Day 17 of the #RPGaDAY2023 is “Funniest Game You’ve Played”. I’m certain that we will see several other entries for this date for Toon or Paranoia. But unfortunately I’ve never played these games.
What I have played is a game that came out in 1989 called It Came From The Late, Late, Late Show. This was a roleplaying game is a humor based game where you play an actor (or someone pretending to be an actor) trying to help a low-budget film get made. The director had a script which was the plot of the session. It was all tongue-in-cheek.
A bunch of RPG buddies had the opportunity to play this game sometime in the early 90’s in a late night gaming session. What I recall is that we had our main character and their stunt double. If we were going into a combat situation, the stunt doubles could go in first. This kept the main character safe until the stunt double ran out of health and could no longer be used.
There was an option where the players could create their own skill/ability (I don’t recall what it was called) and one of my friends came up with the brilliant idea of “Parry with Other”. Basically if he rolled successfully, then he grabbed another person and parried with that person (giving them the damage). There was a chance that it could be an opponent, or a chance that it could be an ally. He used this skill a lot in our game so he never had to send his stunt double into battle. But in one battle, he successfully used the Parry with Other to avoid the attack from the last opponent, and succeeded in the roll of grabbing the bad guy. So the henchman attacked and then was thrust into his own sword attack.
But that wasn’t the funniest part for me in the entire game. We were playing in a bad cheesy kung-fu samurai vs ninjas action flick in ancient Japan. I was playing a failed rock-star wanting to start his acting career (so I sang during parts of the game). There was one scene where we had to sneak into this bar in the middle of the night for one reason or another and it was pitch black. One of the players decided to light a candle so they could see. The director then described the comical scene of how the light now illuminated an army of ninjas that had surrounded us in preparation to attack. The director went around the room and asked each player one-by-one what their character was doing. Various answers of drawing weapons or getting into a defensive stance were returned. When it was my turn, my response to the director was turning my head to the side and making a blowing sound as I blew out the candle.
My friend playing the director fell to the ground laughing maniacally. I was quite proud that my joke had taken him several minutes to recover. I loved making people laugh. I know that in another game, if I could make the DM give a laugh at humor injected into the scenario, he would give me experience points.
This is one of the reasons that I like to play these games with my friends, around a table while eating unhealthy snacks. We get to have fun with each other in a place where we are socializing.
Have you had a session that you would consider your funniest? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
