In my dreams, the campaign I’d run would be one where anything is possible. I’m not saying everything is easy or that every character should be able to do anything. There’s no challenge or entertainment in that, surely? What I do want though is a setting that supports magic and technology and biogenetics. Perhaps not all in the same time and place, but not taking anything off the table.
The way I see this working is with a multiverse or a cosmology supporting parallel dimensions. For this, I’m looking back to Michael Moorcock and his ideas of Chaos, Order and the Balance. Towards the Chaos end of the spectrum lie more magical, whimsical, surreal experiences, while the Order end tends to the authoritarian, technological, and homogenous. I don’t want to deal with cosmic good and evil. Those are constructs of consciousness.
Anyway, in my ideal campaign, players have agency and drive the storyline. In my experience, however, when given the prompt, “What’s your ideal RPG experience and character look like?” they tend to be stymied, or want a character that can do everything out of the box. Starting off, at least, you need boundaries, defined scope.
Which begs the question: How do you agree upon the game the players want to be in and define that as a starting point, while having a greater, wider scope in the future without rendering the initial deeds and stories irrelevant? The starting point has to be the player characters’ actions are the pebble dropped in to the pond that cause the ripple that grows to a tsunami.
If you’re going to run an RPG that spans genres, tropes and concepts, you’re going to want a universal system that is flexible enough to support modelling arcane spellcasting and MechWarrior combat, that kind of narrows your scope. There is also the matter of crunch to consider. As it stands, I’m coming down on the Cypher System. It has so many games that already have a multiverse concept behind them that there’s a trove of material to choose from, and characters are directly portable and comparable, while using the same underlying mechanic.
As a starting point, I don’t want to blow my players’ minds with a multiverse as a starting point. I do want horror, though. I do want the acknowledgement that there’s a wider universe out there. Honestly, that doesn’t limit my choice in Cypher too much. All of the following easily could be used: