Humor?

[cherko]

I started a thread about this in the 'old' forums, and I think it's time to start another thread... How do you make humor in HoMM maps? There's graphical humor, you know, when you place adventure/landscape objects so it looks funny, like, a whale swimming in lava (bad example)
my favourite graphical joke, is something I've made up myself (I've never seen anyone else use it) and I call it Gargoyle taking a leak. You take a gargoyle statue and put a waterfall on it. It looks as if it's P-ing!
And then there's humorous text messages, uuumm... Just play A Wind of Thorns!
But really, it's hard to write something that's funny. The only things I've read that's worth laughing at is A) A Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and B) the text messages from A Wind of Thorns.

What do you think is funny in HoMM maps?

[ScarlettP]

I TRY to write funny things into my maps... but I doubt half the people 'get' the jokes. Things like a Nature Town in the southern part of the map is named "Southern Comfort" which is a brand of whiskey. A pair of Nature towns are named "Soddy" and "Daisy" which are two very small towns near my home that literally grew together and renamed themselves as "Soddy Daisy." It's a real place with a stupid name. I always found it amusing, so I used it.

I also find situations that have been written into other maps funny. One of my favorite old Heroes 2 maps (can't remember the name) had a very vain hero who was always looking in the mirror. A timed event said "Some ents show up at your door and offer their services. You tell them to report to the back of the castle. Gain 10 Wood." The same map had 2 or 3 references to a bartender with a 3rd hand sticking out of the top of his head. If I could get that old map to load, I would probably re-make it as an H4 map because I loved it so much.

Plainswalker had a map of "Heaven" that if you walked to close to the edge of the 'clouds' you would 'fall off' and die. That was pretty funny.

Humor on a map is like any other humor. It has to be something unexpected.

[Thelonious]

Well quest can be set up funny, whole stories can be funny.

I remember a HoMM III map where you were a psychicatric patient and you had to break out of the 'psychiatry' or had to make sure the patients didn't break out.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

I used quite a bit of humor in my latest map, The Dancing Crusader. I tried to make the map lighthearted though with a serious theme.

One of the things I did was create a silly, playful, and innocent NPC who was a sprite that constantly traveled with the main heroe. I scripted a number of random events and some placed events to occur between her and the party.

Other events sometimes poked fun at the main heroe. I also made fun of myself in the map too...the grumpy old wizard who lives in the tower you have to get a staff from.

GOW

[WFW-PREDATOR]

hehehe, thanks for the tip, making my own HOMM4 map

[Ururam Tururam]

my favourite graphical joke, is something I've made up myself (I've never seen anyone else use it) and I call it Gargoyle taking a leak. You take a gargoyle statue and put a waterfall on it. It looks as if it's P-ing!

My favourite is making a skull dungeon entrance with a waterfall spilling from its nose-hole.

[cherko]

It was cool, but I prefer my Gargoyle taking a leak. But there should be more cool graphical jokes, with the possibilities of the HoMM4 editor... Once I was making a map and I didn't feel like writing a story so at day 1 I just displayed a message:
You have been living in a hole all of your life. You have now grown tired and want to conquer the world.
Not that funny, really... References to stuff can be reeeaally humorous sometimes. The feel of playing a map where the mapmaker makes a funny reference to some book/tv-series you like can be great. Or you can just steal something from the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy and transform it into something that has to do with Might & Magic. D##N those books are funny... Especially at the end of book 2.

[Fenris]

Checked through some old maps I've made and there's tons of jokes; and next to none that is actually funny. Countless of Monty Python-references, genies singing Blue Christmas, Britney Spears-songs causing bad morale etc etc. You wonder what kind of sense of humour you have when you find a sign in your map that says: "This is a sign" or "You are here"

[Humakt]

Even though I haven't got any feedback if it were succesful or not, but I used most humour of my maps in Beyond the Bastard's Reach.

From quest huts:

Skeletons of dead troglodytes are everywhere. You are just about to collect the remnants of great treasury but Zimbo the Necromancer jumps shrieking from the shadows and raises the troglodytes. Then he leaps back to the shadows leaving you to fight with host of undead.

Mumbo, Zimbo's brother and also a necromancer, asks for pizza slice with onions, but you happen to be hungry and eat the last slice yourself. So Mumbo gets angry and raises dead dragons to teach how food should be shared.

"Så the wise man tåld that peppers gråw best when planted intå branches. Håw jag inte gåt that great idea? Well, jag expect that you want såmekind åf reward får yåur efforts? Jag är but a påår farmer and can't give much of a reward but please take this 10 000 gåld pieces and this strange chest I dug up yesterday fråm my backyard."

The possible end event:
The competitors have been vanguished. This glorious triumph has ensured all food on the table into your possession. It is time to throw a feasting festival! It won't be much of festival since other contestors have dropped like flyes they are, but in order to have good festival, lot of food for oneself, compromises must be done. You take a good bit of meat and a tiny piece of cheese with bread.

