At the same time, I wince at most puns and have a particular dislike of forced attempts humor in roleplaying games. Over the years, I've seen enough well-meaning but ultimately disastrous attempts to "lighten the mood" that my natural inclination is to be suspicious of humor in RPGs. That's not to say I hate it unreservedly, only that I recognize how easy it is for this sort of thing to go badly wrong.
With all that in mind, I hope I can be forgiven for having very mixed feelings about The Book of Wondrous Inventions. Compiled by Bruce Heard from nearly fifty contributions by a wide variety of authors (more on that in a bit) and published in 1987, The Book of Wondrous Inventions is clearly intended to be a companion volume to The Book of Marvelous Magic, right down to its title. But whereas the content of The Book of Marvelous Magic was largely serious in tone – or at least no less serious than the standard lists of (A)D&D magic items – this new book was intentionally written with humor in mind. In his introduction, Bruce Heard writes the following:
These inventions should be viewed with humor. They provide fun and an uncommon change of pace whenever they appear in the game.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, especially if one is sparing in their use within a given campaign. Almost since its inception, D&D has included its fair share of magic items that could well be viewed as silly. The apparatus of Kwalish, anyone? The difference here, I think, is that previous goofy magic items were spice, those included here are the main course – or, at least, they give the impression of being so, because there are so many of them under a single cover. That's not really their fault, but I can't deny that it bugged me a bit in the past and still bugs me a bit even today.
The magic items detailed in this book are all unique and highly idiosyncratic, the products of singular individuals intent on creating something truly unusual. There's Aldryk's Fire Quencher (a magical water sprinkler), Brandon's Bard-in-a-Box (a portable music system), Kruze's Magnificent Missile (self-explanatory), Volospin's Dragonfly of Doom (a magical attack helicopter for hunting dragons), and so on. As you can see, nearly all of the items described reproduce the effects of a post-medieval – and likely modern-day or futuristic – technological device within the idiom of vanilla fantasy. There's not much cleverness on display here. Instead, the entries are all "What would a magical vacuum cleaner be like?" or "Wouldn't a magical pinball machine be funny?"
The combination of the fundamentally technological framing of these items and their banality results in a very sub-par book, even given Heard's stated intention that they "provide fun" and a "change of pace." It's particularly baffling, because many of the entries are written by talented and imaginative people, like Ed Greenwood, Jeff Grubb, and even Sandy Petersen. I can only assume that they were all specifically instructed to come up with stuff that would feel appropriate in Wile E. Coyote's Acme Catalog – or perhaps from the minds of Dragonlance's tinker gnomes. The end result is not, in my opinion, either useful as a source of ideas for an ongoing D&D campaign or even of mirth. It's dull, predictable, and, above all, forced, which is a great shame, because I admire many of the book's contributors.
Sadly, the book is done no favors by its accompanying illustrations. Much as I adore the work of Jim Holloway, one of the few artists who really understood the humor inherent in typical RPG situations, his artwork here is simply so goofy that it makes it impossible to imagine using any of its inventions with a straight face. Maybe that's the point. Maybe you're not supposed to be able to do so. Maybe I'm just a killjoy lacking in a funny bone. Ultimately, that's not for me to judge. I can only say that, when I bought this back in 1987, I instantly regretted and have never used it, except as a cautionary tale of what happens when you try to inject "humor" into a campaign rather than allowing it to arise organically through play.
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| Oh, the pain ... the pain! |
My instinct is to think that maybe the intention was to collect the random funny things people had in their campaigns into one book, but by them being collected you destroy their comedic nature? For instance, if they came to Ed Greenwood and said “what’s a funny thing or two from your campaign?” he’s likely to have a story or two about a silly item from the course of a long time gaming. Ask a number of contributors for them, and they probably all do. Collect all those into a book, and they cease to be isolated anecdotes and start being page after page of “funny” items that have lost their uniqueness and their place in a larger, likely more serious world. I could be wrong, but I’m betting the issue here is the collection, not necessarily the items themselves.
ReplyDeleteOof, never heard of this, and it looks like for good reason.
ReplyDeleteNever been able to decide if Holloway just liked drawing at least theoretically comedic stuff (which this drivel was not) or if he wound up getting type cast as "the comedy art guy" at some point and that resulted in him being headhunted for everything from Orcs of Thar and Paranoia to Tales From the Floating Vagabond. His serious work is perfectly fine, not like he had to rely on jokes to be a great artist.
ReplyDeleteThere is Funny. And there is Silly. I'm OK with a bit of Funny. Silly has no place in my games, and bugs me to no end. I have a difficult time with Gamma World, or T&T spell names. Other forms of entertainment, I'm all for it.
ReplyDeleteThat's a very good distinction.
DeleteMy friend had this and we had a good laugh reading through it at first. But I think that it was on my second reading that I realised how bad it was. I liked the dragonfly but Id come up with something a bit tamer myself previously.
ReplyDeleteLike all magic items, it's a catalog of available options, and no DM is required to make available all choices to all players. A good example of the level-of-humor vs. drama - MASH was good at doing it much of the time. Justice League in comics did it well too (the team interplay was comedic, the super-villains were still formidable) until it became all BWAH-HA-HA all the time.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like to me the book's content would maybe work in a gonzo post-apocalyptic game world.
ReplyDelete