Shortening racial lifespans?

[Merkuri]

Would it ruin the game for you if all races had lifespans similar to humans (80-100 years)?

I'm thinking up a campaign set in a world where a cataclysmic event happened in the not so distant past. I want the event to have happened long enough ago that details of the world before the event are hazy and uncertain, but I want it to be close enough that it still seems relevant (things used to be different, and the PCs know it).

If some races live for several hundred years and some only live to 100 (if they're lucky) it gets harder to place this event in time the way I want it. If it's only 150 years ago then it's feasible that some of the longer-lived PCs or their parents were alive during the cataclysm, which I don't want, and if I put it 500 or 1000 years ago then the event seems less relevant to the human PCs.

The simplest way to do this, in my mind, is to say that all player races have the same lifespan. Maybe before the cataclysm elves lived for 1000 years, but now they only live to 110.

Would you be okay with that if you were a player in this campaign?

 

[S'mon]

Seems ok to me. Michael Moorcock does this - in some worlds his elf-analogues are immortal (Erekose's Eldren), or immensely long-lived (Corum's Vadhagh), but Elric & the Melniboneans have normal human lifespans. Whatever fits the setting & the plot.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

You could just run an all Human campaign. It wouldn't bother me though. Never had a character that it ever made any difference to. (Well, there was one 1E character who got Aged...)

 

[Wik]

I like the "we were once immortal, but now we're not" approach. Dragon Age kind of does this with their elves: they once had huge lifespans, but contact with humans has "quickened" them.

It's a nice mystery to add to any campaign setting.

 

[On Puget Sound]

If your adventurer is at risk of dying of old age, you're adventuring wrong.

 

[Umbran]

I generally use those extended lifespans as the basis for cultural behaviors that distinguish the various races. Remove the extended lifespans, there's less reason for the races to be distinctive - they are more likely to be more like humans with funny ears.

Which is not to say that I'd hate it, and never play in such a game. But I'd wonder what was gained by changing the lifespan. There are other ways to deal with your particular problem - in theory there could be some individuals around since your cataclysm, but that doesn't mean they'll run into them in practice.

 

[Merkuri]

I generally use those extended lifespans as the basis for cultural behaviors that distinguish the various races. Remove the extended lifespans, there's less reason for the races to be distinctive - they are more likely to be more like humans with funny ears.

I respect this, but I find that in actual play not many players do anything with an extended lifespan. They decide how old they want their character to be in human years and just scale that to match their racial lifespan. In this respect I feel like giving all races the same lifespan isn't losing much.

in theory there could be some individuals around since your cataclysm, but that doesn't mean they'll run into them in practice.

The cataclysm I'm imagining has actually reduced the are of the "known world" to next to nothing. Part of the fun in this campaign will be the PCs exploring the unknown part of the world. I don't want to give the PCs easy access to information about before the cataclysm, and if there are any NPCs in the known world who were alive during the cataclysm it'll be really hard to explain why the PCs can't just find them and ask them questions. I imagine such an NPC would be pretty famous among the "survivors".

It's okay with me if such individuals exist, but they need to be outside the "known world". The PCs should have to adventure to find them.

 

[Wik]

Okay, imagine this - you're a member of a race that lives for a thousand years. It takes a hundred years to reach adulthood. then, suddenly, a cataclysm happens, and you age like a human.

Your entire lifetime is less than it used to take to raise an infant to adulthood.

What would this do to your culture? Modern day cultures get destroyed because of loss of language... imagine if your entire physiology changed!

All those old attitudes and ingrained cultural parent-rearing behaviours no longer work. All of your fables that might teach patience and taking the "long view" to bypass human productivity become counter-productive. In only one century, your race has had to learn an entire new way to live.

Naturally, there will be those who turn to alcoholism, drugs, and despair, just as there will be those who strive to paragons of the old ways - desperately clinging on to traditions that are no longer relevant in a changing world.

The dwarves, who used to live for five hundred years, now live one fifth of that. Imagine a dwarven warrior who has a column in his house that traces back his lineage - a hundred years ago, it had six names, and was only half full... and then, in the last century, it filled at a prodigious pace.

Races are finding that the humans and halflings, who have always lived thus, are more able to adapt, and are still unsure how to cope in this new world. Heroes of these once grand races have to decide if they wish to regain their longevity, or instead find a way to pull their kin out of despondency and face the new world.

 

[Umbran]

I respect this, but I find that in actual play not many players do anything with an extended lifespan. They decide how old they want their character to be in human years and just scale that to match their racial lifespan. In this respect I feel like giving all races the same lifespan isn't losing much.

Yes, and for individual players, that's fine. They are allowed to have whatever personality they want in their PCs. I'm talking about how I'm running the race's culture, as a DM.

It's okay with me if such individuals exist, but they need to be outside the "known world". The PCs should have to adventure to find them.

Well, that's easy - all the long-lived races had their homelands well outside the "known world" you set as your map. There may have been some individuals of those races still in the "known world", but after cataclysm, times get really tough. They probably died by any of the methods available after a cataclysm. Possibly a lot of xenophobia at that time...

 

[Merkuri]

I'm leaning towards the idea that the races had different lifespans at one point, but all of the individuals left in the known areas of the world (including the PCs) have been limited to human-like lifespans.

Perhaps I should explain a little more about the campaign world I'm envisioning.

The world has ended. The certain cause or reason behind this event has been lost, but the scholars saw it coming. They gathered as many as they could into a few cities, spread across the continent, and they protected these cities with magic now lost, surrounding them in protective domes. When the world ended, all that was left was the domed cities, connected with portals. What was left of the rest of the world was not known, aside from the fact that it was unlivable.

Now, for reasons unknown, cities have been disappearing one by one from the portal network. The city the PCs happen to live in now cannot contact any other cities, and the trade they relied on for long-term survival is gone. Within a few years they will no longer be able to support their population. The city governor calls upon the PCs to leave the dome and strike out into the broken world to find out what happened to the other cities.

I'm imagining that the PCs' "city" is actually a city and the surrounding countryside that is probably used more for cattle than farming. Another city happened to get more lush countryside in its dome, and it has been trading vegetables, wheat, and feed for meat and leather. Yet another city might have domed a large mine with it, and it has been providing metal, and so on with different cities specializing in different exports. Alone these cities can't survive forever, they need to trade to get what they need.

Each city may have started off as a one-race city, but in the days before The End the sanctuary cities opened their doors to any who could make it, so now, in the domes, the cities are full of different races.

I'd like it so that everyone alive today in the cities was born within the domes, but perhaps they have tales from before The End handed down from their great grandparents about how they had to take up only those possessions they could carry and run to the sanctuaries. In the rush a lot of history and culture of the individual races was lost, but some of it might still exist in the world outside the domes, waiting for the PCs to find it.