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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Merova" data-source="post: 1189198" data-attributes="member: 2505">Exploration of ThemeHi all!Thematic exploration can be a rewarding style of gaming. When a GM delineates a requirement like "only good" or "no elves," it is because they want to focus on certain challenge types, which would be diluted if the restriction were not imposed. However, there are two big problems:1) Exploration of theme is a difficult style of play. An inexperienced GM is likely to trip in the execution, resulting in a bad playing experience. Furthermore, there is an implied "social contract" here, which delineates the player's participation, which, if violated, causes great disruptions within the game. The fault isn't in the scenario design choice, but in the GM's or player's abilities.2) Theme-based play needs to be interesting to the players. Playing "Merchants & Markets" can be very rewarding, but not if you're interested in High Heroic gaming. The GM needs to design her game around the interests of the players. If her group wants to play evil bandit warlords, then the thematic "Good only" is a selfish and misguided choice.I like being clear with my players about the style of game that I'm running. As a player, I appreciate the GM being honest in telling me what type of behavior is expected. I loath GMs who have expectations of their players, but never give any hints as to what they are expecting, resulting in passive-aggressive scenario design when the expectations are not met. Grrr.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" /> That's all IMO. YMMV.Thanks for reading.---Merova</blockquote>

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