The Theme
This is one of the most important, yet most overlooked, aspects of being a GM.
A good Theme will add greatly to the immersion and paranoia of the players, which again will serve to make the game a great experience and not just another incarnation of a forum based text game. A good theme will also serve to attract more players, which also have a positive effect on the game. Therefore your purpose should be to maximize paranoia and minimize anything that might break the immersion of the game. In my experience, the themes that work the best are those based on an enemy within. A group of people that have known each other from time immortal, but now some of them wish to kill the others for one reason or another. Obviously this theme has its problems with Big games, if the players are longtime friends then its hard to accept that all those who have special roles have been able to hide it from the others. So alternatively you can go with a large group of strangers, this removes a bit of the paranoia whereas the first removes a bit of the immersion in Big games. Both choices are viable, but you need to remember the down sides of both.
The theme is especially important in Big games to keep the paranoia going through dry patches. Lite games are more impervious to bad themes as the frantic paranoia of the game itself can serve the purpose of a theme. This is no excuse to use bad themes in Lite, just a reminder that you need to be a lot more careful with it in Big games.
Before going to go more into the details, Iĺl give you an example of
A Good Theme and
A Bad Theme. Iĺl leave it up to find out why each are what they are.
Accept your limitations
Lets face facts, theres only so much information a player can remember. We as GMs must insure that people are not overwelmed by the setup information, if they are they tend to ignore some parts of it. For instance if we rename every role in the game, introduce a few new ones and at the same time add an intricate theme then people will give up. This will very quickly lead to people ignoring the theme, use generic role names and all sorts of other stuff that break the immersion. An intricate theme is often be less immersive and paranoia filled than a simple one. We also have to consider that some players don't have that much time for playing, sub in late or even start forgetting what the theme was about! The theme must be so simple that these people won't give up them-wise, but will still feel some paranoia and immersion. You will notice that the good themes really need no more than the title and at most a few lines to establish the theme, sure theres usually a bit more but thats just unneeded but nice details.
Generic Names aren't really that bad
Don't discredit the generic name just because they are generic. We have plenty of stories of vicious werewolfes, backstabbing cultist and sneaky sorcerors. We know these names and they instinctively give us a bit of paranoia and actually immersion as well. This sounds contradictory, but it is true. We don't need people to explain what the role is, we instinctively know it and have no need to re-read the first page.
Secondary generic names
Some roles have names that are commonly used instead of the generic name. For instance, the cultist is often called the Sympathizer. If you really can't use the generic name, then consider using the secondary name.
The power of a good Title
A good title conveys as much of the title as possible, introduces loads of paranoia yet is also reasonable short. Don't forget that people will remember your game based on your title, so go ahead and make it memorable.
Role Playing
A good theme allows players to RP. It should ideally be free enough that people don't feel forced into a specific type of role, but also constrained enough to establish some generic RP for those who may not feel like doing a lot of RP. Eg, you need to make it so that the comments of players, who have not chosen any RP role, could come from a paranoid villager.
Stay with your Theme!
If you pick a theme, then at the very least you must stick to it yourself. You can't expect players to, if you can't do it yourself. Don't refer to generic names in your responses, even if the questioner does. You can be nice and include the generic name in bracketed small text for claritys sake.
They really are out to kill you
You want the motives of the baddies to be understandable and clear. Ideally you need to say no more than their names for people to understand that a) they are ev0l b) they mean to kill you and c) nothing but their own deaths will stop them.
Stuff to avoid
Ideally you want the players to believe that this could actually happen, you want the players to imagine themselves in their charachters shoes. So obviously there is a lot of things you want to avoid that could ruin this illusion. Many of these things are not something players will mention if you do it wrong, so it ...
No Escape
If a player could simply walk away from the monsters and the lynchings, why wouldn't he do that? If possible, you should make it clear that the only way out of this situation is to win. Escape is either impossible or certain death.
