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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 5683146" data-attributes="member: 26473">Okay, well, what I dimly recall from lit classes way back when is that a story may be composed of multiple themes, as opposed to "THE theme," in which case I would say that many, if not most, roleplaying game campaigns already include them. Wealth, for example: to what lengths will someone go to get it, what do they do with it once they have it, how does acquiring wealth change someone, and so on. Or Ambition: how does someone get power, how does he keep it, what does he do with it, what is its effect on the people and environment around him.In this case, themes emerge as a synergy of the system (particularly in whatever rewards system, express or impled, the game includes), the setting, and the adventurers.You can make themes explicit for your players, if you're so inclined; I did this without really consciously thinking about it in the game I'm running right now, as part of explaining a genre conceit. In <a href="http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/le-ballet-de-l-acier" target="_blank">the wiki for my Flashing Blades campaign</a>, I include a page in <a href="http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/le-ballet-de-l-acier/wikis/getting-started" target="_blank">the players' guide</a> titled, <a href="http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/le-ballet-de-l-acier/wikis/the-big-idea" target="_blank">"The BIG Idea."</a> Simply put, The BIG Idea is that swashbucklers are motivated by honor before all else; in literary terms, this might be considered the theme of Pride.But Pride is only one of the themes, and it is by no means the only theme that emerges in play. Loyalty, Ambition, Social Status, Romance, Revenge: all of these come up in the game, which is no surprise as they are part-and-parcel of the cape-and-sword genre, but they arise out of the action, rather than being introduced explicitly.For my part, I'm less inclined to try to lay out themes and much more focused on creating a genre-appropriate environment for the adventurers to explore and letting the themes reveal themselves through the choices the players and their characters make in actual play.</blockquote>

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