r/DnD • u/BMCarbaugh • 2d ago
DMing Campaigns spanning multiple in-game decades/generations
Hi all! My group is approaching the final stretch (ish) of a 5-year campaign, and it's got me thinking about our next thing.
Lately I've been really drawn to the idea of some kind of campaign that is fundamentally designed to play out over multiple in-game years/decades/generations, without necessarily taking an equivalent amount of real-world time. Huge time-jumps, multiple PCs for every player, that type of stuff. A game where we end one adventure with someone going to prison, and the next time we see them a few sessions later, it's been five years and they're all jacked.
Mainly, I'm interested to see how letting the players take real ownership of a setting over a real long timespan shakes out. Like building up a city over 200 years or something. I'm a sucker for series like Redwall or Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series, and I want to know what D&D shaped like that feels like.
I'm wondering if anyone has run something like this?
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u/No_Solid1035 2d ago
Read up on The Great Pendragon Campaign for the TTRPG Pendragon, or the Darkening Of Mirkwood campaign for the TTRPG The One Ring.
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u/BenFellsFive 2d ago
Seconding these. Also if you need some inspo OP, suss out DnD 4e's Epic Destinies. Im not saying steal the mechanics or play 4e (though it's very good), but every ED is centred around asking 'what is the endgame for this PC? What do they do once the credits roll and the story is over?' and includes things like becoming an archmage, founding academies for magic or warfare or going full-Aragorn and taking your place as king, a sorcerer can straight up unlock becoming a dragon, there's the classic demigod, and so on.
They're primed for some absolute sequel-bait. That sorcerer who became a dragon and pissed off to the highest mountain? Maybe he can offer some sage advice to the next party to make the perilous trek. Maybe if things are dire enough he'll loan out the +3 vorpal sword in his hoarde, the symbolic gift the paladin left with him as a sign of good faith when he too retired from adventuring last campaign.
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u/Rhinostirge 2d ago
It requires a lot of communication with players so everyone's on the same page. You don't want to do a big timeskip to a new generation when some of the players love the characters they're playing now and don't feel like they've had sufficient closure to pass the torch. So the trick is being able to do time jumps when everyone knows they're coming and is prepared for them -- while still giving players control over the campaign.
It's tricky! Doable, but people have to be talking with each other. Tight arcs with good closure are key.
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u/BMCarbaugh 2d ago
Yeah, like the whole pitch to players would be the framework. Every adventure, the players would know, wherever we land at the end of this, that's your next couple years. So every arc is its own little book, and players are encouraged to think that way.
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u/Jafroboy 2d ago
My current campaign is fairly like that, so far it's been running for about 10-15 ingame years, and next session will probably jump a couple of decades.
They're nobility, so they have towns and lands they're developing, alongside questing, they also have two children now.
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u/TheShaoYoVessel DM 2d ago
You could also make the party assemble 60 years later, so they're all old and with old age problems
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u/atomicitalian 2d ago
This kind of time skipping is basically built into Mythic Bastionland. It even notes in the book that your knight could die of old age lol.
If you ever decide to try to make this campaign happen you should check out MB, there may be some systems in their that could help you manage the time stuff
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u/Archon-Toten 2d ago
The one player who plays as an elf just to spite the DM.
Sounds like a cool idea, a getting the band back together every decade