I’m NOT a fan of always doing something the same way because “that’s just the way we’ve done it.” In fact, those are the things that I think are usually ripe for a makeover.
However, there reasons to stick to certain things – this quote from the linked article says it well: “Gaming is an evolutionary art form, you have to look and see what other people have done and then take those pieces and see if you can improve upon them, and that’s what everybody does. You have to be aware of the whole of it — when creating your own game, you don’t stray too far or you start throwing away hard lessons people have learned over the years.”
This is a good article for anyone who might want to incorporate “typical” RPG elements into just about any kind of game.
Indie RPGs developers call back to mechanics and tropes from the genre’s birth | Polygon