Quote from: Haffrung;756803Some people are happy to eat Wendy's cheeseburgers their whole life. Some get a bit bored and enjoy the novelty of schwarma or vietnamese subs. That doesn't make cheeseburgers terrible.

I do agree. High concept requires high buy in, but if you can get those kind of players it is also high fun. That said, lowered expectations don't hurt either.

I've sort of given up on going to movies, concerts, and restaurants with whole swaths of friends and family, as they have a smaller measure of what I would call adventure in their souls. Still love them, but the new and experimental is just not for them. This is a social judgment and aesthetics thing, and not much more.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756758So if I understand the past few posts correctly, the issue with the tree example as it stands now is that it currently has hooks for...

heroic players (save the tree),
explorer players (figure out how the world inside the tree work),
and acquisitive players (obtain the life magic items inside the tree)...

... but no adequate hook for more passive players who would need the tree and its inhabitants to seriously affect their game world's situation before they consider going in? The tree has to attack or otherwise disturb the status quo actively, rather than simply having it's slow death be a bad thing in itself?

My 'issue' is that the premise sounds great-bloody-rivers-of-tears boring. Oooo, wacky pantomimes with alien bugs! That's what fantasy roleplaying games are missing!

Part of the enduring appeal of dungeon-exploring in roleplaying games - and remember, this applies to drifting spaceships and jungle temples and post-apocalyptic cities as well as bog-standard dungeons - is that player decision-making and goal-setting is put front and center. You don't seem to be interested in that at all; you have a story to tell, and you're casting about for ways to get the players to play along since it appears to be dawning on you at last that being exotic isn't inherently the same thing as being engaging.

Quote from: Steerpike;756786Sure, the Forgotten Realms may be more popular than Tekumel, but that doesn't mean that Tekumel is a "mistake" or that M.A.R. Barker should have just stuck to the cliches instead of writing Empire of the Petal Throne.  The hobby does not really need more Realms-clones and traditional fantasy worlds, it needs more Tekumels - more idiosyncratic, weird, wildly inventive settings.  At least that's what I think.

"Idiosyncratic, weird, wildly inventive" also means less immediately accessible. It carries with it an opportunity cost.

The problem implicit in the thread's underlying assumption is that there is this stultifying lack of imagination out there among gamers. I don't believe that's true; I believe that there are some gamers and designers who think they're a lot more clever than they really are, who mistake novel for interesting and look down on those who don't embrace their 'original vision.'

And then they go and design really boring adventures and rip others for 'not getting it.'

Quote from: Haffrung;756803Texture and tone have their own meaning.

I remember watching Van Helsing in the theatre - yes, please mock me mercilessly - and about twenty minutes in, leaning over to my wife and whispering, "I don't give a shit if any of these characters live or die."

Years later I had the exact same reaction to Avatar.

No amount of tone and texture covers up bad storytelling.

In my experience, tone and texture in a roleplaying game may add depth and facilitate engagement, but only if the understanding that this is a game first and foremost and the game-world exists to facilitate actual play is crystal clear to everyone around the table, especially the referee.

You want the players to explore a giant toadstool? Awesome, but remember what makes playing a roleplaying game fun in the first place isn't, 'Hey, we're in a giant toadstool!'

Quote from: Black Vulmea"Idiosyncratic, weird, wildly inventive" also means less immediately accessible. It carries with it an opportunity cost.

I think it's definitely true that novel dungeons are less immediately accessible, but in many cases this is a feature, not a bug.  A big part of the aesthetics of fantasy and science fiction is the much-discussed sense of wonder.  In essence, sense of wonder boils down to the idea that "alienation/estrangement is not always bad."

This sense of wonder is integrally linked to the unexpected and the new.  Old, well-established tropes can evoke this sense of wonder, but I'd suggest it's a lot harder for them to manage it.  So there's a similar "cost" to employing older tropes: yeah, it's more accessible, but arguably the better-established a trope becomes, the more familiar it is, the less it can evoke one of the central affective states of the genre.  Assuming that some players want to experience a sense of wonder as part of the experience of the game (which wouldn't be surprising, considering the centrality of the sense of wonder to SF/fantasy), they're going to be less and less satisfied with the old tropes unless they can be subverted or otherwise made new.

Quote from: Black VulmeaThe problem implicit in the thread's underlying assumption is that there is this stultifying lack of imagination out there among gamers. I don't believe that's true; I believe that there are some gamers and designers who think they're a lot more clever than they really are, who mistake novel for interesting and look down on those who don't embrace their 'original vision.'

