PDA

View Full Version : Roleplaying Most fun RPG genre's? Least fun?



2D8HP
2016-03-19, 07:26 PM
What do you thing the most fun RPG genre's are? Least fun?
For me from most fun that I have played to least fun were:
1. Swords and Sorcery (D&D and imitators).
2. Space Opera (Traveler etc.).
3. Horror (Call of Cthullu).
4. Espionage (Top Secret etc.).
5. Superhero (Champions etc).
6. Urban Fantasy (World or Darkness).
7. Cyberpunk.
How about for you?

Knaight
2016-03-19, 10:07 PM
This list is probably more reflective of what I'm good at GMing than anything else, but my list:

Space Opera
Cyberpunk/Steampunk (it was a weird game).
Low Fantasy (near-historical)
Historical
Hard Science Fiction
Sword And Sorcery (not D&D style).
Buddy Cop
Espionage
Wuxia-Western
Wuxia
High Fantasy (e.g. D&D).
Horror
Superheroes.
Western
Romance
Urban Fantasy



This is just off the top of my head, and some of those really need to be moved up. I love Wuxia in other media, and would like to bump that up a bit, but lack practice (and group interest). Some of these are also where they are entirely because of a game or two. I ran one fairly successful Wuxia-Western, and that's it. I've run two horror games, one much better than the other, and that determined the ranking. There's been one superhero game, and while I'd like to do more I don't have the background needed to GM it well enough for my standard. Romance showed up once by accident because of two players in a low fantasy game. Space opera and low fantasy meanwhile are pulling from at least a hundred sessions apiece.

Vitruviansquid
2016-03-19, 10:24 PM
My god, I hate to admit it, but I've always had the most fun in team-based heroic adventures.

I can't stand the horror genre.

2D8HP
2016-03-19, 10:32 PM
This list is probably more reflective of what I'm good at GMing than anything else, but my list:

Space Opera
Cyberpunk/Steampunk (it was a weird game).
Low Fantasy (near-historical)
Historical
Hard Science Fiction
Sword And Sorcery (not D&D style).
Buddy Cop
Espionage
Wuxia-Western
Wuxia
High Fantasy (e.g. D&D).
Horror
Superheroes.
Western
Romance
Urban Fantasy



This is just off the top of my head, and some of those really need to be moved up. I love Wuxia in other media, and would like to bump that up a bit, but lack practice (and group interest). Some of these are also where they are entirely because of a game or two. I ran one fairly successful Wuxia-Western, and that's it.
It's funny but the list I made for RPG's doesn't match my taste in other media. For example I recently rummaged through my old book pile looking for some reading material (or re-reading material) and I pulled out "The Canterbury Tales", "The Maltese Falcon", and "The Princess Bride". I started reading each of them bit by bit and it was the "Maltese Falcon" that I finished (more in the mood for), but all else being equal a gumshoe-noire RPG would not be my pick to RPG (a Princess Bride like setting would probably be my pick instead), and what I prefer as a player (Swords and Sorcery) is not what is easiest for me to Gamemaster (espionage and horror) .

JAL_1138
2016-03-19, 10:57 PM
In very rough descending order:

The ones I (usually) love:
*Sword and Sorcery (old-school AD&D)
*Deconstructed Fantasy (Discworld-style)
*Weird Fantasy (E.g., Planescape, Spelljammer)
*Space Opera (Star Wars, etc.)

The ones I (usually) like fairly well but can burn out on:
*Harder Sci-Fi than space opera
*Cyberpunk
*High Fantasy
*Horror
*Horror Fantasy (e.g. Ravenloft)

The (usually) just-okay ones:
*Low-powered Superheroes
*Medium-powered Superheroes
*Some post-apocalyptic
*Very little of urban fantasy

The ones I (usually) dislike but don't outright loathe:
*Most post-apocalyptic
*Zombie apocalypse (used to like it, but zombies have been done to death)
*Ultra-grim'n'gritty Fantasy (Game of Thrones style)
*Ultra-grimdark Space Opera (e.g., WH40K)

And the ones I hate, loathe, and/or despise:
*Überpowered Fantasy (on either the 4e or high-op/high-level 3.PF side)
*The vast majority of urban fantasy (E.g., Vampire, Werewolf)
*Überpowered superheroes
*Almost anything based on or resembling anime (and/or videogames that were also animes, e.g., Pokémon)
*Anything set in high school
*Relationship drama (E.g., harem anime)
*Anything that would require my character to be a kid

Compounding it, these are mostly system-dependent, too; the mechanics matter almost as much as the genre.

