Quote from: estar;757169I consider Martin Game of Thrones as the standard of how to take bog standard fantasy tropes and make them new again. He does this by treating Westeros as a real place that happens to have magic and fantastic elements.

The trick of Westeros isn't in kewl stuff but in creating interesting characters doing interesting things.

Actually, I think he took a fairly standard historical fiction of the sort that has fallen from popularity, added loads of gratuitous sex and violence, and ended up with a series that came across as very original because:

A) It was marketed as fantasy, and
B) Fantasy has become such a tired genre that realistic historical intrigue was strikingly original to many fans.

Without changing very much (and certainly not the character-driven stuff that fans find so engaging), a Song of Ice and Fire could have been historical fiction. Would it have been as popular? I doubt it. Sadly, for reasons I can't fathom, a large part of the fiction market today has an unshakeable antipathy to history.

Quote from: Haffrung;758915Actually, I think he took a fairly standard historical fiction of the sort that has fallen from popularity, added loads of gratuitous sex and violence, and ended up with a series that came across as very original because:

Wasn't it at least partially based on the War of the Roses?

Quote from: TristramEvans;758314I find weird settings over-rated. What's original about a game isnt the setting elements or location, but the choices & personalities of the people playing. I could use the same dungeon layout for 30 years and the game would be entirely unique to each group that went through.

This so much.  If your dungeon is boring, it's because you lack interaction and moving parts in your dungeon.  Dressing up the scenery doesn't fundamentally fix it.

Nothing against theme dungeons - if you have the basics (interactivity, choices, consequences) in place themed dungeons can be awesome.  But if your dungeon is boring, it's probably because you don't have those things, and adding the themey-ness won't fix the fundamental issue.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;758073No. Designing a challenge which is to be solved by wacky pantomime hi-jinks is.

It's not an interesting decision.  It's a quirk.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;758073"Interesting characters doing interesting things" is the holy-fucking-grail. It's amazing to me how many referees seem to miss this very simple thing.

I'll add in "making interesting choices" as well.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;758073The premise of this thread is that gamers are "hidebound," "retreading cliches" rather than being 'creative' or 'original' or whatever it is that ShipLock seems to think is missing from 'the hobby.' The premise is flawed, as it assumes that 'originality' would inherently make the hobby better. For the reasons cited in this thread, that ain't necessarily so.

If the hobby is stagnant, it's (IMO) because we've spent twenty years stripping players of decisions outside of what feats they're going to take in their character build.

Quote from: Steerpike;758121But... I care.  Lots of gamers care.  Any gamer dissatisfied with the current overabundance of cliched dungeons and the relative scarcity of weird, novel dungeons cares.  People like me, Shipyard Locked, and some of the other voices in this thread...

What makes a game interesting is tension, hard choices, difficult decisions, and complex situations where your actions have consequences.  If things are boring, it's almost certainly because you're missing those things.  As most railroady games are.

I'm not arguing that many games can get boring and cliche.  I'm disagreeing that the cause is the wallpaper on the walls, rather than the lack of any meaningful interaction or decision-making.

It's like the common RPG bullshit that "humans are boring characters".  Because, you know, almost every character in fiction *forever* has been human, and they're clearly all boring.

As others have pointed out, nobody seems to think aSoIaF is dull, and that's not even "by the numbers", it's actually got less "weird" elements than most fantasy.  What does it have?  Tension, interesting characters, consequences of actions and a living world.

Quote from: Steerpike;758121Ultimately, I think we can agree to disagree as to whether creators should be focused on just keeping old tropes from going stale or perfecting the execution of more original concepts.

Doing "weird" and "novel" is fine - once you've got the basics down.  Picasso learned to draw and paint very, very traditionally before he started in abstract art.  That's why he's a master, and you can't tell the difference between many abstract artists and children randomly splotching paint on paper.

You've gotta have the basics down before you can advance the art.

Quote from: robiswrongAs others have pointed out, nobody seems to think aSoIaF is dull, and that's not even "by the numbers", it's actually got less "weird" elements than most fantasy. What does it have? Tension, interesting characters, consequences of actions and a living world.

Absolutely.  I am an enormous fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, and have been for over a decade.  It's probably my single favorite fantasy series apart from perhaps the Gormenghast books.  And it's not especially weird, you're totally right.  If anything it embraces the whole medieval fantasy thing way more authentically than most works in the genre.  In a certain sense it actually subverts a lot of standard fantasy tropes, I suppose, because it doesn't sanitize anything and depicts a medieval society unflinchingly, but it's still a very generic world in a lot of ways.

But I also love China Miéville's Bas-Lag books, and those are weird as all get out - and part of why I like them isn't just their execution, their plots and characters, it's their strangeness, the fact that they have mosquito-people and Time Golems and punishment factories and demented arachnid aesthete-gods.  Their weirdness is part of the draw; the fact that they employ non-traditional tropes is relevant to their appeal, and I don't think it can be dismissed as, like, a decorative element.  Those books also include well-told stories and well-drawn characters and everything, and those are still fundamental in their own right, but the weird is more than just set dressing.

