Designing for Generational Campaigns: Part III Advancement

Previously I've talked about the concept of Generational Campaigns and how a game's combat system relates to those goals. Another important sub-system is character advancement, and here we see yet another area of difficulty if one was using the common published systems.

In short, the advancement system must be able to handle the full life cycle of a character that might be played over a decade or more of real time and their entire life in-game. frankly most systems are not designed to do this. WotC noted at one point that most campaigns last six months, and then are closed. Thus there is little reason for system designers to deal with questions of longer campaigns.

Point Buy systems such as GURPs and HERO System are very open ended allowing one to tailor campaigns and worlds to specific tastes, this is especially true of HERO System when one can not only build the characters- but effectively the entire world.

The problem with this is the amount of attention required by a GM who desires a consistent and 'real' world. With that goal one just can't let players buy without limit or constraint, the result is a broken and inconsistent world. The amount of effort required is more than many can handle or have time for. Additionally, the constant gaining of points together with the use of 'caps' on various abilities can result in all character blurring together and losing their niche- becoming interchangable and nearly faceless game pieces.

Class/Level systems avoid this fault by constraining advancement such that character remain in concept. But typically still share a serious failing for this type of campaign- i.e. the upper of characters are so vastly powerful compared to the lower end that they are not able to adventure together. But new and old character adventuring together is a core requirement of the genre such campaigns are based on.

Generational Campaigns thus require three things in their advancement system.:

1. Constraints to protect niche and character differences
2. A slowing of advancement as one progresses to such a degree that decades of play is possible while still keeping the characters 'human' and able to adventure with new characters.
3. The ability to cover the entire possible lifespan of characters, from the greenest starting characters to the most experienced and powerful beings allowed to players.