Joke Characters
As you no doubt recall, our firbolg buccaneer Artificer has exacting standards when it comes to adventuring aesthetics. On board her own ship, that means a commitment to high tech, skulls, and a brass color palate. When it comes to meeting strange new NPCs and running them through, the standards broaden to mean, “No joke characters.”
This is a bit of a personal one for me. You see, my very first Pathfinder 2e character was going to be a leshy. And because I wanted to try all the weird flavors and options I’d never seen before, I wanted to make him an investigator. As I began to describe the li’l guy’s trench coat and adorable fedora, my GM seemed to think it was all in good fun. I did my best Humphrey Bogart impersonation, and the jokes came fast and free.
It’s a rough row to hoe out on the mean streets. This city is overgrown with crime, and it smells worse than yesterday’s fertilizer. If you think any of of these punks will turn over a new leaf, you’ll soon find out their bark is worse than their bite. And no matter how sweet the flower smells, some roses are nothing but thorn.
I could go on, but you’ve already heard my take on puns. We all took a pause from our various Session Zero concerns to participate in the plant-based wordplay. But then I started looking up rules. I started calculating bonuses. Picking starting feats. And the color began to drain from my GM’s face.
“You’re not seriously playing that character, are you?”
“Yeah I am! His name is G. Arden Spade!”
“No, seriously. You’re not playing that character.”
I was a touch disappointed when I realized they were serious. My GM wanted a more dramatic tone for their game. And even if we all know and love the tale of Slappy, those shenanigans can be disruptive in the wrong context. That’s why is respected the request without too much hassle. I switched over to a halfling investigator, and the game went on its merry way.
But as I reflect on my experiences with a joke character, I wonder how the rest of you guys feel? Do you allow joke characters in your games? Do they ruin the mood, or are they all part of the fun? Love ’em or hate ’em, give us your own experiences with gag PCs down in the comments!
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I have played paranoia, so (lethal) joke characters are not alien to me.
I would allow a joke character in my game, on condition that it be played as an actual character. Wisecracking at dangerous situations is fine, but don’t drag your teammates down, and don’t mock genuine drama. You may spit in the devil’s eye and insult his sense of fashion, but don’t juggle a grieving mother’s dead babies and steal her wedding ring to pay for a sleazy night at the brothel. Make fun of yourself all you want, but don’t step on the other players’ character concepts. Contribute to the party.
In the end, it’s all about proportion, temperance, and knowing when to get serious.
I think Slappy would be proud. 🙂
I consider that a compliment. ^_^
It’s funny, my first thought was Paranoia, too. While Macross-R-SDF-1 was something of an in-joke between us as players (also being anime fans) I did play him pretty straight, and was proud that I’d gotten them to Macross-I-SDF-6 before the clone family died.
My first paranoia character was Blackmage-R-Mad. He was so gigglingly eager to kill and demolish everything in his path that he even creeped out Friend Computer.
I feel that this covers a lot of the important angles of the topic.
My best advice is to make the concept a joke, but flesh out and play the character as a character. Even if their base existence is a punchline, they should feel like a living, breathing part of whatever world they’ve been dropped into with their own wants and opinions, and would probably have appropriate reactions to dramatic or somber events. The biggest issue a joke character can have is having nothing but the joke- you tell it once and then the novelty is gone, so make sure there’s something underneath.
I’ve made two joke-ish characters, the first in part due to the build itself being insane and just rolling with it. I’ve taken to calling the build the ‘flying baconator’; it’s a build that’s fully functional even at level 1, and every part of it is Pathfinder Society Play legal. Gnome Sorcerer, Tattooed Sorcerer archetype, Pig Familiar with the Elemental (Air) archetype and Hefty Brute feat (it’s a feat from a list that explicitly can be given to familiars in place of their normal feat), and the Undersized Mount feat. You can ride same-size (small) creatures, your pig is a same-size (small) creature, your pig can fly and has more carrying capacity to do it with. All day flight at level 1, and you spend the rest of the build to make Burning Hands horrifyingly strong for your level (orc or draconic (red/gold) bloodline, free varisian tattoo feat, pyromaniac racial trait, magic trait, 4d4+4 damage in a cone) and ensure your 5 hit point familiar isn’t easy target practice (mage armor, have it take total defense action as a standard action).
