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Message: <blockquote data-quote="stonehead" data-source="post: 9637765" data-attributes="member: 7047885">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.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.Oh, my previous point has already been made...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.</blockquote>