"Ahha! Got the last one!"

You heard an ominous sound and look up only to see the red death smashing you dead on to the table.

"Damn how much I hate bugs on my food!"

Well, I'm not really impressed by them when I look at them now.

[ScarlettP]

I think most map makers will write in what THEY think is funny and hope that someone else will appreciate the effort. Wheither it is a dialog box or a visual thing.

On my Junked "Pirates" map, I was trying to draw an island that looked like the Sea Captain's Hat. Having that artifact ALWAYS makes adventuring on the water MUCH easier so I wanted to make it obviouse where to find the Hat. But the purple 'land' is really ugly. So I decorated it with lots of those funny looking underground trees, multi colored rocks and those 'magic bubbles' coming up. It was HIDEOUS!!! I put placed events all the way around the island that read "This place looks like a bad acid trip."

One of the MANY reasons I never finished that map.

[wimfrits]

You wonder what kind of sense of humour you have when you find a sign in your map that says: "This is a sign" or "You are here"

I really like that. The occassional useless information
Especially in the case of objects like signposts that hardly anybody reads anyway. And when you do read them, you'll be like "Ow.. why did I bother?"

Or when a normally absurd situation becomes natural. Like the shentymen composing songs for my pirates in PiratesLTD. Even though that might be intended to be normal, me and my friend had a real good laugh when we first noticed this fenomenon. It became a completely normal situation for us afterwards. Or the deluded scientists in The Science of Darkness which were awkard at the start but became a constant fun aspect later. In my own AWoT I think the use of dwarven currency is a good example as well.

Overall, I like it when humor plays a part to lighten up a story without distracting too much from the goals. There's always a limit of how much humor a map can have. Cross that line and the map can no longer be taken seriously. Stay too far from that line and the map may become too serious for me.
Type of humor can really threaten story coherence I think. The main character making a joke now and then is plausible. But the main character blowing up 2 balloons after every battle and doing a little dance can easily make the story a mockery.

@cherko:
Thanks for the kudos! Glad you enjoy my 'sense of humor'

[Ururam Tururam]

But there should be more cool graphical jokes, with the possibilities of the HoMM4 editor...

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[cherko]

"Så the wise man tåld that peppers gråw best when planted intå branches. Håw jag inte gåt that great idea? Well, jag expect that you want såmekind åf reward får yåur efforts? Jag är but a påår farmer and can't give much of a reward but please take this 10 000 gåld pieces and this strange chest I dug up yesterday fråm my backyard."

I find that funny cuz' I'm swedish. About the 'You are here' and 'This is a sign' I find that funny. Mind if I use it in my map?
You're entirely right wimfrits. I'm always careful not to make a mockery out of the storyline, but I think you made a bit of a mockery with the aWoT storyline. Really.
Something I found funny in the 'Plan B' map, was the text message in the beginning, something about a god of reloads named Play-it-again-Sam. It really explains why you can complete maps by loading and reloading over and over.

[Fenris]

About the 'You are here' and 'This is a sign' I find that funny. Mind if I use it in my map?
.

Of course not; not very original jokes after all. Another one I found just now is an ocean bottle far out in the ocean saying: "Next time you open a bottle, make sure it's a bottle of plupsi-cola." Cookie-reward if you know what it's a reference to.

Heh, also found a unintentional slightly funny thing in a map from before I joined the Round Table. It was a lich (who had no name, but I'm going to call him Ethric now to make it more fun) complaining about his annoying neighbour; the 'annoying brat' Kalah (an Azure Dragon) who wanted to conquer the world. Hehe... a bit funny...

[Ururam Tururam]

Another one I found just now is an ocean bottle far out in the ocean saying: "Next time you open a bottle, make sure it's a bottle of plupsi-cola."

On one of my maps you can find a bottle of rum "Titanic" with some shipwreck remnants around...

[cherko]

Tell me if this is humorous: In my current project you can come to a place called Cosmos. You must be careful not to fall into black holes, and there are quest huts everywhere. Inside every quest hut is a guy who claims to be the unquestionable master of the universe. They'll give you a hint if you promise to vote for them next year.

[DaemianLucifer]

Inside every quest hut is a guy who claims to be the unquestionable master of the universe.

Is one of them named He-Man?

[ScarlettP]

No, but one is named "Fluffy".

[Thelonious]

Ofcourse you can make a map where the end bos is a sprite (after you've battled hordes of creatures) who wants to take over the world...

But really, to implement humor is really difficult since everybodies taste is different. But some nice touches can be those sorts of bottles and signs, not to mention nutty alchemists who blow up whole shops etc.

[cherko]

Maybe the best thing is to put those jokes that are hard to get or even notice, because those who do get it will find it funny.