Has anyone had any success or joy in running a campaign using the same characters, but set in different stages of their life or career?

I ran a 7th Sea campaign in which I had a Christmas special, a 'Before they were Famous' one-off, which was received fairly well by the group, mostly by those who had a lot invested in the game.

I also ran a Werewolf campaign set in the Modern era, and after 16 sessions we created Wild West/Victorian era characters, and finally Dark Ages Werewolves. I was able to use dtrong themes in each era, and change the game style as well. There was no crossover here, but the players embraced the concept and designed a trilogy of characters each that played on a theme.

(A) good guy, bad guy, evil guy
(B) different aspects of the same tribe etc...

I am a fan of the DC Comics Kingdom Come, and like the idea of taking a set of heroes, and pulling the life from under them, and seeing how they view life in their old ages.

Ideas...

I've wanted to run a long-term Vampire: the Masquerade (or Requiem, or any vampires, really) game set throughout history. I've never had a stable player base that was both 1. interested in the concept, and 2. could stay together for such a long period of time that a campaign would require.

I still tinker with the idea every once in a while, trying to figure out things like 'how powerful the vampires would be in different spots?' or 'if the players affect history, do I roll with it or gently nudge time back to the 'real' timeline?', etc. I think it's a neat idea for a game, and would work with any long-lived creature, not just vampires (Highlander Immortals?). I was also going to use this as an excuse to study more history for myself, as I loved finding out weird tidbits to use in games.

edit: I wanted PCs to play the same vampires throughout the campaign, unlike the Werewolf idea from the OP. Or maybe minions of the originals, but the originals would exist throughout the campaign.

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All my games are built around the ease of doing this. I've done it literally dozens of times, maybe hundreds.

-clash

Vampire (old and new) lends itself to this very well. Masquerade is easier; Requiem has the Fog of Ages for players to contend with, which means that what transpired in previous ages may or may not be "real".

I've been thinking of a "generational supers" game covering each of the traditional "ages" of the genre: Golden Age (1940s), Silver Age (1960s), Bronze Age (1980s) and Iron Age (2000s), possibly revolving around some cosmic macguffin. Granted, those would not necessarily be the exact same characters, e.g. you could have heroes operating under the same name and costume worn by different people in each age.

And of course, D&D. The Dynast path to Immortality in the D&D RC is pretty much this. Birthright too, would make a great generational game.

Quote from: The Butcher;456451Vampire (old and new) lends itself to this very well. Masquerade is easier; Requiem has the Fog of Ages for players to contend with, which means that what transpired in previous ages may or may not be "real".

I think the only thing that would annoy me as a GM about Masquerade, is that due to how generations/aging works, if I started out at an early enough point in history, the players would begin as obscenely powerful vampires and just go up from there. Hence the side thought about playing multiple characters, with most of the action being carried out by minions.

I tend to like the nWoD rule set better though, and thought about just hand-waving away the Fog of Ages bit, and maybe hand-waving the xp loss from topor, too. I basically want to run a campaign with a lot of the old WoD storyline implied, but with the nWoD rules and advancement from weak vampire -> powerful elder. I have the Vampire Conversion guide and would love to test it out on this idea.

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I've had pretty much the same idea as Yevla, and similarly never got it off the ground.  I called it Mundus Senescit, with five chapters spanning (approximately) 1000 A.D. to 2000 A.D., with two cities per chapter (e.g. Constantinople and Venice in 1000, Constantinople and Prague in 1250) and including a system whereby the changes you make to your Virtues in 1250 would be carried over to the character you play (not necessarily the same one) next week in 1000.

It never really came together as something playable, but it gave me an excuse to sketch out an alternate Masquerade with different secret groupings and no Sabbat, which was fun.

In my mafia games I usually elapse several months or years between each campaign (with plenty of input from the players). Haven't had anyone as an old man yet, but some of the characters have had children.

I've done games where I suddenly hopped forward in the timeline several years; but if that doesn't count, then no.

I never did a "prequel"; because to me that doesn't make sense; it means that real "emulation" can't happen.  There's no way a character who's supposed to be alive in the present of the campaign can die in the "prequel" where he's a child/youth/whatever. At that point, you're acting out a story, not playing an RPG.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;456679I never did a "prequel"; because to me that doesn't make sense; it means that real "emulation" can't happen.  There's no way a character who's supposed to be alive in the present of the campaign can die in the "prequel" where he's a child/youth/whatever. At that point, you're acting out a story, not playing an RPG.
RPGPundit

This is the thing that keeps me from running any "prequel" adventures as well.

oWoD - Dark ages Brussels -> Rennaissance Venice -> Victorian London -> Modern New York

Same characters we didn't get a problem with the gen thing we had newbie characters in Brussells and by the time we got to New York the PCs were uber tough.

Oh we changed the GM for each game with the GM's PC becoming an NPC with no direct game enagagement a shadowy background figure if you will.

Worked really well.