A complete joke concept if I’ve ever seen one, but the character themselves had a full personality- a sorcerer who was looked down on by wizards for the typical reasons, and who struggled with her attempts at academics despite her best, legitimately serious efforts, who took inspiration from one wizard claiming they’d respect her ‘when pigs flew’ to try and do exactly that in the hope the act of accomplishing something people used as a euphemism for the impossible would force them to give her begrudging respect. When instead she was laughed out of the room, she took to adventuring to earn adoration for her deeds. She’s a failed academic formerly among wizards, a gnome in a world where the stereotypes of her kind are eccentric weirdos, and is desperately seeking validation and respect with false bravado that translates to an unfortunately unpleasant and smug demeanor. She made a point of riding her trusty mount whenever she needed to show off, using cantrips to lift things up to her or otherwise manipulate things without getting down. I only used her for a one-shot game, but she was a fun one.
The other is a 5e character I’ve yet to have the chance to play, but was my attempt at making a character as close to a cartoon character as possible- feather fall with an umbrella in hand to make a Mary Poppins-style entrance, Disguise Self as an Aasimar version of herself for a halo while putting on an innocent act, she is effectively a boisterous and irreverent bard who blusters her way through trouble and shows off when she’s in control of a situation (abusing her Lucky feat by doing something to give herself disadvantage and then use the feat to get best of three rolls), but is perfectly somber, knowing to put the comedy act away when it comes to serious matters.
Aside from that, the intended tone of a game is key, as others and Claire have already mentioned. The latter would likely have the cartoon elements reduced to general showboating in a more serious game, a daredevil personality on a socialite that has grown bored of everything, and the former is a perfect example of a concept that should be shelved for a more somber game, opting for a goat and a far less boisterous persona for something that’s meant to be more straight-laced fantasy where it’s borderline. A joke doesn’t have to be in-your-face, and sometimes it’s the subtle ones that land the best.
why di I feel the sudden urge to play an Assassin named Joseph Kay?
And his goblin sidekick, Snot Attall.
I have had a character go from more joke-y to less joke-y across iterations. Sure, she was always meant to have a serious character arc, but the second time around I played her a bit more grounded.
That being said, pruning your use of plant puns might have also worked. We have a Leshy Cleric of Pharasma in our party, and they’re dead serious most of the time.
…dammit, now I’m making Leshy puns. I wood definitely love to see a Leshy character show up in one of the Handbook parties somewhere, and not just because puns are a root desire of mine.
———
Now that’s temporarily out of my system, I would probably tell Artificer that even serious tables can have very unserious moments. We went from letting the history of Qadira be rewritten by a retroactive Wish to planar costume party shenanigans, with the arc BBEG being the party host’s talking pet cat with a grudge about being left outside when she didn’t want to be and a few varieties of pesky fey to call on for malicious tricks and sabotage. Our Investigator defused her final plan solo, with a mix of convincing arguments and chin scritches.
And the costume party still lead to a bunch of both fun and serious interactions for our characters. You don’t have to be 100% serious all the time to have a great game.
It certainly helps avoid things getting spore-ing.
I don’t recall ever seeing a real joke character in any game I’ve played in. I mean, sure, there’s the occasional character who’s clearly a dig at some other fictional character, but nothing like you’re talking about.
It’s just not the style of myself or my friends… there’s no shortage of humour, but it’s the kind that flows naturally from a bunch of friends having fun at the table, rather than the forced humour of a wannabe standup comedian.
Same here. To me a ‘joke character” is kinda one note, and aside from deliberate cartoonish games (‘Toon and Paranoia in particular), I’ve never seen them from my groups. I really don’t play with people who do ‘one note characters”.†
Now, that said, I’ve LARPed, so I’ve seen joke characters there, they don’t last long. And I was once requested to play a one note “joke character” (a short lived NPC), but I cranked the one note dial to 11 and came out the other side as nuanced.
The year was early 2000s, renaissance/fantasy LARP, and I was asked to play a Paladin of the Queen’s Court from a race of squirrel-folk who were all named Bob. The race believed they were tasked by their creator deities to make the world “less serious” and “more spontaneous”. So I dusted off Captain Righteous Fury, a character I originally played in the mid-90s in an Ultima rpg and a Bunnies and Burrows rpg, who was super-duper serious about only two things: JUSTICE‡ and Food.