Knaight
2016-03-20, 02:07 AM
It's funny but the list I made for RPG's doesn't match my taste in other media. For example I recently rummaged through my old book pile looking for some reading material (or re-reading material) and I pulled out "The Canterbury Tales", "The Maltese Falcon", and "The Princess Bride". I started reading each of them bit by bit and it was the "Maltese Falcon" that I finished (more in the mood for), but all else being equal a gumshoe-noire RPG would not be my pick to RPG (a Princess Bride like setting would probably be my pick instead), and what I prefer as a player (Swords and Sorcery) is not what is easiest for me to Gamemaster (espionage and horror) .

I suspect this is pretty common. I quite like the buddy cop thing for RPGs, #7 on that list is still pretty solid. It works beautifully for two players and a GM, some of the tropes make for really fun NPCs, so on and so forth. As a cinematic genre? Eh, it's decent. Ish.

Democratus
2016-03-21, 08:00 AM
Most Fun:
1) Superhero
2) Hard Sci-Fi
3) Sword n' Sorcery

Least Fun:
1) Paranoia (it's a genre unto itself)
2) "Evil" campaigns

Kalmageddon
2016-03-21, 11:19 AM
Anything gritty is probably going to be fairly enjoyable to me.
Sci-fi, if not full of unrecognizable transhumanist stuff, is usually something I greatly enjoy. Space Opera and Cyberpunk especially.

Least fun... Generic High Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery stuff.

Piedmon_Sama
2016-03-21, 11:32 AM
I think they can all be equally fun or unfun! I see most of the longstanding RPGs---Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, various flavors of WoD---as all having something unique and cool to offer. I can't think of a genre I wouldn't want to roleplay (well, assuming we're excluding stuff like Romantic Comedy or Parlor Room Drama I guess). I can enjoy GRITTY REALISM, or crazy anime fights where everybody calls their attacks, hard-sci fi or rule of cool pulp, or horror games where the objective is just to survive. I guess the one thing I would get bored with is a game where the characters aren't in life-or-death situations or that are purely dialogue/politicking/intrigue, but that's not really a genre so much I think.

neonchameleon
2016-03-21, 12:03 PM
Most fun:
Whatever the group knows and enjoys.

Least fun:
1: Political Tracts (honourable exception for Dog Eat Dog)
2: Evil Campaigns
3: Campaigns with whitewashed historical extremely bad guys even by the standards of the day (normally the Confederacy) who haven't been substantially rewritten and I'm not supposed to treat them as the bad guys they were.

DaveOTN
2016-03-21, 12:15 PM
It's funny but the list I made for RPG's doesn't match my taste in other media. For example I recently rummaged through my old book pile looking for some reading material (or re-reading material) and I pulled out "The Canterbury Tales", "The Maltese Falcon", and "The Princess Bride". I started reading each of them bit by bit and it was the "Maltese Falcon" that I finished (more in the mood for), but all else being equal a gumshoe-noire RPG would not be my pick to RPG (a Princess Bride like setting would probably be my pick instead), and what I prefer as a player (Swords and Sorcery) is not what is easiest for me to Gamemaster (espionage and horror) .

Well, as is being discussed over in the railroading thread, books and RPGs aren't really that similar despite the superficial similarities. It can be a lot of fun to read a detective novel, following your hunch along about who the bad guy is or the meaning of the scrap of fabric found at the crime scene, only to be blown away in the last act by a completely unexpected plot twist that, in retrospect, makes perfect sense. Pulling this off in an RPG is, in my experience, nearly impossible - the mystery is either way too easy (perhaps because the DM forgot about that Speak with Dead scroll you picked up) or so incredibly hard that the PCs completely miss the clue and hone in on something irrelevant instead. Whereas, as Knaight said, something like a buddy cop movie, which is formulaic enough that the jokes almost write themselves for both the players and the DM, can be a lot more stable base to roleplay off.

I would probably rank my favorites as:

1. Low fantasy/historical
2. High fantasy/magic
3. Old west
4. Space opera
5. "Modern" magic
6. Political drama/espionage
7. Detective stories
8. Cyberpunk

Again, not because I don't like some of those lower-down-the-list genres, but because it's much harder to avoid being railroaded in some of those stories.

2D8HP
2016-03-21, 04:00 PM
Most fun:
Whatever the group knows and enjoys.

