What tricks do you use to make this work?

Say, if you have a campaign that spans 36 years, like Albion does, do you do anything special to make it workable?

What about if you want to do a campaign that spans a 200 year period, how would you handle that?

I've been in only two campaigns that were multigenerational.

The first was for Gamma World had the surviving PCs retire and pass the torch on to their kids or younger mutants to continue the mission.

The other is a still ongoing adventure set in my own game and has so far spanned quite a long time with several generations passing as well as two very long lived characters that reoccur. Though that long life has on several occasions seen those characters out of action for extended periods due to them getting into some dire situations.

It seems to me that these sorts of campaigns tend to grow naturally and are not the sort of thing to try and force on the players. If someone does not want to settle down or RP having kids then thats that.

One of the most famous of the multigenerational campaigns is one most westerners little suspect. Record of Lodoss War. That has some of the characters getting married and their kids continuing the tradition or meeting younger adventurers or the longer lived ones. Apparently the replay novels show this whereas the OVA does not and the series only touches on a little.

Another is Dragonlance. Though done so horribly some just pretend it never happened. Having read one of the later books. I have to agree 200%.

My campaign, in 37 real years, has come 80 game years.  Since the life expectancy of humans in my setting is about 125, a couple of the First PCs have been encountered in recent years: one as a Conanesque admiral and key noble, one as a wrecked and ruined elderly traitor.  

Characters from earlier years have been used as movers-and-shakers, and just a few months ago there was actually a case where a couple of the PCs conspired to put an old character of another player (most recently played twenty years ago and contemporaneously a master wizard in the city the PCs are in) into the Grand Master's seat at the local chantry of the College of Mages.  Andrew brought Master Bolan out of retirement for a couple sessions to deal with the political campaign.

(This actually ties in to one of my stocks in trade.  I'm a packrat who never throws things out, and since I insist on copies of character sheets from people, I've got PC sheets going back into the 1970s.  The folder is a couple inches thing, and it's a dynamite resource for coming up with a fully-fleshed out, non-cliched adventurer personality when I need one.)

So far, I haven't had anyone wishing to play the child of a previous character.  It's far from impossible, since I've got three players who've been in my campaign 20+ years.

The Pendragon RPG has some nice rules for this, as I think you can only go on a certain number of adventures per year so time passes more quickly.

My solution has been to allow players to build a "family tree" with brothers and cousins and sons on it, then if one character dies (or reaches an appropriately high level) he can retire and the player can choose another. The advantage to this is that I'll often allow the original character to hand off one magic item or heirloom to a younger one, along with a little spending money. I tend to run low-level campaigns, so characters retire at a faster rate than in some folks' games.

Quote from: Omega;805590One of the most famous of the multigenerational campaigns is one most westerners little suspect. Record of Lodoss War. That has some of the characters getting married and their kids continuing the tradition or meeting younger adventurers or the longer lived ones. Apparently the replay novels show this whereas the OVA does not and the series only touches on a little.

But the OVA, Tales of the Heroic Knight, and Legend of Chrystania on the whole do feel like parts of a bigger, long-term campaign (despite some inconsistencies), even more so in the manga.

Do you know how Rune Soldier fits in the Lodoss canon?

I never played a multigenerational campaign myself. Time usually flies so slow in my games that a year of play equals maybe two months of setting-time.

Quote from: RPGPundit;805578What tricks do you use to make this work?

Say, if you have a campaign that spans 36 years, like Albion does, do you do anything special to make it workable?

What about if you want to do a campaign that spans a 200 year period, how would you handle that?

First and foremost you need rules for:
-Marriage and children.
-Aging and death.

Second, you need a reason to carry on running a family:
-XP that carries over generations.
-Property that carries over generations.

Dynastic game relies on both characters playing by rules of society so they remain eligible bachelors for marriage and rules of inheritance so their hard earned plunder goes to their inheritors.

I have also been pondering on concept of making all children playable characters so player running family can choose which of the characters goes to adventure.