The Themes of Your Campaign

[ajardoor]

ITT, we talk about what our sessions usually focus on.

This is similar to my previous thread about the aesop of your campaign, but more general and less about actual moral lessons.

[sgtcallistan]

Themes of moral choice, responsibility, the trickiness of your opponents; and recently, that overconfidence on your character sheet means something. ;)

[whswhs]

A fair number of my campaigns have been what I call theme-seeking rather than theme-setting: That is, the theme emerged from what the players were interested in, or from what I came up with as I tried to devise suitable episodes.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

I've thought about this a bit more in connection with my current Barrayaran campaign. It's interesting because the players seem to be picking up on only part of the theme.

*****SPOILERS FOLLOW FOR THE BOOKS*****















The main narrative of Bujold's novels starts when Cordelia Naismith meets Aral Vorkosigan. Cordelia is, in a sense, a success in her society: captain of a survey ship, intellectual brilliant, has the loyalty of her crew. But she's also single, recently emerged from a disappointing relationship with a (male) fellow survey officer, feels betrayed by him and a bit embittered, has resigned herself to the life of a professional spinster, on a planet where sexual gratification seems to be nearly as basis a right as access to the Internet. And she meets a man from a technologically and culturally backward planet that's struggling to modernize to survive contact with the galaxy, and focusing that entire struggle on its military; Cordelia doesn't even approve of the military, and she knows of Aral as a mass murderer in an aggressive war and flinches at his name. But within a week, she trusts him implicitly, as well as being overwhelmingly attracted to him: She believes that he can be relied on to keep his promises and to try to do the right thing, enough so that when her own society lets her down, she flees to join him on his native planet. Seemingly she feels that his sort of old-fashioned masculine virtue offers her something more to be relied on than Beta Colony has; and in any case she can't bring herself to betray him.

You can take this, if you like, as the classic drama of "woman drawn to strong, forceful man" that frustrates a lot of "nice guys." But there also seems to be a subtext of Barrayar having its own virtues that Betans don't get. They're tied up with weird retro stuff like the anti-mutant paranoia and the fear of biological contamination ("The Cetagandans tried to make our children into monsters!"), but there's more to them than that. And Miles, the next generation hero, shows that in Memory, when he's torn between being Naismith and Vorkosigan, and finally decides to become Vorkosigan—and brings all the energy and relentlessness he's put into Naismith to doing something that Vorkosigan has to do. The whole point seems to be that Barrayar embodies honor and loyalty going both ways—and that there's a reason for the women characters to value that, as we see not only in Cordelia but in Ekaterin.

So that's a continuing subtext of my own campaign as well. I have a "tulip mania" about ornamental butter bugs draining Barrayaran and Komarran capital that could otherwise go into farming and terraforming; I have Commodore Koudelka suffering paralysis because long contact with his (artificial) nervous system has caused his (organic) muscles to become unresponsive; I had a scene where one of the PCs was taken by one of her suitors to a new popular horror film about a mutant with dangerous powers. And yet the player characters are all solidly on the side of galactic values and remaking Barrayar in a progressive image. That is, they're taken only part of the thematic content from the novels.

In particular, there was a recent episode where one of the PCs learned that his apartment building had been sold by the Vor lady who owned it to a real estate business that promptly turned around to resell it for much higher prices, forcing him either to assume a mortage that more than doubled his housing costs, or to move to a less desirable location. And one of the other tenants, an older major, came around and asked if he would sign a petition asking Lady Vor'obyev to do something for her tenants, whom she had put into an awkward position. Well, Jack (Xav Jackson Vorpatril) turned him down; the player said (though not in character) that Jack didn't think that Lady Vor'obyev had any obligation to her tenants, as they weren't sworn to her nor from the Vor'obyev District. All that's true—but imagine Miles, or Aral, confronted with that kind of situation! It wouldn't matter to them if they had a contract; what would matter would be their personal honor.

I'm not quite sure where to go with this. I don't want just to subvert the theme of the campaign. But shoving it into the players' faces won't work, either. I need to explore situations where it comes more into focus, I think.