I tend to agree, actually, that for the most part it's not actual gamers at fault at all.  I can name dozens of amateur creators, bloggers, and the like that craft settings and adventures I find wonderfully imaginative - some of them very strange, others very familiar.  The problem, I think, is that a lot of game companies and big-time creators seem to either lack creativity or are so anxious about new or innovative products that they're reluctant to stray from well-established tropes, or at least to present well-established tropes in new and unexpected ways.  This is changing (Numenera comes to mind, for example, or even Eberron) but it's still rather prominent, I think to an unfortunate extent.  In terms of new products, I don't really need to see someone's version of Tomb of Horrors or whatever (unless you really make it interesting); I'd rather see something unexpected that can provide a fresh jolt of estrangement.

If someone's just making stuff for their home game or whatever, go nuts.  If they're asking money for their product, I may well look unfavourably on them if they're just using the same old tropes, unless they've really found a way to reinvigorate them.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756905My 'issue' is that the premise sounds great-bloody-rivers-of-tears boring. Oooo, wacky pantomimes with alien bugs! That's what fantasy roleplaying games are missing!

Alright, this just seems like a matter of subjective taste here, and I'm having trouble figuring out where you're coming from. Tell you what, I've given off-the-top-of-my-head examples, so I'd like to see yours, and I really do mean than in a spirit of polite inquiry, not as a setup for "gotcha!" criticism. What kind of non-combat encounter do you consider interesting enough to pencil in between "20x20 room full of orcs" and "10x60 hallway with pendulum traps"?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756905Part of the enduring appeal of dungeon-exploring in roleplaying games - and remember, this applies to drifting spaceships and jungle temples and post-apocalyptic cities as well as bog-standard dungeons - is that player decision-making and goal-setting is put front and center. You don't seem to be interested in that at all; you have a story to tell, and you're casting about for ways to get the players to play along since it appears to be dawning on you at last that being exotic isn't inherently the same thing as being engaging.

You got me fair and square there - I was initially thinking of a sandbox setup, but as soon as I said "the tree is dying and should be saved" I fucked that up.

So would your qualms be resolved if the pitch was more like this?:

"There's this gigantic tree over here on the map and its insides are known to organically generate items useful for resurrection and regeneration magic, but it's also full of weird critters and unknown shit. You guys can visit it if you want, or not, there's also the crypt of the scarlet mask-maker over here and the troll grottos over there. Whatever."

Quote from: Black Vulmea;756905The problem implicit in the thread's underlying assumption is that there is this stultifying lack of imagination out there among gamers.

Actually, I believe that is true. Over the last 20 years or so, Fantasy, as presented in books and games, has become the most hackneyed and narrow of genres. Even narrower that Westerns and Romance were in their day. It has become a lazy reader's (and author's) genre. People read fantasy expecting to have the same experience as the last 200 times they've read a fantasy novel. Same with fantasy RPGs.

That wasn't the case before the 80s. There used to be a lot more crossover between sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. And a lot of pretty unusual and original setting and premises. In short, it was genuinely fantastic. Now, fantasy tends to be about as fantastic and surprising as a trip to a suburban mall to buy Ben and Jerry's ice cream. You can no longer presume, as you once could, that someone interested in fantasy enjoys seeking out the novel and the unusual - in challenging their imagination.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756758So if I understand the past few posts correctly, the issue with the tree example as it stands now is that it currently has hooks for...

heroic players (save the tree),
explorer players (figure out how the world inside the tree work),
and acquisitive players (obtain the life magic items inside the tree)...

... but no adequate hook for more passive players who would need the tree and its inhabitants to seriously affect their game world's situation before they consider going in? The tree has to attack or otherwise disturb the status quo actively, rather than simply having it's slow death be a bad thing in itself?

You missed my issue that the bug tree is more awkward to place in the milieu than a castle full of humans.

Quote from: Old One Eye;756948You missed my issue that the bug tree is more awkward to place in the milieu than a castle full of humans.

Huh? Well ok, I guess it goes like this: Frontier town --> eldritch wilderness --> bug tree.

Don't feel too bad. I'm thinking of taking your bug tree and planting it as a full blown giant cicada society residing on the neglected continent of Osse in Forgotten Realms. So there will be whole mega eucalyptus forests with a hibernating species of giant bugs within them.

