I think it is worth noting that the playtest uses the word "villain" -- which kind of precludes the sort of thing you are talking about where the PCs are more "anti heroes."
I don't think running a villain campaign would be especially rewarding, fun or even tolerable. Villains, by definition...
I get the strong sense that I asked the question poorly, since so many people are arguing against generic systems in general.
What i really wanted to know is do you (like me) have a go-to setting or milieu against which you measure a system that purports to be generic or universal?
The actual...
Is hacking "a significant thematic interaction" in contemporary or urban fantasy? It isn't Shadowrun. Also, in D&D "significant thematic interactions" are very often gated behind classes.
Very interesting. I wonder what they are aiming for. As @Whizbang Dustyboots suggests, it is too close to the release of the Ravenloft splat for these to be in that.
I think it is reasonable to imagine a "Season of [Evil]" next year...
It would be interesting to know. I wonder if any of the big cons have done the sort of attendee surveys that might give us some insight (and made them public, of course).
I don't believe in the true universal system, simply because (as others have mentioned) mechanics have inherent "tone compliance" and some genres or milieus will just not work with some rule sets. However, I do think you can make a very broad game, that can do a lot of things where the venn...
Some games do a better job than others of being both setting agnostic and having an identity. Savage Worlds is the best popular example, especially SWADE which icorporates a bunch of dials to help focus the game to meet the tone of the given genre.
I am not sure I understand. The generic system is whatever it is (SWADE, say) but if it can do Star Wars (IMO) it can do any kind of pulpy space opera, and probably most other kinds of pulp adventure.