The Performative and Familiar versus the Demanding and Atypical in Games

I was thinking about the idea that maybe I really am burned out on D&D style games right now. I am not sure I am burned out on fantasy....arguably its all fantasy, right? But the core conceits of D&D may just be so well played out for me now that I find it laborious, procedural is the term I keep thinking of, also performative. 

Running a game in which my son attended and played through with the earnestness of youth and a new experience really hammered home for me just how different the hobby can look when you're new to it, and how very, very different it can get when you are an old veteran. That new blood element helps reinvigorate the game, a lot. If I could run a game for a gaggle of 10 year olds who each had the understanding and enthusiasm of my son I think it would be incredibly entertaining for me just to watch it all unfold. 

Older gamers, by contrast, are often creatures of ruddy habit and traditions which can mean that the experience often does not vary. Sure, we can speak different words, roll different dice, and use different terms, but its all very performative...its going through motions, and borders on ritualistic. We're almost more about playing the game as an excuse to hang out than we are to tell a story and enjoy some shared game/story telling experiences. Indeed, its still safe to say that gaming has that much over the static nature of television (or streaming), in that it is meant to engage....but sometimes you've engaged the same thing in the same way too long, and maybe that causes issues in and of itself?

For me, I think it's very easy to write down a scenario, campaign, or entire world and set to exploring it, but the actual process desperately needs more from my players for me to feel engaged that I am used to. Conversely, I think my players need something more complex and dynamic to hang on to help them expand their enjoyment as well, and games such as Call of Cthulhu or Mothership are so much fun because they, by design, frame both rules and subject in a manner which is more prone to demand and beg for engagement that something like D&D which can, in and of itself, be steeped heavily in traditions and tropes which are incredibly well trodden.

This is all to say that what I should really be doing a lot more of is not merely Mothership and Call of Cthulhu, but more of games that, like those two, break the cycle of familiarity and force both myself and my players into new zones of interaction, far away from tropes and the familiar. In other words: I should give D&D and its like a lengthy break, and let them sit a bit, come back in a while maybe, but not until they start to blossom with new ideas.

Some game systems I wish to explore on this include things like Mork Borg (as close to a shattering of the core conceits of fantasy gaming as you can imagine) or Mutant Crawl Classics (which takes a familiar genre formulae and layers it on the deliberate unpredictability of Dungeon Crawl Classics). Others include things like the new Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition (a way to go do some monster hunting without leaning on the Cthulhu mythos), or maybe some scifi in Sar Trek Adventures, Traveller or even Alien RPG. I would love to try some Cyberpunk Red, with the right group. I would love to try Stafinder again....with the right group (you know who you are, I wish y'all weren't scattered to the four winds!)

There are even some older games that could do this just fine: True20 is back in POD, and a fine system. GURPS, once my go-to system from 1990s to early 2000's. I think even Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes (which was recently kickstarted back in to existence) would be a fine system to mess around with again.

I think this is what I actually, really need to do this year: think way the hell outside the D&D fantasy box this year, break some very old, engrained and unsatisfying habits. Now I just need to narrow down the choices to the ones I can feel appropriately invested in.