So Why Add Humor to a Fantasy Game?

In a typical fantasy roleplaying setting, you’re likely to find an interesting mix of ideas lifted from fiction, myths, folklore, archetypes, fairy tales, and actual history. Traditionally, it’s a place where adventurers gain most of their life experience by killing things, and vast sums of money lie around in caves and labyrinths guarded by what one would presume to be very bored monsters. In a fantasy world, a cleric is just about as likely to attempt to murder you for your gold as a thief or a fighter, and whole classes of people earn their livings by bumbling from one mishap to another and stealing enough treasure to totally destabilize the local economy. Without a twinge of guilt, witches fatten up the neighbor children and have them for lunch. Towns are routinely terrorized by fierce dragons and wizards with nebulous motivations. Fighters walk away from battle apparently unfazed by even the most severe wounds. Wizards are annoyingly mysterious runts who look contemptuously upon their muscular companions. Death is a minor setback for the wealthy. Evil is accepted by most as a valid philosophical position. Elves prance about the countryside, dwarves putter with pyrotechnics, and trolls while away the hours digging spiked clubs out of their thick, gnarled hides. And yet, despite all this, fantasy roleplaying games generally aren’t intended to be funny.

Gygaxia is humor fantasy roleplaying mainly because — whether you’ve noticed this before or not — fantasy worlds make hilarious campaign settings. Fantasy is full of conventions that virtually beg to be parodied, and humor fantasy roleplaying provides the perfect opportunity to twist around the many clichés with anachronisms, parodies, and exaggerations. Furthermore, Gygaxia's tendency to blur the boundaries between genres often has a somewhat silly effect on games. Frankly, it’s kind of hard to keep a straight face when you’re playing a superhero trying to stop a meteor from colliding with a coven of witches.

Despite this sort of zaniness, the universe of Gygaxia remains in many important respects a traditional fantasy world. Many of the clichés normally associated with storytelling in general and roleplaying in particular remain; the main difference is that the various preposterous situations and clichés that are a normal part of most fantasy are embraced rather than ignored or downplayed. In Gygaxia, hanging out in a pub may really be the easiest path to adventure. Mortal wounds really aren’t necessarily fatal. And the most lucrative opportunities for earning extra income really do involve dungeons.

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