With the death of my sister and talking with my dad and learning a few things about the family. This got me thinking about the general lifespans of races and PCs in RPGs.
My sister died in her mid 30s, and like Kishma who passed away recently at around the same age, suffered from a lifelong illness. Way too young to pass on like that.
On the flipside though according to my dad alot of the women in the family tend to live well into their 90s. My grandmother was 97 when she passed away in 2012. Same for my great grandmothers. Well into their 90s.
So does anyone actually enforce lifepans of PCs and NPCs? If so. How much or how little? Seems alot of DMs ignore that. Or the nature of a campaign is such that it never becomes an issue?
Playing AD&D was when it seemed we used it the most. Not sure about 2e. But characters did get older. If they lived so long. There were tries to extend lifespans. But eventually those fail. Assuming the character did not become some sort of undead or otherwise no longer exactly alive.
But in general life extending magic and items were rare or epic quest sorts of deals.
Then there are the long lived races. They can end up playing across generations of shorter lived comrades even. Had one player way back, Dale, who played an elf across a generational campaign. Same elf. Eventually hitting the peak for his race and just kind of adventuring with the descendants of his original companions out of fond memories. Contrasting with Jans usual half-orc PCs who tended to never even make it to the ripe old age of 50.
And as mentioned way back in an older thread. We did once accidentally Haste to death one players Dwarf character. No one could tell how old he was anyhow! :o
I'll occasionally refer to the 1e DMG age tables. It rarely comes up within a campaign.
These days I generally have game time progress at same rate as real time, so characters get older but rarely die of old age.
The longest a campaign has run for in game time recently was my Mystara game 1000 AC to 1025 AC. William the Wizard my son's first pc went from age 20 to a 45 year old grandfather at time of final death. He was level 18 up from 4 at start.
Barring death by accident or violence, the prevalence of magical healing gives humans a natural lifespan of about 120 years in my setting (about the limits of what science says is possible before telomeres are no longer able to replicate). Half-elves live no longer than humans, but retain the vigor of youth until the end (if they die of natural causes they probably look no older than 45 by the end of their lives and when the moment of death comes simply fall asleep and don't wake up).
Due to the botched job the demons did warping Men into dwarves to better survive their hellish mines, they start to suffer organ and muscle failure starting around the age of 20 (their parts wear out at different rates), but they've learned to replace those failing parts with runic artifice and, presuming they keep replacing organic parts as they fail can potentially live to about the age of 180 (though by then all that's left of their original body is their brain).
Elves are entirely immortal, but due to how they entered the world from the Realm of Dreams, have a fixed maximum population of souls. Once that number is reached no further elven births are possible until an elf dies and their soul is free to be reincarnated.
The various Beastmen only live about 60 years (though reptilian ones live twice that), but become a "teenager" by one year of age and are fully mature by age two so end up with an active adult lifespan of nearly 60 years after a very short childhood.
Malfeans (elemental tieflings) live about twice as long as a human (240 years), but generally fall to violence before the age of 60. Those who embrace their demonic heritage (instead of rejecting it as most Malfeans do) find their lifespans greatly enhanced; those who fully embrace their demonic nature are called Cambions and are effectively immortal (and no longer even remotely pass for human).
I have rarely run the same campaign world long enough for it to matter, other than as color for the world. Lately, I've been leaning more towards elves not being immortal, and not even as long-lived as the DMG. In the current campaign, I decided to do a split, with the "high elf" analog having several centuries and other elves not. The elves long-life is tied not only to who they are, but how they live. It's the "high elf" isolation and ritual that allows them to live so long, and they know it. I've got a similar dynamic going with two different types of dwarves, though not nearly as extreme. (The longer-lived dwarves might get double a human lifespan.)
Part of my D&D play on this issue is driven by some ideas I've been wrestling with for some time in a home brew system. Don't really have an answer that I like, yet.
No campaign I've ever run have lasted long enough for someone to grow that old and die. I've have had 5 year long campaigns, spanning about two or three in game years.
I don't recall a campaign ever lasting for 20+ years of game time, let alone more.
Dying of old age doesn't happen much at my game table.
When you almost constantly go adventuring, it's just a matter of time.
Characters approaching old age? The closest I can remember was the (human) character aged from 25 to 55 years old by a ghost; the character died before meeting another ghost, though. (The other players started calling the character "old man", even after I pointed out that their DM (me) was older than the character.) Campaigns just don't seem to last that long or have a large enough game time to real time ratio for life span to come up. Maybe if there was a player character race with a very short life span...
In AD&D, age matters since you get stat bonuses/penalties at certain ages (a player at my table just turned 21 in the 5th year of my latest campaign last week). Admittedly, 5e doesn't normally care about such things and he's probably the last character with a "real" age, but I still record the years because I track what goes on in my game world, well over a century in age.
Quote from: Doom;1072743In AD&D, age matters since you get stat bonuses/penalties at certain ages (a player at my table just turned 21 in the 5th year of my latest campaign last week). Admittedly, 5e doesn't normally care about such things and he's probably the last character with a "real" age, but I still record the years because I track what goes on in my game world, well over a century in age.
