What's yer favorite genre?

[aramis erak]

Roughly, in preference order and giving some games I consider in the genre

1. Space Opera (Trek, Traveller, Alien, Firefly)
2. Space Fantasy (Star Wars, Dune, FFG WH40K RPGs)
3. "real" Sci Fi (with the "3 breaks" guideline) - play, not run. Have only done so in GURPS.
4. Samurai Fantasy (L5R, Blood and Honor, The Blossoms Are Falling)
5. Tolkienesque fantasy (TOR 1E, sometimes ElfQuest or RuneQuest)
6. Silly Fantasy (Og Unearthed Edition, Kobolds Ate My Baby, T&T on Trollworld, Silly mode D&D. Sometimes, my players turn Blood & Honor into this.)
7. Arthurian Fantasy (Pendragon, I, Mordred)
8. Semi-Tolkienesque non-D&D Fantasy (WFRP 1e, Arrowflight 1E, The Fantasy Trip, Tunnels and Trolls, Castle Fleckenstein, Fantasy Hero, RuneQuest 3E, Elf Quest, Palladium Fantasy 1eRev)
9. Urban Fantasy (Dresden Files, BTVS/Angel, Shadowrun, Vaesen)

When I run T&T on Trollworld it's a lot sillier than when I run it as a generic engine.
As a GM, I like to run SO and Samurai more than to be a player in them, and the rest are hairs breadth apart. My only issue with Silly fantasy is that some of my players want all the other fantasy genera to be silly, too.

 

[Aldarc]

When it comes to genre fiction, I vastly prefer sci-fi and cyberpunk before fantasy. I mean come on folks, most fantasy books are boring, uninspired garbage.

But when it comes to roleplaying, fantasy is the lowest common denominator for the players around my table, and I as the flexible forever GM adapt to that. On the other hand, one can cram almost any trope into a fantasy world, and in the end most campaigns comes to focus on the social, heavy roleplaying aspect, political scheming and conspiratory webs within webs anyway.

That seems more of a byproduct of its ubiquity and popularity rather than its overall merits as a genre. Most things on the market are crap. The trick with any genre involves finding the classic gems and hoping to find those that will become classic gems in the future. One problem, IMHO, with a lot of fantasy is that there is inspiring literature out there, but many people enjoy treading the familiar waters of Tolkien's shallow imitators.

 

[CleverNickName]

My Top Five Gaming Genres
(and the game systems I play them with):

5. Weird West (Dungeons & Dragons)
4. Science Fantasy/Space Opera (Esper Genesis*)
3. Dark Fantasy (Dungeons & Dragons)
2. Horror (Call of Cthulhu, Dread)
1. High Fantasy (Dungeons & Dragons, The One Ring, Middle Earth)

*Esper Genesis is just 5th Edition D&D that has been reskinned to a science-fiction format, so technically, I use D&D to play science fiction games also. D&D 5E is a pretty robust system, and it can handle just about any type of story and setting...

...except horror. D&D has too many "the players always win" default assumptions that don't really fit in a horror setting, IMO.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

That seems more of a byproduct of its ubiquity and popularity rather than its overall merits as a genre. Most things on the market are crap. The trick with any genre involves finding the classic gems and hoping to find those that will become classic gems in the future. One problem, IMHO, with a lot of fantasy is that there is inspiring literature out there, but many people enjoy treading the familiar waters of Tolkien's shallow imitators.

Well, yes, I was a bit polemic and of course you are right. In all genres of art and media there are golden nuggets, and I have read good fantasy.

I may be more correct to say that I'm less inclined to search for the golden nuggets in fantasy, since the ratio of good versus garbage ratio is heavily skewed toward the latter.

 

[Aldarc]

Well, yes, I was a bit polemic and of course you are right. In all genres of art and media there are golden nuggets, and I have read good fantasy.

I may be more correct to say that I'm less inclined to search for the golden nuggets in fantasy, since the ratio of good versus garbage ratio is heavily skewed toward the latter.

Cyberpunk, Science-fiction, Fantasy, etc. all go in the Science-Fiction/Fantasy section of your typical bookstore, so you are still sorting through the same garbage pile.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Cyberpunk, Science-fiction, Fantasy, etc. all go in the Science-Fiction/Fantasy section of your typical bookstore, so you are still sorting through the same garbage pile.

I live in rural Sweden and my closest physical bookstores doesn't have any sci-fi or fantasy sections, so my garbage pile sorting is all done online unless I take an over-night trip to Stockholm.

All literary media and forums I follow show sci-fi as a genre in constant renewal and development, while fantasy seem to be either new UA oriented stuff or backwards glances to a fantasy canon where I've read most books. Yes, for sure there are good new fantasy that gets written. But the newer fantasy books I've bought for the last decade or so have been disappointments despite seeming interesting, good reviews etc, so I simply don't gamble-buy in that genre anymore. And besides, I already buy more genre books than I have time to read.

And as I wrote earlier, fantasy roleplaying has room for almost any trope, and I get my inspiration from everywhere.

Finally and very OT, some of you may enjoy that Sweden is still doing a very good job at keeping the Amazon plan for world domination at bay, with two national companies dominating the online book market sales.

 

[Fifinjir]

Another high fantasy fan here.
Whatever the h*ck Omori and End Roll are (heavily symbolic psychological horror with heavy “maybe mundane, maybe magical” elements).
Whatever the h*ck Angel Beats is (seriously, I have no clue).

 

[Greg K]

1. Supers
2. Fantasy: Sword & Sorcery, Flintlock, Sword & Sandals
3. Cyberpunk (more noir or punk, less emphaisi on chrome)

In no particullar order:
4. Cyber Fantasy
5. Kids on Bikes
6. Pirates/ Swashbuckling
7. Modern: Espionage
8. Post Apocalypse
9. Science Fantasy
10. Space Opera
11. Urban Fantasy
12. Western
13. Fantasy: Epic/ High Fantasy (but lower magic than D&D)

 

[Committed Hero]

Secret History: what looks like Earth but is affected by hidden powers beneath the surface.

 

[TheHand]

#1 Supers
#2 Fantasy
#3 Post Apocalyptic (Gamma World in particular)
#4 Sci-FI
#5 Modern-Near Future Paranormal*
#6 Kaiju One-Shot Games**
#7 Horror

* This includes things like World of Darkness, but also games where people have unusual abilities but they're not living in a super-hero world
** Usually a homebrew engine. I love creating campy one-shot Godzilla + giant Mecha games. My goofiest one to date was Godzilla vs Pacific Rim vs Evangelion. It should not have worked, but somehow it did haha