They will compliment my jellyfish empires isolating Osse's coasts and floating techno-egalitarian aboriginal (druidic) balloon cities. And Elminster and Drizz't have yet to grace these shores, either.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756951Huh? Well ok, I guess it goes like this: Frontier town --> eldritch wilderness --> bug tree.

I have never run a campaign where bugs were a more common opponent than humans.  Hence, human castle has more potential utility than bug tree.

Quote from: HaffrungActually, I believe that is true. Over the last 20 years or so, Fantasy, as presented in books and games, has become the most hackneyed and narrow of genres. Even narrower that Westerns and Romance were in their day. It has become a lazy reader's (and author's) genre. People read fantasy expecting to have the same experience as the last 200 times they've read a fantasy novel. Same with fantasy RPGs.

I feel like though the gradual homogenization of fantasy is totally a thing, in recent years this is starting to be challenged.  China Miéville, Jeff Vendermeer, M. John Harrison, Alan Campbell, Garthx Nix, Neil Gaiman, arguably even people like George R. R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie have all been deviating pretty radically from the Tolkienian status quo.  RPGs seemed to lag behind a bit, but I do think things are improving at this point rather than getting worse.

Quote from: Old One EyeHence, human castle has more potential utility than bug tree.

I don't really get this logic, just personally.  I have a pretty good idea of what's inside a human castle, and some basic research can fill in the rest... I mean, I guess I see the utility of castle maps and stuff, but thinking up crazy ideas (and then actually making those ideas work) is much harder than filling in mundane medieval details.  Perhaps both have their place, but personally I'd rather see more stuff along the lines of The Ghost Tower of Inverness, Castle Amber, or Dead Gods, just to name a few, than I would, like, more along the lines of Castle Caldwell and Beyond.  Don't give me pantries, armouries, prison cells, and orc lairs, give me indoor forests and brains in jars and reliquaries full of killer bees!

The common stuff is the easy stuff to make up on your own and often improvise or gloss over in play (OK, I get that in a gritty historical campaign this might not be the case, or whatnot, and that's fine, but in general...).  The crazy, uncommon stuff is the hardest stuff to actually make work, so if I'm buying a product, or ven reading about one online, I'd rather see that.

Quote from: Steerpike;756980I feel like though the gradual homogenization of fantasy is totally a thing, in recent years this is starting to be challenged.  China Miéville, Jeff Vendermeer, M. John Harrison, Alan Campbell, Garthx Nix, Neil Gaiman, arguably even people like George R. R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie have all been deviating pretty radically from the Tolkienian status quo.  RPGs seemed to lag behind a bit, but I do think things are improving at this point rather than getting worse.

I like Mieville and the Vandermeers... people like Michael Cisco and K.J. Bishop... going back farther to M. John Harrison... it's not like people haven't been writing different sorts of fantasy all along the way... but little of it appeals in that easily digestible soap opera sort of way that drives the big series.
Mieville has talked about how Harrison's 'Viriconium' intentionally holds off any sort of 'domestication'... it keeps reasserting its desire to alienate the reader... keep him off guard by not being 'knowable'. It's kind of the opposite of what RPGs tend to do a setting... breaking everything into quantifiable, definable bits.
At one point though I'd heard Mieville was looking at some RPG based on the Bas Lag stories... using BRP... but that was a while ago.

Quote from: SimlasaAt one point though I'd heard Mieville was looking at some RPG based on the Bas Lag stories... using BRP... but that was a while ago.

I actually met Miéville at a conference a few years back and he insisted that the Bas-Lag rpg was totally going to be a thing, but it has yet to materialize.  I also learned that he dislikes point buy for interesting philosophical reasons and really wished he could have run Wraith: The Oblivion back in his gaming days

Paizo did a brief d20 primer on Bas-Lag that would work well as the starting point for a Pathfinder version of it.

It's definitely true that people have always been writing different sorts of fantasy, but I feel there was a period when people like Robert Jordan and Terry Brooks were a big thing, like in the mid-to-late eighties and most of the nineties, when Tolkienian-redux fantasy reached a kind of critical saturation point and you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting an orc.

Quote from: Steerpike;756909I think it's definitely true that novel dungeons are less immediately accessible, but in many cases this is a feature, not a bug.

It can be, if it's done well.

