Pathfinder is my favorite, but I have an appreciation for all the different editions of DnD and what they tried to do, good and bad. 4th is the one I dislike the most, but even then I don't hate it. It just never jelled for me.
Chimpzy said:
Here's one for my fellow GMs.
Do you prefer running more narrative-driven campaigns or an open sandbox style?
This depends entirely on the system for me. If a system has a very front loaded character creation (like Traveller or Shadowrun), then making a true sandbox is much easier: the characters' power level will not fluctuate wildly, and thus populating a sandbox is easier because you don't have to give the extra thought of "Will my guys run into this when they're scrubs and get pasted?" all that much consideration.
Games where the players' abilities dramatically increase as they play (any d20 derivative, Dark Heresy, Earthdawn, to name a few) makes creating a sandbox more of a chore if you wish to create an engaging game. If you populate the sandbox a la what most videogames do (easy encounters nearby, harder ones further away), it can feel pretty...well, video-gamey. But if you don't do that, there's high chances of your players stumbling into something they cant deal with. And there ain' no quicksave in PnP games if you accidentally went into the cave of Morgoroth Citybreaker at level 1 when he's a challenge for level 10. Some players love that, some players hate it, it's up to you to know your group's preferences.
I personally like a bit of both. An overarching narrative that provides a start and an end goal, and then making things pretty open ended, letting the players decide how to tackle things and where to go.