Least fun:
1: Political Tracts (honourable exception for Dog Eat Dog)
2: Evil Campaigns
3: Campaigns with whitewashed historical extremely bad guys even by the standards of the day (normally the Confederacy) who haven't been substantially rewritten and I'm not supposed to treat them as the bad guys they were.
I am guessing that #2 on you list is when the PC's are the bad guys, but I am clueless as to what games #1 and #3 on your leaist fun list are?

sktarq
2016-03-21, 05:20 PM
Good Tier

Modern Urban Low impact Fantasy (Vampire, Hunter, Paranormal Investigator Games)
Low Fantasy Sword and Sorcery
Horror-Ravenloft, CoC
Low Powered Superhero Games
Generalismo Type Games (where you play as faction leaders)

Probable okay Tier

Detective/Espionage games (mostly for lack of ST skills)
Pulp Horror/Heroes/Space (fun for shorts)
High Impact Near SciFi Urban Fantasy. (Shadowrun, Trinity)
Rifts-gets it's own slot
Cyberpunk
Historical non fantasy
Low Powered High Fantasy Sword and sorcery

Careful Now Tier
High Powered Sword and sorcery
High Impact High Fantasy Modern Urban Fantasy (Shadowrun. (depending on which optional rules are used), WoD Mage, d20 Modern)
Steampunk
Evil Campaigns (a high risk high reward setup for me-love them but require evil to be interesting beyond lulz)
Space Opera (note I put Savage World more in Space Pulp than space opera)

Dislike Tier
High Powered High Fantasy Sword and Sorcery
Medium to high power modern superhero games
Wuxia
Epic level anything
Most Mecha games
Children-High school centred games
Westerns

neonchameleon
2016-03-21, 07:31 PM
I am guessing that #2 on you list is when the PC's are the bad guys, but I am clueless as to what games #1 and #3 on your leaist fun list are?

Game 1 is generally the GM rather than the official game system. Some GMs have all the subtlety of Atlas Shrugged or The Communist Manifesto. And the prime offender in game #3 is Deadlands although any game using the Confederacy as morally neutral qualifies.

Knaight
2016-03-21, 09:42 PM
Game 1 is generally the GM rather than the official game system. Some GMs have all the subtlety of Atlas Shrugged or The Communist Manifesto. And the prime offender in game #3 is Deadlands although any game using the Confederacy as morally neutral qualifies.

I've seen more a couple of games in type #3 about the crusades as well, which were depicted as heroic stands for civilization rather than ugly wars that were a total mess for civilians everywhere. I also vaguely remember seeing something about playing as a conquistador which got whitewashed as well. Still, the Confederacy gets depicted as morally neutral (or outright good) a lot more often.

JAL_1138
2016-03-23, 09:14 PM
Good Tier

Modern Urban Low impact Fantasy (Vampire, Hunter, Paranormal Investigator Games)
Low Fantasy Sword and Sorcery
Horror-Ravenloft, CoC
Low Powered Superhero Games
Generalismo Type Games (where you play as faction leaders)

Probable okay Tier

Detective/Espionage games (mostly for lack of ST skills)
Pulp Horror/Heroes/Space (fun for shorts)
High Impact Near SciFi Urban Fantasy. (Shadowrun, Trinity)
Rifts-gets it's own slot
Cyberpunk
Historical non fantasy
Low Powered High Fantasy Sword and sorcery

Careful Now Tier
High Powered Sword and sorcery
High Impact High Fantasy Modern Urban Fantasy (Shadowrun. (depending on which optional rules are used), WoD Mage, d20 Modern)
Steampunk
Evil Campaigns (a high risk high reward setup for me-love them but require evil to be interesting beyond lulz)
Space Opera (note I put Savage World more in Space Pulp than space opera)

Dislike Tier
High Powered High Fantasy Sword and Sorcery
Medium to high power modern superhero games
Wuxia
Epic level anything
Most Mecha games
Children-High school centred games
Westerns


"Sword and sorcery" is a different genre than "high fantasy." There's no such thing as "High fantasy sword-and-sorcery" (although a story can transition from one to the other over time, becoming more epic in scope or more personal). High fantasy is in the mold of LotR, with great and noble heroes like Aragorn against the Dark Lord Sauron or some such, or Wheel of Time with Rand Al'Thor & Co against the Dark One, world is at stake kind of thing. Sword-and-Sorcery is along the lines of Conan (books) or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or Elric of Melnibone. Not to say that the world can't ever be at stake in something that fits more into Sword-and-Sorcery, but it's a sort of smaller story with less focus on the epic clash of Good vs Evil or Light vs Dark or Civilization vs Chaos or what-have-you.