By D&D terms he was probably Lawful Neutral bordering on Chaotic, but was a ‘cavalier’ in D&D terms, above I was using the original Paladin definition. So he fopped about in town with the PCs and ignored most of the criminal activity that he witnessed, unless it could be considered an injustice to someone, in which case he issued swift summary JUSTICE and then would immediately go have lunch*. “Can’t let injustice catch you on an empty stomach squire” and “You never know where injustice will be lurking, best to have a few extra sandwiches packed” were his favorite sayings.
.† Now, I’ve played with people whose characters are //jokes//, but that was simply due to poor roleplaying skills or lack of social intelligence, they weren’t deliberately setting out to make jokey characters, and they weren’t funny, just sad.
.‡ Taken to “The Tick” levels of absurdity and bombasticy.
.* By the second time I played him, most ‘criminals’ knew two things: 1 do not commit villainy within sight of the lunch tables, two wait until they heard the shouts of “JUSTICE IS SERVED! Now let’s get something to eat…” before doing anything really dastardly because me and my squire were pretty sneaky, the afore mentioned shouting about justice aside.
Well, yes… actual comedy games would be an exception. Though even when we played Paranoia, we played it somewhat straight… the situations may be absurd, with players openly plotting to get each other’s characters killed with all the subtlety of Wile.E.Coyote, but the characters themselves are taking things seriously.
Joke characters are great if everyone agrees that having a joke character is part of their fun too (including the DM). Since it is a collaborative experience, everyone needs to at least be willing to “accept” the joke, if not actually be in on the joke, and if there is dissention in the ranks, then some form of compromise is always the better way in my opinion.
However, I also think joke characters can be more than the player bargained for, especially in a long form campaign. That joke they thought was just hilarious at first can become fast annoying, or turn out to not be as funny, or just end up one note. What they thought of as a simple joke has now become their long term character and plans can change, either for themselves or the rest of the group if the joke gets old and someone, anyone, (everyone) stops enjoying the character.
And then there’s the other other hand. The one where everyone is fine with the joke, but then the game turns serious and/or the character becomes embroiled in drama and the joke character becomes a far more integral and serious part of plot, machinations, and overall character growth occurs… possibly killing the joke in the process, or forcing a change in the nature of the joke and possibly the entire nature of the character being played (or the player playing the character). This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it can make telling the story later a bit odd.
I think the point is to “try” with a joke character to think past the joke in the moment. Think about the future. Think about the group. Think about yourself, and if you think the joke is going to be funny in a year when the campaign is 50 sessions in and there are still 50 more to go (or more). Forethought and planning are not just for character builds.
And if it’s a one shot (or a short micro campaign)… then everyone chill out and accept someone wants to play a joke!
Joke characters are something my regular in person table definitely allows. We are regretfully a bit more Rollplay than Roleplay so if its a playable thing its usually allowed. We did run into issues with it when i ran the first chapter of Strixhaven as a one shot as a gift to a friend. (I have backed away from DMing as it drives my anxiety through the roof and i only did it out of guilt/responisibility anyways). However since it was a gift for a friend everyone went with his idea, an all bard campaign. Both his and another friends character were…adequately serious, although Darian Fletcher has become a recurring joke all its own as he is the archetypal ego incarnate bard. One character was a bear who was the only one allowed to make bear puns and got angry whenever someone else did it as it was racist. The big issue was a joke group of four bards kind of sucks at combat. I had to lie about so many HP stats just so we weren’t there all night with 1d4 vicious mockeries being the only damage.
We can’t forget his other bandmate imp y celyn.
I’m admittedly somebody that likes having silly characters in my games. See the story of Viridian, the character that adopted a house full of cats.
Jokey characters are always welcome at our tables, again, just so long as you’re not looking to wreck the session with inter-character drama. We had Cornelius Kaplan (“Knee-Cap”), the minimum-sized gnome tank in mithril plate who was frequently mistaken for a tea-kettle. One player had the Puss-n-Boots inspired Fur-nando del Gato who could make Climb checks going up a tree but not when going back down.
Mixed feelings. While I all for some levity in games, I’ve seen a few too many that are one-note jokes. It gets really annoying when there is a character that is based on just a single joke/gag – because it tends to get old quickly and then the player loses interest in playing the character.
