Oh, also, I think that one of the places where Indie games getting lots of play/status/attention is through one shots and con play probably has something to do with our level of reliance on cliche.

Like, yes, there’s a long history of it in RPGs and very good reasons. But the places where in my personal history RPGs have left it behind is where I’m playing with folks I’m actually personally embedded with in games that last for enough time for us to develop some level of joint meaning.

When you’re mostly playing with semi-strangers in one shots, you have to import a lot of meaning pre-loaded, and cliche is an easy way to do that.

Also, the other genre of indie play “hop around like a frog on a hot plate trying to make sense of each others nonsensical contributions in anything that resembles coherence” is — in addition to being something lots of folks actually enjoy — possibly a reaction to the same pressure with an affirmative “sure we can play without cliche, we just have to improvise!”

Of course, a lot of the improvisation ends up verging to cliche.