Alien forms of gameplay/game design you've encountered?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

In one of the later books (I forget which one exactly), one of the characters learns to fly by falling and being distracted at the last second, causing them to accidentally "miss" hitting the ground. It's one of the sillier parts of the series, and that's saying something.

Life, The Universe and Everything. It's the planet where he officially meets Agrajag -- another incredibly wild concept -- after falling off a flying party where Thor keeps hitting on his crush.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Aimless Game: This is a game that might have a very interesting, highly detailed setting where theoretically the PCs could be involved in a myriad of adventures. Unfortuantely, the game doesn't really offer any details on what the PCs are supposed to be doing within the setting.

I played in this as a Daggerheart intro at my FLGS. The DM just crossed his arms and asked us what we wanted to do outside this semi-empty house. We ended up literally walking halfway across the continent following some tracks, because we thought that's what the adventure was. He told us that if we encountered anything interesting, he'd let us know.

I could have strangled the guy.

 

[Pedantic]

I've had some strange experiences that I think of as "Schrodinger's Mechanic" type play. The game has rules for resolving something, those rules are used sometimes, unless the GM has decided not to use them. There's shades of this in conventional rulesets, "don't roll if the results don't matter" kind of leans that way, but I've been in games where instead we'd go from using standard skill checks to climb things, to suddenly interacting with a bespoke climbing system for a specific cliff that didn't involve using skill checks at all (it was a push your luck dicepool thing) and back again.

 

[Deset Gled]

I've had some strange experiences that I think of as "Schrodinger's Mechanic" type play. The game has rules for resolving something, those rules are used sometimes, unless the GM has decided not to use them. There's shades of this in conventional rulesets, "don't roll if the results don't matter" kind of leans that way, but I've been in games where instead we'd go from using standard skill checks to climb things, to suddenly interacting with a bespoke climbing system for a specific cliff that didn't involve using skill checks at all (it was a push your luck dicepool thing) and back again.

To be blunt, this is how many narrative-focused RPGs feel to me. You can often accomplish whatever you want as long as nobody thinks it's important. But the instant something becomes relevant to the story, you activate extra hoops to get through the exact same task you could previously do with your eyes closed.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To be blunt, this is how many narrative-focused RPGs feel to me. You can often accomplish whatever you want as long as nobody thinks it's important. But the instant something becomes relevant to the story, you activate extra hoops to get through the exact same task you could previously do with your eyes closed.

Well, of course that's exactly the case; the resolution is about doing something that's story relevant; its difficulty ("hoops") may relate to how difficult it actually is, but that's not what that kind of game considers important.