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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Water Bob" data-source="post: 5845289" data-attributes="member: 92305">Your game sounds very familiar to me.  My campaign is set during Conan's Hyborian Age.  I've got two players--both of them are the same class:  Barbarian.  Cimmerians, like Conan.  They're clansmen. I started the game with the characters at 11 years old, when the clan begins training its warriors.  I didn't assign stats, but instead, on the first game session, I had the players roll their stats (standard 4d6, drop lowest, assign to taste). I allowed them a limited number of skills to choose from (although they could save skill points for when I opened up other skills later in the campaign). Since we can't chose our given names, I actually named the characters.  I told the players what their character names would be--and I allowed the players to have their characters deal with that however they wanted. By the end of the second session, we had completed characters.  I skipped a year between game sessions, steadily bringing the characters up to age. I created plenty of action for the youngsters inside the village.  There was a lot of NPC interaction and roleplaying.  I threw a festival where the PCs competed for equipment (rare in this game world), and I governed physical obstacles like a race that tested the characters's physical skills.  Plus, the players found their own intrigue--a role playing situation turned into a big fist fight among the young clansmen. Then, when the players leasted expected it, they found their characters in some real trouble.  This has turned into a several session wilderness adventure and dungeon crawl.   It's taken quite a while to play.  And, the players have gained two levels so far--they're now 3rd level Barbarians. I'm not sure the players realize it, seeing only the trees and not the forest the way I do as GM, but what they've just played through is the story of how their characters came to be recognized as warriors in the eyes of their clansmen. My plan is to finish up this story (with lots of story hooks taking us to other adventures, of course) and then skip two or three years, advancing the characters' age to about 19-20 (they're 14-15-16 right now). I think the next story will be about their first raid outside of Cimmeria.  They'll leave for a season or more, fight some Picts, and return.  It'll probably take them a year to a year and a half--maybe even two years--for the PCs to leave their clan territory in northern Cimmeria and reach the Pictish Wilderness. It will be a neat little change of pace for them. After that, I plan on returning to Cimmeria--but, who knows?  The players may lead us in another direction. Every so often, though, I'm going to advance the timeline, evenutally playing through these characters' entire lives. What's really cool right now is that the characters both have strong backstories....because we actually played it!</blockquote>

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