The man said it's not so bad to have some fun...

[Halsy]

I'd like to have some fun with this game. A lot of posts I've read seem very concerned about this or that thing and all seem to have serious overtones. Whatever happened to having some fun? A good chortle as it were. Now, I'm not saying I want this game to be slapstick but I've always appreciated humour and irreverence in RPGs - probably why Paranoia was favourite of mine and please someone KS a Paranoia CRPG already! Let's face it you can't have good drama without peaks and valleys. You need to both build and release tension. And one of the best releases is always comedy. Think about any time you've been in a tense situation that's been diffused with comedy. Or just you're general day to day laughs you get with friends, co-workers, family. As they say, if we couldn't laugh, we'd just cry all the time. That's one of the admirable things Terry Pratchett does so well in his novels where he can treat serious subjects with humour - at the appropriate points - and it makes it much easier to deal with.

 

As an example as we're discussing the PE pantheon of late I'd like to see maybe a few silly deities thrown in for comic effect. Perhaps your party could stumble across a cult and engage in a bit of fun hijinx without the hacking and slashing. In this case let's call them The Order of Perspicuous. Perspicuous is the Lord of the Obvious. His followers exist because they feel that the most obvious things in the world are, well, obviously the most important. Let's face it, the gods wouldn't have made them so obvious if they didn't want everyone to notice them. So by their way of thinking, the more obvious something is, the more important/holy it is. Secrets and the hidden things of the world are the sole purview of evil!

 

As the party was passing by the abbey they were flagged down by one of the monks asking them if they could assist the monks. It seems that the holy relic of the church has gone missing. The relic being a sculpture of the all-seeing eye. The abbot leads the party to the main cathedral to show them where the statue was - placed in a spot of prominence of all to see of course - and explains it's been missing for several days now and htye have no clue as to who took it or why. However this leaves the party perplexed because the statue is still there in plain sight. They say as much to the abbot and the fellow monks there who becomes incensed and declare this isn't an issue for jest. Yet, the statue is really there but for some reason or reasons, the monks and local villagers all seem to think it's gone missing. Your mission - should you choose to accept it - is to find out why this is the case and how to resolve it. In this case it would make for some entertainment if there things the clergy and village folk could see and the party couldn't and vice versa. This could make for some entertaining discussions and interactions.

 

Anyway, you get the gist of where I'm going with this. I'm all for high drama but let's not forget to get the fun in there too!

 

Cheers big ears!

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I would like a long quest to find an incredibly powerful weapon, only to find out it was simply a story made up by an inn keeper to drum up business. I'd work on a mod to add that content to the game if something similar is not included.

[Dream]

Because this game is art, damnit!

[Hormalakh]

Even Shakespeare made his plays fit for both nobility and the common rabble. He was the teacher when it came to drama: always bring your audience back down after a highly dramatic scene.

[jezz555]

Yeah I feel like everything could use a little Goober comedy every now and then. A story about the holocaust you say? Have one of the Nazi's slip on a banana! A Shakespearian tragedy you say? Throw in a few of those Shakespearian dong jokes my English teacher used to always go on about. You say this is a story about mortality and the persistence of loss? About finding ones place in the universe and defeating adversity? You say you want your story to make people think? Well nothing stimulates thought like slapstick shenanigans. < sarcasm

 

Not everything has to be a comedy, the only game I ever played that made me laugh was portal 2, 99.99 percent of the time video game-humour is painfully moronic and if we're just talking about narrative in general, not everything needs goofy puns thrown into everything It's not a necessity and often a hindrance to attempting to communicate a serious message.

[Dream]

Yeah I feel like everything could use a little Goober comedy every now and then. A story about the holocaust you say? Have one of the Nazi's slip on a banana! A Shakespearian tragedy you say? Throw in a few of those Shakespearian dong jokes my English teacher used to always go on about. You say this is a story about mortality and the persistence of loss? About finding ones place in the universe and defeating adversity? You say you want your story to make people think? Well nothing stimulates thought like slapstick shenanigans. < sarcasm

 

Not everything has to be a comedy, the only game I ever played that made me laugh was portal 2, 99.99 percent of the time video game-humour is painfully moronic and if we're just talking about narrative in general, not everything needs goofy puns thrown into everything It's not a necessity and often a hindrance to attempting to communicate a serious message.

 

Not everything has to be a conga line of suffering to emphasize the fragility of life and how we are all doomed to a harsh and sad life followed by a tragic and miserable death (or something like that) either.

