How Much Do You Care About Novelty?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I want to be surprised.

It can be within familiar formats -- my long-running campaign featured a mountain kingdom that a dragon had chased all the dwarves out of, although the dwarves were more the Hatfields and McCoys than Thorin and Company -- but I'm not interested in watching endless reruns of stuff I know by heart at this point. I am much more excited about the new starter set being a remix of Keep on the Borderlands than being a 2025 update of it. (I have the OAR Borderlands book, for the record.)

 

[prabe]

I enjoy it when a game uses tropes familiar to everyone at the table. It eases communication and understanding of what's going on, and it means any inversion or subversion or unexpected mash-up is more likely to land. I don't expect a game to invent its own tropes, that rarely works.

 

[payn]

I’ll take it all if I can have it. Sometimes I feel like a nut, sometimes I don’t.

 

[aramis erak]

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?

Largely, some of each.

Does the particular genre matter?

Yes. Trek or Star Wars needs more existing tropes. Alien, rightfully, was a mix.
Sentinel Comics was a nice mix leaning towards novel for the market segment.
Mouse Guard was, at the time, brilliantly nouveau... unless you knew Burning Wheel or Burning Empires... in which case it was just Brilliant.

Do you want that familiarity or innovation from publishers, or in your homebrew?

I prefer it from publishers. I'm too lazy to do much homebrew these days.

Does the answer change if you are playing a campaign vs a one shot?

Yes. I love one shots of several games that I don't like campaign play of... including Feng Shui 2, Og Unearthed, Brute Squad. I found Feng Shui 2 just too hard to not feel samey-samey... Og would be good for 2-4 sessions, but the silly gets too much. Brute Squad, it's likely the PCs are all dead anyway. I'll tolerate a lot more funkiness in a game designed as a one-shot tool.

 

[Kromanjon]

I want weird and crazy and over the top. I want new and innovative and cutting edge. I want to be wowed and amazed and surprised.

At the same time I know I wont be able to place these games because they usually run on the presumption that everyone, players as well as GMs, have read both settings and rules.

 

[Umbran]

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, how do I say.. these are not in conflict, for me? At least, not in the senses that pop into my mind.

A trope (in my mind, at least) is a commonly used plot structure/device, theme, or set of character traits. Tropes are largely story elements, not game elements.

You can have a world (and lore) filled with new things, a set of rules with innovative structures and processes... and have the resulting fiction still be tropey as heck. We frequently see some of the most innovative game designs built for the specific purpose of supporting certain fictional tropes - Blades in the Dark is a great example here.

 

[John Dallman]

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.

Strangeness can come from many places. In Glorantha, it's built into the setting. When we played Pathfinder: Kingmaker under GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, it came from the ways that GURPS characters work differently from D&D or Pathfinder ones, plus the characters seeing themselves as public servants rather than trying to get rich quickly. In the homebrew D&D setting I play in, it's intrinsic to the DMing style.

 

[DragonLancer]

I guess I prefer the tried and tested trope approach. I like things to be comfortable and familiar. It's easier for most people to get into.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I value innovation in campaign settings far more than innovation in mechanics.

 

[MNblockhead]

The older I get, the less I care about novelty. I still like to try new things, but I don't chase novelty. I'm happy to play in a tried and true system and setting. I still like to check out what new things are out there, but that tends to involve reading about them rather than playing them. The one exception is at game conventions. I go to one game convention a year and at least half the games I play are games I've never played before.