Anyone Else Tired of The Tyranny of Novelty?

[pemerton]

it is normal to complain about remakes and marvel movies in specifically the context that they are not creative because they are not hyper-original.

Maybe I read different critics from you. The criticisms I see of Marvel movies are that they are soulless and have nothing to say.

When I put that together with criticism of remakes, I see a more general criticism of films whose role is to provide comfort and affirm preconceptions. Maybe novelty is related to that, but it seems more like a means than an end.

 

[aramis erak]

I loved the Mustard analogy...
Some people want their favored every time, the same on bangers, hamburgers, club sandwiches, and even as chicken parts dip.
Some want to try every kind with every thing they routinely eat, to find which is best with what.
Both of those are the extremes... Many have different preferences for which foods get which (or no) mustard.
I like yellow mustard or most dijon mustards on my sausages in a long bun... but I don't want either on my hamburger from the local greasy spoon, because neither goes well with A1 steaksauce... And I want only dijon used in my tuna salad.

Likewise, I like class and level for dungeon fantasy well enough... but for sci-fi or even space fantasy, it's not a thing I find a good combination. (even if I did enjoy the Traveller T20 Playtest. And, yes, my name is in the book. The parts I love I backported to MegaTraveller last few times I ran it.)

But for a game, if it's not at least a novel mixture, there is literally zero reason for me to buy it.
And many novel mixtures don't appeal for various reasons. The brain behind Legend of the Flame Princess makes his take on differencing from BX... a new encumbrance system, and an emphasis on weird fantasy, and on providing adult imagery. It's one of the most novel pseudoclones. DCC is a different kind of novel BX pseudoclone... Neither is a true clone; not being a true clone is what makes them valuable. C&C is an AD&D pseudoclone... it has the same classes and races, but a different engine under the hood, monster compatible with AD&D. Labyrinth Lord? It's only real change that struck me from the free version was a switch to ascending AC as an option... it's value as a BX replacement went away the day that WotC restored the BX, BECMI, and Cyclopedia availability on DriveThru. Especially since they now allow PoD on some of them.

I only run old school D&D as a one-shot or mini-campaign, because I only run it when a group basically begs me to. And then I use Cyclopedia. (I've 3 copies from the 90's.)

I'm always seeking the novel experience; complacency with a given setting is not something I've ever experienced. Pendragon comes closest, but most of my campaigns end because player actions break the timeline.

I've run several adventures multiple times over the years... WFRP TEW, Traveller The Traveller Adventure (TTA), Pendragon Great Pendragon Campaign, Firefly The Wedding Planners.... and every time they have run differently. TTA was a very differennt each time, as I was using different rules each time... CT, then CT+B7:MP, then MT, then MT+CT core trade, then TTNE, then T4, and finally, MGT 1E.
Hoard of the dragon queen? Run it 3 times. Felt same-y every time. Only the in-character idiocy of one player and the in-character play of another in the same group made the 3rd run feel different. (J and B: it was a hoot, thanks!)

Novelty isn't a tyranny. No one's making the OP buy the novel stuff. But novel is what markets need to stay vibrant. And for many, probably most, a certain amount of novelty is essential.

 

[Hussar]

I agree with the OP wholeheartedly. Particularly when it comes to D&D (and D&D-like) adventures.

There is a perception that every Adventure Path/Campaign needs to be unique, and cover completely new ground. Paizo is like this but so is 5e WOC. All the themes are totally unique and get more and more extreme as the go on. Consequently more and more distant from a base campaign setting. It starts with good old fashioned dragon cult slaying and ends up following carnivals through the faewild, hellscapes and ice-worlds. Pathfinder was the same, it started with Rise of the Runelords and ends with some weird stuff - futuristic/invasions/Cthulhu/carnivals/police

I think this is a weakness in editorial expectations picking the adventures. Not everything needs to be unique, novel or totally different from what preceded it. As role players a lot of the unique experience comes from the interaction of different characters with the main plot. We just need to have different challenges, locations and enemies so we’re not replaying the exact same stuff and spoiling the surprise.

Still catching up on the thread, but, I have to ask, what?

WotC has done nothing but retread well worn paths over and over again. Good grief, we've got TWO Ravenloft books now, Ghosts of Saltmarsh (reprints and updates, no original material), Tales of the Yawning Portal (reprints and updates, no original material), Against the ... err sorry... Storm Kings Thunder, and that's just naming a few. All the themes are totally unique? Good grief, I'm not sure they could get any less unique. When you are directly reprinting several modules for your new edition, it's pretty strange to complain that the modules aren't treading well trod paths.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, heh, @doctorbadwolf, I imagine it comes as no surprise that I disagree with you.