 

Having said that, since PS:T and BG had a good bit of humor in them, and P:E is supposed to be their spiritual successor, lets go with that.

Edited November 30, 2012 by Dream

[rjshae]

I really enjoy well-done humor, but some types of frivolity can ruin the experience of good drama. Silly deities thrown in for comic effect is absolutely the wrong thing to do in serious role playing drama. Likewise with Monty Python references and sci-fi one-liners. Toss these on the pyre of incongruous ruminations.

 

Good humor is hard to do; stupid humor is best left for spoofs and robot chicken episodes.

Edited November 30, 2012 by rjshae

[jezz555]

Yeah I feel like everything could use a little Goober comedy every now and then. A story about the holocaust you say? Have one of the Nazi's slip on a banana! A Shakespearian tragedy you say? Throw in a few of those Shakespearian dong jokes my English teacher used to always go on about. You say this is a story about mortality and the persistence of loss? About finding ones place in the universe and defeating adversity? You say you want your story to make people think? Well nothing stimulates thought like slapstick shenanigans. < sarcasm

 

Not everything has to be a comedy, the only game I ever played that made me laugh was portal 2, 99.99 percent of the time video game-humour is painfully moronic and if we're just talking about narrative in general, not everything needs goofy puns thrown into everything It's not a necessity and often a hindrance to attempting to communicate a serious message.

 

Not everything has to be a conga line of suffering to emphasize the fragility of life and how we are all doomed to a harsh and sad life followed by a tragic and miserable death (or something like that) either.

 

Having said that, since PS:T and BG had a good bit of humor in them, and P:E is supposed to be their spiritual successor, lets go with that.

 

Well there is a disconnect here. A great many influential authors; Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Philip K. D!ck, Cormac McCarthy to name a few all wrote very seriously they didn't throw a few yucks into War and Peace so people could "have fun". Even author's like Joseph Heller, Camus, Beckett(debatably) or Kurt Vonnegut who wrote satire always did it in order to prove a make a point, often a dark one, it wasn't just goofy puns thrown in so people could go "Hurr durr I understand that reference!"

 

Mature narrative doesn't need to be humorless you can use humor to tell a point but what the OP is talking about is dumb jokes thrown in without purpose to make him chuckle. Humor of that kind is immature by nature and best left to comedies. Comedies are fine but its not what I want this game to be. OP might, but I don't.

Edited November 30, 2012 by jezz555

[xSigma]

Just read any of Shakespeare's plays, there is a reason he has Comedy and Tragedy close together.

Either to simply be funny

Comedy in contrast to the tragedy is pathetic and sad, a tragedy.

To 'soften' up the crowd, to make them more susceptible to tragedy.

• Source : Shakespeare's Use of Comedy in Tragedy : http://www.jstor.org/stable/27530731?seq=3
  

Edited November 30, 2012 by xSigma

[Dream]

Yeah I feel like everything could use a little Goober comedy every now and then. A story about the holocaust you say? Have one of the Nazi's slip on a banana! A Shakespearian tragedy you say? Throw in a few of those Shakespearian dong jokes my English teacher used to always go on about. You say this is a story about mortality and the persistence of loss? About finding ones place in the universe and defeating adversity? You say you want your story to make people think? Well nothing stimulates thought like slapstick shenanigans. < sarcasm

 

Not everything has to be a comedy, the only game I ever played that made me laugh was portal 2, 99.99 percent of the time video game-humour is painfully moronic and if we're just talking about narrative in general, not everything needs goofy puns thrown into everything It's not a necessity and often a hindrance to attempting to communicate a serious message.

 

Not everything has to be a conga line of suffering to emphasize the fragility of life and how we are all doomed to a harsh and sad life followed by a tragic and miserable death (or something like that) either.

 

Having said that, since PS:T and BG had a good bit of humor in them, and P:E is supposed to be their spiritual successor, lets go with that.

 

Well there is a disconnect here. A great many influential authors; Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Philip K. D!ck, Cormac McCarthy to name a few all wrote very seriously they didn't throw a few yucks into War and Peace so people could "have fun". Even author's like Joseph Heller, Camus, Beckett(debatably) or Kurt Vonnegut who wrote satire always did it in order to prove a make a point, often a dark one, it wasn't just goofy puns thrown in so people could go "Hurr durr I understand that reference!"

 

Mature narrative doesn't need to be humorless you can use humor to tell a point but what the OP is talking about is dumb jokes thrown in without purpose to make him chuckle. Humor of that kind is immature by nature and best left to comedies. Comedies are fine but its not what I want this game to be. OP might, but I don't.

