1000 Years vs D&D Lifespans

[unseenmage]

So in a game recently 1300 years passed and that was supposed to be long enough to cause some distress to our characters. It did kind of feel like our backstories were almost completely invalidated until I remembered that D&D races and monsters have obscenely long lifespans.

How long is long enough to erase a characters backstory based on the average lifespan of the character's detailed in that backstory?

Access to a list of average lifespans for the various races and creatures would also be welcome.

[VoxRationis]

What do you mean, "erase" their backstories?
Humans in D&D don't live much longer than in real life; their maximum age might be a little higher than the current world record, or it might be a little under. Of course, the PHB notes that most people die from disease or violence long before that point. Halflings are a little longer-lived, but not much when you compare them to anyone else.

Elves and gnomes live for centuries, though they start taking aging penalties at obscenely young points in that lifespan for whatever reason. I think the maximum age is somewhere in the ballpark of 700 years.

Dwarves live for 4 or 5 centuries, I think.

I don't think outsiders like demons or archons age; if they do, it's from something listed in an obscure sourcebook somewhere and not in the core rules. An outsider could conceivably be tens of millennia old, depending on the campaign setting; 1000 years would mean little to such a creature.

Dragons have long lifespans, probably the longest of all the core rule Material Plane creatures, though I'm not 100% certain of this. Draconomicon puts maximum age limits on them, since the Monster Manual doesn't say what happens to them after they reach great wyrm status. If I recall, the limits vary based on dragon color, and are somewhere in the ballpark of 2 to 4 millennia. Even so, 1000 years is a significant timespan to them. In that time, a dragon goes from being a hatchling to one of the most powerful creatures in the setting, or (more likely) is killed by adventurers or monsters.

[Gildedragon]

What races? Cuz the lifespans are all over the place. Elan, warforged, undead, and outsiders will still be around
Dragon wrought kobolds might also be lurking about, and the elves aren't dead too long

Also what do you mean erase? As in unremembered? Who knows that's not tied to lifespan directly.
As to dead: well narrow down the list. There are aging tables in the books ya know.

[unseenmage]

I'm mostly curious how many generations of each of the core (or even of the most popular) races there are in the span of a thousand years.

Heck I'm mostly lost on how many generations of real world humans live during a given span of time.

It occurs to me that the next time I want to tell the players that a long span of time has passed I'm going to express it in terms of elf or dwarf or dragon generations in addition to saying hundreds or thousands of years.

[Gildedragon]

The generations depend on the birthrates. For humans 20 years is a reasonable rule of thumb, especially for pre industrial times (a bit high for those actually)
Use the adulthood category (rounded up to the next nearest multiple of 10) as a dnd estimate

For elves 120 years to a generation

[unseenmage]

What do you mean, "erase" their backstories?
...

I meant exactly that. Having enough time pass that everyone they ever knew or who was ever relevant to their backstory is long dead and gone.

Sure the backstoy's effects on the character at hand still matter of course. But vengeances cannot be wreaked, lost loves cannot be rekindled, escaped villains cannot be brought to justice. That sort of thing.

I mean imagine your favorite novel or movie character if they were suddenly hurled 1000 years into the future. How relevant would their backstory be? Everyone Harry Potter knew dead and gone. All of Bilbo's beloved friends and neighbors buried and replaced by their children's children. That sort of thing.

Except that there are some races with a Time Lord-like lifespan who would barely notice.

It was just an odd thing that I thought merited discussion.

[Bronk]

I'm mostly curious how many generations of each of the core (or even of the most popular) races there are in the span of a thousand years.

Heck I'm mostly lost on how many generations of real world humans live during a given span of time.

It occurs to me that the next time I want to tell the players that a long span of time has passed I'm going to express it in terms of elf or dwarf or dragon generations in addition to saying hundreds or thousands of years.

I think a thousand years would be way more than enough for most short lived races (humans, etc.), just enough for the middle races (half elves, gnomes), but not long enough for the long lived and immortal races (elves, dragons, immortal stuff).

Basically, for humans, you think of three or so generations for things to get to the hearsay stage... unless it's written down, there's very little that bets passed down... right now, I've personally heard a bunch of my dad's war stories, and he's told me some of my grandfather's war stories, but I don't even know what my great grandfather's name was. We know a lot of history from the past few centuries or we can find it out because we have journalists, widely disbursed written documents and formal education, but most DnD settings wouldn't have any of that... the nobility might sponsor a historian, but they'd only be keeping track of specific or important things.

I see what you mean though... that's the kind of thing that you want to get right. I read a Forgotten Realms novel, Elfsong I think, that had two main bad guys... an old half elf, and a green dragon. The half elf was old... for a half elf... 300 years, and she was a decrepit crone. But then they paired her with the dragon, and the dragon was all 'whoa, she's old!' when that should just be a drop in the bucket to him. Really took me out of the story.