Exacting standards when it comes to adventuring aesthetics? She might get along with Goff Skullcracker then.
https://marblegate.webcomic.ws/comics/34/
Her attire covers more than 25% of her skin, but she does have skulls on her belt and boots, and long sexy hair. So the question is whether her arm muscles are at least one quarter the size of her head and her breasts are at least two thirds the size of her biceps. See, there’s a bit of maths you have to do here…
Thanks for posting that link! New comic to deep dive into!
I am married to a kender. Well he looks like an older 5’11” human, but give him even half a chance and he’ll take your game to places you didn’t even know existed. None of the other DMs we played with would let him play a kender. We had one who was new to the group that we warned to not let him play one, but he was, “I can handle anything”. Three sessions in and hubby has been restricted to a straight human fighter, period.
I’m the only one that can handle him, because, you know, controlling DM and all that :). I know how to rein him in when his shenanigans start to get out of hand. Plus we’ve been together for 42 years, I know how he thinks.
My characters tend to be lawful good (depending on how the DM is doing alignments), but I can do a chaotic neutral character in a heartbeat. Which is fun since it usually throws anyone who’s played in my homebrew or seen me play a LG character. Those characters usually have a motto of, “I’ll do anything once and if it’s fun, then do it again!”
The closest thing I’ve had to a joke character in a serious campaign was the Doomguy-inspired demon-hating Magus in my Ancient Aliens campaign. He wouldn’t necessarily be a joke character in ordinary circumstances, but there aren’t demons in the Ancient Aliens campaign, because there are, well, aliens. However, the player has leaned into this and made a running joke that his character is delusional and will quickly identify anything the party needs to fight as “demonic” or “demon-worshippers” regardless of how little sense that makes. This has kept the character tolerable for over 100 sessions.
…Now that I think about it, the Vigilante Captain Moonman, Defender of Moon (real name Lunar Larry, Moon Congressman) who fights by jumping insane distances and then kicking people probably also counts a joke character. But that was a Level 16 short adventure about fighting demons on the moon, so he generally fit the inherently absurd tone. (The player also had to drop out partway through due to scheduling issues, causing the character to run off to go fight Moon Tax Evasion, but the character returned under DM control in the final battle to inexplicably smash through the ceiling and killsteal the final boss.)
By characters like that is that Disintegration is a spell 🙂
Players and characters making jokes is okay, the character being the joke is tiresome 🙂
As funny as joke characters can be, I’d tend to have to agree with your GM there. It’s very disruptive and really disheartening as a GM to want to run a serious (or even semi-serious) game and then have someone come in not taking it seriously.
I don’t think comedic games are all that uncommon so if that’s what you want as a player it’s pretty easy to communicate that. If it’s not what your GM wants to run, one should be polite enough to appreciate the GMly efforts to just wait until the next opportunity.
Personally have some recent experience with this. I offered to run a game that has a bit of cartoonish elements to it for the sake of not being as deadly and being more fantastical. And my players took this as license to just make absolutely absurd characters. I tried to communicate to them that that wasn’t what I’d intended, but they were all pretty attached to the idea of what they’d perceived the idea of the game to be. So I just decided to roll with it. But it’s still a bit disheartening since I’m not really running the game I wanted to anymore.
For me it’s a bit of an odd question, since the biggest difference between Tragedy and Comedy is the outcome and the background music, and the dice do a large part of picking the outcome.
One of my characters had what was posited as ‘crippling social anxiety’ as a major character flaw, and played out as her panic-attacking out of most social interactions and flailing (with explosively lobbed bombs) in combat anytime someone got close to her. It WAS a joke character based off of a specific pop culture character, but with the tiniest of tweaks, she could’ve been incredibly tragic. She was compelling either way.
One of my BEST characters was one played with my roommate, of two vaguely-40k Half-Ork brothers who just made cockney non-sequiters back and forth at each other for shiggles nearly non stop. They ended up as joke characters, despite the fact that their shared backstory was their entire village gone missing during a hunt, and their best idea being to become mighty and famous so the villagers could find THEM.
So would I deny a joke character in a serious game? No, but I might request we tweak the background music a little.
your first character reminded me of one of my players. he had a wild magic sorcerer literally named panic, with a home-brewed wild magic table that went off whenever he started to panic, similarly tragic backstory and all.