 

I sure as **** don't want War and Peace the Game.

 

Video games are a different medium than books and the same "rules" (if you can even consider them that) don't apply. This very game is the spiritual successor of a series that had gold, silver, and bronze pantaloons that formed a big metal unit. If you don't like "immature" humor that's fine, but a lot of people do, and as BG and PS:T showed you can have both a serious narrative and a good deal of dumb old fun at the same time. If you want a more modern example look no further than Borderlands 2 which possessed some rather dark and sombre elements but at the same time had some of the most off the wall ridiculous jokes I've ever heard.

[jezz555]

Yeah I feel like everything could use a little Goober comedy every now and then. A story about the holocaust you say? Have one of the Nazi's slip on a banana! A Shakespearian tragedy you say? Throw in a few of those Shakespearian dong jokes my English teacher used to always go on about. You say this is a story about mortality and the persistence of loss? About finding ones place in the universe and defeating adversity? You say you want your story to make people think? Well nothing stimulates thought like slapstick shenanigans. < sarcasm

 

Not everything has to be a comedy, the only game I ever played that made me laugh was portal 2, 99.99 percent of the time video game-humour is painfully moronic and if we're just talking about narrative in general, not everything needs goofy puns thrown into everything It's not a necessity and often a hindrance to attempting to communicate a serious message.

 

Not everything has to be a conga line of suffering to emphasize the fragility of life and how we are all doomed to a harsh and sad life followed by a tragic and miserable death (or something like that) either.

 

Having said that, since PS:T and BG had a good bit of humor in them, and P:E is supposed to be their spiritual successor, lets go with that.

 

Well there is a disconnect here. A great many influential authors; Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Philip K. D!ck, Cormac McCarthy to name a few all wrote very seriously they didn't throw a few yucks into War and Peace so people could "have fun". Even author's like Joseph Heller, Camus, Beckett(debatably) or Kurt Vonnegut who wrote satire always did it in order to prove a make a point, often a dark one, it wasn't just goofy puns thrown in so people could go "Hurr durr I understand that reference!"

 

Mature narrative doesn't need to be humorless you can use humor to tell a point but what the OP is talking about is dumb jokes thrown in without purpose to make him chuckle. Humor of that kind is immature by nature and best left to comedies. Comedies are fine but its not what I want this game to be. OP might, but I don't.

 

I sure as **** don't want War and Peace the Game.

 

Video games are a different medium than books and the same "rules" (if you can even consider them that) don't apply. This very game is the spiritual successor of a series that had gold, silver, and bronze pantaloons that formed a big metal unit. If you don't like "immature" humor that's fine, but a lot of people do, and as BG and PS:T showed you can have both a serious narrative and a good deal of dumb old fun at the same time. If you want a more modern example look no further than Borderlands 2 which possessed some rather dark and sombre elements but at the same time had some of the most off the wall ridiculous jokes I've ever heard.

 

Well then what are we arguing here? You like immature humour and I don't , it's just a matter of taste at this point.

Edited November 30, 2012 by jezz555

[Pshaw]

I think that characters should have different personalities and that's really all their is to it. Some should be serious, others silly, just like people in real life. I still think even serious ones should occasionally show some rye humor or gallows humor because that's only human. Just like I don't mind if there is an overly silly or crass character. People can take the companions whose personalities they enjoy with them and leave the rest behind. If you encounter an NPC that isn't your cup of tea, slog through it, just like in real life not everybody you meet will appeal to you and sometimes you need to deal with people who annoy you.

 

Now I do agree with the OPs spirit of this post. It's all well and good to say you don't want memes (since there was a thread on that) because they're immersion breaking and usually tired by the time a game is released. However I don't want the game to be so 'mature' in it's subject matter that it's just dour from start to finish. Even games with darker settings and plots manage to slip in humor from time to time.

 

I don't think that we have much to worry about in this regard though. I'm sure that we'll get jokes and lighthearted moments throughout the game.

[jezz555]

I think that characters should have different personalities and that's really all their is to it. Some should be serious, others silly, just like people in real life. I still think even serious ones should occasionally show some rye humor or gallows humor because that's only human. Just like I don't mind if there is an overly silly or crass character. People can take the companions whose personalities they enjoy with them and leave the rest behind. If you encounter an NPC that isn't your cup of tea, slog through it, just like in real life not everybody you meet will appeal to you and sometimes you need to deal with people who annoy you.