Bill Stoddard

[reb]

i never know what the specific theme is untill i have ran the game for a while,sometimes the theme just happens right off,
sometimes i have to run a session or two,
usually i have a vague concept at game start based on what kind of characters the players have put together,
i get a fair idea concept and change it as they start roleplaying in game,then a theme just comes together and i steer the game towards it.
most of my themes are usually some variation of doing something either for pay or doing a mission/quest/operation-etc for the good of the world at the time.
i have a broad theme and then once the game starts i can narrow it down and tailor it to what the players seem to be steering their characters towards..
depends on the players roleplaying capablities and what they can handle as to how involved the theme is,
whether epic or small type theme.......

[Ed the Coastie]

Offhand, I would say that I don't really have discrete "themes" so much as I do ideas upon which I like to hang the main action of the campaign. Said ideas depend upon my interests at the time; my current GURPS campaign, for example, involves Cherokee Mythology and Mormon Archaeology.

If I do have a theme, I would say that it generally tends toward "There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The discovery and exploration of the unknown play a large part in any game that I run.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Ed the Coastie

If I do have a theme, I would say that it generally tends toward "There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The discovery and exploration of the unknown play a large part in any game that I run.

If you'll forgive a repetition, I don't count that as a "theme," but as a "thesis." Anything that can be represented as an assertion, a claim that one thing is true and another false, is a thesis, even if it's a very general one, such as this. A "theme," to me, is a topic about which one might make varied assertions. For example, "the discovery and exploration of the unknown" is a topic (in fact, it's a lot like the topic of one of my recent campaigns, "myths and legends of the seas and seafaring"), and therefore is a suitable theme, whether you have a specific thesis to put forth about it or are just looking at different possibilities.

Bill Stoddard

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If you'll forgive a repetition, I don't count that as a "theme," but as a "thesis." Anything that can be represented as an assertion, a claim that one thing is true and another false, is a thesis, even if it's a very general one, such as this. A "theme," to me, is a topic about which one might make varied assertions. For example, "the discovery and exploration of the unknown" is a topic (in fact, it's a lot like the topic of one of my recent campaigns, "myths and legends of the seas and seafaring"), and therefore is a suitable theme, whether you have a specific thesis to put forth about it or are just looking at different possibilities.

Bill Stoddard

A theme is a main idea or message, of an essay, paragraph, movie, television program, book or video game. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.[1]

Wikipedia

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

A theme is a main idea or message, of an essay, paragraph, movie, television program, book or video game. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.

"Messages should be delivered by Western Union." (Samuel Goldwyn)

"Most great works of art have a theme that holds them together. This song doesn't." (Harry Chapin)

"Mr. Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message." (Theodore Sturgeon)

The trouble with the "message" interpretation is that it suggests that every novel is a roman à thèse, or even a propaganda novel. That's not necessary to a novel, or any work of art, and it often represents an artistic failure. I wouldn't call a "message" a fundamental component of any art form; in fact, I'd say that if you can sum up a novel, film, song, or poem as a message, it's a failure as a work of art—the work of art itself ought to be the briefest form in which you can say whatever it has to say.

And this applies all the more strongly to an RPG, where the course of events is not dictated by the scenario writer or the GM, but emerges from the choices of the players in situations presented by the scenario writer or the GM. The GM can choose a recurring focus for scenarios, but can't make them prove any specific point.

Bill Stoddard

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by whswhs

"Messages should be delivered by Western Union." (Samuel Goldwyn)

"Most great works of art have a theme that holds them together. This song doesn't." (Harry Chapin)

"Mr. Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of message." (Theodore Sturgeon)

The trouble with the "message" interpretation is that it suggests that every novel is a roman à thèse, or even a propaganda novel. That's not necessary to a novel, or any work of art, and it often represents an artistic failure. I wouldn't call a "message" a fundamental component of any art form; in fact, I'd say that if you can sum up a novel, film, song, or poem as a message, it's a failure as a work of art—the work of art itself ought to be the briefest form in which you can say whatever it has to say.

And this applies all the more strongly to an RPG, where the course of events is not dictated by the scenario writer or the GM, but emerges from the choices of the players in situations presented by the scenario writer or the GM. The GM can choose a recurring focus for scenarios, but can't make them prove any specific point.

Bill Stoddard

Well it says "main idea or message" not just message. In any case it was copied from wikipedia so I am not taking a position other then the position that it economizes on arguing to go back to the manual before beginning just to make sure it's not just a matter of everyone having a different idea of what a word means.