And yet it’s been done before! It’s what came before our trope-heavy round of games we have today! Specifically, I’m thinking PbtA games and Cortex Plus games, but obvs lots and lots of other games that use genre shorthand/overused cliches to get a lot of information across fast.

I know Cam doesn’t want to talk history, but again I refer to OG D&D. You bust out the red box, you’re not going to produce “a story like Tolkien/Howard/Moorcock,” nor did the creators intend for that to happen way-back-when. Situation is represented by a map, tension is presented by mechanical challenge, resolution is handled in a wargame-y way: do damage and/or appeal to the ref for a ruling.

And I get that the easy-peasy way to break the circuit here is to just say “but that’s not really an RPG!” And boy oh boy is that a big can o’ worms. 

I have a whole other thread I want to get into tomorrow. It is basically “have RPGs been marching relentlessly toward an ideal experience (with today’s heavy reliance on tropes being the latest technology put toward achieving that ideal), or do RPG fashions evolve and splinter, with no particular ideal in view or even possible?”

I feel like it’s probably both. Ish. All the arts continue to evolve into extremely esoteric forms, but most of the audience still likes a nice melody/rewarding narrative/sculpture or painting that looks something like its subject/plays in acts on a stage with props.

As intellectually excited as I can get about very interesting new forms, I gotta say I usually would rather read a Stephen King novel than some post-narrative tone poem. (But I love that I can find something weird and challenging out there as well.)