Subgenre Hybrids

[Steerpike]

I was thinking about the Science Fiction Campaign Setting? thread and my own frustration with genre labels and the self-limiting tendency common to some fantasy (ie imitating Tolkien).  Clearly most of the campaign creators here at the CBG have freed themselves from these tropes - on the first page of the Homebrew forum we've got a Mesoamerican setting (Xiluh), a sprawling, colorful Multiverse (Divergence), a pulp-inspired futuristic setting (Silvercat's Dream), a very surreal sci-fi setting (Weird Sun), a Renaissance setting (Avayevnon), a "Renaissance hunter-gatherer" setting (Clockwork Jungle), my own post-apocalyptic/dying earth setting, etc.

Though I think that ultimately genre labels are limited - especially insisting that a setting is sci-fi vs. fantasy or whatever - I'm wondering what some of your favorite sub-genres are, particularly those you feel have been underutilized in roleplaying, and how some of those sub-genres might be adapted into campaign settings, or how sub-genres could be combined to create interesting new settings.  Sword and Planet meets Wuxia?  Space Opera meets Steampunk?  Urban Fantasy meets Fairytale Fantasy?  Fantasy of Manners meets Biopunk?  Lovecraftian Horror meets Western?

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Future With Aliens meets Modern Day.  Essentially this is what happens when we make contact with aliens, some of them start living on Earth, and our culture doesn't change.

Animé Fantasy gets updated to Modern Day or Futuristic.  Take your airship-flying, magic-slinging fantasy as seen in animé and let it advance into a "day" comparable to our current time or into some future era.

[Elemental_Elf]

Sci-Fantasy is one of my favorites though that may be too broad a term.

'Traditional Fantasy that mixes Mecha into it' like Escaflowne is one of my favorite sub-genres. Its hard to pull off right but when it happens, its glorious!

[Biohazard]

I try to keep my interests away from a few of anime's tropes that actually are tropes... That's why you'd never see one in my own work. Horror is a must for almost anything for me. It's hard to say exactly what excites me and is listed among my favorites beyond that... Space Opera, Western, fairytales, hard sci-fi, and modern warfare elements can all get me if they're done right.

[Nomadic]

Science Fiction meets Science Fact (aka - hard scifi): I love factual based scifi. Unfortunately it is rare to find a GM that can pull it off right. A good example of this would be the space odyssey series (2001,2010,2061,3001).

Steampunk meets Elegant Fantasy: I love the feel and look of steampunk, especially when it is mixed with a Victorian, Oriental, or Grecian elegance. A prime example of this would be the Disney movie Atlantis.

[Llum]

Good God. Escaflowne. That was a good show, though it started to get pretty messed up near the end. (I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote engine)

Mecha done in semi-realistic way is something I like. Airships are always nice to see as well.

For science fiction I tend to only really like hard science fiction. Not sure why, probably cause Time Travel has always bugged me.

I tend to stay away from Horror as a rule. I don't find things scary, and most Horror just descends to a level where it tries to gross you out (kinda the point with body-horror genre). Its just something that I don't find interesting.

[Steerpike]

Spaceships, Sixguns, and Cyclopean Horrors

Space Westerns meet Lovecraftian Horror

For centuries humanity wallowed in its blissful ignorance, fighting its idiotic and futile little wars, until under the auspices of illumination and science they took to the stars and the Great Beyond and made the ends of the universe their frontier.  Out in the black abyss of space they found whole star systems of planets, asteroid belts and clouds of stellar gas rich in the elements they'd squabbled over so wretchedly on their insignificant Earth.  Feverish with excitement and swollen with their own technological magnificence and the promise of spoils beyond their wildest dream, humankind began its great Diaspora, scattering itself across the galaxy.  Mining colonies and thriving boomtowns spread to the systems of Arcturus, Baalbo, Xoth, Betelgeuse, and Hydra.  Blood was still spilt, spattered across the dusty, cratered plains of distant moons in showdowns beneath the high noons of binary suns.

But ore and gas was not all that humanity found amongst the stars.

Something else was waiting.

As they dug into the depths of ancient and alien worlds, humanity found traces '" ruins, the husk-cities of departed civilizations, inhuman and unfathomable.  Still they delved; ever their reach exceeded their grasp.  Until, plundering some tenebrous little world beneath the dying light of seven ebbing suns, the Crawling Chaos emerged from his prison'¦

Face down a shoggoth in a crumbling temple of Lrogg on the fourth moon of L'gh'yx (Uranus).  Saddle up your worm-mount and hijack a Ghisguth-drawn caravan on the fiery plains of Haddath.  Converse with the Insects of Shaggai in one of their phantastic hive-cities.  Fight rangewars over herds of crustacean cattle.  Uncover the secrets of the Yith with the Necronomicon in one hand and a six-shooter in the other.  Brawl in the saloons of New Arkham City.  Blip into hyperspace to escape the unthinkable jaws of the Great Old Ones themselves.

