How serious do you like your games?

[Amechra]

I like my silliness to be deadpan. Nothing ruins the mood more than acknowledging that you're being ridiculous.

Sure, I'm playing a bored noble half-orc with chronic trust issues (aka he trusts everyone implicitly), or a dwarven "paladin" who has decided that his scribbled notes is the true holy writ of Morradin (they were in crayon), and those are pretty ridiculous people. But I'm never going to acknowledge that in-character, because that's like laughing at my own joke.

[Taevyr]

I prefer campaigns to be fundamentally realistic-ish, rather than serious: with which I mean, there's stakes, decisions to be made and the campaign/personal goals feel meaningful to our characters beyond things like "hurr durr i want to **** a dragon", but there's no reason we can't have fun & shenanigans whenever we can unwind, or that characters can't have odd/fun quirks.

I wouldn't want to play in a campaign that feels like there are never any real stakes or decisions to be made, or the party feels like it consists mainly of a bunch of jokes: that's an excellent setup for a beer-and-pretzel oneshot, but not campaign material I'd enjoy.

Neither would I want to play in one where our serious party always has to be doing something useful, we're constantly swarmed by meaningful plot decisions and deep worldbuilding, and my quest to have some fun at the local tavern during the rare downtime gets treated as my character developing a drinking problem: yes, he may have a drinking problem, but so would you if you had to live like that.

In the sillier group I've played in, I generally preferred playing straight-man with some minor quirks: it helps keep the shenanigans from getting too out of hand, but most importantly, it's utterly hilarious when you manage to properly play foil to the sillier characters. Stuff like your Wild sorcerer turning into a potted plant and you just going "Guys, Malden went floral again; I'll watch his...whatever it's called currently", or "Just... think about the logistics of screwing a dragon for a second, okay? I mean, they're obviously way too big, and crazy possessive to boot"

[TexasSkiandFish]

My dwarves are mongolian. There's a mongolian rock group that uses traditional instruments that sounds just like I imagine dwarven music to sound.

The hu?

10 characters.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The hu?

10 characters.

Yes. That's it. I was on mobile when I wrote that and the warthog knelt[1].


[1] inside joke from another forum meaning basically "I was too lazy to go look it up."

[TigerT20]

In the sillier group I've played in, I generally preferred playing straight-man with some minor quirks: it helps keep the shenanigans from getting too out of hand, but most importantly, it's utterly hilarious when you manage to properly play foil to the sillier characters. Stuff like your Wild sorcerer turning into a potted plant and you just going "Guys, Malden went floral again; I'll watch his...whatever it's called currently", or "Just... think about the logistics of screwing a dragon for a second, okay? I mean, they're obviously way too big, and crazy possessive to boot"

This is me in my current party, which is incredibly bizarre given I'm a 7-foot tall black-scaled bipedal crocodile (lizardfolk) that refers to party members via lizardfolk naming methods - assigning them descriptors, essentially.

[NorthernPhoenix]

I don't mind (and might even prefer sometimes) light hearted tones, but i do want people to take the basic premise seriously, in the sense that you treat the character as a person in a world rather than an actor surrounded by stage and props where nothing really matters.

I don't need people to cry or forget the real world or even talk in first person, but i really can't stand the kind of "kill anything that moves/i pull down my pants and fart on the king" style of irreverence.

Setting wise i don't need anything to be totally realistic or "normal", but i'd prefer to not play in land of nothing but subverted tropes and weird gatchas.

[SandyAndy]

It depends. I played a in a goofy setting that turned out to be super gritty because the players went that way. I also played in a grimdark setting that turned whacky when we made an all-goblin circus troop. Sometimes you want the dark and gritty. Other times you want cartoonish antics. Sometimes you put them in the same campaign. It's all up to the group and how you set the expectations.

[Nhorianscum]

Yes.

I enjoy my games to simultaneously be the most silly inane or improbable nonsense unpossible while also being utterly deadpan serious gritty and grim.

[Azuresun]

Dwarves that are a ROCK group. Pun intended?

Well, some of them are more into heavy metal.