Recurring themes in your games?

[Anders]

I also tend to gravitate towards TL 2.

[The Benj]

Special powers that are not known about by the general public.

[quarkstomper]

Romance is a recurring theme in the games I run with my wife, not too surprisingly. I often throw a number of possible romantic foils at her. She almost always chooses the Brooding Byronic Anti-hero or the Charismatic Megalomaniac over the Nice Guy. Unless the Nice Guy is really rich, or the Megalomaniac does something to cross the Moral Event Horizon.

I ran an X-Men campaign with her once where she was dating the Beast for a while. Until Magneto started showing an interest in her. Of course, he did propose to her in a memorable manner, so I suppose I can't blame her for being impressed.

Similarly, in a DC Supers campaign, I had her character working for Ted Kord, aka Blue Beetle, and they had a cute relationship for a while. Until she met Bruce Wayne. (sigh). Beetle just can't catch a break. And even dating Bruce Wayne didn't stop her from flirting with Jason Blood and Vandal Savage.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by quarkstomper

Romance is a recurring theme in the games I run with my wife, not too surprisingly. I often throw a number of possible romantic foils at her. She almost always chooses the Brooding Byronic Anti-hero or the Charismatic Megalomaniac over the Nice Guy. Unless the Nice Guy is really rich, or the Megalomaniac does something to cross the Moral Event Horizon.

I ran an X-Men campaign with her once where she was dating the Beast for a while. Until Magneto started showing an interest in her. Of course, he did propose to her in a memorable manner, so I suppose I can't blame her for being impressed.

Similarly, in a DC Supers campaign, I had her character working for Ted Kord, aka Blue Beetle, and they had a cute relationship for a while. Until she met Bruce Wayne. (sigh). Beetle just can't catch a break. And even dating Bruce Wayne didn't stop her from flirting with Jason Blood and Vandal Savage.

Actually that's kind of cute. So you use roleplaying for roleplaying? Well I guess it makes sense.

[exalted]

Exploring the settings honor/moral/religious codes is probably my favorit, but it doesn't work for all players in my experience so it is usually a sub-theme.

Consequences are not always fair but serious actions have consequences always, sometimes it just take a couple of sessions to be noticable.

Often the swift and easy path require questionable alliances and/or actions. It also frequently but not always disastrous in the long run.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by exalted

Exploring the settings honor/moral/religious codes is probably my favorit, but it doesn't work for all players in my experience so it is usually a sub-theme.

Consequences are not always fair but serious actions have consequences always, sometimes it just take a couple of sessions to be noticable.

Often the swift and easy path require questionable alliances and/or actions. It also frequently but not always disastrous in the long run.

I do some of that in microfiction.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

I do some of that in microfiction.

One of my heroes when he was young led a foray to save some hostages including his sister. When he captured the enemy chief he threatened to order his brother who was a medic(and who he said would know how to do it) to torture him. The chief revealed the locations. Later his brother asked him,"would you really have ordered that?". The hero said yes and replied,"would you have done it?" His brother said yes. At which point the hero said,"Then we've both learned something about ourselves today."

Another story, which I never wrote down, had the same hero later in his career make a successful attack on an enemy position. One enemy officer was bleeding to death refused to surrender so he gave him a weapon and fought him in single combat to save his face(again while he was bleeding to death and with unfamiliar weapons to boot; the heroes chivalry only went so far). Later the heroes wife quite reasonably berated him because the man was doomed anyway and the hero had loved ones to consider.

[Tuk the Weekah]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Do you have any themes or phenomena which regularly recur in your campaigns, perhaps even so frequently that you could make a drinking game from it? Take a shot if the villain is an Ancient Cult. Every time there are zombies, take a shot. Etc. And they shouldn't be commonplace, so "people have to drink or they die" wouldn't be valid.

Let's see. Since coming back to GMing:

1. A PC is always related to the Big Bad
2. Clowns aren't good people
3. The chicks always dig Player X's characters
4. There's always a betrayal

I'm sure that a different, better list could be made by my players.

[Archangel Beth]

1: PCs are Weird and Unique Special Snowflakes. (Like, all of them. ALL of them. Yes, I do tend to say, "Sounds cool! Sure!" when they ask "can I play an X?")
1a: NPCs are either unfazed by this, or already hitting the alcohol because of the combination of PCs and a few Special Snowflake NPCs.

2: The PCs talk when they were expected to fight, and do so convincingly enough that non-stupid NPCs don't start fighting anyway.

3: Someone gets a Divine/Infernal/house-ruled-3rd-side Intervention and the logical consequences of having something Cool Happen distort the session around it. (On the plus side, the players all seemed to like how I portrayed Lucifer that time.)

4: Superior Safari Tour. Everyone goes to visit the Library.

[robkelk]

Digression:

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

4: Superior Safari Tour. Everyone goes to visit the Library.

Now you've got me picturing a nice, quiet chat between Archangel Yves and the Unseen University's Librarian...

Okay, that's enough digression.