Passing Time Between Campaigns

[the Jester]

If you use the same milieu for multiple campaigns or groups of pcs, do you advance time in between them? Why or why not? If so, by how many years?

If the current game is "done" and we're starting a new one, I'll usually advance time. Sometimes by a few years; sometimes by a few decades; most recently by about 2500 years.

I like that the players get to see the way their previous characters' actions affected the world they now know. I think it's cool when they find an old pc's journal entry as a part of a mystery. I like it when they see a twisted version of the history of their accomplishments.

How bout you?

 

[TheYeti1775]

Done it a few times in the past.
The time variable has always varied greatly. One campaign I was in (as a player) when much younger was essentially, "ah you reached name level now and are settling down, choose which of your apprentices/henchmen to stat out and start their own adventures with your old character as their liege". Several generations of characters like that.

I've found generally 20yr jumps to be a best case scenario unless they were really world shattering events that happened. The 20yr block allows for children (least human ones) of prior heros (old characters) to now be up and coming. As well as the stories of previous characters being told by bards during their childhood filling them with their Adventurer's Lust.

 

[Stoat]

I usually advance the timeline. Partly to give the players a sense that the world exists apart from them, partly to keep new PC's from getting involved with the old PC's, and partly so I can introduce new villains or developments in the campaign world.

I don't usually advance the game more than a few years. The longest time jump I've used came when we switched from 2E to 3.0. The 2E PC's retired, and I advanced the timeline 15 years.

 

[weem]

I've created my own campaign setting (world map, etc) recently that the players have been playing on since level 1 (now level 8).

My last campaign ended with the players having to make a choice to either "leave this world and begin anew" or to stay and face their ultimate enemy, but with the understanding that they would be left behind on a world that was seeing its end come to be...

...they chose to stay and defeat the evil, and succeeded, at which point the campaign ended. The assumption from there was that the world was eventually destroyed entirely - nothing left. The reality is that it was torn apart and remade. The outcome for those characters was the same (eventually death), but what the new characters (and players) are not aware of is that this new world is their former one (Mystara) reborn some 4,000 years since the previous campaign.

In short, yes, I change time - and it's something I do for every campaign - in almost all cases, the timeline is advanced as opposed to turned back though.

 

[an_idol_mind]

I've done this several times. I've jumped forward 15-20 years to allow the players to play a child of their former PCs. My last big campaign ended with a Time of Troubles-style event, so I hopped the timeline forward 100 years to allow those events to fade into the realm of legend rather than accepted fact.

More recently, I've decided to advance my setting more slowly to allow for more reusable NPCs. However, if a player wants to play someone who was just a kid during the last campaign, it's likely I'll include another jump to accommodate that.

 

[Barastrondo]

If you use the same milieu for multiple campaigns or groups of pcs, do you advance time in between them? Why or why not? If so, by how many years?

Not frequently, but I use a pretty American Fantasy-sized milieu, and jump around a lot in it. If the desert nomads overthrew the evil amir and his wicked vizier, that might have some influence on a "Corsairs of the Jadesea" campaign, but the campaign set in the isolated mountain city that has forgotten the outside world? Not going to come up, most likely. I jump around geographically, not chronologically. Plus you never know when players might want to revisit old characters.

If I ran more epic-level adventures, that might prove tempting, but mostly I play D&D in full-bore "heroic tier" mode with some dabbling in early paragon for the stronghold phase. For epic stuff like undead krakens and PC apotheosis I use a different system/game world.

 

[Jack7]

To me this is the best time for the players to consolidate gains, create networks or reacquaint themselves with family, old friends, allies, etc, to advance financially and economically, to collect rewards and pay for service, get promoted, to train, build fortifications and keeps and houses, advance in level and to advance socially, politically, and professionally.

So to me and to them it's like a campaign within itself, but the goals are different than they are for missions, scenarios, and adventures. With missions, scenarios, and adventures, the players are usually working for some aim or objective over which they only have limited contour against forces and enemies which are generally unknown, and usually in the employ (direct or indirect) of others.

Between Campaigning though (and it is called campaigning since they are a paramilitary and intelligence outfit working for the Byzantine government and the Orthodox church) the players have a chance to undertake their own desired goals, to collect rewards and pay, to distribute and investigate treasure, and to pursue hobbies and personal interests and other ends (such as building, investing, getting married, raising kids or livestock or both, sailing, advancing socially, and so forth) over which they usually have direct and personal control. In addition rather than dealing with enemies (although occasionally enemies will track or harass them, both inside Constantinople and at their own estates) they can build networks of friends, family, and allies. They can also invent, prepare for future campaigns, read, study, train, recuperate and convalesce, get treated, pursue religious devotion, travel, vacation, etc.

Oftentimes the periods between Campaigning (how much time is spent between one campaign and another) are determined by need, season, or the orders of superiors and the Emperor. If not then generally I let the players decide how much time they spend between Campaigns and what they do in that time.

Time spent not Campaigning is called Relief, or being Relieved.
We've had a lot of good adventures or preparations for new missions and adventures during relief time.

Vacation, travel, training, vadding, study, business, building, farming, hunting trips can all make for good adventures during Relief. Usually no one is trying to kill them but there are many other dangers, opportunities, and enterprises available to people aside from combat. That's as true of the imagination as it is in real life.

 

[Crothian]

Yes, it is what my players want. Currently we are in Campaign number 10 in the same world, all have been chronological. Most cover the same areas though it has slowly expanded outwards.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I've seen it done a few times but never been tempted when I'm GM. I'm usually sick of a setting by session 20, often earlier, and I want to do something different.

 

[kaomera]

I've wanted to do a bit of the opposite for a while now: set the new game just far enough before the end of the previous one so that the PCs get to see the results from a different perspective. Unfortunately I ended up getting this idea only after I stopped running the kind of campaign I could really apply it to.