Please list for me all the RPG genres (high, low fantasy, S&S, hard sci-fi, etc) coming to your mind, along with examples of games that best embody that genre to you.

I'll update the OP to make a comprehensive list of genres and associated games.

Supers - Champions 4e or Supers!
fantasy roleplaying - AD&D 2e or BFRPG
Horror - Call of Cthulhu
modern day military - Gurps 3e with Covert Ops, Espionage, and SWAT
Martial Arts - Dragon Fist
Oriental Fantasy - Legend of the Five Rings

Since I'm in a Mage mood tonight ...

Modern Urban Horror/Fantasy: Mage, Vampire, Changeling, Promethean., Demon, Wraith, UA. Kult, Dresden Files, Neliphliem, Conspiracy X, Werewolf, NWoD blue line, CoC Whispering Vault and Chill for a start.

Edit: Anything by Eden Studios such as Witchcraft, Armageddon, BtVS, Angel and AFMBE.

Games:

Science Fiction: Starcluster 3
Science Fiction with Anthropomorphics: Justifiers
Space Opera: Traveller
Space Opera (Licensed): D6 Star Wars
Space Opera/Greek Mythic: Hellas
Espionage: Top Secret/SI or Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes
Heist: Leverage
Fantasy: High Valor
Superheroes: Hearts & Souls, MSH/Faserip, Marvel Saga, or Icons (all damn fine)
Cyberpunk/Fantasy: Shadowrun 4E
Cyberpunk sans Fantasy: Cyberpunk (original 1E)
SuperCyberpunk: Underground
Urban Fantasy/Horror: NWOD
Cartoon Themed: Cartoon Action Hour S2
Historical Fantasy: Ars Magica
D&D Setting: Birthright
D&D Rules: Cyclopedia
Generic: Gurps 3E
Generic Anime: OVA
Strange Fantasy: Providence (Second Runner Up: Talislanta.)
Mecha: Mekton Z
Oriental/Wuxia: Qin
Pulp Action: Spirit of the Century
Pulp Fantasy/S&S: Barbarians of Lemuria
Post-Apocalyptic Serious: Atomic Highway
P-A Wahoo: Gamma World 4E (Not for D&D4E)

Fantasy: It's low-tech and has magic. Sub-genres may be defined along the pervasiveness of magic (low magic vs. high magic), literary influences (low fantasy/S&S vs. high/romantic fantasy), cultural inspiration (Medieval European, East Asian, Near East, Antiquity), etc. D&D, Runequest, WFRP, Rolemaster etc.

Horror: It's got horrific things and monsters and paranormal phenomena in an outwardly mundane setting, typically our own world (modern or historical). Call of Cthulhu, Chill, Kult... what about World of Darkness? The term may be misappropriated when you're playing the monsters -- maybe "dark supers" or "modern-day urban dark fantasy" are more accurate descriptors -- but in casual parlance, I still use "horror". The aesthetic is right even if, strictly speaking, the genre label isn't.

SF: It's got speculative technology that doesn't exist today, or that'll never exist but plays on assumptions extrapolated from science, modern or dated. Here, sub-genre makes a lot of difference: cyberpunk (Cyberpunk 2020), space opera (Traveller, Star Wars), post-apocalyptic (Gamma World, Twilight: 2000) etc. Even steampunk can be considered SF in my book.

Supers: It's got people with powers. Most games (HERO, Mutans & Masterminds, ICONS, every Marvel and DC RPG) reflect a fairly "four-color" universe, though some games (e.g. Wild Talents) seem better at doing a grittier, "suddenly supers" game like GRRM's Wild Cards, or TV's Heroes or The 4400.

Pulp. Somewhere between supers and modern-day thrillers, lies a genre that typically encompasses something resembling men's adventure serials of old and their latter-day imitators (e.g. movies like Indiana Jones and The Mummy). Adventure!, Two-Fisted Tales, Hollow Earth Expedition, Spirit of the Century.

Modern-day action. A leading genre in mainstream movies and books, yet for some reason a red-headed stepchild in RPGs. James Bond/007, RECON, Spycraft, The Company.

Composite. Most games from the 1990s afterward seem to touch two or three of the categories above. Shadowrun (cyberpunk SF and fantasy), Castle Falkenstein (steampunk and fantasy), Unhallowed Metropolis (steampunk/Teslapunk and survival horror), Ninjas & Superspies (modern-day spy thriller RPG with elements from East Asian fantasy and cyberpunk SF)

Multi-genre. Anything goes. Defy any sane attempt at classification and include elements from just about every one ofthe genres above.  Rifts and Synibarr are the only ones I know.

