Do you track history within your games?

[megamania]

In my Darksun Game, I wrote down every historical event or date given in the Campaign books, accessory books, dunguen and Dragon magazines, Trading Cards and novels. I then created a thirteen opage long timeline of these events that I refer to.

Has anyone done anything like this in their games?

 

[ForceUser]

Sort of. I don't draw a timeline, but I do keep track of major historical events and insert them into the milieu of the campaign as appropriate.

 

[Crothian]

of course I track history, if I didn't I couldn't use it

 

[Nifft]

I try my best.

-- N

 

[Darkness]

Moved to GD.

 

[shilsen]

I'm doing it for my two Eberron campaigns now. I'm tracking events for the next few months in the future of where the PCs are right now. I change things around to reflect the results of the PCs' actions. I've got both campaigns running in the same general area about a month apart, so the second group is also somewhat affected by the events of the first group. It's a lot of extra work, but a lot of fun too.

 

[MoonZar]

In my Darksun Game, I wrote down every historical event or date given in the Campaign books, accessory books, dunguen and Dragon magazines, Trading Cards and novels. I then created a thirteen opage long timeline of these events that I refer to.

Has anyone done anything like this in their games?

We play in a custom world, but i keep track of each historical event with a website of mine...

 

[Shemeska]

Well my Planescape campaign, the first one, was set about five years post Faction War, ahead of the timeline of that setting and about concurrent with current events in FR etc. Events in Sigil were effectively my playground. When I went to Sigil I used the current events of that prime world as well as I knew from the current books and novels etc and some of the players were familiar on that level with that world too.

My 2nd PS campaign is set 150 years after that point and I did make up a couple pages of relevant history that occured in the meantime to cover rise and fall of factions, death of important persons by old age, assassination etc. Tracking that history gave me tons of plot hooks if I wanted to delve into those past events or the people around them, etc.

 

[ElvishBard]

Nope, I have a hard time keeping track of what adventure the PCs did when, let alone the history of the world. But my players are much more into hacking and slashing, so I find it more fun to engage them with baddies and watch their excitement than bore them with history that they couldn't care less about.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Time passes, things happen, of course I keep track of them - if there are no events then the passage of time becomes meaningless,, and the setting becomes static... now whether or not the events agree with what happens in canon is another question...

The Auld Grump