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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5684052" data-attributes="member: 177">Two things:1) If the players decide to not go on a particular adventure, I have to improvise a single session's worth of material to cover the gap until I can find out where they really want to go, and prepare for that, specifically.  If the players bomb out on an entire theme, that impacts all my future work.2) A player may buy in to an adventure they aren't really thrilled about, because it is just one adventure.  There'll be another adventure in a session or two or three.   A player is less likely to accept an entire campaign theme that doesn't excite them, because that theme is going to be there in most of the sessions, inescapable for the life of the campaign.Basically, for both the GM and the player, a campaign theme is a larger commitment than a single adventure.  Well, I don't usually start a campaign telling the players who the ultimate BBEG will be, or even if there will be one.  I often enough don't know myself.  I don't see too many cases of the players buying in to long-term plot details, so much as general situation or genre details.When you are pitching a long-term plot, the themes are usually implied anyway, because long-term plot usually indicates genre, and genre typically implies themes.Which, I think, just goes to suggest that if you want to run a particular theme, find a genre that does that theme well, and pitch that to the players.  It would probably be more intuitive to most players, and avoid having to go into a discussion of what you mean by including "literary themes" in the game, and what that implies for play.</blockquote>

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