Eternal Campaign

I realized that what I want to achieve from all my experimentation with RPGs is to settle on a system, group of people, and a setting, and then play one campaign forever. I don’t feel like I know a set of rules that I can do that with yet though, or at least a set that will enable me to do this with the people I know already.

One problem I recently came to understand about D&D is levelling up. I find the changes from low level to high level come too quickly, and change the dynamic of a campaign too much. My current solution to this problem is to pick a starting level for the characters, and then stay there. Everyone gets comfortable with the abilities that they have, and nobody expends any effort wondering about what feat to take next level. Characters develop if the players let them, and they can come across new equipment that enables new abilities.

Another game I’ve been playing is Lords of Gossamer and Shadow (linked in the sidebar). It’s a diceless game, so I imagine that won’t go over well with some players. Otherwise it would work well for me, it does have a system for mechanical development of characters, but I think it is less drastic than in D&D.

Other systems I know of like Savage Worlds or Dungeon World do have mechanical advancement, but I don’t know how much that changes the feel of the gameplay.

What do I want to be true about a truly long term campaign then?

The characters won’t change massively in terms of their personal power. They might quest for a great weapon that lets them defeat a powerful enemy, but they don’t permanently gain power from that weapon.

The characters do grow and change over the course of the campaign. They get older, make mistakes, learn about the world, suffer setbacks, enjoy victories, and change their outlooks over time.

Character death does not happen lightly. How exactly I make that happen I’m not sure, but I want players to be able to maintain the same character for as long as they like. If enough time passes in the campaign world then it might make sense for the character to retire or die of old age. In any case, a player can retire a character and create a new one.

The world changes. Big events rewrite history and change the political map. Small events affect the people of a town or a local ecosystem. Mighty magic releases horrors or eradicates them. The characters might stay at the same level, but the campaign world does not stay the same.

Some things do stay the same. If the game has boundaries that are decided on during setup, then they stay constant unless everyone agrees to change them. Some things you can depend on…

This actually sounds like Pendragon would work, I should have a look at that again.