For me it depends on the tone of the game. I’ve played joke characters before (like The Bat, a wrestler raised by bats, for a Fantasy Wrestling League game) and I’ve run light hearted one shots where I encouraged the players to make joke characters. But when I’m running something more serious in tone, like my current City of Mist game, I prefer the players to make character that are a little more grounded. The game focuses a lot on incorporating the PCs’ backgrounds and personal ties into the game and a joke character just wouldn’t mesh with the modern noir setting we’re working with.
In more serious roleplaying games, the best joke characters aren’t obvious. They should be subtle enough that by the time others realize the joke, the character is ingrained in the game.
Like the time my buddy intro’d his white-haired chef to a game. He bought a LOT of chickens and flour for his cooking, and carried around a specific blend spices and herbs for his dinners. The character had been an officer in a militia.
By the time I figured out he was playing Colonel Sanders, he was already entrenched enough it was easier to accept the joke than to refuse it.
One of the PCs in the Lancer game I run is named Trev Starfucker, and you might be surprised at how quickly it starts to sound like a normal name! I wanted to run a fairly serious game, but I also actually encouraged my player to use the name (if they wanted to) after they said they should probably pick something else.
And here’s the reason: I’m a big believer that players need outlets for their silliness if you want to run a serious game. It’s fine and smart to have a talk about desired tone beforehand, but if you try to force it to be serious all the time, it’s going to vent in places you don’t want it to.
So while I might have vetoed a name that would be too silly (and I did veto a proposed team name of “Unnamed Flight” because of confusion issues), Trev Starfucker manages to threat the needle of leaving room for jokes without ONLY being a joke—and the player had come up with an interesting and serious backstory that *also* sounded silly at first (oh yeah he’s evil kneivel in space… but also it turns out he’s on the run because he discovered that he’s one in a line of illegal flash-clones that they replace and every time he dies in a stunt, with his brain overwritten with the memories and personality they want him to have, based on the original trev).
So yeah, he owns 4 shirts and all of them are his own merch, because that’s what he grabbed on his way out the door. Etc.
I feel like as long as you can meet the game where it’s at, joke characters can be fine as long as they’re not *only* joke characters. Like Slappy, they have to be allowed to grow, and you have to know and trust the player enough that you know they won’t undermine the game for everyone else.
Also, one-shots are the best place to put joke characters because you aren’t going to be doing the same joke for a three year campaign
These little leshy characters need to be paired up with a tiny treant samurai. A banzai tree! Banzai!
I Personally feel it’s all down to context and how it is played out, for a hackmasters game I played a mario expy for several sessions before anyone found out, mostly due to the still rather earnest nature of the character.
Oneshots are where I feel weird or down right joke characters have the perfect chance to shine, long enough for the jokes to still have their punch while not becoming rote. it’s in long form campaigns that joke characters can have a hard time fitting in, weather from the whole thing playing out till it loses its edge or the tonal whiplash of a serious moment with a goofy character.
So we have a Steve in our group, and everyone should have a Steve in their groups, cause he’s playing the most ridiculous characters, but he always know where to draw the line and not disrupt the flow while still giving us enough funny moments.
His first character in our group(s) was Henpecked Hou, the air genasi monk who was fighting with his jar. The jar itself was the source of a lot of jarring puns, but we never forget the regular Who’s on first moments.
…his latest character is called Yu…
But seriously, he gets away with it cause whenever he finds a broken combo, he’s prone to abuse it for the entertainment factor instead of minmaxing.
I was wondering if you’d seen this:
https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/dungeons-doodles-tales-from-the-tables/the-guide/viewer?title_no=682646&episode_no=27
featuring your FAVORITE D&D species: Kender
No joke- I have a fairy bard 1/rogue 6 named Spruce Spring-Green.
The cut of your jib. I like it. XD
It depends on the group and the campaign. If everybody else signed on for a serious high fantasy adventure then maybe hold off on the joke characters. If everyone else is on board, however, feel free to break out all the joke builds.
One of the most memorable campaigns we ever played in had a party consisting of Liono, Derpy hooves, a pokemon trainer, and general Custer.
I rolled up a PF2e character to distract myself some time ago, a mute but empathic automaton gunslinger built to fight creatures of the abyss, capable of producing its own ammunition, and described as “A lightwriter with legs”.
I named it V0.
I do wanna play it somewhere, but I feel like nobody would let me. 🙁