The Novelty Trap in Tabletop Game Critique

In the often-forgettable general forums for Board Game Geek, I found a lovely thread on themes.

It’s worth reading the (brief) opening post. But the gist of it is that themes that often bore gamers who have played hundreds or even thousands of games, are in fact exciting to many people.

In playing so many games with the same broad thematic touches, we lose sight of this.

I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, and I think it’s a topic that can be explored even further.

Film Critique: Audiences vs. Critics

A point was made to me many years ago that film critics often value different qualities than audiences do. In more recent times, we can see this dichotomy in something like Rotten Tomatoes and their two ratings that represent critical approval and audience approval.

The two are often at odds with one another. While some will use these ratings disingenuously to try to invalidate the opinions of the opposite side, I think rather they can be used to provide a particular kind of insight.

Film critics are watching hundreds of new movies every year, more than all but the most dogged film buffs. And it’s true that a lot of writing and directing falls back on formulaic concepts and strategies that have been proven to garner success.

Except it’s a lot less exciting when you’re seeing a writing trope for the 25th time this year, as opposed to the first or second time.

Something that’s “different” in some tangible way is more likely to resonate with someone who’s seen the formulaic stuff 100 times in the past year.

But this doesn’t necessarily invalidate the formulaic stuff. It just means we have thresholds for repetition in our media consumption.

Tabletop RPG Settings and Tropes

I’ve defended this previously in video format.

To summarize the argument, a lot of RPG gamers are tired of so-called generic fantasy settings. Some have been playing in a fantasy setting for decades. So when they get the chance to try different styles of play in different settings, it’s wonderful for them.

Except your average roleplaying gamer isn’t a lifelong player, and they’re likely exploring a lot of roleplaying tropes for the first time in their lives.

For some of us, we still gravitate toward specific tropes for one reason or another. The elven ranger who lives in the wilderness and is a stoic embodiment of various goodly characteristics is still a character archetype that I enjoy. If you told me I were playing an elven ranger in my next campaign, I’d be thrilled.

Some others have played “normal” combinations like this one too many times, though. Their next character will be a shapeshifter impersonating a deceased bugbear, playing as a homebrew warlock subclass so that they can have zombie Elvis Presley as their demonic, charismatic patron.

Or whatever. That was a made-up example, but there’s a reason memes exist describing this same progression of many players.

But you know what’s the most popular race/class combination in D&D every time they conduct a poll or research on their online character builder? Human Fighter.

Arguably the most “generic” class combo, but it’s the most popular. Why? Because it works well for a lot of people, and their fun won’t necessarily match with others who find excitement in more exotic combinations that are less well-established.

Creating Shared Understanding Via Tropes

Established tropes also serve a secondary function in RPGs as well. Namely, you can’t flesh out every corner of a campaign world with interesting, unique details. So leaning on well-known tropes can help to create a shared understanding between players.

At that point, you can more easily focus on the specific details of your campaign without having to worry about, say, how a cave-dwelling dwarven society functions.

I think thematic touchpoints like this can serve the same function in other forms of gaming too. A board game might not need a fleshed-out world in the same manner as a roleplaying game. But if your game is themed around dwarven miners, everyone already sort of has a mental image of that, right? Now you can get onto the more important business of actually playing the game, for which the theme may be able to help you since you’re familiar with the tropes.

Noticing a trend between this article’s sections so far? Hopefully so. That’s not going to change as we talk about…

IP-Based and Historical Games

“Omg, another Lord of the Rings game?! How many do we need?”

Some fall into this mentality with specific time periods as well. Lovecraftian horror themes or Sherlock Holmes games are incredibly common, for instance, because both of those intellectual properties (IPs) are in the public domain. Anyone can adapt them for any creative purpose without paying royalties.

This is attractive to many publishers, but can also lead to fatigue and burnout in a gaming audience who has already seen a LOT of Lovecraft and Sherlock.

