I'd like to hear what everyone's personal preferences are. Settings, rule systems, genre, dice color? Anything. I'm hoping to get a little inspiration by hearing some new ideas or different takes on old standards. So I'll go first.

High fantasy. God, I hate high fantasy that doesn't have a twist. Vanilla fantasy is the hardest thing for me to play in. Particularly, technology. I see these timelines that span thousands and thousands of years with the world forever being stuck in medieval times. It's nearly impossible for me to believe that in the last six thousand years of whatever setting there were no Albert Einsteins, Thomas Newcomens or Samuel Colts? Come on. I can't touch fantasy that does not involve at least the beginnings of more modern technology.

Fantasy that has the beginning tech of the Renaissance.
Guns are rare, granted with magic they might stay at the handcannon stage longer.
Give me elves,dwarves, gnomes and orcs and I'm a happy camper toss in psionics
and it feels close to perfect.

I am perfectly content playing in nearly every type of fantasy milieu, but my preferences are always for Gritty.  I want PC death to be a regular threat and semi-regular occurrence.  (Yes, this is as a player.)

Now, I don't mind if the system is "Only Named-Villains cause death, not bad dice rolls" and I don't mind if it's like Hackmaster -> "Let the dice fall where they may."  Either way, I'm happy.

As for setting: I love steampunk.  I love it especially when someone asks one of the original steampunk questions, "What if Napoleon (or this world's equivalent) said, 'yes'?"  Anything that begins from some kernel of alternative-earth history logic is awesome.

As for vanilla fantasy settings; I don't mind 'em either, but what I especially love it when one or two racial tropes are twisted.  For example in my personal campaign world: Trolls are the most honorable race in existence.  So honorable that they can bind any promise/oath into a permanent geas/quest.  Might sound really minor, but it changes the race from one that wanders about getting killed by adventurers to one to be not just feared, but held in awe and respect as well.

I'm not really a fan of vanilla fantasy settings, but it's feasible for technology to remain stagnant in such a world for various reasons.

Personally, I like futuristic settings that don't involve zombies.  I'm sick to death of zombies.

In reply to GamerHandle (msg # 3):

I love switching around racial tropes. I've tried to apply it to all the usual races and made those MY tropes for the races.

In reply to face-hits-ground (msg # 1):

I prefer homebrew settings, either as a player or a GM.  It sucks when everyone knows how to exploit every advantage within a world or worse yet, knows everything about the world, its history, magical items, who all the power houses with in the political structures, etc.  Kind of takes the mystery away from the world.  With homebrew, the players only get what the GM feeds them.

Gotta love my Rolemaster as far as rule sets.  With this one system, any genre can be handled, high fantasy, gritty fantasy, space age, pulp, you name it.  And if you like the fact of death can always be knocking your door, check out the crit and failure tables.  I guarantee any guy will groan in pain at least once and maybe the women too.

Dice color has to be a pearled emerald green, with pearled dark blue in second.

In reply to face-hits-ground (msg # 5):  Woot! Absolutely!  good stuff.

In reply to tulgurth (msg # 6):

I wholeheartedly agree.  I love rolemaster, I will even take the watered-down MERP 2e.  However, it's very difficult to get people to want to play it.  The critical charts make me giddy.