Please stop giving the town sheriff a noogie!

Question

Related to this question but more closely related to this question.

How can I get my PCs to not cause a single or small handful of characters to become the butt of a joke when that humor could easily decrease their survival rate and/or quality of life? I'm not interested in making them take the entire game seriously, nor the whole plot, and not even every character. Just some obvious ones like the constable with a hair trigger or the irate wizard with a short fuse.

I'd like solutions that help prevent this instead of ones that mete out consequences as that's my default and it appears to result in hurt feelings. Note that I'm not interested in overall campaign or mood settings nor am I interested in warning the PCs out-of-game that "this sheriff will put them in the barracks should his scalp be violated by any of their knuckles." I want in-game ways to discourage this.

Answer 1

Warn them in-game.

Have the PCs overhear chilling stories in a bar about what happened to those who made fun of the sheriff. Have them encounter a man with half of his face badly burnt, and have this burnt man tell them he should never have made that joke about that wizard. Reinforce these stories by showing these unfunny people take a joke very, very badly: have the sheriff shoot or whip or stab through the hand with a dagger a funny guy right in front of their eyes; have the wizard's crow familiar pick the eye of a joker in front of them. (Also, (re)watch some Tarantino, and (re)read some GRR Martin or Stephen King, for inspiration.)

If even that's not enough, have the evil NPCs punish some innocent people - whom the PCs have grown somewhat close to, preferably - for some jokes made by different people, before the PCs themselves would dare risk such a joke.

Also, you may want to have the NPCs make fun of themselves, of their most "laughable" features publicly - in an inn, at a reception, etc - and then punish all those who laughed.

Answer 2

The problem with in-game solutions to out-of-game problems is that the players can as easily catch the whiff of metagaming as the GM can (and there are more of them to "roll Sense Motive"), whether it's actually metagaming or not. If it is an out-of-game problem, them detecting subterfuge by the GM to bring them back in line can make them resentful of the not-so-invisible hand and resort to doubling down to resist it.

Whether in-game solutions technically count as metagaming or not, players who are "resisting the yoke" of the GM by undermining their serious NPCs (it always seems to be the serious, dangerous NPCs) will see it as metagaming. In other non-gaming contexts, the players might call trying to change their behaviour with subtle manipulations "passive aggressive".

Fortunately, you can find out if your group is stuck in this dynamic easily enough: telegraph that the NPC is extra-dangerous in-game and see how they react. If they just redouble the jokes, they're engaging in a power struggle with you and an out-of-game conversation about the group becomes the only functional means of moving forward.

Answer 3

Ask them if it is what their characters would actually do.

You don't have to be heavy handed with this, or warn them of the consequences out of game, but it can often clarify things. Players love to make jokes, and presumably you don't want to take that way from them. By reminding them of the line between player and character, you might help restrict this to at least out of game jokes.

If you want to remove the latter, then I'm doubtful an in-game solution will ever work!

Answer 4

I often have problems with players settling down, when they are inclined to make jokes and mess around a lot before the game begins and for a few minutes after it starts. I was able to stop it after I started saying, after I felt the players should be serious, "In-character as of now".

Basically, anything the player says is said by the character (within reason - a player needing the bathroom doesn't mean the character goes in the middle of the street), and the NPCs around will react appropriately. After one or two rather awkward moments and losing a deal with a mage that would have got them a bit of cash, they quieted down a lot.

As long as you are fair and consistent, you shouldn't have too many problems with this approach - and if the players decide to noogie the town sheriff in-character, he'll probably to it back and then have them run out of town!