 

Now I do agree with the OPs spirit of this post. It's all well and good to say you don't want memes (since there was a thread on that) because they're immersion breaking and usually tired by the time a game is released. However I don't want the game to be so 'mature' in it's subject matter that it's just dour from start to finish. Even games with darker settings and plots manage to slip in humor from time to time.

 

I don't think that we have much to worry about in this regard though. I'm sure that we'll get jokes and lighthearted moments throughout the game.

 

There's a difference however, between jokes in the context of the game; like one of your party members telling a joke for example, or like the type of humour employed in portal and outside of universe jokes that essentially break the fourth wall like in Borderlands, which was just a goofy unfunny meme-fountain. I'm okay with the former, it's the latter I have a problem with. Not that Borderlands was bad for what it was, but it is immersion breaking in a serious game.

Edited November 30, 2012 by jezz555

[SophosTheWise]

Yes, yes a thousand times yes.

I can't take the over-seriousness anymore.

 

Even though I seldom agree with Dream, I agree with him/her here. Art doesn't always have to be angsty to be good.

 

A great many influential authors; Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Philip K. D!ck, Cormac McCarthy to name a few all wrote very seriously they didn't throw a few yucks into War and Peace so people could "have fun".

 

Yeah, there are many other great authors such as Mark Twain, Christian Morgenstern, Ernst Jandl, Allen Ginsberg and so on absolutely threw in "fun" because "fun" is not always stupid. Fun - well crafted, witty jokes absolutely have a right to exist. There are different approaches to crafting a great story and by dismissing humour as bad, you're just enabling a bunch of pretentious snobs that are still stuck in the age of scholasticism. You know, I absolutely love classic literature from Homer over Shakespeare to Goethe, but I also see the merit of Terry Pratchett's novels which are in NO way unintelligent.

 

By the way you chose Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoi - all of which share the same cultural "darkness", so it's not especially surprising that they are absolutely serious. And Camus basically had to take himself serious (and overall, imo, he took himself TOO serious, as did all existentialist, but that's a different discussion there ) because some philosophers already frowned on him for writing novels.

 

Also there are many games with a good kind of humour in it. I didn't like the Borderlands meme explosion, but for example I liked the absurd humour of claptrap. I agree with you - I like humour that is inherent to the world and doesn't necessarily break the fourth wall if that isn't a general concept of the game. Not because it breaks immersion but because I generally feel that it doesn't fit.

 

Example

Divine Divinity: Two skeletons in the first dungeon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6zb8HFfLj0

 

 

Edit: Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night :D

Edited November 30, 2012 by SophosTheWise

[J.E. Sawyer]

I think it's safe to say that we all (on the PE team) believe that we want some measure of humor in the game. It's probably not going to be a rollicking knee-slapper, but we don't want it to be The Road: The Game.

[LadyCrimson]

I think it's safe to say that we all (on the PE team) believe that we want some measure of humor in the game. It's probably not going to be a rollicking knee-slapper, but we don't want it to be The Road: The Game.

I love that movie (didn't read the book), but ... yes, I wouldn't want that either.

[AGX-17]

I would like a long quest to find an incredibly powerful weapon, only to find out it was simply a story made up by an inn keeper to drum up business. I'd work on a mod to add that content to the game if something similar is not included.

 

How does that increase business for the innkeeper?

 

 

I've seen that general idea done in multiple games. Just off the top of my head:

In Oblivion on that boat-inn in the Imperial City, the boat gets hijacked because the owner/innkeeper spun some fanciful treasure ship tale.

 

And there's a mission in Borderlands 2 where Marcus scams some nerd into buying a "legendary gun" because he's the "chosen one who will save pandora" (sending said nerd to his certain death,) and he sends you after him because he accidentally gave the nerd he sent to die $10 in change instead of $1.

 

A merchant huckster selling a "legendary weapon" with flattery and faux-prophecies sounds more believable than an innkeeper telling people (his source of revenue,) to leave his inn (his place of business,) and go on a quest for something that doesn't exist. If the innkeep sent you off to your death, he'd lose potential repeat business. If you came back empty-handed, he would certainly not profit.

Edited November 30, 2012 by AGX-17

[HangedMan]

SophosTheWise is proving to live up to the name; it's a very good point, and it's one I fully support and get behind. I personally found the existential skeletons in Divine Divinity to be amazingly hilarious, and would love to see that the humor in the game comes from their world, not bits and bobs of our world shoehorned (and/or gently caressed) into place.

