# Do your campaigns have a theme?



## Bynw (Jul 31, 2013)

My game/campaign whatever you want to call it. A series of related adventures set in the same world and background spanning multiple players and GMs for the past 30 years. Has long had the same theme:  Sixguns, Sorcery and Psionics. A home brew setting called Teara Adan, which has a used a number of gaming systems through it's history. Feel free to check it out www.teara-adan.com


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## Ahnehnois (Jul 31, 2013)

Rel said:


> Are your philosophies about life reflected in your GMing style?



Yeah, heavily. I work in a lot of thematic material based on my own life and professional experiences. Sometimes in the foreground, often in the way the world is constructed in the background.

Of course, like with any good piece of art, it's important that the players be allowed to act independently, form their own opinions, and not have stuff shoved down their throat.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Jul 31, 2013)

I've considered "Enchantment under the Sea", rejected "Midnight in Paris" and "Evening in Venice", found "The Time of our Lives" to be trite, and have somewhat positive feelings toward "A Midsummer Night's Dream." No decisions yet, though.


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## FickleGM (Jul 31, 2013)

Yes, but it always changes.


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## diaglo (Jul 31, 2013)

i do what comes naturally. i ask the players for input.

i ask them what they want to play.

i build the world around them.

that is not to say i don't also make suggestions or offer some options. and i do tell them when i can't make a concept possible. but for the most part i make sure to build the fun into the game.

that is the way it has worked for me as a referee. don't be afraid to tell me what you want.

what most often happens is players get paranoid when some part of their characters background or history appears in game.


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## Jhaelen (Aug 1, 2013)

My campaigns typically have a quite obvious theme. My first campaign featured a world fallen into an eternal night with the dead returning from their graves. My latest 3e campaign revolved around a plot by the mindflayers to draw the material plane into the plane of dreams to be controlled by the Avatar of Ilsensine, resulting in nightmares becoming true.

Despite the thematic similarities, the approach I used to plan the course of the campaign was very different: The former involved a lot of preparation, worldbuilding and planning ahead in great detail (largely removing choice from the players). The latter was more of a sketch, loosely based on an existing setting (Blackmoor) and the players' actions always decided how the campaign would progress.


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## Fetfreak (Aug 1, 2013)

Rel said:


> *Are your philosophies about life reflected in your GMing style?  Is  the way you plan your life similar to how you lay out the course of a  campaign?*




I think they are. For one, religion in my campaign setting is based on faith. Gods never showed themselves and I never said to my players that they do or do not exists. This is probably because I'm conflicted on the matter myself.
A lot of my villains are simply misguided characters whose desire and power got out of the control. 
And many of my story lines are about eternal life. 

I guess those are my usual themes.


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## DrunkonDuty (Aug 2, 2013)

By campaign people mean a series of adventures that have some sort of connecting theme, action or goal. Truth be told, it's a pretty vague concept. A series of published adventures with no connection, played by the same players with some of the same characters would be a campaign. At the other end of the spectrum there are Pathfinder's Adventure Paths in which the heroes pursue one main goal from start to finish.

And for the OP: yes. I run games that reflect who I am as a person and what I'm interested in. There's usually a lot of social realism in the game. (The poor are poor, the rich are rich, and it doesn't matter what level you are, you bow to the monarch.) I don't like to include gender or racial bias, except sometimes as a feature of a villain t show that they are particularly vile. A species is not inherently evil, it's nurture over nature. I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other things that come through too.

I would post more, but it's time to game. Cheers.


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## Hand of Evil (Aug 2, 2013)

Theme...Kill the players! No, no, just joking.  

Hard to say, I seem to have a lot of them going on at the same time and the players cross the streams as they campaign.  

Example: 
1) The Young Prince once to be King, the problem is that he has two brothers in front of him.  So, first he has to gain backers and power, then he has to plot the deaths of his two brothers and the King.  This will happen over a period of time, this is an event and the players will either be involved or not but it will progress.  I as the GM has to decide how and when that happens. 

2) The Cult of Evil God is planning on opening a portal to their god's domain, this is going on at the same time as example 1 and may even cross over it.  As the GM I have to come up with the location for the portal, the ritual, and a number of other requirements.  Again, I then have to set up how and when the players interact with this plot, they decide if they follow it.  

Hope that makes sense.


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## thedmstrikes (Aug 3, 2013)

The extent that my life experiences affects my campaign choices has been limited to the fact that I move every three to four years to a new place.  When this has happened, I search for and collect together a new group of gamers, sometimes brand spanking new ones.  Early on, I had no real link to my games, it was the brand new shiny adventure published that caught my eye, but after a certain one had become published in the early 90s, I latched onto it and expanded my initial campaign from there.  I am a huge fan of the forgotten realms world, which allowed me to concentrate the memorization of my background knowledge so it was easily on the tip of my tongue when the need arose.  From there, I simply shoehorned in additional material and options.  For example, once I gained a copy of Rappan Athuk, the entrances were added to the map of the local region and it was always a "side quest" choice for the players.  The mainstream items I had added, however, all complied with a central theme, well, two actually (spoiler):  kidnapping and the underdark.  Some of the theme related events happen to become red herrings, so it could become easy for the players to get confused or side tracked.  Unfortunately, I have yet to stay in one place to see the entire campaign wrap up, so at the higher levels, things would probably become more clear about the real main idea that had lasted throughout the entire campaign.


