If you've never seen how a particular game works and want to get a feel, search around and watch an episode or two of the game online. Rollplay on Youtube has a good channel that covers a lot of different types of games. You can also find games on Roll20's channel as well, and many more on Twitch and other channels.
As for game types, many of the ones listed here are very tailored games meant to play a very specific kind of game. I'll try to give you a summary of some of the popular ones.
Apocalypse World (AW) is a game, as you'd expect, about playing as a group of survivors in a post apocalyptic setting.
Night Witches is a varient of AW about a female bomber squadron in WWII.
Dogs in the Vineyard is a game about faithful 'God's Watchdogs' that go around Mormon-esque towns helping the community and enforcing the judgments of their religion.
Fate Accelerated or Fate Core is a mostly generic system meant to tell a lot of different kinds of stories. Fate Accelerated specifically is a very short and very flexible rulebook for whatever you could imagine.
D&D or Pathfinder are games about playing a group of adventurers in a tolkien-esque fantasy world, generally combat focused but you can play a lot of kinds of campaigns in D&D.
Dungeon World is a 'rules-lite' version of D&D based on the AW ruleset, which basically means it has a lot less rules and is more focused on the collective narrative.
Shadowrun is a game about telling cyberpunk heist stories in a fantasy/cyberpunk futuristic city run by megacorporations.
Blades in the Dark is a game about a scoundrel crew building their gang up from scratch in a city roughly based on the Thief or Dishonored games.
There's many more out there, it just depends on the kind of experience your group wants to have. Many of these rulesets are wildly different and the rules are tailored to create a specific kind of experience. Some of these rulesets are more generic and meant to be used to play a wide variety of games. Some are 'rules heavy/crunchy' which involve a lot more mechanics while some are 'rules light' and deliberately involve much less. D&D, Fate, Pathfinder are examples of more generic rulesets, whereas Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World, Night Witches, or Dogs in the Vineyard are much more specific.
In "My life with Master" the party play the henchmen of an evil master. It explores ideas of culpability, fear, self-loathing, humanity and, possibly, redemption. It is the only role-playing game to give me heart ache. Literally, pathos I felt as a physical reaction.
"The Clay that Woke", another by Paul Czege, concerns a race of Minotaurs, more physically powerful but utterly subjugated by humans. It explores themes of racism, power, imperialism, and ethics. Not quite as good MLWM, but very much worth playing.
I added "The Beast" to go all in on a game totally unlike D&D. It is a single player game, using cards and a diary, with an erotic theme, and dark overtones. I haven't finished my play through, and I'm not sure I recommend it, quite, but it has got under my skin.
"Hillfolk" is Robin D Law's 'Drama system', essentially game mechanics built around generating interesting interpersonal conflict. The setting is Iron Age subsistence, but it includes several other settings, from horror to modern life.
Funny mix of games, as most of them are rather new in RPG terms, while Shadowrun has been around since the 80s (and has maintained a mostly coherent timeline since first release).
I currently play with a group on roll20. It's not perfect, but it's adequate. (We pair it with a discord server for voice and secondary/out-of-character chat and logistics.)
We've looked at this exact issue from a PR perspective as well. In the media generally, there are some outlets that are blatantly one sided one way or another on certain issues, essentially just covert mouthpieces for certain organizations. What we've found is that it's not worth the effort to actually respond to hit pieces from those outlets, because they are only picked up on social media in circles of people that only talk to each other and are already incredibly biased against us. By even responding to the article in any way, we are just extending the shelf life of the piece within those circles. So there are now entire outlets we completely ignore from a PR perspective because it is simply a waste of our time and entirely counter-productive to respond to. We only respond to legitimate articles that are actually picked up by social media circles that we care about, which we have essentially mapped out.
There are no outlets that are not blatantly one-sided. If you believe so, your perspective has been narrowed by a filter bubble so that even minute variations of the same message seem great to you.
Some context for that year in CA politics: State Senator Ron Calderon was indicted by the feds in a pay-to-play sting on a film tax credit, State Senator Rod Wright was sentenced to 90 days in prison for breaking the law about living in your district (he served only a few hours, CA prisons are too overcrowded), and then State Senator Leland Yee was indicted by the feds in a sting that was actually meant to get Raymond Shrimp Boy Chow but ensnared a State Senator by chance. The State Senate actually suspended all three members.
