Introduction

Every so often I get the chance to review interesting and fun roleplaying supplements. I like a good comedic game and there are some really interesting and clever products out there.

Unfortunately humour is a very difficult thing to pull off, and every so often I get sent products that have a good idea that just wasn't successfully executed. Tome of Levity is one of these products.

Tome of Humdrum

Tome of Levity is a small softcover trade paperback sized book. The cover has a cheap computer mockup that is intended to send up the cover to a certain other game's Player's Handbook. It has a logo that reads "d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 System." This ought to be taken as a warning regarding the type of humour to expect inside the book.

There is a clear attempt to use irony as a form of humour throughout the book, but the author never really succeeds in making it funny - rather many of the jokes seem forced.

Inside the book is a clean layout with very basic fonts and design. While it is clearly small-scale publishing, I would be willing to forgive the layout. After all, it is tidy and easy to work through.

The back of the book clearly states the intended goal of the book:

Within this massive Tome you'll find the spells your spellcaster needs to banish boredom and dispel dullness from any adventure. Send your GM into fits with spells the likes of Become more invisible, Delayed Atomic Blast Fireball and the ever-popular Summon Gamemaster!

The Tome of Levity will bring laughter to the table of your favorite fantasy (and sometimes sci-fi) campaign.

Why doesn't it work?

The Tome of Levity consists of a list of around 100+ joke spell ideas. That's where the problem lies - they are ideas, but not really fleshed out enough to actually be of use.

Because the author or Z-Man Games presumably wished to make the book of use to non-d20 players, they didn't actually stat any of the spells out. Rather they list a number of joke ideas that clearly are not really intended for use in a game.

Sometimes there are hits - a couple of the spells are amusing and would have been funny if they had been fleshed out a bit more - but unfortunately Alex Strang's writing just isn't funny.

If the book had been fleshed out with stats and written to actually be used with d20 for genuine comedic gaming, then I think it would have worked more. Z-Man games has overlooked the fact that reading spell lists is never a fun exercise, rather it tends to be very dull.

Because the book isn't really laid out for genuine game use, it really expects the reader to go from beginning to end - and the poor puns and badly executed jokes begin to wear thin very quickly.

Conclusion

There isn't enough in this book to really warrant any game use. I don't believe that this was the goal anyway, despite the claims on the back of the book. The layout suggests that the book is just meant to be a piece of gamer humour - but it fails in this respect because of the tired jokes and rather amateur attempts at ironic humour.

I would suggest to Z-Man Games and Alex Strang to read QAGS second edition, published by Hex Games, to see how this style of gamer humour should be written for humourous effect with playability. Otherwise they should turn to The Munchkins Guide to Powergaming published by Steve Jackson Games to see how real gamer humour for the sake of it is done properly.

All in all, a real disappointment.

Should I buy this product? No. There are a lot of better comedic game books that are genuinely funny.