How Much Do You Care About Novelty?

RPGs usually exist in the same space as genre fiction, and genre fiction lives in this space between tried and true tropes, and innovative ideas.

So, when it comes to RPGs -- from your personal campaigns to published games/materials -- how much do you care about that relationship? Do you want comfortable tropes, or weird innovative ideas? Does the particular genre matter? Do you want that familiarity or innovation from publishers, or in your homebrew? Does the answer change if you are playing a campaign vs a one shot?

I'd prefer a game that does something well, rather than one that does something new.

Tropes, 100%.

I got tired of people thinking their subversions were clever a decade ago.

Hard skew toward weird. There's very little actually new after 50 years of gaming and nostalgia won't carry me more than a handful of sessions in most cases.

Yup, I'm pretty happy with a handful of tried and true tropes, recombined in endless configurations. Think of all the songs you can write with just 8 notes.

Reynard said:

RPGs usually exist in the same space as genre fiction, and genre fiction lives in this space between tried and true tropes, and innovative ideas.

So, when it comes to RPGs -- from your personal campaigns to published games/materials -- how much do you care about that relationship? Do you want comfortable tropes, or weird innovative ideas? Does the particular genre matter? Do you want that familiarity or innovation from publishers, or in your homebrew? Does the answer change if you are playing a campaign vs a one shot?

Click to expand...

I want the tropes. It helps me create characters that work within the fiction. There are enough tropes out there that I don’t feel like I need something truly innovative because sometimes what sets out to be innovative falls completely flat at the table. I’m not looking for a reinvention of the wheel.

I'm not much interested in novelty in rules... like kinky new dice tricks.
But I like settings that have at least some element of surprise to them... some doorways into the weird for those that go looking.., but I need a baseline of 'normal' to veer off of.

I'm sometimes interested in mechanics or settings that explore underdeveloped areas, but in the latter case I don't have much appreciation of deconstruction, and there's no assurance I'll like something just because its not done to death.

I love to be surprised, but also to be delighted, which means I’m usually looking for a fusion of familiar and new elements.

Mechanical Dream and Xer0 had too much novelty and not enough familiarity for me - couldn’t get a good mental foundation to build on. Tekumel is right on the edge for me. Forgotten Realms has too much familiarity, and its innovations mostly don’t appeal to me.

Where the familiarity is matters very much but is hard to spell out because it’s very twisted and idiosyncratic. As Roger Ebert said, “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it’s about it.” My familiar territory is a mix of prose style, imagery, narrative construction, musical riffs, editing style, associations of conversations about stuff with friends (and sometimes others), associations about things going on in my life at the time, and so on.

So I could say something like “Ligotti-influenced cosmic horror”, but that’s going to be influenced by my writing for Wraith, talking about horror with Rich, Geoff, Deirdre, and the gang, being happy about a totally unexpected social life, being intensely in love, and so on. I just accept that any accounting I give of genres and tropes and whatever will be incomplete and roll on.

Reynard said:

So, when it comes to RPGs -- from your personal campaigns to published games/materials -- how much do you care about that relationship? Do you want comfortable tropes, or weird innovative ideas? Does the particular genre matter? Do you want that familiarity or innovation from publishers, or in your homebrew? Does the answer change if you are playing a campaign vs a one shot?

Click to expand...

Here's the rub. If something weird or innovative becomes popular then it just becomes the norm. D&D was a weird and innovative game way back in 1974. Deadlands, a mash up of old west tropes with wizards, mad scientists, and samurai was pretty weird in 1996. It was even called The Weird West.

At the end of the day, I care more about quality than I do about innovation. Although it's delightful to find something both weird and good.