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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7679532" data-attributes="member: 42582">Whose hypothetical GM?I've never met a GM who put an iron golem on a bridge, and then was upset when the PCs eliminated the threat posed by that golem by pushing it off the bridge (or something similar). Let alone upset that the players then took pleasure in that success.But that really seems orthogonal to the humour issue. Suppose that the players take pleasure by high-fiving one another and keeping on playing, rather than taking a five-minute break to guffaw and regale one another with tales of the golem crushing a drow village below then slowly climbing its way back up to the top of the ravine - is that anyone else's business?Yet people have been doing this with D&D since the game was invented. And a whole edition of the game (3E/PF) is built around a version of this ideal, and remains very popular in the market.I honestly have no idea who your target is, here, nor what bearing any of this has on whether it is good or bad for WotC to deliberately attempt to make their D&D products funny.If I turn up to the game and mention that my grandmother died last week, and then the table bursts into laughter, I probably won't be happy. And reasonably so.Laughter isn't always the appropriate response in a situation governed by social dynamics.To focus on a gameplay example - if the PCs confront the nemesis of one of them, and the player of that PC gives a vengeance speech, and the other players start laughing or poking fun, the speech-giving player mightn't be happy. And reasonably so.I mentioned, upthread, an actual play instance that could have engendered jokes along the lines of [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION]'s othyugh fart joke: a pool of water, in arid foothills on the edge of the desert, fouled by a defecating elf. The players could have played that for laughs, but didn't, and I think it made the game better. That doesn't mean that I would have been unhappy if they'd laughed, but I'm happier that they didn't.You seem to be saying that this is a sign that I have a problem, and am choosing the wrong passtime by playing fantasy RPGs. Or have I misunderstood you?</blockquote>

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