This is a benefit of the encounter-driven architecture of D&D, though. Players want a series of fun encounters, and my experience is that they’re willing to buy into the obvious adventure hooks (”Go slay this monster to get an item that might cure the king”) if it means they’ll get fun encounters out of it.

I may be a bit spoiled in this regard, but it’s been a while since I had players go off the reservation too far.

In general, I know the play space well enough that I can keep things on theme, even if the specific action goes haywire somewhere. By devising conflicts, rather than plot points, I can be pretty sure that the story will still come across. The players came to play, and that means they came to play out fights, use their powers, and engage the story.

This kind of talk about inspiration actually helps keep people together, too, because staying on theme or within the atmosphere becomes part of the gameplay.

Themes, for me, come down more to the storytelling technique at the table. As the DM, I challenge people for descriptions, ask leading questions, and try to provoke difficult choices related to the theme. For example, in this past (first) session, a dead witch asked the characters if they were out adventuring really to seek a cure for their dying king or to secure their own power. “Power for you or your king,” she asked each character… and then she backs it up with a special mechanical effect (which won’t be revealed until the next session). But the way that D&D is built now, that’s hardly a house rule, I think.

If people are interested in this sort of thing, I’ll write more about crafting the setting to support both sources of inspiration, and maybe tackle other campaign-specific topics. I’m just uncertain how much people want to hear about some dude’s game on the Internet.

Do you have any house-rules to reinforce your themes, or is it just a matter of table-convention and roleplay-reinforcement?