[Phelix-Mu]

It's entirely subjective. Remember that many of the worlds where D&D takes place don't have some kind of overarching cultural repository of knowledge or history. Will Johnny the Barbarian be remembered by his tribe in a millennia? Seems safe to say no.

But how about Elamir the Elf? Let's go with elves lasting about 10x longer than humans (roughly accurate). Imagine that elves are humans, and look back five generations in real life. That's basically back to the Baby Boomers. We still know the names of the important people. Their grandchildren are coming of age. The events are well-remembered and well-recorded.

Now go back five more generations. That's probably more turn-of-the-20th century area. I'm a smart person, and I'm having trouble coming up with anything beyond presidents and maybe one or two relevant events without giving it a moments thought. It was the end of the Golden Age, Teddy Rosevelt was going monopoly busting, and so forth.

So extrapolate that and adjust for cultural record-keeping of whatever race is under consideration. In real life, we have printing presses, cheap paper, newspapers, and other tech that helps remember or extend the reach of the past into the future. Highly magical cultures, like elves, probably have conjugates, and so important stuff probably does endure several millennia. But humans? No, I'd say that most places where there is no common, easily accessed education and historical references, it's all probably a matter of myth and legend after five generations.

Alright, so, we can go more in-depth, if you want. But the simple fact is that most of a person's personal stuff will be reduced to places and events by 10+ generations. We remember that WWI happened, but we don't remember the names of the lower-ranking officers, we don't even know any specifics once you imagine a world where none of us had a history class. The cities may remain, but even the land can change dramatically in that span of time (especially with the help of shorter-lived races or, gods save us, magic). Short of Jedi holocrons to send the past into the future, there isn't much to be done about this.

And, disclaimer: MAGIC.

[Gildedragon]

Time immemorial in D&D is a funny thing and needs tens of thousands of years to be that across the board.
Especially if one considers some of the pre-writing groups might be very big on oral histories as means of establishing legal rights for property and status and any number of things. It is not uncommon for oral-tradition groups to remember names seven or more generations back.
With writing, more than that can be accomplished, especially if the family history is important for social interaction (think the descent tables: son of X, son of y, doer of the thing, daughter of z, brother of a, children of b by...) they aren't particularly rare.

Though 1000 years for humans is a bit much, the people would faded into legend and myth, but more importantly, the world ought have changed a lot. 2014CE is radically different from 1014CE, which is a world away from 14CE, etc.

Now if magic keeps societies fairly unchainging, then there is, most likely, a highly conservative ideology in place. In which case, yeah it would be possible that the PC can find traces of their past life after 50 generations (prolly a kn check of 21-Level, an epic character would still be talked about after much longer than that)

[Elderand]

And then you remember that anyone with a good enough knowledge check, or enough magic, can find out factual informations on things that happened at the dawn of creation and the point is moot anyway.

Nothing is ever truly lost or forgoteen because silly skill system and magic/psionic.

[Phelix-Mu]

Also keep in mind that many of the better fleshed-out races with really long lifespans (elves, dragons) have an inbuilt mechanism to help them process huge amounts of memory. This is important to consider, because a major component of most biological lifeforms' memory processes is forgetting stuff in a not-quite-selective, natural process. Otherwise, the sheer amount of accumulated sensory data and inter-linkage of experiences over the years would cause a perpetual kind of PTSD, with newly sensed data being linked to relevant previous memories, which link to others, and more and more, until the proverbial cascade failure would occur. Normal creatures experience forgetfulness in order to limit the impact of past memories on their current state of mind.

Elves have the reverie, and dragons have a racial memory bank. Presumably elans or other similar creatures meditate or have otherwise adapted their mental processes to accommodate increased lifespans.

On the other hand, the undead, constructs, and potentially outsiders, don't have to rely on the physical, anatomical limitations to their memory, and will likely experience perfect memory up to the limits of their Intelligence rating (though, for some reason, the actual roll to remember something is always hard for me to figure out).

Magic, as has been repeatedly mentioned, can bypass or enhance many, if not all, of the limitations of normal memory. And, of course, methods for avoiding death also get around the problem of relying on others to remember you.

[Bronk]

And then you remember that anyone with a good enough knowledge check, or enough magic, can find out factual informations on things that happened at the dawn of creation and the point is moot anyway.

That's a good thing to keep in mind... in D&D worlds, the universe itself is watching you, keeping track of you, at all times. Maybe they could skate by by laying low, but once the people start making their names again through adventuring, anyone could use 'legend lore' to find out all about them, given enough time.

[Alex12]

Elves have the reverie, and dragons have a racial memory bank. Presumably elans or other similar creatures meditate or have otherwise adapted their mental processes to accommodate increased lifespans.

Elans trance kinda like elves. Also, since the vast majority of Elans are psionicists, they've got Autohypnosis, which is all kinds of awesome.

[Gildedragon]

Also the dead can be called back, or visited in their respective afterlife/alternate plane.

[BWR]

I meant exactly that. Having enough time pass that everyone they ever knew or who was ever relevant to their backstory is long dead and gone.

