next week, 3 years later...

[alsih2o]

a player has control of their character through the creation process for the most part, and maintains some control over the character throughout play, but is always at the whim of the dm as for supplies and experiences.

i am wondering if anyone practices letting the players control more of their characters shaping and direction by tkaing met-breaks.

at the end of a weeks playing time have you ever told your players, next week we resume with 2 years having passed, please arrange a backstory and and add 2(4,6?) levels to your character.

this would give the character more room to grow independent of the dms availability of training, found treasure and the like.

anybody do this, does it work well for oyu?

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

We did it, but it didn't work for me as a player. It felt like a power-up I didn't deserve. The problem might have been because the DM jumped us about 8 levels. But some of it was because he didn't think it through enough. I was playing a half-orc. Jumping ahead 15 years is a big deal for short lifers!

The game was fun, but it was like it had become a one-shot. From a character-development view, it was like I had to start over again.

-BG

ps check is in the mail

 

[MojoGM]

I don't know if I'd give them levels, buy maybe some XP.

The characters in my game are about to spend some time at Candlekeep (Forgotten Realms) researching some artifacts. As we are due to take a break anyway and play Star Wars for awhile, we'll come back to the game after several months have passed and hopefully in 3.5

But I do like the idea. One of the characters is 17 years old. He was a 17 year old 1st level, now he's a 17 year old 8th level. I'd like to work some down time in there to give the characters time to grow.

 

[Voadam]

I would avoid level jumping for nongame stuff.

One way to have reasonable down time is winter.

In many places and times, life pretty much shut down and people hunkered in for winter with no trade, travel, or real work. Having the winter pass and the character give some details of how they spend the time (I'm a wizard, I study lore on extraplanar beings and general arcana. As a monk I enter meditation for ten hours a day and spend the winter contemplating nothingness. My bard tells many stories and uses diplomacy on the ladies, if you know what I mean, heh, heh, heh).

Traveling is another good excuse to advance the calendar, both on ships and overland. These can be used to develop downtime or character aspects as well.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

As BG said, the one time it happened, I didn't like getting the sudden boost in power while I didn't have to work for it. We started at 1st or 2nd level I think, we painstackingly went up to 6th or 7th, and then, boom, 11th level. I felt as much as a cheater as having been cheated. The character pretty much committed suicide closely after that.

It was in a 2nd Ed. game, I was playing an elven fighter-thief. Jumjin Hexean (that was his name) died, and the other characters tried to resurrect him, but I insisted on making my Ressurection roll (Con-based in 2nd edition... had a 98% chance of surviving it. Rolled a 99. The DM told me that it didn't matter but I insisted on playin by the rules, just so he would stay dead)

Now there's a little village in the woods named after him.

AR

 

[MarauderX]

at the end of a weeks playing time have you ever told your players, next week we resume with 2 years having passed, please arrange a backstory and and add 2(4,6?) levels to your character.

Sounds like D&D homework... "have your backstory of 1000 words typed and double spaced with New Times Roman font at 12 point height. Your description should include at least one battle with a childhood nemisis, 2 cases of near-death experiences and unique opportunities for roleplaying a situation."

Why even have a DM? It's not good if your DM is trying to ramp you up so he can run a certain adventure or face a foe he has created. It's so easy to gear an adventure up or down to match, and I wouldn't want the players to skip ahead a few chapters in the book that is their characters.

 

[Mercule]

About the only time I, as DM, did extended downtime was when the PCs were busy running a state.

We let things slide for a few months, real time, and did another game (ShadowRun, IIRC). When we came back, only the person who played the actual Count wanted to continue with the same character. I advanced things by about 20 years, let him see his grown children, etc.

I think I only gave him one level, though.

 

[diaglo]

never.

i have had players take time off for characters. but when they brought the character back he was the same level. and a backstory was in order.

the funniest was an elf.

he took 40 years off to research a spell in an OD&D/1edADnD hybrid.

when the player resumed play with this character, which was 5 years later in real life, he was gaming with the grandchildren of the original human PCs in his former party.

he had plenty of backstory, a new spell in his spellbook, but no added xps or levels.

 

[mythago]

I've had GMs do that with XP we'd already earned--"Okay, in levelling up, I'm going to have [time] pass, and I want you to explain what you were doing all that time."

I too would feel a little weird about being granted levels for a calendar-flip scene.

 

[Henry]

I did it one time, and it worked pretty well. The campaign continued about 9 months after it happened, and then we broke it up in preparation for D&D 3E. I allowed a year's time to pass in-game, and gave them about one levels worth of XP, which meant the thieves went up two levels and then we resumed in their search for the Wytch-King's treasure, in which was contained powerful historical info on how to diffuse the Northern Humanoid War that was brewing.

Unfortunately, we quit before we had the war. One of these days, I plan to resurrect the old character sheets, convert them to 3E, and use the Cry Havoc War rules to fight out the conflict.