The two terms also have nothing, or at least very little, to do with power level or amount of magic in the setting. A gang of überoptimized level-20 god-wizards and CoDzillas can go on a sword-and-sorcery dungeon crawl, and a gaggle of Level 3 fighters in low-magic E6 can go on a high-fantasy epic adventure to save the world from the Forces of DestructionTM (e.g., LotR, which is fairly low-magic and low-power all told, but very definitely high-fantasy).

Most Gygax modules are in the Sword-and-Sorcery genre; whereas something like the War of the Lance in Dragonlance is High Fantasy.

EDIT: Low Fantasy is another beast altogether, and the definition diverges wildly between literary and gaming terms. In literary terms it covers practically anything set in the real world or an extremely Earthlike fictional world (differing from magic realism mainly in that the supernatural elements in magic realism are treated as normal aspects of the world, in low fantasy they're treated as significant variance from the norm), while in gaming terms it tends to mean hewing close to the realistic side for the setting. Although it's in the horror genre primarily, Call of Cthulhu is probably an example under both definitions.

goto124
2016-03-24, 09:19 AM
What's the term for fantasies where there're essentially two worlds: the 'real' world, sometimes our RL world, where magic is either "feared as a supernatural element no one really knows" or "thought to not exist"; and the magic world, where magic is commonplace and a part and parcel of its citizens' lives? For example, Harry Potter.

JAL_1138
2016-03-24, 09:52 AM
What's the term for fantasies where there're essentially two worlds: the 'real' world, sometimes our RL world, where magic is either "feared as a supernatural element no one really knows" or "thought to not exist"; and the magic world, where magic is commonplace and a part and parcel of its citizens' lives? For example, Harry Potter.

There's quite a split in literary circles over whether Harry Potter is Low Fantasy, Magic Realism, or High Fantasy. Basically, the term for fantasy akin to the Harry Potter series is "an argument." :smalltongue:

CharonsHelper
2016-03-24, 11:20 AM
What's the term for fantasies where there're essentially two worlds: the 'real' world, sometimes our RL world, where magic is either "feared as a supernatural element no one really knows" or "thought to not exist"; and the magic world, where magic is commonplace and a part and parcel of its citizens' lives? For example, Harry Potter.

The standard 'magic thought not to exist' by most people is usually Urban Fantasy (Harry Dresden style), but since Harry Potter's world barely interacts with the 'muggle' one, it would probably just be a part of the somewhat broader Contemporary Fantasy.

sktarq
2016-03-24, 02:59 PM
high fantasy vs low fantasy in this case is all about the degree of fantastic element. Taing fantasy as an antonym of real/realistic/realism theme complex. It is descriptive trait not a genre name. Similarly the degree of power is a descriptive term.

genre naming conventions being a realm of intellectual masturbation that I have no care to into the details of and this is why.

Knaight
2016-03-24, 03:07 PM
There's quite a split in literary circles over whether Harry Potter is Low Fantasy, Magic Realism, or High Fantasy. Basically, the term for fantasy akin to the Harry Potter series is "an argument." :smalltongue:

Who's arguing in favor of magical realism? I can get either of the other two, though it's a bit of a shoe horn either way, but magical realism? Harry Potter isn't exactly Un Cien Anos de Soledad.

JAL_1138
2016-03-24, 05:44 PM
Who's arguing in favor of magical realism? I can get either of the other two, though it's a bit of a shoe horn either way, but magical realism? Harry Potter isn't exactly Un Cien Anos de Soledad.

Magic Realism has about 2000 definitions, some of which roll pretty much all of Low Fantasy into them and amount to a long-winded way of saying "Supernatural things naturally exist on Earth." These definitions are overbroad in my opinion, but are argued for anyway.

Personally I quite like the tongue-in-cheek definition of MR, which you've unintentionally referenced--"fantasy novels written in Spanish."

Strigon
2016-03-24, 06:19 PM
In very rough descending order:

...
And the ones I hate, loathe, and/or despise:

*Anything set in high school
*Anything that would require my character to be a kid


I pretty much agree with your entire list (it seems we have very similar taste), but especially this part.
I may barely be out of my teens IRL, but the only thing I hate more than teenagers as a whole is teenagers as portrayed in media.
In other news, I'm well on my way to becoming a crotchety old man.