Of course a big part of the fun of RPGs is that most of them defy classification. Stormbringer is clearly high-magic, low-fantasy dark adventure. What about D&D, is it low or high fantasy? Low or high magic? What about Traveller, is it hard SF (radiation hit!), or soft SF (FTL! psionics!), or just retro SF? That's all part of the fun for me. Games work best when they're their own thing, as Benoist often points out.

OK excellent. Keep it coming. I'll reorganize all this stuff at some point.

Part of the reason I'm doing this is I want to find out if there is some area/genre in RPG that is glaringly missing from my RPG collection. I thought it might be interesting to have a general picture of what exactly exists, and example of games that go along with the categories people think of.

As a 90% approximation, RPGs are fundamentally action/adventure stories.  It's not going to be that hard to cover all possible subgenres of action/adventure with a reasonable number of books, but there are dozens of other literary/media genres that are either completely unrepresented or are only represented by niche one-off storygames.

One thing my inner OCD feels compelled to point out is that the field of literature, film and media criticism has very different definitions of some of these genres than the RPG community.

Transhumanistic science fiction? I think Eclipse Phase would be a game for that, and there was a special edition of Shock: social science fiction.

Also, how would you classify games like Over the Edge, or Don´t Rest your Head?

Steampunk? Lady Blackbird would suit. I don´t know too much about the genre, but I think there are other -punk subgenres (like aetherpunk).

Maybe weird fantasy and sword & sorcery as subsets of fantasy.

Also, anime-inspired genres? something like magical girl: for games, I think there´s panty explosion, maid Rpg, and it´s complicated.

Western? both historical and supernatural western: it´d be deadlands for the second.

Quote from: Khimus;539964Western? both historical and supernatural western: it´d be deadlands for the second.

Aces & Eights for the PSEUDO-historical (since it's an alternate Earth), Deadlands yes, Weird West RPG too.

And I wouldn't be too OCD on the classifications themselves. All this stuff is arbitrary in the first place. The goal for me is to try and identify which genres I'm totally missing with the RPGs I got but would like, and I thought this could be useful for others too, while talking games and shit in the process.

Quote from: Benoist;539966The goal for me is to try and identify which genres I'm totally missing with the RPGs I got but would like, and I thought this could be useful for others too, while talking games and shit in the process.

Okay, let me clarify my question: are you looking to fill out genres for which reasonably accessible RPGs have already been published, or are you looking to fill out genres regardless of whether a reasonably accessible RPG for that genre exists?

For instance, "dark supernatural western" is well-represented in published RPGs.  "'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous' Prime-Time Soap" is not, unless you count the (highly collectible) Dallas RPG.

The reason I let my OCD imp off his leash is that it helps to ensure you have a common language when discussing this sort of thing.  To someone who actually studies literature, "high fantasy" and "low fantasy" mean very different things than to the average RPG enthusiast.

To return to the topic:

Film noir: the Noir RPG, A Dirty World
Supernatural neo-noir: Bloodshadows, arguably the Dresden Files RPG
Dynastic History: Aria, arguably Birthright

Quote from: daniel_ream;539972Okay, let me clarify my question: are you looking to fill out genres for which reasonably accessible RPGs have already been published, or are you looking to fill out genres regardless of whether a reasonably accessible RPG for that genre exists?

The former. I'm talking existing RPGs here.

I think the list here is pretty exhaustive.

Quote from: Steve Dubya;539975I think the list here is pretty exhaustive.

Good link! Thanks.

Just list all the GURPS books.

Very similar to The Butcher, here is how I currently have Vintage Games sorted over at the Citadel:

High Adventure
Arduin; Middle Earth Role Playing, RoleMaster; RuneQuest, OpenQuest; Tunnels and Trolls; Palladium

Strategy Review
AD&D; B/X (Moldvay/Cook), BECMI (Mentzer) D&D; Holmes Basic; Labyrinth Lord; OSRIC; Swords and Wizardry; White/Brown box D&D (Greyhawk, Blackmoor)

Generic Systems
Basic Role Playing (Worlds of Wonder); GURPS; FUDGE

Dark Places
Call of Chulhu; Chill; Paranoia

Soldiers, Spies, and Superguys
Twilight 2000; Recon; Top Secret; James Bond 007; Champions/Hero; DC Heroes; Marvel FASERIP; 4C

Spacefarers
Metamorphosis Alpha; Robotech; Star Frontiers; Star Trek; Star Wars (d6); Traveller

Planetside
Cyberpunk 2020; Gamma World; Shadowrun; Skyrealms of Jorune; Rifts

I separate the SF stuff because the usual planet bound stuff ignores space travel altogether, while the stuff that has space travel usually has a mix of space and ground, even if the space travel is mostly handwaved; ie, Star Frontiers, Star Wars d6.

D&D has enough internal tropes to be its own genre, in my view.