@surreality said in What themes and subjects do you look for in a game?:
@Coin Thank you! You know I 
you, but it's in like ALL THE THREADS lately... and seems to turn people away from universal contributions once it seems all WoD-centric. 
I'll help turn it back by responding to @Coin's comment (ie It will all be N edition soon, prior edition no longer accepted).
I think that creates a hard line, another reason I'm not a fan of cannon source (movie- book-verse)/game material (specific rpg). I just spent some ducats (cause I'm Roman, not cause I'm gangster) on N edition books for a good read, but its a year or two later and the new books are billed as N.N edition. I don't want to spend more money to play the game. I don't want to wade through the virus infested swamp that is 4share or some other file share on-line. The kind folks that love that specific game or cannon have taken the their valuable time to enjoy all the books or supplements and decide which is the most fun for their game, but then I have to look through the list to make sure I have the sources material specific to what I want to play or just not play it.
10 pages of wiki for original theme (which is light for some places we can agree) is a lot less reading I have to do to get into something.
Now, I do agree with @Arkandel, I don't want to read all that original theme to discover I'm onto some personal meta by the staff which is really running through the course of some unplanned book they want to write and everyone is just some pawn in the course of them revealing that story to the audience, which is the 10 people remaining on the game after a year who have all been promoted to staff.
This gets into other realms I've brought up, how much needs to be meta versus free form. Any grand meta sets the life of a Mu* to the extent of this great arch, even if it includes dozens of people, there is an end. Any lack of meta means lack of long term interest too. As it comes up a lot and a few WoD have run the course lately of being active with >dozen folks for multiple years running. The old standard when places ran for 5-10 years, just cause we thought they'd never close and the purpose was to stay open forever (SW1 is still running around, bless their soles).
I prefer original theme cause recurring genre like WoD is just a rehash of stories already told it seems. Its white washed and run again. Didn't @Thenomain just comment in another thread, if you have a great game running that eventually 'dies', just white wash it and run again with new name. I don't want it white washed, I want it painted. System doesn't matter, say its historical western. Don't say its small town Colorado again in 1868, the last frontier. Move it to 1842 New Mexico pre Mexican-American War. Do something new. WoD, don't just move city and let it be similar stories. I just want something original. That and a mix of adventure, where I know what the adventure is that I can do on a personal level because I'm never on when staff are around, with social between the adventure bread so I can mix peanut butter and jelly all I want.