What do you think of systems that penalize for old age and reward for young age? Or rather, it tends to be young = higher physical stats, older = higher mental stats.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1072745What do you think of systems that penalize for old age and reward for young age? Or rather, it tends to be young = higher physical stats, older = higher mental stats.
Seems about right. As you tend to get older you accumulate insights and usually lose a bit physically. And considering my grandfather was still inhumanly strong at 70, makes one wonder what his stats must have been at his prime.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1072745What do you think of systems that penalize for old age and reward for young age? Or rather, it tends to be young = higher physical stats, older = higher mental stats.
I prefer the Traveller approach where all stats decline with age. OK if that can be partly offset by advancement bumps from level/xp/etc.
It has never come up in any game I have been part of. In theory, I reduce non-human lifespans to a sensible range - perhaps 120-130 years for dwarves, and 150-170 for elves - for practical reasons, just like none of my game worlds have 20,000 year histories either. But that's aesthetics: our campaigns tend to take place over a span of a few years maximum. The current one is around Day 91 (counted from mid-Summer); our historical fantasy Helvéczia campaign lasted 3 in-game years, and our large Fomalhaut campaign was around 2.5 years. Aging does not figure into it.
I've been in two that went generational. In my Spelljammer one two of the PCs are long lived and have been active across I believe now at least a hundred years and more likely approaching two hundred. They have actually beaten two empires by simply out-living them. Some of the other PCs have lived on through later generations. Others have fallen and someone new stepped in.
You could give a campaign a much longer timespan by extending long rests to be very long indeed; if a long rest (or more generally, preparation for an adventure) goes from a day to six months, then an adventuring career might mean decades to reach high levels. The level limit might arise naturally from declining abilities (older characters might also take longer to advance, effectively an experience penalty).
It would not work for a fast moving campaign; more Cold War than World War II. But if adventuring opportunities are scarce and in remote places, it might be the natural pacing for the campaign. Odysseus took 10 years to return home from the Trojan War, and how many encounters did he and his crew have? More than twenty?
That is absurdly too long to have anyone bedridden and out of commission in a game.
And we've gone over that in other threads anyhow.
Even high level characters would not be down quite that long. Though depending on the system they could be down white a bit.
In BX is was 1d3 HP per day. A fighter level 10 would have on average 42 HP. Or with con bonuses 51, 60 or 69. So they could be down anywhere from a little under a month to a little over a month to a little over a month and a half on average.
In AD&D it was 1 hp per day. and con bonus or penalty at the end of each week. And fully healed at the end of 4 weeks (28 days) An AD&D Fighter had on average at level 10 a total of 51 hp without con bonus. and upwards of 91 with an 18 con. Even at 1 hp/day and no full heal at 4 weeks theyd only be down about a month and 3/4ths at dead average no con bonus - to just about a month for that 18 CON fellow. (due to the speedier recuperation from the con bonus). Even removing the con bonus theyd be down only about 3 months max.
Now 5e with its glut of HP you could end up down quite a while with the AD&D. A level 10 Fighter could have anywhere from on average 55 HP to 105 HP with a 20 con. Using 1 hp/day and +con/week that would be anywhere from a month and three quarters again to about 2 months due to the CON bonus. (4 months at level 20)
The DMG variant only stretches a full heal out to a week. Which to me feels to short. Though 5es HP are even more exhaustion/stamina than prior. One player suggested just getting rid of long rests, and extending short rests to 8 hours and just spending a single HD+CON bonus. Haven't had a chance to test that out yet.
Quote from: Omega;1072680With the death of my sister
My condolences, I'm sorry to hear that. 'Hope you're doing ok with everything!
@Others shame on you all for not showing just a little bit of compassion to the OP! This forum sometimes, I swear...
Quote from: Omega;1072680So does anyone actually enforce lifepans of PCs and NPCs? If so. How much or how little? Seems alot of DMs ignore that. Or the nature of a campaign is such that it never becomes an issue?
Well, in my new setting, Orcs live into their 50s and 60s given a somewhat peaceful life -- less because of natural lifespan and more because of stuff that has mutated them in the setting. Humans live standard lifespans into their 80s and 90s. If I were to enforce these guidelines, I'd just have the players roll after some time has passed (before and after a Scenario, most likely). In fact, I may even design a sub-mechanic around this very thing, I'll see if it fits.
It also is very uncommon for PCs to ever experience their sunset years due to the nature of running RPG campaigns. Compared to real-life, life is quite cheap in RPGs, dying before 40 (even 30!) is quite common regardless of setting (accounting for genre-specific species lifespans, obvs).
Quote from: Omega;1073060That is absurdly too long to have anyone bedridden and out of commission in a game.
Why do you assume that the time must represent being bedridden and out of commission? Long rests are not only about healing. Consider the time that professional boxers spend preparing for a title fight; consider the time that might be needed to find a suitable adventuring objective, to procure the proper equipment and to travel there; consider the time to prepare spells and replace potions (in our OD&D house rules, we expected the time to prepare spells to take, by spell level, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15 etc. hours, and that this was at the rate of 8 hours per day, so a wizard would take almost three weeks to completely replace their prepared spells - plus any time spent on spells cast during the preparation time).