What is your pet peeve? The "Martha Stewart" need to outdo one's neighbour's terrain and miniatures? For those outside of North America, MS is a billion dollar US decorating woman who has hordes of assistants who make it look like Martha just decides on a whim to paint Easter eggs in 2 billion shades of purple, landscape 20 acres in an afternoon in country style or sponge and stipple paint an entire mansion in an evening...

Our group goes to great lengths to try and achieve nice looking terrain and miniatures because we combine modeling and wargaming. Over the past couple of years, a few Warhammer gamers have joined us (and we them) and they really enjoy setting up games using some of my terrain. However, I've always maintained that although terrain can look nice, once the plastic bullets begin to fly, it's the excitement of the action of the game that is remembered, not how well painted or crafted something is. We tend to remember:

"I couldn't believe how many many regiments were cut down to nothing while the fighting swept back and forth over that single damn hill!!!"

not (forgive the sarcasm)

"The hill was so beautifully carved from styrofoam and the just right sprinkling of flock made the scene of the lines of beautifully painted ESCI, Revell and Imax Civil War figures waxing and waning across the slopes look like something out of a moving picture."

Thus a fuzzy towel over a pile of books is just as good. Just my opinion.

Other than computers, I can't think of other visual representations for a game. My following three examples are still miniatures games and I think you're looking for something that is "different" fundamentally from board and miniatures gaming? Perhaps virtual reality Star trek type "Holo deck" adventures might qualify as a brand new paradigm. OTOH, such an experience is still an extension of RPGs, I think.

There were a couple of fellows on this newsgroup that did "Play Mobile" gaming - with those appealing kids' toys with military uniforms. Also Lego Wars was a rule set available on the net up until about 5 years ago when Lego made the web master remove it because it was unauthorized. I've also got rules of a game one of our group brought the rules back from an Ottawa game convention which sounded fabulous - Clay O' Rama. Apparently, you construct war machines/monsters out of plastercine, judges then rule what weapons they have and then you go at each other. Hits are tracked by ripping pieces of the clay figures off... My friend said it was hysterical fun.