Ever since reading John Dies at the End a few years ago, I've been thinking it would be really cool to run a game in it's kind of Lovecraft meets Douglas Adams tone. I know of Call of Cthulhu and survival horror games as well as comedy ones, but I was just curious if there were any games that attempted to grasp the mixture without doing injustice to either? I'm interested enough to consider attempting some kind of home-brew, but I just wanted to make sure I'm not doing something that's been done. Thanks

In reply to Covenant (msg # 1):

If it has been done already, so what? If you have a good idea then go for it and put your own twist on things...

It's a strange combination. You basically want to create Silly Horror? I gues you could focus the silliness on the kinds of mental breakdowns and perhaps the way the characters first come into contact with the elder gods?

It's a tough demand because sillyness normally cancels out horror and vice versa ...

There are a lot of movies that cut back and forth between horror and comedy, Shaun of the Dead to name one of the best. And a lot of movies and books that switch between tragedy and comedy very effectively, such as Catch-22.

It would take a sure hand as GM and players who understood the dual flavors, but no reason it couldn't work as well as anything else.

Oh, and it needs a GM and players who can do comedy, which is hard. (SEE: Edmund Kean or Edmund Gwenn or somebody)

It's always been one of my favorite genre-combos, but admittedly it might be tough to implement in a game. Anyway, if I'm getting the signal here that it hasn't been done to death, I think I might try to work up a proper setting/system for it. I'm thinking maybe White Wolf or Burning Wheel type successes with a Runequest type system to determine where hits are dealt on the body? Probably some kind of insanity stat as well, considering. Thanks for the replies!

I haven't played it, but the Laundry might be what you're looking for:

http://www.cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/the-laundry/

In reply to Mustard Tiger (msg # 6):

That actually looks really cool. I haven't read the books it's based on, but it looks like a match tone wise, I might have to pick it up. Thanks

There's an increasing number of films that take this kind of approach...Shaun of the Dead was already mentioned, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, and even, to some degree, The Cabin in the Woods all have this kind of blurred-line overtone.  No reason a game couldn't do it...but, as also mentioned, it's something that would need the right chemistry of GM and players to really work well.  It would still be workable with some not-quite-right elements, in those aspects, as long as they weren't too far off...but finding the right people to run and play is pretty much the secret to the success of ANY game on here, regardless of genre (or hybridization thereof).

While not of the psychological horror aspect, around the table we've done the more slapstick physical comedy mashups (Shaun of the dead'esque) using both All Flesh Must Be Eaten and Savage Worlds.

I also remember a Halloween one shot using Teenagers From Outer Space some many years back that worked very well.

True that, face. But I've heard enough about your theatrical background to think you'd agree that comedy (especially improv, which is what we do on here) takes particular gifts and sensibilities. Not to mention that timing is particularly difficult in the PbP medium.

That said, one of the first games I played here was Venture Bros-based and it actually made me laugh out loud on many occasions.
This message was last edited by the user at 11:48, Sun 10 May 2015.

In reply to Gaffer (msg # 10):

True...while you can get a comedian to do dramatic roles with minimal difficulty (and a pretty good rate of success), trying to get a dramatic actor to do comedy can be a real trial (not impossible...but there's a reason that dramatic actors rarely end up being the host on SNL and when they are, they're generally written into the sketches as the straight man to all the jokes...)

But PBP really is its own animal in that regard...granted, what we're doing is improv, but unlike live improv, you actually have time to think about what you're going to say and do before having to do it.  That said, there's a reason the vast majority of my characters are serious with occasional moments of levity, and not the other way around.  *grin*

Well, this thread got a lot more responses than I had anticipated. While you all are here, are there any tips you could give on implementing comedy into a PBP game without making it so silly it's not fun? I've done comedy RP, and I've done PBP, but I haven't actually tried mixing the two.

I think as long as you keep the stakes legitimately high, you can get pretty silly.  I mean, Shaun of the Dead gets downright ludicrous...but you never lose sight of the fact that they are constantly in a life-or-death situation, and that keeps the ridiculous things like trying to kill a zombie with a tetherball from becoming distractingly silly.  Don't worry too much about trying to keep it from becoming too much comedy...focus more on whether it's appropriate comedy (to the scene/situation), and the funnier things get, the more danger should be inherent to the moment...if anyone gets too caught up in making it funny, having them very nearly die should have a pretty sobering effect.  *grin*

I've also read John Dies at the End, and just recently I finished "This book is Full of Spiders". I love both of the books, and I'm eagerly awaiting the third. As for game systems, Call of Cthulu would fit. Technically, you could use a system like BRP or GURPS to play it. It really just depends on the GM and how he runs the game.