I think those are all interesting. But interesting as a side experiment.

I don’t think the reason for the reliance on TV or film tropes in RPGs is a generational or technology thing. I think it’s a best fit thing. Which is also why there’s an increase in CRPG tropes in games.

Plays are different from movies primarily because of the active presence and involvement of an audience. Many of the standard tropes of plays…aside from technological limitations, evolved because of the need to be seen and heard by people present. Unless you are playing an RPG to a live in studio audience any recreation of these tropes will be interesting…but not needed.

Similarly, novels have a different function. I would argue that novels which would be good fits for RPGs are also those that tend to be good fits for movies. The kind of novels they forced us to read in High School English class…not so much. Literary novels aren’t really about characters doing things. In literary novels characters doing things are just the vehicle used to deliver whatever the message of the novel is. RPGs are about characters doing things…so again, interesting experiment, but not a natural fit.

Movies and TV by contrast are a natural fit. Leaving the edgy Avant guarde stuff aside, they are always about characters doing things. And aside from the occasional voice over, the lack of a narrator means that information about stuff gets conveyed via those characters and what they do…exactly like an RPG.

TV and movies are also a highly visual medium. I would argue that TTRPGs are a highly visual medium too. It’s just the screen is the inside of our forheads (so to speak). I know I’m certainly visualising the action theater of the mind style when I play. And there’s a reason why RPG art, and wonderful maps, and fancy minis play such a big role in the hobby…to provide common touch points for that visualization.

It’s thus pretty natural to start guiding those visuals off characters doing things using the tropes of characters doing things in TV and movies…because that’s the best most natural fit.

Maybe comic books were initially a better more natural fit…in the days before cable TV and multiplexes perhaps comics were a larger more ubiquitous touch point to draw from. Not surprisingly comic books are also about characters doing things with limited space for non character narration. But today…if you’re playing a game about characters doing things…it’s film.