unforum

[\\-]

Seriousness?

[Mr_Nekomata]

Hm, less serious in what fashion?

[\\-]

Funnier, mainly. Basically a comedy ARG. It's not childish or stupid, it has a plot and things for people to solve, it just doesn't have that "people-are-gonna-die-unless-you-help" serious tone that other games seem to have.

[notgordian]

They've been popular in the past.
Must Love Robots in particular got rave reviews for incorporating comedy into, well, everything.

[Endless_Serpents]

I think the best way to incorporate humour would be for the main villain to have a minion that found the whole thing hilarious.

Think of the ToTheArk videos, he's often mocking the rest of the cast, denouncing the frightening nature of Slenderman with stuff like a stop-animation and badly done (on purpose) frightened eye rolling.

This way the cast can remain afraid, the villain can still be evil, but there is some comedy in there.

--

If you want straight up comedy though I'd go for:
- a huge cast, have them get murdered in strange ways every episode.
- a recurring cop character that missing all the clues and straight up doesn't see the murders
- have the cast find things that aren't clues ("Aha! A pair of boots!" "Those are just my boots.")
- show the villain as fallible, like the cast can sneak by him or he falls over in the dark some times (he can still be scary to a point)

[MageSteff]

To the guest:

I would suggest that you play/follow at least one game before committing to running a game.

Why? It gives you an idea of what went before and what ideas seem to work better and what ideas seem to flop a bit. It also will give you an idea on what the community is like.

Humor is great, but knowing your audience is imprtant too. Not to mention that any game, no matter the subject or length of run, can be very time consuming for the PM during creation and actual launch run. Be prepared for weeks where you might only get 2 or 3 hours of sleep - sometimes even on the same night...

[Fishjp]

I would recommend subtle humor. For example in my game I had the cops known as Trilateral Investigations in Narcotics And Gangs (TINAG) a joke that was not lost on the players but the characters paid it no mind. Just remember in the best comedies the audience laughs NOT the people on stage.

[Ofiuco]

I seem to remember that several years ago some notorious Unfictioneers made an elaborate ARG that was entirely funny. It prominently featured the phrase 'school suxxxxxxxxxxxx'.

I'd play it.