campaign in six weeks

[bolen]

I was thinking of running a"campaign" over the summer where I hit only the high points of the characters lives.

I was thinking of letting them go up 5 levels between adventures. I know that this might be unheard of and almost heresy in the eyes of some but hear me out

I thought the characters could tell me what their characters did over the period that we did not play. Could you help me "flesh" this idea out.

 

[EricNoah]

Not only have them gain levels, but have them get (significantly) older. I envision the grizzled veterans, finally getting some peace and quiet in their shacks out in the woods, being tracked down to take care of "one last quest for the king" or something. Especially if it is tied somehow to what they did during their lower levels.

For some reason this has me thinking about time travel, meeting their older or younger selves, correcting a mistake they made at some point, something like that...

 

[Pigeon]

I seem to remember that there was a roleplaying game that did this sort of thing - a King Arthur type thing when each session took place a year from the last one. Pendragon maybe? I can't remember.

Anyhow, my advice would be link the PC's with a specific land/country, and have them rise up to positions of power. So you could start off as 1st level as a group of 16 year olds who get into trouble with the local lord and have to go on the run, move onto a kind of robin hood type situation where the group is a bunch of outlaws preying on the corrupt land. Then, when King Richard comes back from the crusades or whatever the group overthrow the bad leaders and towards the end of the campaign look after the kingdom (perhaps guard it from invaders ect). The climax of the campaign could be the group as 70 year olds riding out to certain death in order to save the land they have sworn to protect.

 

[bolen]

I was thinking along this line have the cleric work in the church, the paladin as a prince, then king. ect. Like the old birthright game. The players tell me what happens over the last 5 levels (which might be 10 years).

 

[Drawmack]

There is an online conversion of birthright to d20 for that kind of game. What I think you be cool is that they have an adventuring company and most of the time they spend chasing off goblins and such but once in a while they get that really big adventure.

 

[haiiro]

I seem to remember that there was a roleplaying game that did this sort of thing - a King Arthur type thing when each session took place a year from the last one. Pendragon maybe? I can't remember.

Pendragon does do something like this. In Pendragon, social interaction and ensuring progeny are at least as important as combat, and when you do get into a fight and happen to get wounded your wounds take a long time to heal. Without heavy armor, it's pretty easy to get killed in combat -- which is why it's so important to have kids.

For these reasons, Pendragon is played in seasons. Winter is generally spent cooped up in the castle (or manor, whatever) trying to breed, etc. One of the seasons is for tournaments (I can't remember which one), and the other two can be used for adventuring. If you get seriously wounded at any point, it might take you weeks or months to recover.

I might be mis-remembering some of this, but I think that's a pretty good basic overview.

 

[Piratecat]

Sounds like tremendous fun. In the Pulp Heroes game that Gospog and I co-run, PCs go up a level between every adventure. This isn't a lot different in theory, although 5 levels is a significant power difference.

 

[Drawmack]

Or you could run a QLM campaign for them. That shouldn't take any more then 16 weeks for the entire campaign.