own gaming universe as “Paranesia.”

Note: For no reason which is likely to become apparent anytime soon, the gamemaster in Gygaxia is sometimes referred to as The Cobbler.

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