Biggest/Smallest Genre of RPGs

[Stormborn]

the smallest genre? That's probably "Stuffed Animals RPG" - there's a (rather popular though OOP) game here in Germany called PP&P (Plüsch, Power & Plunder) where you play sentient stuffed animals...

Fuzzy Knights RPG is forthcoming (or is it out yet Mossfoot?) and in it you play sentient stuffed animals.

I was going to say Bunnies and Burrows, but obviously got beaten to the punch.

Really, almost anything you can think of has been done at least once, and usually by GURPS. But, do one or two books constitute a "genre" in RPGs? Sure, they might be in somethign else, but specifically an RPG genre? I don't know.

In Watchmen, Allen Moore has pirate comics being the dominant genre, I wonder if in the same world all RPGs are Westerns.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Fuzzy Knights RPG is forthcoming (or is it out yet Mossfoot?) and in it you play sentient stuffed animals.

In hardcover?

 

[tadk]

Twilight 2000 Hard Military
The Morrow Project Hard military / Post apocalyse

 

[tadk]

Boot Hill is the only Western one I know of if you dont count Deadlands as western and count it as horror like I do

 

[trancejeremy]

Traveller as a whole, in its numerous incarnations, would all qualify as Hard SF.

Well, to me, Hard SF is essentially realistic. Traveller happens to have: Psionics (including stuff like telekinesis and teleportation), FTL space travel, anti-gravity, and a galaxy teeming with advanced civilizations. None of which is realistic. Since the first three violate the laws of physics and the last goes against pretty much all observation (ie, we'd probably have noticed if there were aliens just next door by their stray EM radiation)

 

[Tetsubo]

I'd say the smallest genre would be Bad RPG's. Because no one wants to be in that genre...

 

[wingsandsword]

Boot Hill is the only Western one I know of if you dont count Deadlands as western and count it as horror like I do

Aces & Eights, the new western from Kenzer (http://www.kenzerco.com/rpg/acesandeights/)
They were promoting it at Gen Con by handing out an old-west-style town newspaper for the default setting, kinda neat (and a few sly references to Knights of the Dinner table when they played Cattlepunk. Almost entirely in-character too, except for a subtle ad for the game in the corner, pretty neato.

Sidewinder: Recoiled (http://www.greenronin.com/catalog/grr1408)

OGL Wild West (http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/rpg/detail.php?qsID=527&qsSeries=3)

d20 Past from WotC had a section on using d20 Modern for the wild west.

It certainly isn't a large genre, but it isn't the smallest. By the way, I always counted Deadlands as Western/Horror, putting it in both, and it could easily be either depending on how it was run.

 

[Mark Plemmons]

Aces & Eights, the new western from Kenzer (http://www.kenzerco.com/rpg/acesandeights/)
Sidewinder. They were promoting it at Gen Con by handing out an old-west-style town newspaper for the default setting, kinda neat (and a few sly references to Knights of the Dinner table when they played Cattlepunk. Almost entirely in-character too, except for a subtle ad for the game in the corner, pretty neato.

Thanks! By the way, that's Aces & Eights: Showdown (you accidentally typed Sidewinder!)

 

[Ycore Rixle]

My vote for smallest genre goes to the Teen Soap Genre. There's Nicotine Girls, and there's HeartQuest, if you count shojo manga as a Teen Soap. Which I do.

Ok, my ulterior motive in claiming that this is the smallest genre is to get people to point out games I'm missing. I'd love to hear about them.

Off-topic: someone posted above that antigravity violates the laws of physics. It doesn't, at least not in the way that FTL travel does. I'm not quite sure what was intended by that comment.

 

[wingsandsword]

(you accidentally typed Sidewinder!)

Oops, I originally just started to list them, but then I thought to put links and mention the little promo newspaper, and I put things in the wrong place. Typo corrected.

About the Teen Soap thing, Teenagers from Outer Space might count as a particularly strange take on that (and just like HeartQuest is shojo-insipired, TFOS was obviously Urusei Yatsura inspired).