Thoughts on Humor

I thought of a decent example of the kinds of humor I find in games and wanted to put it to (virtual) paper. This is not meant to be conclusive, exhaustive, or in any other way refined, just some random thoughts.

Let's set up our hypothetical first: This is in some sort of game with an inventory system and some way to interact with the inventory items in menus. Think RPG or OWSC with in-menu item usage. Additionally, some items can be acquired in-world in a semi-random way, either obscured (you don't know what it is until you pick it up, e.g. Xenoblade) or plainly visible and just RNG-determined spawn conditions (e.g. Minecraft).

The subjects of our consideration will be two items: a 3-leaf clover and a 4-leaf clover. Each will have a rarity, an item description, and possibly a way to interact with it in the menu.

The base, "control case" version of the game would simply have the 3-leaf clover be very common and the 4-leaf clover be very rare. The description of the 4-leaf clover would be something mundane like "A rare, mutated variant of the 3-leaf clover, possessing 4 leaves equally spaced." If you saw this in a game, you'd think nothing of it.

We'll now cover the worst case: referential humor. The rarities would be the same as the control case, but maybe with a higher drop chance for the 4-leaf clover. However, the description would be something like "What a lucky charm! It's magically delicious!" If you don't understand the reference, it just sounds weird. If you do understand the reference, it's still not funny unless you're Leonardo DiCaprio. Unfortunately, this is the most common form of humor in games these days because the internet has poisoned the well with memetic references.

So let's try something a bit more interesting: 3-leaf and 4-leaf clovers are now fairly common, but there's a new greater-than-4-leaf clover item that's extremely rare. You can still ruin this with reference humor (7-leaf clover, for example), but it gives a bit more freedom to expand your world, rather than referring back to spotty pop-culture knowledge. Are 5-leaf clovers a bane for farmers because their roots somehow kill the plants near them? Maybe 9-leaf clovers cause eldritch knowledge to leak out into our world because the overlapping leaves are too crowded? Or your crafting system could have a recipe which needs 2 3-leaf clovers, but you can substitute a single 6-leaf clover. The humor potential is there, but now you have to work for it.

Unfortunately, lampshading can still ruin this. If the item description is something like "Wow! I thought 4-leaf clovers were rare, but here's one with 8 leaves!" then we end up with a situation where the writer is trying to predict criticism or thought-patterns, rather than trusting the player to understand the implications. It's not as bad as reference humor, but can still sap the fun out of the writing.

Finally, my favorite possibility is to inject humor into the crafting system for clever players. What's the difference between a 3-leaf clover and a 4-leaf clover? A crafting recipe that takes two 3-leaf clovers and some glue. It's stupid, it's simple, but as long as you don't draw attention to it with lampshading, it can be a fun little treat for the player.

In conclusion, trust your players/readers to have the intelligence to recognize the amusing oddities in your writing. If you have to wink and nudge, the joke wasn't funny to begin with.