Suddenly, I find myself building a new campaign (or, just perhaps, a one-shot). This all came about due to a Google search for strong themes, and on perusing the resulting list one leapt out at me: lost honour.
The idea, of course, is that the various campaign elements would be defined by their honour - either they're in the process of losing their honour, or they've deliberately thrown aside their honour, or they've defined honour badly, or they're persecuting the PCs for their own lost honour.
In terms of the PCs, the key would be that each player would be built with two requirements: the player needs to define how that character defines honour and how the character has lost that honour, and the character is required to care about that loss.
As noted, the character's definition of 'honour' can vary: one character may be, essentially, a Samurai who finds himself without a master (i.e. Ronin), and who bitterly feels that disgrace. Another might be a former soldier who, in a moment of weakness, turned tail and ran, leaving her unit to their deaths. A third might have been brought up with the notion that his purpose was to make a good marriage and sire an heir to the family name, only to discover that the wife his parents chose for him was a monster - he fled, but feels the loss of wealth and station that that decision results in. And so on, and so forth.
There are, of course, several ways the story can then resolve itself - the character could find a way to redeem their lost honour, the character could come to peace with the loss, the character could conclude that their definition of 'honour' was faulty, or whatever. Or, of course, the character's story could end without a proper resolution - either due to the collapse of the campaign, a plot that doesn't quite work out, or of course a premature death.
And now, I need a game to use, a setting, and some players...
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