Seeking Sources Of Genre Descriptions

[Mulsiphix]

My kids and I have been roleplaying for a little while now. We use a homebrew system for collaborative storytelling, and each of them will be soon running a play by post game for our family. Right now they are trying to decide what kind of story they want to tell and I was hoping I could find some good descriptions for different potential genres.

GURPS Fantasy has a wonderful breakdown of the Fantasy genre, which is currently the best I've seen in terms of genre description. I was wondering if anybody had any other resources (RPG, books, web, or otherwise) they might recommend that cover this topic? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[ericthered]

Gurps Mysteries, Horror, and to a lesser extent Space have decent genre breakdowns in them.

[whswhs]

Page 10 of GURPS Adaptations has short summaries of fourteen broad genres.

GURPS Supers breaks down that genre on two different axes.

[dcarson]

Genres don't have edges so much as landmarks. If you see enough of a given genre's landmarks you are in it. They can share some landmarks and you can see enough in some cases to be in two or more genres. So pick which set of landmarks you care about.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Gurps Mysteries, Horror, and to a lesser extent Space have decent genre breakdowns in them.

GURPS Mysteries in particular has an splendid analysis of the sub-genres of mysteries ("cozy", "hard-boiled", "police procedural", and "thriller"), giving excellent advice about what sorts of characters you have to generate to play each one, and why. I've found it very useful.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

GURPS Mysteries in particular has an splendid analysis of the sub-genres of mysteries ("cozy", "hard-boiled", "police procedural", and "thriller"), giving excellent advice about what sorts of characters you have to generate to play each one, and why. I've found it very useful.

Additionally, GURPS:Mysteries provides solid advice for GMs who want to run any sort of adventure that includes secrets, of any sort, the discovery of which is something the players will need or.want their characters to do.

I wish I'd had it, when I began to run my own games, many years ago. I can't recommend it highly enough.