I'm not saying the weird needs to overwhelm the generic entirely, or that weird settings and games are the only worthwhile ones.  That would just be replacing one homogeneity with a different one.  Rather, I'm saying that I think there's room for both.  If I seem to be critiquing generic settings, it's only in saying that they're a bit too predominant, that I wish there was a little more diversity.

Quote from: robiswrongDoing "weird" and "novel" is fine - once you've got the basics down. Picasso learned to draw and paint very, very traditionally before he started in abstract art. That's why he's a master, and you can't tell the difference between many abstract artists and children randomly splotching paint on paper.

You've gotta have the basics down before you can advance the art.

Couldn't agree more.  I think most novice GMs are probably best served by starting with very familiar, generic modules and dungeons.  That's certainly what I did.

But veteran creators who are producing products for the community at large - from them I'd rather see a few stranger, more innovative products.  Not that generic products need to stop being made, or anything.  Just that variety is a good thing.

And I agree that dungeons that fail may not be suffering from a bad theme so much as bad moving parts.  But that doesn't mean that themes and scenery and aesthetics don't mean anything, or aren't worthy of consideration.

Quote from: Steerpike;758936And I agree that dungeons that fail may not be suffering from a bad theme so much as bad moving parts.  But that doesn't mean that themes and scenery and aesthetics don't mean anything, or aren't worthy of consideration.

And I don't think anybody is really arguing with that.

I think what people arguing is what they're interpreting as "your dungeon is boring?  Stick it in a weird setting!" which they view as counterproductive.

If your dungeon is boring, fix the basics.  If you've already got interesting dungeons, weirdness can add spice and novelty, but spice and novelty don't mean jack if the meat is rotten.

I mean, give me a well-cooked steak and I can eat that day after day.  If you've got a crappy piece of meat that's not cooked well, all the sauces and garnish you can pile on it won't help.

To continue the book analogy, it's not that the weirdness is just set dressing, especially if it's written well.  But if it's not written well, and isn't engaging, and doesn't have interesting characters or plots, the weirdness won't help it one damn bit.

Fair enough, robiswrong, and I don't disagree with anything you said there.

On the flipside, it seems to me that no one here who's defending the idea of a non-traditional dungeon is suggesting that things like the basics of good design are unimportant, or that weird dungeons don't need to be thought-out and run properly.  Of course an original idea doesn't an interesting dungeon make.  I don't think Shipyard Locked was arguing that all a boring dungeon needed to become un-boring was a change of decoration or a weird setting - he was just noticing that a lot of the common dungeon locales have become somewhat overused.

I hope we can all agree that yes, of course even the most unorthodox dungeon needs to be well-made to be effective.  But that doesn't mean, I think, that the desire to make weird, unusual dungeons is at all misguided or foolish, or even, in a sense, "unnecessary."

EDIT: Thought of a better way of saying what I wanted to say: the basics/fundamentals of dungeoncraft do matter, but that doesn't mean they're all that matters.

Or, to put it another way: form is absolutely important, but that doesn't mean that content doesn't count.

Quote from: Steerpike;758948I hope we can all agree that yes, of course even the most unorthodox dungeon needs to be well-made to be effective.  But that doesn't mean, I think, that the desire to make weird, unusual dungeons is at all misguided or foolish, or even, in a sense, "unnecessary."

Right. Furthermore, while I can understand why homebrewers might avoid the unusual because it is more difficult, it seems odd that professional designers working for pay haven't led the way in pioneering slightly more creative fare. Why are the video game designers (cliché-dependent as they are too) showing more effort overall?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;759066Right. Furthermore, while I can understand why homebrewers might avoid the unusual because it is more difficult, it seems odd that professional designers working for pay haven't led the way in pioneering slightly more creative fare. Why are the video game designers (cliché-dependent as they are too) showing more effort overall?

they get paid more.
If your job pays more there is more competition for places so you cherry pick the most able.

Quote from: Shipyard LockedRight. Furthermore, while I can understand why homebrewers might avoid the unusual because it is more difficult, it seems odd that professional designers working for pay haven't led the way in pioneering slightly more creative fare. Why are the video game designers (cliché-dependent as they are too) showing more effort overall?

Yeah, if anything the situation is the opposite.  A very quick comb through some forums and blogs quickly turns up such gems as Planet Motherucker and The Clockwork Jungle, such inventive monsters as the Lichwife and the CronoMagno Golem... yet if you unfocus your eyes, Golarion, Points of Light, Greyhawk, Faerun, even the Warhammer World, they all look kinda the same (not that they're all bad, they're just rather samey).

