Meta Fun

A sense of humour is wonderful thing when wielded appropriately. The issue is that it's actually more like an intelligent magical sword that wields itself according to its own whims. Political correctness has attempted to mandate jokes over recent years but I sense that its finally on the wane now and the fog is slowly clearing on social responsibility and, broadly speaking, someone is always the butt of a particular joke. Truth can be lost in the heat of the moment as extreme humour is often used ironically to make the protagonist the true target of ridicule rather than the content of what is said, Homer Simpson being the iconic example. But what has all this got to do with roleplaying ?

Well, spare a thought for the players of Mark Shelton's eight week campaign based in Seattle. Apparently a wonderfully detailed and engaging Pathfinder scenario that took all his invested players through its maze of challenges to the climatic finale that turned out to be nothing more than a ridiculous pun. Now the extent to which this is funny really depends on whether you were in the game or not - when absolutely everyone around the table is the butt of the joke then you should really be prepared to die by your own sword whether it is intelligent or not but it is a timely reminder that if you are not sensitive to people's passions then you have to respect the true chaotic neutral outcomes of your own sense of humour and be prepared to take the consequences.

There is a natural balance when it comes to social circles, ours included, in that like minded people will tend to stick together so we can muck around within a game to a degree. Indeed this is much of the pleasure as impossible worlds are full of wonderfully slapstick and ironic moments and indeed many games specifically nod to this - the Rolemaster critical strike tables being an endless source of demise- "Foes head is no longer available" etc. Many environments however require a more sombre, serious or sinister ambience such as Twelve Candles, Star Trek or Cthulu respectively but to be honest its all a matter of balance both in game and out. As long as people enjoy themselves then I'm fine with that - just don't be too precious about your precious.