Never really asked myself this before when coming up with ideas. What do I want from the game. I'm not sure what the context of the question is: what do i want as a player? Don't know, chances are anythign I create I will only ever run (unless I'm exceptionally fortunate). But that's ok. Is what I want as a player different from what I want as a GM? I'm not sure it is. I think they are the same things: a cool setting with lots of opportunities for cool roleplaying.

What then is cool roleplaying? Well to me, that means encounters/scenes - moments where the players meet cool characters/antagonists and engage with them, most likely in combat. I don't mean scenes in the Forge kinda way, but in the sense of encounters - moments in the game that are, well, cool. Such as a rooftop encounter with an vampire SS Colonel on the roof of a storm drenched Schloss. But, by comparison, not endless Library Use rolls inside a boring old community library. There's a difference (and I dont care for puzzle solving or riddles or trying to outthink the GM's own through processes in such matters). So I think I prefer a more action oriented game.

It also means that the protagonists (ie the PC's) are iconically powerful within the setting. Not necessarily Mary Sue types, but competent enough that dice rolls don't result in something retarded in play. Characters that are heroic, if not heroes, and able to do things without tripping over their own shoelaces.

That's why Feng Shui ranks among my favouritest of roleplaying games, despite it's clunkly initiative system.

So this post is me thinking out loud as I begin the design process anew.

I think that I want:

Steampunk - it's just the most wonderfully evocative genre. So it has to have some measure of retro technology in that clockwork and steam industrial revolution gone mad style.
Magic - magic is just...magic. Every game pretty much has it in some fashion, and why not. Magic is that embodiment of dark wonder, a hint of terrible danger and the allure of ancient forbidden lore.
Guns - because what's cooler than whipping out two pistols (or muskets, perhaps, as those old style weapons are so evocative in design) while diving across the room.
Monsters - included in this is perhaps different character races (if only because more choice is a good thing, usually), you have to have antagonists that represent different aspects of the setting, not just people like the PC's.
Old Empire - ever since I learned about WFRP's Old World I thought 'how cool'. A western fantasy but with more central european flavour (even if it's just calling everyone Willheim or Gustav). In fact the world beyond the Old Empire/Kislev and the Borderlands around it is of no interest to me whatsoever to the point I don't think even the likes of Bretonia belong (i'll make exceptions for Ulthuan and the Dark Elf place that's basically America)!

To that end I'm thinking of a setting that's got an old world feel in part, an empire collapsing under the weight of its own history and pride. I'm looking at, then, some kind of caricature of Russia. Perhaps in the way that 2000ad's Nikolai Dante cartoon is (i'm not its biggest fan, it tries to be a bit adult and it comes across a bit silly, plus it's sci fi). In this setting I think a revolution will be underway and that, because of ancient bloodlines, some minor portion of the now-persecuted nobility will have magic...

I shall return.