Today is going to be another giant muffin day.

By that I mean I’ll be making more muffins. I’m going to try modifying my basic recipe so it becomes white chocolate and raspberry muffins.

Coffee and a nice muffin are one of life’s little luxuries that help make those me time moments special.

They also make a great treat while running a game session. Sadly for my friends and fellow gamers there hasn’t been an opportunity for them to try them since I got back into baking.

Let’s look at today’s hashtag theme…

Theme for me is just as important a factor as system when choosing an RPG.

If the theme doesn’t excite you then why are you playing a RPG with that theme? It’s why I have no interest in the upcoming D&D campaign/adventure Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos. I wasn’t a fan of the Harry Potteresq setting in MtG. So doing a D&D setting with it, it just isn’t for me. Which is fine. So I won’t be buying it or playing it.

Very often the mechanics of the system you are playing support and help bring out the theme of the RPG you are playing. A good example of this is in the Alien RPG with the stress dice and it’s stress mechanic.

Free League have done a really good job of using the Year Zero engine to bring out that element of stress to the game. Each player has a stress level which determines how many stress dice they roll in addition to their normal dice to make a skill check. They can even opt to take on stress to add a stress die to the check. More dice rolled increases the chances of getting a success. However there is a risk. Roll a 1 on one of those stress die and they have to make a panic roll. If the combined value of their stress level and panic roll is 7 or more then some sort of negative impact affects the player. Which could be as simple as increase their stress level, or at the extreme end make them catatonic.

Naturally being a fan of the Alien movies and comic books from the late 80’s/early 90’s, the theme attracted me. But what sold me was the stress mechanic. It struck me as being really cool.

So themes that are likely to get my interest are the usual fair, such as fantasy (D&D, Realms of Terrinoth, The One Ring), cyberpunk (Cyberpunk Red, Android: Shadow of the Beanstalk), sci-fi (Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 A.D., Paranoia, Alien), post apocalyptic (The End of the World) , and alternative history (Twilight 2000).

What themes grab you?