So I'm a pretty snarky person to start with. One of my big challenges when running Dark Heresy is to get the tone right. I want it to be dark — the Warhammer 40K universe has plenty of horrific aspects. I also want to maintain the dry sense of humor that's characteristic of the source material.
Since I have a tendency to go for the easy joke, I sometimes/often slip over the edge and wind up making my own jokes about the setting, which sort of gives players permission to laugh rather than dread. And to me, the dread is important.
How can I maintain the tone in a Dark Heresy (or Rogue Trader, or even any of the Warhammer Fantasy games) campaign? How can you keep the game from going too far over the top, given that it's such an over the top setting to start with?
Best Answer
If you are the guy with the temptation to go for the easy joke, this may be extraordinarily difficult, since as GM you really have the opportunity to set the tone.
Maybe you need operant conditioning. Every time you go for the easy joke, throw a token in a jar that the players can use as a bonus of some kind. Make them the arbiters, so they are both watching for you to slip up and tacitly monitoring their own behavior.
Maybe you need a way to express this stuff directly. Sometimes playing an inherently over-the-top setting absolutely straight is just not viable, and injecting a little appropriate recognition of the absurdity is both a relief and helps maintain focus. Maybe have a comic relief NPC, a guy who recognizes the ridiculousness, a sort of court jester, and use that guy as your mouthpiece for that stuff.