This is moving beyond the dungeon, or course, but I really do think it has to do with the idea of risk.  Designers and publishers want their game to succeed, they see what's succeeded in the past (D&D!) and then they tend to make a version of that thing.  Even with stuff like Shadowrun, which is a great setting in a lot of ways, it feels a bit like they felt "well, we'd better include Orks and Elves..."

But there's a gorwing number of exceptions to this, especially from smaller publishers and those consciously making science fiction or horror games rather than strictly fantasy ones.

Quote from: robiswrong;758927Wasn't it at least partially based on the War of the Roses?

Yes. And while Martin was very much a sci-fi, fantasy, comic-book, weird-stuff fan and author in his early days, he has admitted that in the last 20 years he reads a lot more history and historical fiction than fantasy. History is more chock full of drama than the entire fantasy genre. But again, for reasons I don't understand, many younger readers today will not read history or historical fiction. And I'm not talking about just 14 year olds. Those 14 who read only fantasy have become 44 year olds who read only fantasy. And that's kinda sad. Maybe the desire for escapism has become so desperate that the escape has to be into other worlds altogether, and not just into another time or place on earth. Or perhaps history is too unfamiliar and weird for an audience that doesn't want to be challenged at all.

Quote from: Haffrung;759087Yes. And while Martin was very much a sci-fi, fantasy, comic-book, weird-stuff fan and author in his early days, he has admitted that in the last 20 years he reads a lot more history and historical fiction than fantasy. History is more chock full of drama than the entire fantasy genre. But again, for reasons I don't understand, many younger readers today will not read history or historical fiction. And I'm not talking about just 14 year olds. Those 14 who read only fantasy have become 44 year olds who read only fantasy. And that's kinda sad. Maybe the desire for escapism has become so desperate that the escape has to be into other worlds altogether, and not just into another time or place on earth. Or perhaps history is too unfamiliar and weird for an audience that doesn't want to be challenged at all.

I read mainly history books and my feeling is people who don't like them sometimes just haven't found the right kind of history book yet. It is like reading anything else, you have to find a category that interests you. With history you don't just have different time periods but also different approaches and lenses. I think most peoples' primary experience with history is through overviews covering a long period of time in a specific place or region (i.e. A Concise History of Byzantium). That may have something to do with the difficulty they experience getting into it.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;759094I read mainly history books and my feeling is people who don't like them sometimes just haven't found the right kind of history book yet. It is like reading anything else, you have to find a category that interests you. With history you don't just have different time periods but also different approaches and lenses. I think most peoples' primary experience with history is through overviews covering a long period of time in a specific place or region (i.e. A Concise History of Byzantium). That may have something to do with the difficulty they experience getting into it.

Absolutely. Consider the relative success of certain sensationalist types of historical documentary or drama like most of the History channel's fare or The Tudors.

My Dark Albion campaign has certainly been a big success, being historical, different from standard games, and yet not "subverting" old tropes.

Quote from: Steerpike;758121I think you've admitted that weird dungeons can be done well, it's just tough to do so.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;759066Furthermore, while I can understand why homebrewers might avoid the unusual because it is more difficult . . .

Are you two fuckers done sucking each other's dicks for being so much cleverer than the rest of us yet?


Nothing you clowns are describing is hard. Doing it well can be. But the thing is, the exact same thing is true of working with familiar tropes. Fun is fun, and boring is boring, no matter how you dress it up.

There was a post I read years ago on Big Purple by a guy who was describing a starship that travelled between star systems when a giant who struck space with a hammer caused it to move from one place to another. Another poster, not missing a beat, wrote, 'So it's a jump drive then?'

A Honda Civic with a spoiler and racing wheels and its exhaust pipe cut at the catalytic converter may look and sound like a street racer, but it's still just a motherfucking Honda Civic.

Until you understand what makes a great game-setting great, none of the rest of this shit matters, and if you do understand what makes a great game-setting great, then it matters even less. That's why I keep Ladybird's quote about "five kobolds in a room" in my signature.

Steerpike, do you actually understand what makes settings like Planet Motherfucker or The Metal Earth fun? It's that they are well-done pastiches of familiar tropes that put what the adventurers do front and center.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;759843Until you understand what makes a great game-setting great, none of the rest of this shit matters, and if you do understand what makes a great game-setting great, then it matters even less. That's why I keep Ladybird's quote about "five kobolds in a room" in my signature.

QFMFT.

Weird dungeons are hard to do well, sure.  But so are regular ones.  And the things that make regular dungeons fun are *exactly the goddamn same* as the things that make weird dungeons fun.

QuoteAnd the things that make regular dungeons fun are *exactly the goddamn same* as the things that make weird dungeons fun.

Then I ask again, to you and Vulmea and anyone else who is using this reductive line of thought:

Why are we playing anything other than Greyhawk D&D if that's all we really needed and our desire for novelty is an immature pursuit of meaningless window dressing?

What setting are you using and why did you waste time setting it up when all that matters are the basic building blocks?