Sure the backstoy's effects on the character at hand still matter of course. But vengeances cannot be wreaked, lost loves cannot be rekindled, escaped villains cannot be brought to justice. That sort of thing.


The word you're looking for is probably 'make obsolete' not 'erase'. If they were erased they would never have happened. They have happened, it's just that very little can be done about the hooks they provided. Barring powerful magic or some interesting legal documents, that is. And goodness knows, maybe some of the people in the backgrounds found their own way to cheat death; undeath, potions of longevity, mind transfer to construct, become outsider, stasis, time travel, etc.

As far as a list of average lifespans of creatures, that's hard to find apart from the PC race lists and dragons. Draconomicon might have lists of maximum age for dragons, but apart from that I don't know of any max limit. Still, 1300 years is easily a lifetime for such creatures. Some 2e monster write-ups included lifespans, but I am not aware of any master list of any sort.

[Phelix-Mu]

As far as a list of average lifespans of creatures, that's hard to find apart from the PC race lists and dragons. Draconomicon might have lists of maximum age for dragons, but apart from that I don't know of any max limit. Still, 1300 years is easily a lifetime for such creatures. Some 2e monster write-ups included lifespans, but I am not aware of any master list of any sort.

Yeah, if I could go back in time, I'd make sure that WotC was more rigorous about including a "biology" or similar section for more of the monsters and pc races. They used to do this more, and it isn't too hard to have just 2-3 sentences that sum up the major points of a creature's life cycle, reproduction, habitat. Some books have it, but they were very inconsistent across the various splats. It harkens back to similar, pervasive design flaws that mostly emanate from the idea that much of the world exists only to support the combat encounter side of the game. Which is a pretty short-sighted and idiotic way to design a simulationist game.

[Elderand]

Yeah, if I could go back in time, I'd make sure that WotC was more rigorous about including a "biology" or similar section for more of the monsters and pc races. They used to do this more, and it isn't too hard to have just 2-3 sentences that sum up the major points of a creature's life cycle, reproduction, habitat. Some books have it, but they were very inconsistent across the various splats. It harkens back to similar, pervasive design flaws that mostly emanate from the idea that much of the world exists only to support the combat encounter side of the game. Which is a pretty short-sighted and idiotic way to design a simulationist game.

One thing is for sure, oozes are for ever.

[Graypairofsocks]

Elans trance kinda like elves. Also, since the vast majority of Elans are psionicists, they've got Autohypnosis, which is all kinds of awesome.

I think they also only have to rest 4 hours.

[atemu1234]

For their entire world to change, you need roughly 100x the lifespan of the average being. I'd probably use elf lifespan for this, quite simply because they are the longest lived creatures that you'd normally encounter, slowing down change. So that'd give you about 60,000 years. For just characters to stop existing, a couple thousand ought to do it. In fact, elves should be dead at the 1,000 mark.

[Erik Vale]

Mmm, but can you imagine the same world after 60000 years?
Sure, elves might be able to remember, but I'm thinking they'd have trouble as they'd have to keep up with recent events... Like the invention of the LCD screen tv's and moniters [1000 years random guess].

The only way you could skip like that and have a recognizable campaign world, is if Medieval Stasis was enforced. Probably by a combination of assassination and mind-rape.

[RhoTheWanderer]

Mmm, but can you imagine the same world after 60000 years?
Let's see...Jumping from circa 58,000BCE to circa 2000CE. Heck, you're basically jumping from the beginning of early civilization to our modern age. Right now I have this image in my mind of a D&D campaign where everyone is playing barbarians, druids, and rangers using stone weapons and such during an ice age. Their tribe is fairly advanced, having recently invented something called a "wheel", and they have a friend who, in addition to making various balms and ointments, is experimenting with a wierd new thing that is definitely magic (but not the god/goddess ordained divine magic. It is something truely new. Something mysterious and arcane:smallcool:). Somehow, they are transported into the distant future either to somewhere like Renaissance-era Europe or maybe even some sort of Jetsens-like future (either way could perhaps be represented by the Eberron Campaign Setting). Hilarity & confusion ensues!

[unseenmage]

Let's see...Jumping from circa 58,000BCE to circa 2000CE. Heck, you're basically jumping from the beginning of early civilization to our modern age. Right now I have this image in my mind of a D&D campaign where everyone is playing barbarians, druids, and rangers using stone weapons and such during an ice age. Their tribe is fairly advanced, having recently invented something called a "wheel", and they have a friend who, in addition to making various balms and ointments, is experimenting with a wierd new thing that is definitely magic (but not the god/goddess ordained divine magic. It is something truely new. Something mysterious and arcane:smallcool:). Somehow, they are transported into the distant future either to somewhere like Renaissance-era Europe or maybe even some sort of Jetsens-like future (either way could perhaps be represented by the Eberron Campaign Setting). Hilarity & confusion ensues!

And when they do it again to try to get home it sends them to the Fallout universe where magic is dead and everything is irradiated. :smallbiggrin: