Magic systems in many niche tabletop RPGs posit that magic is empowered by social transgression, in the sense that it’s not the nature of the particular transgression that matters – save perhaps insofar as it resonates with the desired effect, of course – but merely the magnitude of the transgression in question that’s important.
An obvious yet curiously rarely explored implication of this is that worn or carried magic items logically ought to be more powerful the more offensively tasteless and unfashionable they are.
(Another rarely explored implication is that it may be possible to compare the magnitude of seemingly-incommensurable transgressions simply by measuring how much of a boost they give to your magic. Somewhere out there, some enterprising wizard is attempting to devise a pair of trousers that’s literally worse than murder.)
