Genres
Fantasy
- "high fantasy": epic struggles between good and evil in mythic landscapes
- "low fantasy": the intrusion of magic or fantasy into our own everyday world
Science Fiction
- Space opera (taking familiar storyline and throwing it into space, more character oriented?)
- Time travel
- Alternate realities and parallel universes
- Post apocalypse
- Robots and other neo-machinery
- Entirely new worlds, creatures and cultures
- Science runs amok
- Nature strikes back
War
- Past, present or future
- Historical
- Imagined
- Sweeping or focused; an entire war, a theatre, a campaign, or one battle
Adventure
- Exploration
- Conquest / empire building
- Quest
Espionage
- Spies, saboteurs, and code breakers
- Stealth and secrecy combined with action
- Gadgets and tech to defeat foes and obstacles
- Gritty or "Bond-ian"?
Superhero
- Those born...
- ... and those made
- Extremely skilled or tech-amended humans
- Super-powered beings
Crime
- Cops
- Criminals
- Lone wolf or leader (Dirty Harry or Godfather)
- Mafia / mob
- Gangs and gangsters
- Vigilantes
- Pulp / hard-boiled / noir
- Fact based
- Procedural
- Heist
- Pursuit
- Vengeance
- Prison
- "Last run"
Mystery / whodunnit
- Detective / investigator
- Professionals and "talented amateurs"
- Traditional / "drawing room"
- Pulp / hard-boiled / noir
- Courtroom
Horror
- Monsters, creatures, vampires, etc.
- Supernatural / occult
- "Human" monsters
Westerns
- Traditional (John Ford and John Wayne)
- Revisionist (Sergio Leone's films; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; Deadwood)
- Native American; African American (e.g., buffalo soldiers); other ethnic / cultural focus
Sports
- Winners and losers
- The big game
- The rise; the fall
- The underdog(s)
- The comeback
Romance
- Often appears as an element or plotline within another genre
- Unusual as the core or goal of a narrative-based game
changed March 25, 2008