Everything you think about Game Mastering is probably wrong: Part X - Humour
While I am sure lots of people actually do understand how to use humour, I've seen a lot of bad GMing advice (and laments, which are a type of advice) on the topic recently.
Humour is essential to the game of sitting around pretending to be elves being both enjoyable and more importantly (to me) memorable. Good laughs cement a moment in your group's memory for years to come. The other thing that makes moments stick into your memory are great victories and great tragedies and they require the feeling that something is worth gaining or losing. As this is all pretend that is hard enough and it is impossible if everything is a great big joke. To this end there is seen to be a tension between humour and seriousness. The presence of "Stupid joke characters" and "Emo crying elves" are alternately seen as poison for the wrong campaign and various whines on the Internet are available to read if you want more details.
The truth is that this is a false dichotomy, and beyond that a harmful one towards the end of a memorable game. They are two different metrics not a single sliding bar where more of one means less of the other. The reason they are seen this way is a confusion with another metric of "diegetic vs non-diegetic" content. In less pretentious terms this is about the so called "Fourth Wall".
Humour is best done when the players laugh, not the characters. Its really irrelevant if the characters find something funny in terms of being memorable. The "seriousness" factor is the opposite, it is important that something be a serious matter to the characters rather than the players. It's virtually impossible for anything at the game table to be serious for the players unless you bring in money or use Russian roulette as a resolution mechanic. That works though because players have a buy-in to get into the heads of their characters and imagine things matter. This means the key is to have things that are funny to the players but dead serious to the characters.
I use this to great effect (or I think to great effect) in everything I write. But not everyone reading this is going to be super-familiar with my body of work so I'll use something far more popular in my example. Interplay-era Fallout and as an even more well known example, I'll focus on Fallout: New Vegas (which both isn't Interplay era but also definitely is). Fallout: New Vegas (FNV from here on out) is a masterful example of how to use this technique. So let's start at the top for some big examples. (author’s note: This was all written well before the fallout TV show and does not include any details originating from it)
1.) The Factions
The NCR isn't really that funny, it's pretty grounded. It's got some humourous people in it but functionally its the straight man (or feed) in a comic sense. This is important to have to help add seriousness.
Mr. House has a pretty reasonable (for a post-apoc sci-fi setting) background. He's a clear wink and a nod to some historical figures, but the biggest dumb joke is his name is "Mr. House" as in "The House always wins". Seeing as he is the epitome of Old Las Vegas this is a bit of a dumb joke and a clear wink to the audience. But within the game world there isn't a joke here, he is a serious individual with serious plans and his name isn't funny to any of the player or non-player characters in the game world. He is ramping up.
The Legion is a giant stupid joke to the players. "Oh! Ha ha! the game set in Las Vegas has people dressed as Romans because Caesar's Palace is a famous Casino and they have people dressed as Roman soldiers walking around!". You probably first met them as they are crucifying non-joke characters. No one in the game world thinks this is funny, in fact (and quite well done) there is no Caesar's Palace Casino in New Vegas. The background of the legion (and spoilers on a 10 year old game) is entirely based on history books and the Hegelian dialectic. The legion is a serious force with serious goals and a real ideology that many characters (mostly non-player characters) find appealing.
So compare how the Legion functions as a dumb reference to Caesar's Palace outfits to how Diamond City security in Fallout 4 fails to maintain a serious edge. They are wearing baseball gear as armour, but it's been over 200 years since their place was a baseball diamond. Why are they making new baseball gear? Right after the bomb, using whatever is at hand for makeshift armour makes sense. 200 years later why aren't people wearing custom built armour? No in-game reason it's done, it's just for a bit of humour that this is "post-apocalyptic. It would be like people now building new Brown Bess muskets to arm police with. Now it isn't blatant, they do try to dial it down a lot more in Fallout 4 compared to 3, but it still misses the blend that New Vegas got right.
2.) Characters I already mentioned "Mr. House" as a kind of a wink and a nod character in the faction sections. But let's dive into some other folks.
Mr. New Vegas is Wayne Newton (he even did the voice) as Mr. Las Vegas. It's a small touch, but it's nice. It sets the setting as Las Vegas more to players (despite being silly that 200 years later Wayne Newton is still in Las Vegas) , but it's not really humourous to the characters. It just is.
The Kings are a bunch of Elvis impersonators. Wouldn't be Vegas without them right? It strays from being slapstick because "The King" gives a solid reason why he organizes and dresses the Kings the way he does. A dumb joke to the players but just weird (and then understandable) to the characters. This one skates the line of being too dumb but masterfully skates back.
Fully Integrated Security Technetronic Officer Seriously, just a golden blend of stupid yet not a joke.
Humour in this manner has a lot of other important benefits as well. It's almost essential to a solid horror game, it makes it much quicker to do game prep, and it helps players track different factions and individuals from past games. I'll cover some of those other concerns in future posts.