[jezz555]

Yeah, there are many other great authors such as Mark Twain, Christian Morgenstern, Ernst Jandl, Allen Ginsberg and so on absolutely threw in "fun" because "fun" is not always stupid. Fun - well crafted, witty jokes absolutely have a right to exist. There are different approaches to crafting a great story and by dismissing humour as bad, you're just enabling a bunch of pretentious snobs that are still stuck in the age of scholasticism. You know, I absolutely love classic literature from Homer over Shakespeare to Goethe, but I also see the merit of Terry Pratchett's novels which are in NO way unintelligent.

 

By the way you chose Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoi - all of which share the same cultural "darkness", so it's not especially surprising that they are absolutely serious. And Camus basically had to take himself serious (and overall, imo, he took himself TOO serious, as did all existentialist, but that's a different discussion there ) because some philosophers already frowned on him for writing novels.

 

Also there are many games with a good kind of humour in it. I didn't like the Borderlands meme explosion, but for example I liked the absurd humour of claptrap. I agree with you - I like humour that is inherent to the world and doesn't necessarily break the fourth wall if that isn't a general concept of the game. Not because it breaks immersion but because I generally feel that it doesn't fit.

 

 

I think we are mostly in agreement here, I'm not "dismissing humour as bad" in all cases, and if that's what you got from my post you've mistaken me. Like I said humour has it's value, but it can be done right, and it can be done wrong. I generally speaking do like darker literature(loved the road), and while I'm not existentialisms biggest fan or anything I disagree with you that they all took themselves too seriously(though some did) or that sad writing is inherently pretentious(though it can be). I don't have a problem with humour, its fine, I wasn't saying that those authors were the only good authors in the world, or that constant seriousness is necessary, my only point in my first post was that humour it's not always necessary to a story or a scene either.

 

Also to the highlighted portion of your post Philip K. D!ck and Cormac McCarthy(who I also mentioned) didn't share the same cultural darkness, so your statement regarding the others is pretty irrelevant.

 

The reason I had a pretty negative reaction to OP's post was that making an entire god that is intentionally a joke I think is the wrong kind of humour. I'm not really worried about PE in this regard as I liked most of the humour in the IE games, but there is caution to be taken here. Bad video game humour is absolutely the worst and I think we've seen plenty of examples of that.

Edited November 30, 2012 by jezz555

[Quadrone]

I think it's safe to say that we all (on the PE team) believe that we want some measure of humor in the game. It's probably not going to be a rollicking knee-slapper, but we don't want it to be The Road: The Game.

 

Well, that's ok with me, but what I do hope is that it is not humor like in the OP's example with the silly god/deity.

Humorous quest and characters are just fine but the difference for me is if you make a part of the official setting/lore (i.e. a god) silly, it rubs off on the entire game and makes it hard to take it seriously.

This might work in other games but I always thought of PE as having "different", more serious, kind of tone than Fallout/Wasteland.

[SophosTheWise]

Yeah, there are many other great authors such as Mark Twain, Christian Morgenstern, Ernst Jandl, Allen Ginsberg and so on absolutely threw in "fun" because "fun" is not always stupid. Fun - well crafted, witty jokes absolutely have a right to exist. There are different approaches to crafting a great story and by dismissing humour as bad, you're just enabling a bunch of pretentious snobs that are still stuck in the age of scholasticism. You know, I absolutely love classic literature from Homer over Shakespeare to Goethe, but I also see the merit of Terry Pratchett's novels which are in NO way unintelligent.

 

By the way you chose Kafka, Dostoevsky, Tolstoi - all of which share the same cultural "darkness", so it's not especially surprising that they are absolutely serious. And Camus basically had to take himself serious (and overall, imo, he took himself TOO serious, as did all existentialist, but that's a different discussion there ) because some philosophers already frowned on him for writing novels.

 

Also there are many games with a good kind of humour in it. I didn't like the Borderlands meme explosion, but for example I liked the absurd humour of claptrap. I agree with you - I like humour that is inherent to the world and doesn't necessarily break the fourth wall if that isn't a general concept of the game. Not because it breaks immersion but because I generally feel that it doesn't fit.

 

 

I generally speaking do like darker literature(loved the road),

 

Me too, though I also absolutely appreciate the more lighthearted attempts - like the ones I mentioned (and of course Douglas Adams, how could I forget that one? Edit: Goddamn, another one: Oscar Wilde)

 

I disagree with you that they all took themselves too seriously(though some did)

That wasn't all too serious, it was intended to be a bit tongue in cheek

 

or that sad writing is inherently pretentious(though it can be).