But ask yourself this, which do you think had more players, Glorantha, Jorune, or Tékumel? Which of these three settings would you consider the most accessible to players? And yes, I'm deliberately taking D&D's published settings out of the mix entirely here, because that's simply not a fair comparison.

Here's an offshoot question from the one raised by this thread: do referees value originality in settings more than players do?

Quote from: Steerpike;756909This sense of wonder is integrally linked to the unexpected and the new.

I don't know that I agree with that.

Quote from: Steerpike;756909Old, well-established tropes can evoke this sense of wonder, but I'd suggest it's a lot harder for them to manage it.  So there's a similar "cost" to employing older tropes: yeah, it's more accessible, but arguably the better-established a trope becomes, the more familiar it is, the less it can evoke one of the central affective states of the genre.

Are we still talking about playing games here? Because the main thrust of my argument is something that may make an interesting novella or movie isn't necessarily the same thing that will make for an interesting roleplaying game.

Yes, one of the challenges of using familiar tropes is to keep them from feeling stale. I think this is one of the hallmarks of successful referees. That would be another thread topic actually: how do you keep familiar tropes fresh and engaging in a roleplaying game campaign?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756914Alright, this just seems like a matter of subjective taste here . . .

No, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that creating a setting for a roleplaying game that doesn't put 'what do the adventurers DO?' front and center in its planning or design is objectively bad.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756914What kind of non-combat encounter . . .

Y'know, that right there - "non-combat encounter" - is a whole mindset I would like to see die in a fire.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;756914. . . do you consider interesting enough to pencil in between "20x20 room full of orcs" and "10x60 hallway with pendulum traps"?

Why would I pencil it in between? The orcs have been trying for a week to get past the pendulums, losing eight of their number in the process. They'll offer to help the adventurers handle whatever's on the other side in exchange for a share of the loot.

Or five of the orcs make a sport out of hazing the sixth, and their latest stunt is to throw his favorite sword to the far end of the hall. He's already lost the tip of his nose and half his scalp trying to get it back, and in exchange for help retrieving it, he'll turn on his companions and lead the adventurers to a secret passage past a monster's lair.

Or the orcs are gambling using treasure collected from previous adventurers killed by the pendulums. Or the orcs are engaging in a drinking contest, and are so besotted that they mistake the adventurers for the evil wizard's emissaries and offer to shut off the trap to let them pass. Or the orcs are emissaries from two different tribes arguing over who's going to lead the next raid on a nearby human settlement - should one or both groups of emissaries not return, then the tribes could end up going to war with one another instead. Or one of the orcs was captured by the other five, and is being forced to guide them through the dungeon - he's trying to lead them into the pendulum trap so he can escape, if he can just figure out a way to avoid getting killed himself.

Not original. Not novel. But hopefully interactive.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;757146No, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that creating a setting for a roleplaying game that doesn't put 'what do the adventurers DO?' front and center in its planning or design is objectively bad.

I have no idea how the bugs don't meet this criterion. The players can choose to try and interact with them or not, ignore their overtures and kill them for loot or not, never go into the bug section of the dungeon or not, come up with a clever way of getting into the hidden sections of the dungeon without burrowing bugs or not.

I literally cannot see how my example is objectively stultifying compared to your orc one. Is a language barrier challenge inherently boring? Are more-likely-to-be-friendly-than-not encounters inherently boring?

Is it because you still think I was railroading? Did you see the rest of what I said in that post? Here, I'll repeat it:

QuoteYou got me fair and square there - I was initially thinking of a sandbox setup, but as soon as I said "the tree is dying and should be saved" I fucked that up.

So would your qualms be resolved if the pitch was more like this?:

"There's this gigantic tree over here on the map and its insides are known to organically generate items useful for resurrection and regeneration magic, but it's also full of weird critters and unknown shit. You guys can visit it if you want, or not, there's also the crypt of the scarlet mask-maker over here and the troll grottos over there. Whatever."

Quote from: Steerpike;756980George R. R. Martin.

I 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.

There is nothing wrong with far out stuff either. The takeaway is that setting is the spice, the meat of a good book are the characters doing something interesting. Likewise heart of a good tabletop campaign is not the setting but the players experiencing interesting situations as their characters.

Another example is Breaking Bad, I don't make a habit of watching show about drugs, and crime. I don't think the genre sucks but I have other things I want to watch with my time. But Breaking Bad is written really well in my opinion. Written well enough that I will take the time to watch the show. Again what make Breaking Bad so good is interesting characters doing interesting things.