D&D 5E A campaign that lasts an entire (in-game) lifetime... what would this look like?

[BookTenTiger]

I've been playing around with some longterm downtime activities that last for years instead of weeks, and it's getting me thinking about how I would run a campaign that lasts, in-game, for decades (if not longer).

But I'm having trouble picturing how this would actually work! Adventurers tend to be so driven that it's difficult for me to imagine scenarios in which they spend years not adventuring.

On the other hand, that's what I call a design challenge!

So how would you design a campaign that lasts for 50+ in-game years?

...

Peaceful Realm: The campaign could take place in a setting that is, in general, peaceful and bucolic. There's not really a big need to go out adventuring. However, every once in a while, something happens that threatens the peace! A dragon appears. It rains blood. A hag is gathering an army of fey. Those who can take up arms and head out on an adventure, defeating the threat... until a new one shows up after a number of years have passed!

Growing Kingdom: The adventurers could be protecting a small settlement that grows and grows over the years and decades, eventually forming a large city or kingdom. In between adventures, the characters are helping the settlement grow- patrolling the wilderness, running businesses, leading worship... Then, when threats arrive, they head out on the next adventure!

What are your ideas?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

We did a generational game twice, once in 2e and once in 3.5 (technically 3 times cause we did it in WoD too once)

you need to enforce downtime being real downtime... not "Oh on day 1 i want to do X, on day 7 I want to do Y"

and you need a good social encounter group... the abilitiy to 'hold court' as an adventure day.

I would most likely go with brutal rests... 8hours for a short and a week for long, but I'm not sure that is needed.

 

[commandercrud]

Long rest = 1 week downtime. Add in training time to level and game time flies by.

 

[Ancalagon]

the longevity differences between some character races really would have to be considered...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

some of the highlights

2e a psionicist and a wizard rescued a baby dragon... 3 sessions (9 months) later they found a woman who would become the party patron. over the next year (only about 3 sessions) the psion and woman fell in love... but she was an older woman, the grand mother of the baby dragon. By then the party also had a ranger with species enemy dragon that wanted to kill her.
the ranger got his hands on an artifact that allowed him to terriform miles of space around him in only a month... he went to the dessert to start making it green, but found a dessert druid/rogue who taught him that useing it to change ecosystems was wrong... at this point though the now 5 PCs (psi, Wizard, Ranger, druid/thief, and Fighter had found a map to a ancient lost temple in the dessert... so after about 15 sessions taking up 4 years. we then spent almost as long (10+ sessions) just exploreing the ruins taking less then a month of game time

3.5 was very different our Warblade and Warmage opened a school together and our Ninja (shadow dancer)started a spy ring. But our cleric and multiclass monstrosity never found anything other then tagging along with the other 2...

 

[BookTenTiger]

the longevity differences between some character races really would have to be considered...

The thread on longevity got me thinking about it, actually! It would be interesting to do smaller time jumps between adventures in the beginning (5 or 10 years), then start increasing the gaps (20 years... 50 years... 100 years...). The elves, dwarves, and gnomes might still be playing the same characters, but the humans and halflings and orcs would be playing later generations, or students, etc.

 

[BookTenTiger]

This would be an interesting way to do a "points of light" campaign. The world is recovering from a long period of darkness. Much of the wilderness is literally too dangerous to travel, even for adventurers. As the years pass, though, more of the world opens up (through the efforts of the adventurers, of course).

Characters might spend years of downtime in new settlements, helping them get established. Or they might be in the main city, running guilds and academies. Or patrolling the wilderness, trying to keep the eternal threats at bay!

A new adventure starts when a distant community reaches out for help, a large threat makes an appearance, or someone discovers a valuable resource hidden in the wild.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Another approach would be to lean into the generational aspect... Maybe there is one great adventure each generation. 25 to 50 years pass between adventures. Players can keep the same stats and treasure, but play as the children, students, or worshippers of their precious characters.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Growing Kingdom: The adventurers could be protecting a small settlement that grows and grows over the years and decades, eventually forming a large city or kingdom. In between adventures, the characters are helping the settlement grow- patrolling the wilderness, running businesses, leading worship... Then, when threats arrive, they head out on the next adventure!

This was (more or less) what my group back in Arizona from 2001-2006. The PCs lived and eventually passes away, with their children picking up the torch (literally LOL).

 

[Mannahnin]

I'm playing in a generational game right now- The Great Pendragon Campaign.

The whole concept is that the game starts several years prior to Arthur's birth, and your first generation of characters are knights in service to Earl Roderick, who in turn serves Uthur. The campaign is intended to last through Uther's death, the interregnum of chaos until Arthur ascends the throne, and all through his reign until his death.

Play is divided into game years. Sometimes we play through a year in a session; busier years might take two or three sessions.

Each year the GM tells us what events are happening. Some more or less require our participation (though often you CAN bail out/make excuses), like our liege lord mustering his knights to war against the Saxons, or Christmas court. Other periods less is going on and we can pursue our own interests. Sometimes Merlin might recruit us for an errand or quest. In Winter we make a series of rolls to see how prosperous our lands/households are, against the GM rolling on behalf of the winter. Our horses can die, we can have kids if we're married or petition our lord for permission to marry if we're not, etc. Some kind of family event will happen. And after our characters reach a certain age they'll have to make aging rolls and gradually become decrepit, assuming they don't die in battle younger. And our heirs are the intended next generation of PCs. Two of our three PC knights in our first generation HAVE recently (less than ten years into the game) died in battle against an evil Fae giant. One of the new PCs is the recently-knighted squire of one of the deceased knights, and the other is the younger brother of my former character.

Pendragon has mechanics for feasts and for battles as well as for the winter/estate-management phase.

A significant plot thread for my original PC Sir Gwydion was that he managed to marry a wealthy widow with several estates, but I never improved my Stewardship skill, so I was reliant on hers, and then on that of a skilled steward who I specifically went out to recruit after a few harsh winters/bad rolls on my part. And then I had EVEN WORSE rolls with that guy despite his very high skill, which the GM explained as drunkenness and carelessness on the steward's part. After the first couple of failures and a dead warhorse over a winter my character sat him down for a very "shape up or you're dead" conversation, and then when he failed AGAIN, he went on the lam with a bunch of stolen silver and one of my best horses! Hunting him down was quite a fun side adventure, which was prompted by the winter phase mechanics, growing organically from play.

As far as how you would implement something like this in D&D, I do think you're going to want some sort of extended downtime mechanics like you're working on for winter and so forth, and feast/social activity ones would be good too.

In terms of regular play, you can just establish with the players that the pace of adventure is simply different in this game than a regular D&D campaign. The land is perhaps more peaceful, and monsters more rare, and the PCs have responsibilities of some kind which prevent them from just wandering off the map into the wilderness in search of treasure.

Framing play around the year and the seasons, I think, is really good. Like in Diplomacy- Spring, Summer, and Fall turns, with Winter being a time when adventure normally can't be had and PCs need to focus on survival and keeping the homestead whole. If you plan for each season to be when one "thing" (event or adventure) happens, then you get a max of three adventures/major activities per year, and time can pass at a page less breakneck than seems common for D&D.