Identical Appearances
The baddies must be indistinguishable from the goodies, otherwise finding out who was the baddies ought to be very easy. This is why we have Werewolfs, since everybody knows they look just like regular humans during the day. This doesn't just mean that if you decide to use 50-foot tall demonic dragons as your baddies then you have some explaining to do, its also a principle you should remember if everybody is human. Say the goodies are US marines and the baddies are Taliban. It should be fairly easy to identify the baddies based on overall fitness, skin color and beards. Also applies to speciel roles.
Why don't the baddies simply kill them?
Try to avoid situations where the baddies do something instead of simply killing the goodies. Imagine for instance that the baddies poison the village water supply making everybody forgetting that they know the others, thus allowing the baddies to infiltrate them. But, why wouldn't the baddies use a killer poison or just start killing people while they walk around in daze??
Don't make it unbelievable.
This is a bit of a catch all. If you can't make a theme without an unbelievable event, then don't. Offcourse, this being what it is there are different standards for what is believable. Freak tsunami killing everybody on an Island save the players. Not believable. Pissed of God teleporting the players to a deserted island. Believable.
How do you know if something went wrong?
Sometimes its easier to notice when the theme went wrong, then when its going well.
Players refers to roles by their Generic Name
Players ask to have the theme explained / got confused by theme
Players ignore theme
Keep the readings of the First post to a minimum
This obviously is very hard to monitor, and its more something you should have in the back of your head. Every time a player reads the first post, it is because he is uncertain about something. You want your players to understand everything perfectly the first time. This is impossible, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't strive for this ideal.
Lots of zombies / inactivity
If you are hosting a Big game, then don't assume that because the thread is dead that people are inactive. The game can be surprisingly active behind the scenes while appering to be dead and buried in the thread.
A few types of themes
Generic
Don't underestimate this. It can be a surprisingly good theme, its not overused, the generic names fit perfectly and so does the general chatter. Theres nothing wrong with this theme
META
This is about having a WW game about WW games, the forum or similar. This is generally a very bad idea and surprisingly commen. It can work, like in
The Lemeards, but thats the exception rather than the rule. Also, it can easily violate the recently imposed no-impersonations rule.
Flipping the standard sides of Good and Evil
A game where werewolves are the goodies and villagers are the goodies. A surprisingly common theme and a very bad idea. People get confused and the result is that very soon people just start to ignore the theme, except for a few player who remember it just to write "LOLZ you just admitted to being a villager. THey are da Ev0ls". Note that there is nothing wrong with themes like
THIS where the goodies are corrupt cops, and the baddies are IA.
Just like a previous game...
Beware that players have long memories, if you host a game with a theme identical to a previous game then players will expect clear similarities. Theres nothing wrong with knowing this and building a game on the same basis as the old, especially oldies who played the old game will approve. But if you are not aware and have to denounce any similarities at the beginning, then a lot of immersion will be lost. So try to avoid that.
Fun Themes
In General any theme you invent because you thought "LOLZ wouldn't be hilarious if... " is a bad idea. Its usually somewhat entertaining for a day or two, but it quickly leads to people utterly ignoring the theme, the role names and everything else. It can work in Lite games where the paranoia of the game should kick in at this time, but I don't recommend it.
Tribute Games
Once I considered making a game called Wolfestein 3D, which would be a tribute game to this old but marvelous game. Special roles would be named after characters and objects in the game. This is a bad idea. The Doctor being called "+50 HP Health Pack" would utterly ruin any sort of paranoia in the game. Tribute games that are deep into the mythology can also be hard to get into for people who don't know anything about it. It can make it hard to RP since a lot of roles are already "taken". A railroading theme can also be very stiffling, if the GM insist that all people are a very specific thing. With all that said, tribute games that just take the setting and make it somewhat generic can be great. The Warthogs game is a great example of this. In fact, many excellent themes can be found from books, mythology and history. Using either of these as a springboard for your theme is a good idea, just avoid the pitfalls mentioned above.