 

 

Not what I meant at all. I was referring to the so-called cultural elite that has been established in many feuilletons and intellectual circles who have a dogma that says only "serious" stuff is good. I think that's the conservative wing of culture while the newer artists are more open and more progressive in those ways. But those old "it's only good if it's angsty!"-elitists are just pretentious snobs in their ivory tower.

 

 

I don't have a problem with humour, its fine, I wasn't saying that those authors were the only good authors in the world, or that constant seriousness is necessary, my only point in my first post was that humour it's not always necessary to a story or a scene either.

 

Definitely not. But forced seriousness is as bad as forced humour. It should just come naturally, so I think we agree here.

 

Also to the highlighted portion of your post Philip K. D!ck and Cormac McCarthy(who I also mentioned) didn't share the same cultural darkness, so your statement regarding the others is pretty irrelevant.

 

I just noted that 3 out of 5 authors you've mentioned share more or less the same cultural background because I think that cultural background is extremely important when it comes to writing, especially eastern European and Northern European authors share that "grim" worldview. So you can't really use one style of writing as an example for whole literature. I could also take Kater Murr und Kringler by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Don Quijote by Cervantes, Das Leben eines Taugenichts by von Eichendorff as examples for "funny" and satirical writing, but that would also give a wrong impression of literature as a whole.

 

The reason I had a pretty negative reaction to OP's post was that making an entire god that is intentionally a joke I think is the wrong kind of humour.

 

Have you read Small Gods by Terry Pratchett? It's an incredibly philosophical and deep yet screamingly hilarious novel that kind of question the whole concept of Gods and religion in general, with "The Great God Om"as an extremely funny example. Gods can be funny too if written right

 

Edit 2: You can also break our religions down to kind of silly bits. Christianity, after all, has an omnipotent space-zombie. If there are enough serious believers for a religion, the religion itself doesn't need to feel silly. This is directly connected to the aforementioned Great God Om from Small Gods.

Edited December 1, 2012 by SophosTheWise

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

How does that increase business for the innkeeper?

 

The locations visited are close to the inn. Adventurers would need to rest after exerting themselves.

 

I've seen that general idea done in multiple games. Just off the top of my head:

In Oblivion on that boat-inn in the Imperial City, the boat gets hijacked because the owner/innkeeper spun some fanciful treasure ship tale.

 

And there's a mission in Borderlands 2 where Marcus scams some nerd into buying a "legendary gun" because he's the "chosen one who will save pandora" (sending said nerd to his certain death,) and he sends you after him because he accidentally gave the nerd he sent to die $10 in change instead of $1.

 

A merchant huckster selling a "legendary weapon" with flattery and faux-prophecies sounds more believable than an innkeeper telling people (his source of revenue,) to leave his inn (his place of business,) and go on a quest for something that doesn't exist. If the innkeep sent you off to your death, he'd lose potential repeat business. If you came back empty-handed, he would certainly not profit.

 

Both are actually believable. The inn-keeper is spreading stories to get adventurers to come in the general vicinity of his/her inn, I think if it is presented as something that got out of hand for the inn-keeper(like the inn is just too busy) would make it even better. A snake-oil salesman would also be quite funny, especially if his potions actually ended up working(unbeknownst to said salesman).

[Jojobobo]

Humour's fine; all you have to do is keep it separate from the more serious story elements so it doesn't spoil the mood - but anyone with a touch of sense would do that naturally anyway. Honestly a lot of the past titles the devs have worked on have had some decent humour in them without comprising their games' more earnest moments or making them generally silly, so it would've been very weird if they didn't put it in for P:E.

[Osvir]

Conceptual idea, Viki from Suikoden some random chick popping up when you travel the world, Wild Teleporting Magic (She travels through time too). Though perhaps not as someone as you can recruit, but perhaps someone appearing out of a portal falling flat to the ground in front of you, confused and generally distressed individual who leaves suddenly after some short odd conversation~ random fun events!

 

Can't remember the names but the Demon Child & the Dog in Baldur's Gate

 

Moo I say!

Edited December 1, 2012 by Osvir

[mstark]

Anyone remember the man who falls from the sky and smashes into the ground right at the start of Morrowind, if you go in the right direction?

 

Whatever you do, don't use his Scroll of Icarian Flight (+1000 acrobatics for 7 seconds) and jump xD.