2D8HP
2016-04-09, 06:48 PM
:smallsmile:Thanks everyone!

SimonMoon6
2016-04-11, 10:05 AM
For me, it's often more of a "setting" or "rules" issue than the actual RPG's genre.

For example, I thoroughly enjoy running high-powered superhero games. But you can't do that in Champions (well, you *can*, but it's ugly). Or GURPS. You need a proper superhero game system, one designed for high-powered characters. So, that's a "rules" issue.

Likewise, the default superhero setting is a rather boring "maintain the status quo" place. You don't get to go off looking for adventure. You have to wait for a villain to do something before you can go on an adventure. So I try to run superhero games that are a bit different.

Fantasy adventure is another great genre. However, there aren't really any games that do high-powered fantasy well. D&D is notable as being problematic once characters become high-level. So you don't *really* get to play high-powered fantasy in D&D. But that's not the genre's fault, it's the rules.

I tend to dislike playing in a horror game (though I have no problem running it) as the characters will never get to be high-powered awesome guys... if they did, they wouldn't be scared of the monsters, right? (Though one multi-genre game I ran was inspired by this sort of issue. One player complained that all the monsters in Call of Cthulhu were equally scary; a ghoul was as scary as a god because they could both kill you in one round. So, I thought... what if the PCs had superpowers in a Call of Cthulhu setting? But the game didn't stop with just that...)

Personally, I think anything sci-fi tends to be boring as an RPG because you typically have very "set in stone" limitations for what you could possibly do and unless you have some sort of magical/psionic/TheForce way to cheat those rules, it's just a mundane game with different sounding weapons. My gun goes "zap zap" not "bang bang"... how exciting, not.

comk59
2016-04-11, 10:29 AM
This is a tough one, honestly. There is so much variation between different systems with the same genre.

Absolutely love playing
1. "Hard" Sci-Fi
2. Mid to low power fantasy
3. Horror
4. Space opera

Enjoy playing, but ultimately indifferent
1. Urban fantasy
2. High powered fantasy
3. Sword and sorcery
4. Cyberpunk

Don't love, but I'll still play
1. High/Middle school (with a twist of some kind)
2. Mystery
3. Superhero


You'd need to force me at gunpoint to play
1. Wuxia
2. Mythic fantasy
3. High/Middle School (played straight)
4. Wuxia
5. Wuxia

Winter_Wolf
2016-04-11, 11:38 AM
Most to least enjoyable for me:
-Space Opera/sci-fantasy (think Phantasy Star series rather than Star Wars)
-Low to mid magic fantasy (no magic marts)
-Swashbuckling (Musketeers count for this too, right?)
-Some others that aren't terribly noteworthy simply because I don't remember right this instant
-Waaaay at the bottom we end with urban fantasy. Lawd save me from World of Darkness.

BayardSPSR
2016-04-11, 07:13 PM
Let's see... From experience, in order, best to worst:


Cyberpunk, villain PCs (fantastic)
Cyberpunk, hero PCs (good)
Classical heroic fantasy (mixed)
Steampunk (bad)


In theory, I like the idea of trying science fiction space operas, dark urban fantasy, and westerns, and dislike the idea of Wuxia, which feels somehow orientalist.


Magic Realism has about 2000 definitions, some of which roll pretty much all of Low Fantasy into them and amount to a long-winded way of saying "Supernatural things naturally exist on Earth." These definitions are overbroad in my opinion, but are argued for anyway.

Personally I quite like the tongue-in-cheek definition of MR, which you've unintentionally referenced--"fantasy novels written in Spanish."

I really like the idea of Magical Realism in the sense of "fantasy in rural Latin America, without explaining how anything works," except that I can't figure out how to make it fun for people to engage in when no one understands how anything works and no one is ever allowed to ask.

2D8HP
2016-04-12, 08:44 AM
-Waaaay at the bottom we end with urban fantasy. Lawd save me from World of Darkness.
Nooo!!! My spirit is wrenched by waves of pain and rage to read these words! How then does thy roleplay thine deal with Awesomocity?
The Dream of the 90's Weeps! Weeps!

To my shame, I actually can't remember anymore the D&D games I played in the 70's and 80's (which I loved!), as well as the Cyberpunk and Vampire games I played in the 90's (settings I despised!)..