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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 5403939" data-attributes="member: 3820">I dunno; it seems to me that much of the Old School Renaissance movement prospers in defiance of this theory. It's founded on the idea that you can have fantastic roleplay in a system as stripped down as OD&D, and in fact many claim the roleplay is better because people are called on to provide their own ideas and the rules get out of the way as much as possible.It's possible that both are right, of course; in fact, I think that's the most likely answer. But it's another form of "group chemistry with one another and the ruleset is the most important thing." I don't think so. Without cursed items you can definitely still craft jokes about PC sociopathy and how they can use deception and magic to abuse the crap out of hapless peasants, and those subjects will definitely still come up if that's what your group thinks is funny. I think the thing that's lost is more of a shared experience, in the sense that not every group has a cloak of poisonousness anecdote. And since humor is a subjective thing, that shared experience is something of variable value: if both groups have the same experience, and one thought it was hilarious while the other thought it was stupid, it doesn't quite bring the two groups together in gaming style.No argument there -- but again, the nature of humor being subjective does mean that what one group considers a bad joke being institutionalized in a rulebook may not increase levity when a die roll brings that bad joke up. Whether it changes the mood or not is a separate question of whether or not it changes the mood for the better. The best examples I can think of are Monty Python quotes and puns: to some gamers, they're high comedy, to others, they're repetitious or lame beyond accounting. I just got out of a session that had plenty of Snakes, in particular a critical reversal that put us in deep trouble behind enemy lines (and we ain't out of the woods yet by a long shot). Not all masks of drama are necessary if the ones you're using are applied with any skill.</blockquote>

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