It seems you can have either a wonderful setting or wonderful rules. The two rarely coincide.
If you like Super-hero genres, GURPS Supers has the best rules, IMO, on the block, although Aberrant has an even better setting.
For pulp action, Adventure is wonderful and has the best setting of any pulp game I've seen. GURPS Steam-punk deals with the mechanical aspects much better, however.
Several other White Wolf games are quite fun, such as Vampire (which doesn't really fit into a class). Mage also has some strong points, although it can be ridiculously hard on the DM at times...
Paranoia isn't really suited for a campaign, but it is damn fun for a night of light-hearted betrayal...
Futuristic stuff comes and goes, but Trinity and Transhuman Space are two of the more interesting ones (one uses Storyteller rules, the other GURPS). Transhuman space is the more 'realistic' while Trinity includes psionics and aliens and such. Trinity is probably the most flexible SF setting I have seen, since it has room for cyberpunk, investigative, bug-hunting, mecha-stomping, psi-lensman-star wars / force fighting, alien contact or exploration missions, all in the same setting. Generally you can't have bug-hunts and mech-stomps and psi-battles and cyber-intrigue and space exploration / first contact in the same game.
Lovecraftian stuff is fun to read, but kinda boring to play, IMO. One can only go mad and die so many times before it gets fairly old hat. Every Halloween we have a GURPS Horror game that it much scarier than any Call of Cthulhu game I have ever played, because you can actually sit down to one hoping to get out alive (and sane), while in my experience you pretty much sit down to CoC wondering how badly you are going to die, and whether or not a large section of the human race is going to die because of your failure. Not exactly great incentive for me to 'get into' my character...
A lot of games go this route, IMO, fun to read, but not so great to play. I could read a dozen Weis and Hickman Dragonlance novels, but never cared one bit to play in a setting where anything important has already been done. I have pretty much the same hang-up about the Star Wars setting, there is one important bloodline in the galaxy, the immaculate conception midichlorian-boy and his brats, and you aren't playing them, so really, who cares what you do. The Realms have gone that way as well. If you aren't Chosen, nothing you do matters, and pretty much any signature character that doesn't become an actual GOD is being snapped up as the Chosen of this god or that... Star Trek is slightly better in that there are no special supreme chosen people with a superior bloodline / power / morality to everyone else, but I haven't seen a game for it that is remotely decent yet.
[Hm, Star Trek d20. What a bizarro notion...]
Other games are simply fun to read, but not as much fun to play for other reasons, such as difficulty wrapping ones brain around it, like Wraith. I could read Wraith (or Kindred of the East) supplements until my eyes fell out of my head and I'd love every minute of it. I have no interest in playing it. GURPS Voodoo fits here. Wonderful reading, but I don't think I'll ever use it. Apparently Blue Planet suffers the same syndrome. Won all sorts of awards and honorable mentions for being one of the best written lovingly detailed campaign worlds ever written. And yet crickets chirp in the long grass near where it was buried.
If you like Super-hero genres, GURPS Supers has the best rules, IMO, on the block, although Aberrant has an even better setting.
For pulp action, Adventure is wonderful and has the best setting of any pulp game I've seen. GURPS Steam-punk deals with the mechanical aspects much better, however.
Several other White Wolf games are quite fun, such as Vampire (which doesn't really fit into a class). Mage also has some strong points, although it can be ridiculously hard on the DM at times...
Paranoia isn't really suited for a campaign, but it is damn fun for a night of light-hearted betrayal...
Futuristic stuff comes and goes, but Trinity and Transhuman Space are two of the more interesting ones (one uses Storyteller rules, the other GURPS). Transhuman space is the more 'realistic' while Trinity includes psionics and aliens and such. Trinity is probably the most flexible SF setting I have seen, since it has room for cyberpunk, investigative, bug-hunting, mecha-stomping, psi-lensman-star wars / force fighting, alien contact or exploration missions, all in the same setting. Generally you can't have bug-hunts and mech-stomps and psi-battles and cyber-intrigue and space exploration / first contact in the same game.
Lovecraftian stuff is fun to read, but kinda boring to play, IMO. One can only go mad and die so many times before it gets fairly old hat. Every Halloween we have a GURPS Horror game that it much scarier than any Call of Cthulhu game I have ever played, because you can actually sit down to one hoping to get out alive (and sane), while in my experience you pretty much sit down to CoC wondering how badly you are going to die, and whether or not a large section of the human race is going to die because of your failure. Not exactly great incentive for me to 'get into' my character...
A lot of games go this route, IMO, fun to read, but not so great to play. I could read a dozen Weis and Hickman Dragonlance novels, but never cared one bit to play in a setting where anything important has already been done. I have pretty much the same hang-up about the Star Wars setting, there is one important bloodline in the galaxy, the immaculate conception midichlorian-boy and his brats, and you aren't playing them, so really, who cares what you do. The Realms have gone that way as well. If you aren't Chosen, nothing you do matters, and pretty much any signature character that doesn't become an actual GOD is being snapped up as the Chosen of this god or that... Star Trek is slightly better in that there are no special supreme chosen people with a superior bloodline / power / morality to everyone else, but I haven't seen a game for it that is remotely decent yet.
[Hm, Star Trek d20. What a bizarro notion...]
Other games are simply fun to read, but not as much fun to play for other reasons, such as difficulty wrapping ones brain around it, like Wraith. I could read Wraith (or Kindred of the East) supplements until my eyes fell out of my head and I'd love every minute of it. I have no interest in playing it. GURPS Voodoo fits here. Wonderful reading, but I don't think I'll ever use it. Apparently Blue Planet suffers the same syndrome. Won all sorts of awards and honorable mentions for being one of the best written lovingly detailed campaign worlds ever written. And yet crickets chirp in the long grass near where it was buried.
