Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Davelozzi" data-source="post: 7086261" data-attributes="member: 771">Growing up I always considered that one of the cool things about RPGs was the possibility that the actions of the players could affect the world in the long term, beyond the current adventure/campaign.  I always felt like one campaign would build off another, with the old PCs being present as NPCs in a new campaign in that same world, with their prior actions forming part of the world's background.  Presently, after a long hiatus (7 years from RPGS, 10 years from D&D, 19 years from the Forgotten Realms), I am getting ready to run my group through Storm King's Thunder starting in a couple of weeks and I keep going back and forth about whether to use the default timeline in the adventure (anywhere circa 1486-1490 D.R.), or use a timeline just year or two after my prior Realms campaigns (so about 1359/1360 D.R.), about 130 years earlier.Part of me feels like for the reasons cited in the first paragraph, it would be a lot cooler to use the earlier timeline and have the old characters still present and accounted for, and to be able to keep the NPCs we liked from the earlier era, etc.  That said, the Realms has a lot of baggage, such as the Time of Troubles (which we played through in our childhood campaign...not the published ToT adventures, just the era itself) but I now feel is sort of lame.  I am just not a fan of all the divine upheaval and hands on action from the deities.  I feel the same about the Sundering and the 100 year gap, I am not into any of the history written into that, however I do feel that where they left the setting after all that, as presented in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, is basically as strong a presentation of the Realms as I've seen since 1e (again, as long as the recent history is largely played down or hand-waved away).More than that though, I am now an adult with other responsibilities and using the later timeline is less work for me, so as not to have to change all of the NPCs and local leaders across the North from what is presented in the adventure.For what it is worth, my group this time around is five players, two of which played in a long running Realms campaign that I ran through the junior high and high school years, one of which played in a Realms campaign I ran at college, one of which has played only non-Realms campaigns with me in later years, and one who will be brand new to D&D.I'm really on the fence, and while I realize that ultimately it is a personal call, I am curious as to what other DMs feel about this kind of thing.  Do you generally assume that one campaign build off the other, or do you consider each campaign to basically be a reset?</blockquote>

Verification