This old but ever present conundrum.

This old but ever present conundrum.

Originally shared by Rob Donoghue

I'm totally having an internet fight here. Raar.

Ok, innovation in RPG design. Yes, innovation is necessary for any big leaps forward in RPG design, so yay innovation. It is important to question and challenge assumptions. This is super true..

But there is no connection between "innovative" and "good". The problem is  we often use the word like there was.  A lot of TERRIBLE games have been innovative. Innovation is implicitly risky, and while I applaud the courage it takes, it offers no guarantees of quality. And if the default, standard, boring thing has a better than average success rate, then most innovations will probably be a step back.

It's a buzz word.   And that's fine.  People can be legitimately excited about buzz words.
  
The thing is, It should not be the goal, but too often it is, because it is easier to make something different than something good .  Even more, something different is more likely to get attention, and we all know that good offers no guarantee of recognition.    Which is not to say all innovation is about social currency, but it often is.  Innovation without context can be fun, and good can come of it, but it's just a sort of brainstorming.

This becomes especially true when innovation is used to defend ideas. It is super easy to dismiss criticism as people not "getting" an idea, simply because it's new.   It's a social defense and a power game and it does nto improve the discussion. 

It is great to see innovative designs. It genuinely is. But innovation follows quality, it does not presage it. And I know i sound harsh here, so let me acknowledge something very powerful here.  It is very hard to say a game, especially one you are working on, is good.   That sounds like bragging, and it's not really provable, so we're very uncomfortable speaking in those terms, despite the fact that it is our goal.  It is much easier to say something is innovative - that is more provable and sounds less arrogant.  And I totally get that instinct.  And it's a large part of why we use "Innovative" as a coded substitution for "good".  I know I have certainly done so.

But we've been using that code for 20+ years, and it's produced some screwed up results.  When you say "innovative' in lieu of "good" long enough, some will start genuinely equating the two (a fact made worse that we have a gearheaded subgroup in our hobby who genuinely wants innovation more than quality, because they intend to scavenge for parts.  In this, I ma part of the problem).

So, bottom line, I think it's a crap word when applied in anything but the most shallow of ways. Genuine innovation can survive my scorn.

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None of which speaks to the other issue surrounding game designs that depart from existing best practices ("Innovative" games).  This is a more interesting question because the balance of audience buy in vs creative freedom is a very rough and tumble space.  I don't think there's a right answer, but I do think that if you don't know why you shouldn't try wacky new things, then I'm very skeptical of why you think we should. 

Thankfully, this issue is not one that is unique to RPG design - technology has struggled with it for ages, and if you want a little context for why you might not want to shake things up (or at least be more selective in your disruptions), I point you to Dan McKinley's remarkably spot on essay on the topic - http://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology

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Those are two really different issues, and they don't even touch on other land mines like one person's innovation is another person's old hat, and the cyclical nature of ideas in our community.  Which is to say, OF COURSE it's a problem.  It is not a load bearing word, so avoid putting too much weight on it.


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Tellingly, the dude I'm having this internet fight with is someone I know will produce quality.  It might be innovative too, but it also might not.  That matters less to me. :)
http://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology