Favorite Genre or Setting and Why?

[inflatus]

I am kind of curious as to what genre or settings peak your interest in an RPG. If you have second can write a few lines as to why it is your interest.

I plan to run a game using Hangouts and will not be very familiar with the prospective players. If I can get a broad idea of favorite settings or genres and why there favorited, I can come up with some questions to ask those players before planning the adventure.

[Benji]

For me, it would be fantasy. I love the imagery classic fantasy games evoke. Some may call the genre cliche, but I would venture to say it is iconic. Dragons, elves, knights, wizard towers, artifacts from ages past and dungeons, it's all there. However, within fantasy you have so many different options. Will it be an epic quest, a dungeon crawl, courtly intrigue or mystery? You may have a combination of all of these & much more. The possibilites are endless.

... damn, I sound like a TSR ad from the 80's. Scary.

[ericfromnj]

sandbox space opera. Probably from my love of d6 tramp freighters star wars...

[HyveMynd]

Ever since picking up Hollow Earth Expedition, I think my favorite setting/genre is now pulp. Which might be cheating as "pulp" covers so many things, and there's so much you can do with it. Conan-style Sword & Sorcery (and scantily clad women), John Cater of Mars-style Sword & Planet (and scantily clad alien women), Indiana Jones-style action adventure, The Shadow-style psychic G-Men, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow-style retro future, and The Maltese Falcon-style noir detective stories all fall under the "pulp" umbrella. Plus, with a few exceptions, you can mix and match them or toss in elements of one sub-genre into another and nothing really feels out of place.

Perhaps the best thing about the pulp genre though, is the cliffhanger. Because it's a staple of the genre and serial nature of the source material, it doesn't feel out of place when you call a session (or plan for a session to end) just before a big fight or right after a big revelation. When running games, I (try to) put on a "1930's radio announcer" voice and start the session with a recap "When we last left our intrepid band of heroes..." and then wrap up with "...and what will happen to Rex Richards and crew? Tune in next time to find out!"

Another benefit is pulp's somewhat over the top nature. Everyone is larger than life, and it gives the players (especially the GM) a real excuse to ham it up when playing their characters. Also, no one (who isn't a dick) calls bullshit when you toss something extreme into the mix. For example, I'm running a 1930's game right now that hasn't had any overtly supernatural elements so far. It's pretty much a noir detective game currently. But if I decide to make the big bad a Chinese sorcerer (which will happen) and start dropping in some magical bad guys, none of my players will bat an eye.

Yeah. I love pulp.

[rickno7]

As a GM, I love running Fantasy games the best overall. It is the easiest to get players to buy in to, and I can focus on whatever is the meat of the particular game flavor I"m going for. With well known settings/genres, just by speaking the setting there is a chance people will instantly have a character flash in their minds.

As a player, I like the scifi. Cyberpunk especially, and then small team space opera. 1980's dirty cyberpunk is just dripping with atmosphere, and I love enveloping myself in the culture presented in the books by Gibson, or seen in the movies like Bladerunner. You tell me cyberpunk and I"m already sitting in front of a noodle stand, listening to the rain as my soup gets cold. The twitch near my ear is my implant reacting to the over abundance of moisture. I'm not eating because I'm actually here to spy on the man across the street. A suspected escaped CEO from a company that literally owns him and the data in his brain.

I guess with both it gets down to ease of immersion.

A Trans-human Neo-anarchist Cyber-vampire city transported back to post-WW1 George V era England might be FREAKING AWESOME, but its going to take A TON of research and reading on the part of the players to get into that world and setting. Time that might be better spent on character development in an easier to grasp setting.

Save the complex and totally out there settings for groups that already know you're going to spring this kind of stuff on them, long time veterans tired of the easy cliche stuff, or insane people at a con. One of the most horrible things you can do to a group of players is introduce them to part 21 of a 74 volume world you've been working on 15 years in a basement somewhere in Montana and expect them to be all gung ho for it.

[Forresst]

It's so hard for me to pick one. I love running games in so many settings. I'm gonna go with post-apocalyptic, but about a generation or so post-apocalyptic. I like playing games in the settings where it's the seeds of the new era. Does that make sense?

[jazzisblues]

It might be because I've been gaming for so long, but I love them all. About the only thing I've not done a lot of is supers. If I were going to rank them in order though it would be:

1. Fantasy - It was Tolkien, and my father talking about Norse mythology that got me started.
2. Sci-Fi - My father handed me a copy of Heinlien's Time Enough for Love when I was 12 and I was hooked.
3. Pulp - Kind of like Hyve said, just so much you can do and such amazing imagery for stories.

Cheers,

JiB

[Deleted]

Science fiction is my hard drug. Through it I feel I can actually escape this prison planet in my game time. I find that I've gravitated away from the other genres to this over time and with the experience of other RPGs.

[malifer]

Pulp here too.

Other reasons not already mentioned;

Most obstacles or difficult situations can be solved by punching your way out of them.

Nothing needs to be realistic. Space Pulp is just fantasy with a different shade of color no need to bother with gravity rules or atmosphere. Sometimes I want that gritty realistic feel, but most times I just want to make crazy stories.

My bad acting skills are great for cheesy one-liners from my character.

[shadrack]

Right now, I really want to play some pulpy swashbuckling, space, steampunk.

I don't care if it's airships or spaceships but I want a ship and some stars (literally) to sail her by.

Inspirational settings:
Firefly
Farscape
Sundered Skies
Space 1889
Clockworks (webcomic) - look it up. he's working on a savage worlds sourcebook for it.

wait for it...


spelljammer.
dragonstar


on another note: I am interested in the transhumanism stuff, Eclipse Phase style.

[mook]

I've always been very partial to 'kitchen sink'/do anything settings - whether this is what led me to GURPS, or whether GURPS led me to this preference, is hard to say since they both seemed to spring up around the same time.

In particular, I really enjoy running games set in Cynosure, from the GrimJack comics (here's my player's handout). Due to the unique nature of the city, I've run games of horror, science-fiction, mystery, supers, western, medieval genres and probably more - often with a great deal of overlap.

I've also occasionally run 'single flavor' games (fantasy, modern day, whatever), then segued them into a Cynosure game when the players got itchy.

Though it's my favorite setting, it has been a loooong time since I've been there in a game, I think at least partly because my gaming/prep time have diminished a lot and that kind of "anything goes" game takes some effort (GM needs to be familiar with any rules that might come up - in Cynosure, that can mean Magic, Cybernetics, Firearms, Melee, Psionics, Robots, Space, etc.)

[ericfromnj]

Holy Crap. Grimjack! I haven't heard that name since the early 90's!

[stork]

The Mook knows I'm a big fan of Grimjack

Soooooo......how bout those con games?

I mean really...If I can do the PHREQUE show for 4 consecutive cons, why not an ongoing Cynosure game? Ill be the first in line!

Consider the gauntlet thrown!

And as far as I'm concerned, the Jem game happened in Cynosure, so that's one!

[mrcj]

I've always been one to mix in different elements. I almost always run a sandbox take elements, reshape them then spit them out.

A sci-fi campaign that combined elements of Dune and Star Wars.

I got inspired (don't ask me how) while watching the Madonna Bedtime Stories video (disclaimer...I don't make a habit of watching Madonna videos) and listening to "Plight and Premonition" buy David Sylvian, and I sprinkled in a little Edgar Rice Burrough's "John Carter on Mars," and perhaps some Empire of the Petal Throne's Tekumel setting, oh, and there might have been a bit of Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" in there somewhere. And out came a kind of Eastern Mediterranean style fantasy setting over the top of a crumbled sci-fi setting. That was fun.

I love creating the world. Ultmately I GM the game I want to play in.

[mook]

Nov 21, 2012 19:24:15 GMT -8 stork said:

I mean really...If I can do the PHREQUE show for 4 consecutive cons, why not an ongoing Cynosure game?

Mostly 'cause I'm, ya know...a big slacker. That really is a great idea, though. I must mull - I'm mulling!

Nov 21, 2012 19:24:15 GMT -8 stork said:

Consider the gauntlet thrown!

Surely you mean ... the Gaunt-let?

Nov 21, 2012 19:24:15 GMT -8 stork said:

And as far as I'm concerned, the Jem game happened in Cynosure, so that's one!

HA! Now it all makes perfect sense!