I think it's probably hard to impossible to come up with completely new ideas for RPG's today. Just about every possible mechanic, campaign/genre idea, and story idea has pretty much been done. The only thing new is in how they are used or put together.
Anyways, just my opinion.
Yes, this is true, but I don't see "newness" as equating with quality, real innovation, or depth. What you describe is what I would call "horizontal" value, it is the breadth and diversity of ideas--the "landscape," if you will, that is explored. Originality comes from discovering a new pocket in that landscape, which you say has pretty much been colonized. I pretty much agree, but only if we're talking about the surface of the landscape. We have mapped the entire earth, but only on the surface level--what about the depths of the oceans? And even more so, the depths of our own souls? This would be the "vertical" axis, which is depth, meaning, substance, and what could be called "mythic resonance."
This is why you might find a movie, for example, covers no new territory but is still deeply meaningful. Or vice versa: a clever new approach to story but with little depth or humanity (Quentin Tarantino made a career out of this).
This is not to say there are new ideas out there, but that we shouldn't be concentrating on the search for the next thing if we're only looking at surfaces, which becomes a kind of shallowness and is inherently a doomed proposition.
In that sense, in terms of "verticality," there is infinite room for development in RPGs, both in terms of aesthetic quality and depth of meaning. I mean, I'd rather see "just another vanilla fantasy setting" done well and with beauty and meaning then a novel idea without anything deeply resonant. The former become enduring classics, the latter fads that fade away and die. To put it another way, not all vanilla is created equally. Compare Ben & Jerry's organic vanilla ice cream to your garden variety supermarket ice cream.
Personally I think the best combo is vertical depth coupled with fresh approaches to mythic-archetypal material. In other words, universal archetypes and themes in culturally relevant or fresh forms. But the emphasis is on the "deep structure," not surface novelty. But it is still always nice to see fresh approaches at old themes, so that the vanilla is subtly textured with a variety of flavors in infinite possible combination.
(You're allowed to jack your own thread, right?
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