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## megamania (Aug 18, 2013)

Nearly all of my Storyhoured campaigns over lap in some manner.   True heroes and their activities should affect the surrounding area in way other groups would notice.  Some have reoccurring NPCs (Kim Elderitch, Sir John) or villians (Face of the False Moon Mistress Muy Monstrous) and so on.


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## Lwaxy (Aug 18, 2013)

Theme, yes, but not necessarily related to my world views, and definitely not related to how I pln my life for i don't plan my life at all


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## Gilladian (Aug 18, 2013)

I've never been able to work a long-term theme into a campaign. I've tried, but my players resist. I just go with the flow, making each adventure tie to the one before it in some way, and we end up with something we call a "story". Frex, my best campaign in a while was one in which the PCs started out in village/town A, explored a dungeon for a while, then got involved in a "bad baron"'s political plans, and ultimately killed him and disposed of the body. I thought they'd then help his lady wife get her very young son protection from the baron's friends, so he could eventually rule, but instead, we went off on a tangent involving a pregnant girl and her missing husband... then they did a bunch of cross-country travel, ducked out on a chance to help a transformed prince break the curse he was under, and ended up the game after the PCs went back to dungeon-delving and got filthy rich! The campaign lasted about 2 years real-time, and was loads of fun even though it changed course radically 3 different times. And it definitely made an impact on the campaign world; they helped a bunch of kobolds become functional members of a community, discovered a dungeon with a myriad of gates in it that MAY become a transit center in the world, and once again failed to eliminate a villain who thus has a chance to consolidate his power in the kingdom.

Oh, and I do think this reflects my thinking about life; you can plan all you want, but life itself will throw you for loops, and you'd better be ready to change direction, no matter how much confusion or grief or whatever it causes!


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## sabrinathecat (Aug 27, 2013)

way back when I was in college (20 years? YIKES), I was running a 2nd ed Spelljammer game. Tweeking that world to 4th ed, with the multiple world-changing disasters and what I had planned for that campaign way back when into 1000 years later, we have my current game. Actually, there are two games, neither of which knows it is the same as the other game (one player I think is starting to suspect).
The short version: the eladrin/elves have been claiming they discovered this plane and it was unoccupied, and everyone came after them. The truth: the Elven Imperial Fleet was the main survivor of the war with the Vodoni, and they leveled and destroyed all other societies and crushed all other learning for 500 years. Only in the last 500 years (when they suddenly were cut off from travelling to other planes (even via portals) due to an 'incident') have the elves and eladrin allowed societies other than their own to develop. They have, however, planted false histories into the education of the other races. The players in one game opened planar travel as part of their lvl 6-10 adventure chain.


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## innerdude (Aug 27, 2013)

I'd say my campaigns generally have a "tone," but not usually a "theme." For example, for my current campaign the tone is "heroic exploration in a fallen world." The tone is meant to have a hint of mystery surrounding the events of the past, while allowing the heroes to really push an active agenda in the present. If you're familiar with Michael Sullivan's "Ryria" series of novels, I'm trying to emulate that sort of style. 

As far as "theme?" I don't think I'd ever impose a "theme" on a D&D-style game. For something like FATE it might make sense to have some thematic expectations in place--"As a group I'd like your characters to explore themes of loyalty and betrayal, and personal sacrifice for the greater good." That would be more in line with choosing appropriate Aspects. 

But for an action-oriented game like D&D (or Savage Worlds, which is my current system of choice), "theme" is more something that arises from in-game play than anything I try to impose on it.


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## pemerton (Aug 28, 2013)

I don't lay out the course of a campaign - my campaigns evolve through the process of actual play.

But I do have certain recurring themes in my campaigns - loyalty, rulership, the earth vs the heavens and hells, millenial destinies, etc. I wouldn't say that these are particularluy connected to my philosophies of life, but I think they are the sorts of themes that are inherent in fantasy tropes and motifs.


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## steenan (Aug 30, 2013)

Campaigns I run or play in tent to have themes. Some of them emerge spontaneously in play, others are pre-designed. I never prepare the story in advance, but I tell my players in advance what, in general, the campaign will be about.

In last campaign, there were three main themes. 
One was revenge. When it is justified, how much we try to understand others and how it affects how we judge them. Revenge as emotional act, as social expectation, as moral duty.
Second one was servitude. Being a slave versus serving willingly. Loyalty and how it is earned. Keeping an oath versus being loyal to a friend. Fighting slavery. Social inequalities; objective factors one cannot ignore versus being humane to all people.
Third - but probably most important - was secrets. Pursuit of hidden knowledge. Sharing knowledge versus knowledge that's too dangerous. Learning how the interesting parts of the world work. Knowledge as a goal in itself versus knowledge as a source of power.

Earlier campaign - run by me - had two main themes.
One was journey. Travelling to far away places. Dangers of sea, desert, jungle. Meeting strange cultures, strange people, strange creatures.
The other was myths. Contemporary religions of the setting, old gods. Forgotten history, discovering it and how it affects the present.


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