Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?
I like something that's believable. That's maybe why Fantasy rates fairly low (but not zero) in my preferences. If I'm doing magic it has to be something that doesn't totally stick two fingers up to the laws of physics. I can go with Invisibility and Charm Other, but Create Food and Drink out of thin air? No thanks. Oh, and what does the Purple Dragon, apparently living for centuries in Room 101 of the Death Druid's Dungeon, do with all its dung?
My sci-fi has to be believable, too. I much prefer Traveller over Star Wars (gotta love my black with red spots Traveller dice), however, I find slower-than-light and spin-gravity to be too restrictive.
I don't really like mixing genres - one of my pet hates is science-fantasy. If you have all that tech, why the fruit would you carry (and spend half your life learning to use) a sharpened metal stick? It's just not believable.
A game has to have a story, whether it's devised by the GM or the players, there needs to be some form of plot or it becomes a pointless dice-rolling exercise. My preference is for a GM-directed sandbox - the GM provides a universe and a few plot hooks and the players, like people in the real world, decide what to do and where to go.
In my games (and games I like to play in), if PCs are sensible, they'll usually survive. Death is a result of stupidity, self-sacrifice, not reading the warning signs, or a gamble gone wrong, rather than a fluke dice roll. If three of you take on a biker gang in a back alley the results are... believable.
I've played Fantasy and Sci-fi in the past (and will in the future) but my current taste is setting the PCs against a real or alternate historical background with characters in the mould of Ivanhoe, D'Artagnan and Flashman.