CA remains a popular target for federal stings, Shrimpscam was a famous example of a federal sting that ensnared many members way back, but now there are much more recent examples. It was a crazy year, and the indictment for Leland Yee was nuts, it read like a crime novel.
Many CA legislators were infamous about running for districts in which they did not live. One of these was David Roberti, a member of the Democrat leadership who built his career on firearms ban (CA's first "assault-weapon ban" was officially the Roberti-Roos act).
The CA media generally refused to report on this until he was term-limited out.
I always wondered if one of the reasons that Wright was left to twist in the wind was that he dared oppose the Democrat leadership on some issues... like gun bans.
<The State Senate actually suspended all three members.>
I don't know if any was suspended before suffering felony indictments. Calderon was not only not suspended, he officially remained in office (drawing full salary and benefits) for the rest of his term. Wright was not suspended until after his felony convictions.
One might argue that political corruption has a huge negative impact on society and democracy. There are absolutely victims at all levels, for many years after their dirty deeds.
Contrast this to all people in jail for crimes that really haven't hurt anyone.
The real crooks are the ones that should be smacked extra hard.
I also take issue with your characterization of charter schools as all being run as for-profit corporations. The charter school environment and laws vary from state to state. California as one example has 1,198 charter schools. Only six of them are incorporated as LLCs, the rest are all either non-profit organizations or run by school districts. There certainly are for-profit charter schools, and in some states they have been an issue, but the majority of charter schools are run as non-profits.
Quick summary: The CA Legislature passed a bill eliminating personal belief exemptions for vaccinations in CA yesterday. The Governor of CA just signed it today with no hesitation.
The new requirements (mandate without personal belief exemption) is for children in "any public or private elementary or secondary school, child care center, day nursery, nursery school, family day care home, or development center" except for "pupils in a home-based private school and students enrolled in an independent study program and who do not receive classroom-based instruction". More detail, including bill text, at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
Government affairs staffer working in Sacramento politics. My field is education but I like to keep tabs on technology and start ups who almost always end up in the legislative realm eventually.
One fight I've been watching with interest in the CA legislature is the anti-Uber/Lyft legislation currently pending. We're in the last three weeks of session now and I'm very interested to see where that ends up and whether Gov. Brown signs it. There's nothing more fun than watching a policy fight you don't have a dog in.
If you've never seen how a particular game works and want to get a feel, search around and watch an episode or two of the game online. Rollplay on Youtube has a good channel that covers a lot of different types of games. You can also find games on Roll20's channel as well, and many more on Twitch and other channels.
As for game types, many of the ones listed here are very tailored games meant to play a very specific kind of game. I'll try to give you a summary of some of the popular ones.
Apocalypse World (AW) is a game, as you'd expect, about playing as a group of survivors in a post apocalyptic setting.
Night Witches is a varient of AW about a female bomber squadron in WWII.
Dogs in the Vineyard is a game about faithful 'God's Watchdogs' that go around Mormon-esque towns helping the community and enforcing the judgments of their religion.
Fate Accelerated or Fate Core is a mostly generic system meant to tell a lot of different kinds of stories. Fate Accelerated specifically is a very short and very flexible rulebook for whatever you could imagine.
D&D or Pathfinder are games about playing a group of adventurers in a tolkien-esque fantasy world, generally combat focused but you can play a lot of kinds of campaigns in D&D.
Dungeon World is a 'rules-lite' version of D&D based on the AW ruleset, which basically means it has a lot less rules and is more focused on the collective narrative.
Shadowrun is a game about telling cyberpunk heist stories in a fantasy/cyberpunk futuristic city run by megacorporations.
Blades in the Dark is a game about a scoundrel crew building their gang up from scratch in a city roughly based on the Thief or Dishonored games.
There's many more out there, it just depends on the kind of experience your group wants to have. Many of these rulesets are wildly different and the rules are tailored to create a specific kind of experience. Some of these rulesets are more generic and meant to be used to play a wide variety of games. Some are 'rules heavy/crunchy' which involve a lot more mechanics while some are 'rules light' and deliberately involve much less. D&D, Fate, Pathfinder are examples of more generic rulesets, whereas Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World, Night Witches, or Dogs in the Vineyard are much more specific.