Wouldn't it be just great if people responding on this thread actually responded to Saint's original question?
Let me be the first:
First of all, I really like Gear Krieg in particular. I am a big fan of the pulp action genre and there are precious few games out there that cater to that particular jones. Gear Krieg has solid and simple mechanics, well-thought-out sourcebooks, and authors who seem to really know the source material that they are drawing from. THe fact that the Nazis (boo, hiss) developed mechs to give them a huge advantage during the war is a really cool switch, but it does not detract from the pulp feel of the game. Instead, it seems to blend right in.
Which, I guess, is my general point. It is good to mix and match genres, but it just has to feel right. Take high-tech and magic. Shadowrun tried it first, and (in my opinion) failed horribly. What could have been a facinating concept became instead garish, contrieved, and just plain jarring. It is like the designer couldn't decide if he wanted to play D&D or Cyberpunk 2020, so he just slapped them together without trying for logic or internal consistency. The RPG Obsidian, on the other hand, also combined high-tech and magic and did it very WELL. The setting is dark, the magic is powerul and possibly corrupting, and the backstory explains neatly why mankind should shy away from magic and yet whey they don't.
If you want to mix genres, don't just throw a bunch of cool conventions together and call it a "setting." Yeah, postapocalyptic mutants hunting magical elves can be fun ("Fritz! They killed Fritz! Those dirty stinking Faries!"), it won't work if the setting exists "just because." Instead, work up a setting that you want to run, and incorporate what concepts from other genres you want included AFTER you have already come up with the internal consistency for your own universe. This way not only do you already have a template to work with, but things will come much more naturally and make a lot more sense.
