The coolest looking genre?

[hexgrid]

Planescape, when illustrated by Tony Diterlizzi.

 

[Tetsubo]

I'd say Steampunk with a dash of fantasy thrown in. Steamjacks with Dwarven Engineers and Elves armed with Longarms...

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

The whim of the moment...currently, I am on a Firefly kick, so sci-fi western is it...

 

[Henry]

It varies from month to month for me.. at current, I've been on a Western kick. However, Fantasy, from the John Buscema/Erol Otus style to the modern Todd Lockwood stuff, is good, as well as Post-Apocalyptic, Marvel or Image Superhero, to Pulp.

Post-Apocalyptic is always especially cool, because you get your WIld West mixed in with your future tech.

 

[Morpheus]

Modern day, end-of-the-world confrontations between cults, terrorists, and otherworldly creatures and technology vs. everyday-joe investigators who are struggling to understand and stop the madness. Horror, evil organizations, despicable villains, gunplay, car chases, computer hacking, and a sense of the ticking clock.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Job.

i.e. Beyond the Mountains of Madness

 

[dave_o]

Definately steampunk. I'm glad it's gotten so popular, I remember when no one had any idea what I was talking about when I'd mention it.

Required reading: The Difference Engine by William Gibson and all of China Mieville's work.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Space Western, particularly Firefly and Star Wars. The big steel of Star Wars could be duplicated very stylishly in a Steampunk setting.

Now... if you replaced the modern guns of the former and the laser guns of the latter with single action Navy .45s... and everyone had a sword on their hip, and you had wizards slinging firebolts back and forth on a ship-to-ship battle in the upper atmosphere...

Heh. Doesn't hurt that I'm currently working on a setting that looks like that.

 

[lukelightning]

I've come to really like the steampunk look and feel, particularly that done by the Iron Kingdoms. I also like Warhammer FRP's "grubby fantasy" feel.

 

[francisca]

Frazetta.

I also like the look of the 1982 Flash Gordon movie. Would like a game in that setting. Perhaps the Rocketmen RPG Decipher is doing for WK will punch the ticket.

 

[The Shaman]

For me, it's easily Victorian Age mystery (ala Sherlock Holmes) or adventure fiction from the era (ala King Solomon's Mines). How can you not love foiling evil in the fog-shrouded streets of Victorian London, battling through leagues of cannibal savages in the distant African interior, or working to reveal the re-organized Thugee of 19th century India?

Though I'm not a big mystery fan, I agree with everything else that jdrakeh describes: Pathan tribesmen with nail-adorned jezails and wicked curved swords, sepoys in crimson or khaki marching in long lines behind elephants and camels carrying mountain howitzers, ruga-ruga askaris with leaf-bladed spears and zebra-hide shields, chasseurs d'Afrique in powder-blue uniforms riding through the Atlas or gathered at an oasis, corpulent Omani slavers in silk robes and turbans, a column of Russian soldiers dressed all in white marching across a lonely steppe with a screen of Cossack cavalry, women in white dresses and enormous hats with translucent mosquito nets taking tea in a frontier outpost...

It's the juxtaposition of the ancient and modern that I find so interesting about the period.