Frayed Knights: Humor and the Knights Blog Post

Jay Barnson has penned a blog post on his decision to make Frayed Knights a comedy game, and delved deeper into the particular brand of humor of the dungeon crawling title. Here’s a snippet:

Like tragedy, humor is best served by contrast. You can’t just have goofy after goofy forever. You have to ground things in the serious once in a while for whatever is supposed to be funny to really shine. That’s why one of my favorite story points in the game is actually the least funny part of it of all. Those who have played the game and know what’s under the windmill, you know. Now, I know that my skills as a writer are still evolving. (Shameless plug check out my short story (Dots, Dashes, and Deceit) in Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology! ) I don’t know if players ever came to care about a certain characters the way I did in my mind. That, and the game plays out for everyone a little bit differently. That’s the interactive medium for you.

And then I still have my weird setting, D&D-campaign-world-as-envisioned-by-an-inexperienced-but-earnest-14-year-old. It’s full of things like pus golems, pimple gods, obsessive puzzle-building wizards, paper mache dragons, jaded adventurers, spells with names like (hotfoot,) (Boot to the Head,) and (Power Word: Defenestrate), and sorceresses with names like (S’makh-Daon.) One thing I tried to do (and I think I’m getting better at it as I go) is to make this world if not believable at least somewhat consistent. Part of the joke there is for old-school gamers who recognize all the tropes that get abused in computer and console RPGs as well as dice-and-paper gaming I wanted to explain, lampshade, or subvert all these classic fantasy bits in the context of the world.

Sometimes it’s a little over the top. Sometimes its subtle. Sometimes. well, there are spots now where I can now tell I was really trying too hard. It happens.