[Elemental_Elf]

Spaceships, Sixguns, and Cyclopean Horrors

Space Westerns meet Lovecraftian Horror

For centuries humanity wallowed in its blissful ignorance, fighting its idiotic and futile little wars, until under the auspices of illumination and science they took to the stars and the Great Beyond and made the ends of the universe their frontier.  Out in the black abyss of space they found whole star systems of planets, asteroid belts and clouds of stellar gas rich in the elements they'd squabbled over so wretchedly on their insignificant Earth.  Feverish with excitement and swollen with their own technological magnificence and the promise of spoils beyond their wildest dream, humankind began its great Diaspora, scattering itself across the galaxy.  Mining colonies and thriving boomtowns spread to the systems of Arcturus, Baalbo, Xoth, Betelgeuse, and Hydra.  Blood was still spilt, spattered across the dusty, cratered plains of distant moons in showdowns beneath the high noons of binary suns.

But ore and gas was not all that humanity found amongst the stars.

Something else was waiting.

As they dug into the depths of ancient and alien worlds, humanity found traces '" ruins, the husk-cities of departed civilizations, inhuman and unfathomable.  Still they delved; ever their reach exceeded their grasp.  Until, plundering some tenebrous little world beneath the dying light of seven ebbing suns, the Crawling Chaos emerged from his prison'¦

Face down a shoggoth in a crumbling temple of Lrogg on the fourth moon of L'gh'yx (Uranus).  Saddle up your worm-mount and hijack a Ghisguth-drawn caravan on the fiery plains of Haddath.  Converse with the Insects of Shaggai in one of their phantastic hive-cities.  Fight rangewars over herds of crustacean cattle.  Uncover the secrets of the Yith with the Necronomicon in one hand and a six-shooter in the other.  Brawl in the saloons of New Arkham City.  Blip into hyperspace to escape the unthinkable jaws of the Great Old Ones themselves.

Sounds awesome, more PLEASE!

[khyron1144]

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
-T. S. Eliot

Good Swiping is an art in itself.
-Jules Feiffer[/quote]Teenagers From Outer Space[/u] game where the NPC population was taken from a variety of television programs (especially cartoons), comic strips, and movies.  Obviously humor was the primary intent, but what do you call it when Wednesday Adams meets Godzilla in a classroom where the teacher is Dilbert?

Then there was the time I tried to run Call of Cthulhu.  For whatever reason, I decided to jettison the actual Cthulhu Mythos, other than some of the humanoid races secretly dwelling on Earth, like the deep ones.  Instead I subbed in a mixture of the supernatural elements of DC (The Endless Family, Earth and other Elementals ala Swamp Thing) and Marvel (The Darkhold) and attached it to a sort of detective game starring Wesley Dodds (the golden age Sand Man).  I then mixed in other low-powered golden age heroes and characters I felt had the right pulpy resonance (The Phantom, Mandrake The Magician, The Shadow, The Green Hornet, Indiana Jones).

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=khryon1144]Then there was the time I tried to run Call of Cthulhu. For whatever reason, I decided to jettison the actual Cthulhu Mythos, other than some of the humanoid races secretly dwelling on Earth, like the deep ones. Instead I subbed in a mixture of the supernatural elements of DC (The Endless Family, Earth and other Elementals ala Swamp Thing) and Marvel (The Darkhold) and attached it to a sort of detective game starring Wesley Dodds (the golden age Sand Man). I then mixed in other low-powered golden age heroes and characters I felt had the right pulpy resonance (The Phantom, Mandrake The Magician, The Shadow, The Green Hornet, Indiana Jones).[/blockquote]That sounds really cool.  Very pastiche.  You say "tried to run" - it didn't work out as planned?

[blockquote=Elemental_Elf]Sounds awesome, more PLEASE![/blockquote]Heh thanks I'll see what I can come up with.  Never hurts to have multiple projects on the go...

[khyron1144]

That sounds really cool.  Very pastiche.  You say "tried to run" - it didn't work out as planned?

It was fun.  It only went about two sessions, but really that's okay because it was meant to be something to do between D&D and Vampire: the Masquerade.  Basically I said tried because it was a short-lived enterprise.

[Nomadic]

You know on a semi-unrelated note I would LOVE to be a part of a commoner campaign. That would be so awesome.

[Elemental_Elf]

That relies heavily on experienced, creative players that are willing to, essentially, act out the Sims.

But yeah, it would be loads of fun!

EDIT: Actually a campaign based on the 6 NPC classes - Warrior, Expert, Adept, Magewrite, Commoner & Noble would be loads of fun as well. Maybe it would be a Commoner campaign that slowly bridged the PCs into one of the other 5 NPC classes.

[Nomadic]

That relies heavily on experienced, creative players that are willing to, essentially, act out the Sims.

I take it you have never heard of Joe Wood...

[Elemental_Elf]

Is that from the Commoner Campaign from the WotC Boards? if so, I followed that for over a year before I just stopped going to that site, lol.