Some other properties, such as the aforementioned Lord of the Rings, have licensed the IP out numerous times for various gaming adaptations. Video games, board games, card games, roleplaying games, etc. There are too many to count.

But each of these IPs, and many others, have enormous fanbases. And the majority of people in these fanbases aren’t consuming every single piece of media. But a new release may catch their eye.

And so IPs need to be reinvented for new generations and new fans.

This is sometimes an impossible task when trying to avoid burnout among other fans who really are playing everything or perhaps are gaming fans but not specific fans of the IP. That gameplay looks awesome…but I’m bored with Lord of the Rings.

How do you please everyone here? You don’t. It’s not a feasible task for any publisher or IP. All you can do is follow a creative vision and/or follow your core audiences with products that should appeal to them. That will mean annoying some people with how many games come packaged with a specific IP on it, but it will also mean a steady infusion of new interest. It’s a trade most IP estates and/or publishers are willing to make, and rightly so.

Loss of Perspective in Board Gaming

I’ll occasionally get deep down into some board gaming discussion rabbit holes where gaming trends some have never heard of are tiresome to me and my friends. I’ll give you an example.

In recent years, publishers have increasingly taken to making their games themed around cute or anthropomorphic animals. The reasons for this are twofold:

1. Cute animal stuff sells well.
2. In avoiding depictions of humans, they skirt possible representation issues that can arise when the fanbase believes the artwork is not diverse enough or contains problematic depictions of certain segments of society.

The trend is…well, it’s quite pronounced, to the point where it’s become a bit of a running joke. Slap some cats on your box or something, and watch the sales roll in. Nevermind whether or not it’s a good game. That’s secondary. Hire yourself a good artist and pick a pseudo-fantasy world filled with 2-3 animal types of your choice, and your product will be fine even if it’s hot garbage.

Established publishers, designers, artists and longtime gamers will openly acknowledge this trend, often sardonically. But these are the people most deeply embedded in the online hobby side of gaming. For the vast majority of gamers, those attending weekly meetups or playing with family to unwind but not paying any additional attention to hobby trends, they’ll never notice it unless it’s pointed out to them.

And guess what? Cute animals work! I’ve even benefitted from this. I was able to successfully pitch a couple games in my collection by talking about the animal theme. We ended up enjoying the games, and now it will be easier to get others to play in the future.

So my personal gaming is better for this, even as I roll my eyes at the trend. It’s not one that I care for in the slightest, and can even have my enjoyment soured occasionally because I’m acutely aware that the trend is often about money alone, not a specific creative vision. So it’s easy to become a touch cynical. But I’m also far from the totality of the audience.

So it’s a loss of perspective to imagine that games aren’t also meant for people outside myself, to whom these things will not be an issue. And so it feels a touch disingenuous to call publishers out on this when my complaints come from only one perspective.

The Novelty Trap

I actually don’t think there’s a right or wrong in some instances here. I can watch a “bad” film, knowing it’s just meant to be lightly entertaining for a couple hours, and enjoy myself.

Conversely, once I’ve seen enough such films of a particular type, I start to become bored with them and gravitate toward those that seem to break their genre molds in interesting, unexpected ways.

If you’re tired of something, you’re not wrong. Love (and hate) whatever you want.

The point isn’t claiming anything’s right or wrong though. It’s about the awareness of perspectives outside your own – sometimes wildly different from your own – that are part of the audience for industries and media you happen to follow.

No piece of entertainment, art, or media is for everyone, but it’s easy to lose sight of this when our frame of reference is hoping that our preferred entertainment is catered to our preferences at all times. Unfortunately, it never will be.

The other point, to loop us back around to the opening of this article, is that the same thing that seems novel and interesting to us might simply be weird and quirky for the sake of being weird and quirky to someone else, while something we find overdone is in fact welcoming and exciting to many others.

Keeping this in mind can even reinvigorate our love of certain trends in gaming, and allow us to enjoy them more with friends and family.