There is a problem with genre in tabletop RPGs.
Just like video games, Genre in RPG is too often boiled down to the System of Play. In video games, we often call things "FPS", "RPG", "Platformer" first and then the actual 'genre' of the game second. These 'genres' don't explain what the game is at all, just how you play it. In tabletop, this is the same as when we say "PbtA", "FitD", or "D20" games. It’s a distinction that is important, but is ultimately useless at telling you what the game is about.
A platformer can be many things, Celeste, Mario, Super Meat Boy are all the same 'mechanical genre'. This is why distinction is important because some people just like playing Platformers. Just like some people might just like playing Powered by the Apocalypse games. It's a quick and easy way for consumers to group games that play similarly together.
But, its hard on creators to group things this way. I know that Interstitial is nothing like Apocalypse World or Monster of the Week. But they're all PbtA games. This genre is useless as a category in this sense- It feels like people boiling down our games to be something they're not. Even still, when you start applying genres in the way they're used in movies or music, you run into issues because so many games are bigger than one genre. School Spirit & Monster Hearts are kinda coming of age stories, which is kind of a genre? But that doesn't encapsulate completely? Dungeon World and D&D are both Fantasy. But they’re different in core ways.
So this leads to people come up with more complex genres like "Lyric Game" or "SWORDDREAM" or "OSR" or "Indie" , but that ends up being useless to anyone not in the know of what the cool new lingo means. They’re not immediately evocative of tone in the way that “Horror” or “Punk” are. Further, as a designer, seeing someone go "Ah, you make lyric games" and you have no idea what a lyric game is feels fucking weird because like, I know what game I made. I don't know what you mean by Lyric Game, and that makes me uncomfortable. It’s someone else putting a descriptive tag on my game that I have not cleared, and I might not even relate to or understand.
Genre's like this, that try to hyper focus in on the feeling you get when you play a game, are so weird, because it will never be immediately evocative enough to explain at a glance what your game is, and it won't be broad enough to encapsulate enough games to be standard.
Basically- There's a genre problem in TTRPGs because the field has so much innovation in it. We don't have a good way to sort this shit outside of "Mainstream", "OSR", and "Indie". All three of these have way too much baggage to be compelling genres and not just qualities. I want for TTRPGs to get a handle on genre so bad. I wish I had a solution other than just this weird observation. I'd say avoid calling other peoples games a specific genre unless you hear them do it, which is fuckin rough because you need to describe games to sell them.
So idk, i don't have a solution just alot of thoughts on genre and why it's important. Interstitial is Funkopunk PbtA INUTW is Funkopunk Playerless School Spirit is a Coming of Age PbtA that's all i fuckin know. i don't make sworddream, hope punk, or lyric games.