What I've seen in the hobby and the genre is the tyranny of the nostalgic. Any new ideas are immediately met with outright hostility and ridicule. You want to change X? Oh, HELL no. That would contradict some article written in Dragon Magazine in 1994, so, you CAN'T change that. It's CANON.

And the Canon Police are very, very active. Any and all changes get resisted very strongly. Things MUST BE done the way they were before and YOU MUST NOT change things is the repeated refrain, over and over again. Heck, things are judged, not on whether they are actually good or bad in their own right, but how closely they toe the line of what came before.

WotC add Dragonborn and Tieflings to Greyhawk!! Oh HELLS NO. The wailing and gnashing of teeth can be heard all over the place. Make psionics just another type of magic utilizing existing mechanics because it gets the job done and it's much easier to learn? Oh HELLS NO. Not a chance. On and on and on.

Good grief, invoking Tolkien is the fantasy genre equivalent of Godwinning a thread.

So, no, I'm really not seeing what you are seeing. What I AM seeing is 5e, finally, after what, 7 years, FINALLY starting to bang out some original material that isn't reprint or rehash of what came before. Like I said to @TheSword above, what would you consider to be the first original WotC 5e adventure? I'm thinking Candlekeep, but, I might have missed something. Maybe Dragon Heist - but, then, that leads straight into Dungeons of the Mad Mage which is 100% rehash.

So, what would you call the first original 5e work?

 

[TheSword]

Ok, heh, @doctorbadwolf, I imagine it comes as no surprise that I disagree with you.

What I've seen in the hobby and the genre is the tyranny of the nostalgic. Any new ideas are immediately met with outright hostility and ridicule. You want to change X? Oh, HELL no. That would contradict some article written in Dragon Magazine in 1994, so, you CAN'T change that. It's CANON.

And the Canon Police are very, very active. Any and all changes get resisted very strongly. Things MUST BE done the way they were before and YOU MUST NOT change things is the repeated refrain, over and over again. Heck, things are judged, not on whether they are actually good or bad in their own right, but how closely they toe the line of what came before.

WotC add Dragonborn and Tieflings to Greyhawk!! Oh HELLS NO. The wailing and gnashing of teeth can be heard all over the place. Make psionics just another type of magic utilizing existing mechanics because it gets the job done and it's much easier to learn? Oh HELLS NO. Not a chance. On and on and on.

Good grief, invoking Tolkien is the fantasy genre equivalent of Godwinning a thread.

So, no, I'm really not seeing what you are seeing. What I AM seeing is 5e, finally, after what, 7 years, FINALLY starting to bang out some original material that isn't reprint or rehash of what came before. Like I said to @TheSword above, what would you consider to be the first original WotC 5e adventure? I'm thinking Candlekeep, but, I might have missed something. Maybe Dragon Heist - but, then, that leads straight into Dungeons of the Mad Mage which is 100% rehash.

So, what would you call the first original 5e work?

It’s all original, with the exception of the yawning portal and Ghosts of Saltmarsh which are reprints. The story to Tyranny of Dragons is a story along a theme. Princes of the Apocalypse is a new story along the theme of the temple of elemental evil. It’s possible to tell a new story with an old theme.

The search for complete originality is an unreasonable expectation and what’s more, I don’t think it’s what people want.

Though to answer your question in the way you want it answering I would say that Out of the Abyss is a truly original campaign.

 

[TheSword]

Still catching up on the thread, but, I have to ask, what?

WotC has done nothing but retread well worn paths over and over again. Good grief, we've got TWO Ravenloft books now, Ghosts of Saltmarsh (reprints and updates, no original material), Tales of the Yawning Portal (reprints and updates, no original material), Against the ... err sorry... Storm Kings Thunder, and that's just naming a few. All the themes are totally unique? Good grief, I'm not sure they could get any less unique. When you are directly reprinting several modules for your new edition, it's pretty strange to complain that the modules aren't treading well trod paths.

Are you unaware of the Jungle Campaign, the Ice campaign, the Hell Campaign the Library Campaign and the new Carnival campaign?

I want SOME campaigns that take place in a normal fantasy kingdom

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm not sure if there is any real purpose here, I just get frustrated by the attitude that greater novelty is inherently better and retelling classic stories is some sort of moral failure.

The big problem I'd say is that a lot of the stories being retold aren't "classic stories", but rather they're often simplistic stories, drawing on a few conceptual elements from classic stories, but with nothing to say, and often little of the heart of the "classic story".

Yeah, novelty is overrated. Execution is king: a well told story is good, whether it is original or derivative.

This is exactly the issue though in many cases.

The story is selling largely or even solely because it's using an "established IP", even though the story itself is not particularly well-executed. This is a big part of why people are getting so tired of this.

