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?
Why not both?
Honestly, I'll take either, so long as it's done well.
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult, but genuinely, a trope-y RPG that's exceptionally well-made is great, and a novel RPG with brings in really cool ideas is great. I've played and enjoyed both in recent years.
Rule-wise, I think it's important that rules keep developing. Frankly, RPGs are much, much, much better designed now, in 2025, than they were in 2005, let alone before than, hell even than 2015, on average. And I say better for a reason, I don't say "differently". Better. Designers understand rules better, they think about them more thoroughly, they make actual thoughtful choices on which rules to use and so on. Things aren't perfect but there's a clear direction of improvement.
We also have more diversity in actually-solid rules systems than ever before. Even when very old systems are used, particularly d100 role-under, they're intelligently and with care in most cases, for games where that makes sense.
The only thing I hard-oppose is "weird dice", because literally there's nothing mathematically you can do with those that you couldn't just do with normal dice (or, if there is, I have yet to see it, I am open to seeing it if people have examples), and frankly every game I've played with them, they were just an excuse to get more money out of the group and maybe try and lock new gamers into their "ecosystem".
Also in terms of settings, honestly we're missing many RPGs that actually, properly support a lot of fairly common "vibes" in SF/F, ones which have well-established tropes in many cases, but RPGs are simply not be made for (apart from rizz-less half-arsed 5E-based attempts, which are always poorly-designed nothingburgers and/or hopelessly compromised by being "5E compatible" so far).
Although it's delightful to find something both weird and good.
Yeah this is part of why I've been so keen on Rowan, Rook and Deckard, and Grant Howitt's output in general. Weird and wild settings with something to say and some actual ideas, combined with rules that actually work well, and for the most part, support the setting and the fiction. Also there's clear improvement - Heart is flat-out better designed for what it is doing than Spire was (and Spire was already good), and I'm hoping Hollows will continue this trend!
