Day 7 - RPG With "Good Form"

#RPGaDay2024

I’m finding this one hard to answer, primarily due to the opacity of the prompt. What exactly do they mean by “good form” anyway?

The OED defines “good form” as “behaviour that complies with current social conventions.” What that has to do with roleplaying game design is beneath me.

Beyond. Beyond me.

So is this about discussing a roleplaying game which follows current social trends, or one which leads social trends? A game whose content refuses to rock the boat, as compared to groundbreaking stuff that’s not been tackled at great length in any other game before?

I don’t have a product line to recommend here. There are games which do rock the boat and provide what could potentially be incredible gaming experiences, but because they contain elements such as romance, even sexual activity, they are classed as “adult” gaming and relegated to niche tabletop game sessions in grubby basements.

And yet, at the same time, “mainstream” games are happy to dedicate vast swathes of verbage to “gritty, tactical” combat which is, in effect, glorification of violence and releasing pent-up anger as fury and rage. It’s “good form” if your game focuses on player characters plunging swords and axes into the skulls of ugly non-humans, but not “good form” if the characters end up fucking the beings they encounter.

And if they end up in a situation where they encounter beings with whom they fall in love, have romances with, form a connection with … the players are given the stinkeye by their violent, immature peers.

Is it “good form” to base the predicates of a game on violence, aggression, murderous combat, death, as compared to forming relationships or a community, or investigation, or worldbuilding or exploring (as compared to a hexcrawl where your characters are expected to do nothing but engage in murderous combat with each apparently random beastie they encounter in the next hex on the empty map)?

D&D can get fucked.