Humor in Games

Question from BGG: “What are the funniest games that you have played and how do the mechanics (which can easily be the antithesis of humour) enable this?” Games can so often have a funny theme, illustrations or flavour text, but what games give rise to genuinely funny emergent play?

A: Genuinely funny play comes not from repeating jokes, which will get old, but from engineering surprise into the game mechanics, and empowering the players to create their own humor.

This question was based on a thread on boardgamegeek.

I have the most laughs when a game is simple and surprising. Bluffing games, like poker, can delight me more than a game with jokes on the cards, in part because I choose to play with the right group of friends. But it’s also because the game is simple enough that we can communicate, rather than being heads-down figuring out what to do next.

It's interesting that someone mentioned Snake Oil on this thread as a game that gets old with the same group. I think that's because the cards are so bland as to give rise to very few meaningfully different combinations. The writing is critical in any game like this: the cards need to be selected carefully to give rise to the most surprising combinations.

Conversely, Cards Against Humanity can get old by living at the opposite end of the scale: many of those cards are basically jokes in themselves, so the combinations and interactions with other cards become nearly irrelevant.

I think we got the card mix pretty right in The Big Idea and I certainly still enjoy playing it.

"Situations" are obviously harder to engineer than cards. Games don't tell linear stories very well; instead, they give players the tools to create stories of their own. So a funny environment can help create humor that is always new. That's the approach I usually take in trying to add humor to a game, for example Kill Doctor Lucky. The basic premise is funny, and it is based on tropes that the players already know, so they can feel comfortable improvising.

Funny cards can bring you in, so I’m not saying you shouldn’t put jokes on your cards, but you can’t rely on them long-term. These jokes provide the framework for funny situations, creating the opportunity for joking and roleplaying. So a good card will serve as a starting point for more player-created humor, not a complete joke in itself.

This approach puts a lot of control in the players' hands, so your results will vary with the group. Some groups can be funny with anything, and some can't. As a designer you need to encourage roleplaying by making players feel comfortable about improvising, but without forcing it.

One of the most challenging humor games I’ve ever played is Why Did the Chicken, a game where the cards create random and often incomprehensible setups, and players must write their own punch lines. This game is frightening at first, until the players realize that the punch lines don’t necessarily have to follow logically in order to be funny.

You might want to check out my article on RoboRally in the Hobby Games 100 Best. It's a short discussion of how the mechanics of that game contribute to its humor. Basically, without putting any jokes on the cards, Garfield creates a scenario where funny things can happen because of the simultaneous execution of the program cards.

Of course, this is just my opinion. I see many humor games succeed entirely based on “jokes on the cards,” and while they fall flat for me, that doesn’t make them unsuccessful. Obviously I can’t single out Cards Against Humanity as a game that “doesn’t work” when clearly it works (and sells) just fine. In a sense, getting old is part of the marketing strategy of games like this, which must stay fresh by constantly injecting new cards.