Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I do get where you are coming from. Take Magic for example. Growing up my parents would not allow me to get into trading card games like that. I bet I would have had a lot of fun with it, but they claimed (rightfully) that it would be costly. MTG lingo, and most other card game lingo, is foreign to me. It's all a bit weird because I have no experience or knowledge with it. Same with other tabletops like Warhammer. I played one game of that, liked it a bit, went to the local comic shop and local hobby shop and was just overwhelmed with not only the cost, but the sheer amount of lore and stuff that I would have to pick up on.
Honestly though, if you gave D&D a chance with a laid back group I think it would be up your alley Jeff. The only real limit to what can happen is your imagination. I've played with a group that was super serious and didn't really allow for any dicking off aside from getting your character drunk, which I did a lot, but with a less serious group there are some real shenanigans to be had. To me that is a big part of the fun. Just basically dicking around outside of combat.
True story, the second ever serious campaign I played was a custom one. I was really inexperienced at the time so the group decided they would do a test run of a custom campaign their DM had been working on. It wasn't overly complex at the time, but we were exploring this crypt. It had a few basic fights, most just to try to teach me how combat worked and to show me what different classes were capable of. Our party leader was a guy playing a rogue, I was a fighter just because it seemed the least complex to play, we had a cleric and a wizard. We enter into this room that is pitch black, save a tiny beam of light coming from a hole in the ceiling. The light is shining on this jug that is just sitting on a rock. Next to the rock, is an unlit torch. the DM finishes describing the room and the jug, so the rogue approaches it and taps it to see if there is liquid inside. The DM confirms it is filled with a viscous liquid. Literally the second he finishes speaking, our wizard shouts out "I drink it." The DM replies "You feel a burning sensation as the liquid travels down your throat and upon reaching your stomach you instantly feel sick. Congratulations you just drank oil that was supposed to be used to help light the torch."