

* Dungeon and Dragons-esque combat systems. (I believe her name was "little girl" all in undercaps? (googled it: it's "tiny girl")) There should be dozens of those kinds of NPCs in my memory banks from these games, but there aren't. The only NPC I can really recall is the little girl with the missing dog from ADOM. Your player character is a class, an archetype, not a person. * An extreme focus on de-emphasizing characterization and human interaction.

Gardening, house-nesting, social parameters, tribe-building. * Putting no strong emphasis on expanding play systems. "Escape from Jurassic Park" already has your imagination soaring like crazy with possibilities.) (Let's go over a ton of themes that can and should be used: Aliens, Horror, Kaiju, Dinosaurs, Wuxia/Xianxia, Killer Robots From Hell, Isekai, etc etc. Nothing says "keep the normies out" quite like permadeath.

Some holy cows that really make the scene stagnate: Some people want their games to be a very specific way, and get reactionary if someone tries to change anything. Oof, that's exactly the kind of insular attitude of the community I'm talking about. Two weeks ago I called Void Terrarium a 'roguelike' and almost immediately someone jumped down my throat to inform me it was actually a 'mystery dungeon' (a term I have never heard before in my life)