 

[Aldarc]

Are you unaware of the Jungle Campaign, the Ice campaign, the Hell Campaign the Library Campaign and the new Carnival campaign?

I want SOME campaigns that take place in a normal fantasy kingdom

I assume that you are using "normal fantasy kingdom" fairly liberally since you also seemed to describe Paizo's Rise of the Runelords as a more normal fantasy kingdom, despite that it's not a kingdom at all. The closest to a "kingdom" is Magnimar, which is more of a city-state in the likes of Baldur's Gate or Waterdeep. The adventure is also something of an odd beast really since the tone shifts to a murder mystery/haunted house story in the middle and then ends in a ruined fantasy "Tibet."

The "Jungle Campaign" of Chult seems like a normal fantasy land, albeit one in a non-European inspired kingdom. The "Hell campaign" starts off in the highly iconic Baldur's Gate, which seems like a normal fantasy kingdom/city-state. The "Ice campaign" takes place in equally iconic Icewind Dale, which struck me as a fairly normal fantasy land. Considering that 5e adventures, such as Lost Mines of Phandelver, Dragons of Icespire Peak, Tales of the Yawning Portal, Ghost of Saltmarsh, etc. are mostly "normal fantasy kingdom" as well, I think that that you already have plenty of SOME campaigns already that take place in a normal fantasy kingdom.

But maybe I am missing something about your sense of what makes a "normal fantasy kingdom" and how you are lacking that in what WotC is publishing. It also seems that there are plenty of 3pp who are publishing such adventures as well.

 

[TheSword]

I assume that you are using "normal fantasy kingdom" fairly liberally since you also seemed to describe Paizo's Rise of the Runelords as a more normal fantasy kingdom, despite that it's not a kingdom at all. The closest to a "kingdom" is Magnimar, which is more of a city-state in the likes of Baldur's Gate or Waterdeep. The adventure is also something of an odd beast really since the tone shifts to a murder mystery/haunted house story in the middle and then ends in a ruined fantasy "Tibet."

The "Jungle Campaign" of Chult seems like a normal fantasy land, albeit one in a non-European inspired kingdom. The "Hell campaign" starts off in the highly iconic Baldur's Gate, which seems like a normal fantasy kingdom/city-state. The "Ice campaign" takes place in equally iconic Icewind Dale, which struck me as a fairly normal fantasy land. Considering that 5e adventures, such as Lost Mines of Phandelver, Dragons of Icespire Peak, Tales of the Yawning Portal, Ghost of Saltmarsh, etc. are mostly "normal fantasy kingdom" as well, I think that that you already have plenty of SOME campaigns already that take place in a normal fantasy kingdom.

But maybe I am missing something about your sense of what makes a "normal fantasy kingdom" and how you are lacking that in what WotC is publishing. It also seems that there are plenty of 3pp who are publishing such adventures as well.

Normal fantasy from a D&D point of view would be the kitchen sink settings of the Sword Coast and Greyhawk. But could be dropped into anyone’s campaign with relative effort… Breland in Eberron for instance.

Rise of the Runelords starts in kitchen sink setting. Standpoint, is kitchen sink as is Turtleback Ferry. Magnimar is pretty much archetypal fantasy metropolis and could stand in for Waterdeep or Greyhawk without changing the adventure.

I find quality of 3pp varies dramatically. Can you point to any that are particularly good? I’ve seen Tales of the Old Margreve, which was very good, though again, heavily themed.

 

[Hussar]

Are you unaware of the Jungle Campaign, the Ice campaign, the Hell Campaign the Library Campaign and the new Carnival campaign?

I want SOME campaigns that take place in a normal fantasy kingdom

The Ice Campaign? As in the one that takes place in the 10 Towns? How is that not a normal fantasy kingdom. Even granting the Chult campaign, which, frankly, since it's borrowing from all sorts of older sources, is hardly particularly original, the other three you list all came out in the last 12 months. So, out of 7 years, you've had 6 years of "normal fantasy kingdom" barring one example.

Let's see - Phandelver, Hoard, Princes, Out of the Abyss (a large chunk of that takes place in "normal fantasy kingdom"), Strahd, Storm King's Thunder, Tales of the Yawning Portal, Waterdeep Dragon Heist/Dungeon of the Mad Mage, and Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Rime of the Frost Maiden.

How many "normal fantasy kingdom" adventures do you need? I mean, heck, Candlekeep Mysteries all take place in the Sword Coast. Several of them take place in or around Baldur's Gate. It's hardly the "Library Campaign" if none of the adventures are actually set in a library.

So, yeah, I'm thinking that you don't have a whole lot of room to talk here. You've got more than enough "normal fantasy kingdom" adventures to last you for the next several years. Can the rest of us please have some thing new that ISN'T set in a "normal fantasy kingdom"?