How Much Do You Care About Novelty?

Scribe said:

Tropes, 100%.

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

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These days, it's often subversions all the way down too. Homer Simpson (the icon of the "sitcom dad" trope) was originally a subversion of ideal role model fathers in older shows like Leave it to Beaver. If a sitcom today came out with a dumb, bumbling dad character, or a cape film with a dark edgy anti-hero, no one would call it a subversion. So now authors subvert those tropes.

I'm left just wanting something genuine. Something inspired by the author's life, not inspired by a different trope.

John Dallman said:

I want some strangeness. I'm all burned out on Dark Lords, epic quests, and plot vouchers ("Collect all these things and trade them in for a conclusion!") I want to play characters that are different from my previous ones.

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I don't exactly disagree, but I do question how much of this comes from the book and how much comes from the table. I've played some deep interesting games in vanilla mainstream systems, and I've also played "Go find the artifact so you can stop the bad guy" campaigns in systems that had, on the surface, a very unique setting.

Retros_x said:

Mh, in terms of genre and setting I don't expect too much from the games itself, at the end the vibe of the game is largerly dependent on the DM. Even a Forgotten Realms D&D adventure can have a completely different flavor of fantasy depending on the DM running it.

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Oh, my previous point has already been made...

Retros_x said:

Where I LOVE innovation and new stuff is gameplay and systems. When I buy a new TTRPG I NEED them to try out something new. I still have my old games, they don't run away, I can play the old game when I want to play the old game. I don't to buy the same game with the same mechanics over and over again. I very much desire new takes, new experiments, new approaches to gameplay and mechanics.

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I think there's some value in novelty, but I also think the "tropes" of game design we have now exist for a reason. Usually that reason is because they work really well. "Roll some dice and add your bonuses, the DM decides if you succeed" is intuitive in a way that using cards or jenga blocks or thaco just aren't. When I really enjoy interacting with a game system, it's usually because it's well-designed, not because I've never seen it before.

stonehead said:

These days, it's often subversions all the way down too. Homer Simpson (the icon of the "sitcom dad" trope) was originally a subversion of ideal role model fathers in older shows like Leave it to Beaver. If a sitcom today came out with a dumb, bumbling dad character, or a cape film with a dark edgy anti-hero, no one would call it a subversion. So now authors subvert those tropes.

I'm left just wanting something genuine. Something inspired by the author's life, not inspired by a different trope.

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As far as other types of media, I probably agree.

When it comes to my "D&D-esque" gaming? I'm here for exactly that.

The name Homer Simpson is from Day of the Locust. As far as novelty, truthfully not too much I guess, as I find in long games, the novelty wears off. Sort of like the Joy Division song.

Tropes are useful story telling tools. And there are a huge number of them, just check out TVTropes. The problem with the fantasy genre is it tends to use the same few, over and over and over. And an overused trope is called a cliché - and worse, for a game, it's predictable. If the players don't know which trope to expect, they have to think about the actual situation and clues, not just apply meta-knowledge.

[I'm talking about narrative here, not rules, which should be as intuitive as possible for an RPG, so when a player says "I do X" they don't have to think about rules, just the situation.]

Paul Farquhar said:

Tropes are useful story telling tools. And there are a huge number of them, just check out TVTropes. The problem with the fantasy genre is it tends to use the same few, over and over and over. And an overused trope is called a cliché - and worse, for a game, it's predictable. If the players don't know which trope to expect, they have to think about the actual situation and clues, not just apply meta-knowledge.

[I'm talking about narrative here, not rules, which should be as intuitive as possible for an RPG, so when a player says "I do X" they don't have to think about rules, just the situation.]

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Given those perimeters, what would you consider is your favorite game?

Micah Sweet said:

Given those perimeters, what would you consider is your favorite game?

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I don't have one. So long as the rules stay out of my way, I don't care. You can use any trope with any RPG. The trick is to use the less obvious ones.

Reynard said:

Do you want comfortable tropes, or weird innovative ideas?

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Depends on the tropes:

Some well-worn tropes, like psionics treated as science instead of magic or "humans are special", are so offensive to me that I don't care how classic they are. But I also really enjoy being able to follow along with a story's thought process without having to do much overt thinking myself, which necessitates a heavy use of tropes.

I find the best way to both be comfortable and innovative is to liberally introduce tropes from outside a genre's usual toolbox, and to make subversions stand out so people know you're doing them.

stonehead said:

I think there's some value in novelty, but I also think the "tropes" of game design we have now exist for a reason. Usually that reason is because they work really well. "Roll some dice and add your bonuses, the DM decides if you succeed" is intuitive in a way that using cards or jenga blocks or thaco just aren't.

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I agree with you, but I don't need new games coming out using old mechanics - I just play the old games. I'd rather see new experiments that might fail (because it turns out using a jenga block for resolution is not great) than seeing the same slight variation of 5e for the 100th time.

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?

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Personally, I lean heavily towards the classics. Give me swords, sorcery, ancient ruins, cursed artifacts, and a brooding barbarian with a tragic past, and I’m all in. Think Conan the Barbarian, Excalibur, or the kind of grim fantasy where nobody trusts the wizard and everyone ends up in a tavern brawl by Act II.


I enjoy that sense of familiarity — not because it's predictable, but because it sets the stage for drama, tension, and those “did-that-just-happen” moments. Tropes are tools, and when used well, they hit hard.


I don’t mind if the game is a long campaign or a quick one-shot. The tone matters more than the length. Whether it’s a doomed quest or a cursed treasure hunt, if it feels like it could’ve been scrawled on a piece of parchment in a smoky medieval hall, I’m happy.


As for published books, I love them — but I’ll happily tweak a rule or re-flavor a monster if it gets me closer to that gritty, mythic vibe. Just enough homebrew to make it mine, but not so much that the cleric is casting spells with interpretive dance.

Retros_x said:

I agree with you, but I don't need new games coming out using old mechanics - I just play the old games. I'd rather see new experiments that might fail because it turns out using a jenga block for resolution is not great than seeing the same slight variation of 5e for the 100th time.

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I don't know. I think we have seen some pretty cool innovative current games built around old mechanics. The *Without Number games come to mind, for example.