PC's actions and the world at large

[Jigawatts]

Our main DM has a homebrew world that he has meticulously crafted over the past 10+ years. It comes complete with fully fleshed out cities, nations, races, ethnicities, cosmology, gods, lore, and ancient history. He even used a map program to create a pretty detailed map of the main continent.

One of the other features of this setting is a (continually growing) number of NPC's which were former PC's that are in retirement following the completion of a campaign. PC's actions have lasting effects and those characters become permanent fixtures within the setting after retirement. Events can be referenced in a new campaign that took place in a campaign over a decade ago, and the reverberations of those events can lead to new potentials for adventure. Basically PC's are literally the driving force behind any change in the world.

So I am curious, is this relatively common? Do you/your DM, whether using a published campaign setting or a homebrew of personal design, have the actions of the PC's carry over from one campaign to the next as part of the greater world? Or are your groups adventures usually more self contained?

[Honest Tiefling]

I once had a DM that decided if the party failed, if there was a world-ending event the world got all sorts of ****'ed up in its next incarnation. This might seem meanspirited, but to be fair, the PCs usually caused the end of the world with their ineptitude and none of them seemed to mind.

[mephnick]

As a hobby it can be fun for a DM to have his own living world, I have my own, but it's only practical in a few circumstances.

The problem is if you don't play with the same people all the time. All that history and referencing the past is completely lost on new players. New players generally don't want to read 50 pages of world history to join a group either. As an adult, it's almost impossible to guarantee you won't be constantly bringing in new players, as people's lives get more busy year by year.

So, in my experience, it's purely a guilty pleasure for the DM, that can be fun for long term players if your life works out that way. I wouldn't start one expecting anyone to care about your storied history 10+ years from now.

[Milodiah]

I also have a personal world created, which has both a past and a future. My players certainly aren't epic heroes praised across the continent, but they do influence the world in certain ways.

For example, the PCs accidentally a forest fire.

Now there's a map overlay on my AutoREALM file called "**** my players did" which includes little fire doodles over the southwest quarter of the Vallondian Heartwoods.

This is what happens when you use fire-based attacks on flying enemies in thick forests during a drought.

[Phelix-Mu]

I do as the DM mentioned in the OP does, but I largely mitigate it by making the world really huge, and having it have a really long, long history. Thus, if I need a clean slate for a new concept, I just go back a couple dozen millennia, and pretty much nothing the characters do will have such a dramatically huge impact on things (but I do try to keep echoes of the really epic stuff that goes down).

Also note, I've played about 5-6 campaigns in the West End Games Star Wars setting, almost all of which were set sometime between A New Hope and Return of the Jedi. These campaigns had to carefully navigate the timeline set up by those movies, and the big political events caused by their plotlines, but it worked out well and was actually a very enjoyable experience. I'm sure other rpgs set in the Lucas-verse have to deal with similar issues. Several of the campaigns were actually dovetailed together, and there wasn't any huge issues generated, as I recall.

[jedipotter]

So I am curious, is this relatively common? Do you/your DM, whether using a published campaign setting or a homebrew of personal design, have the actions of the PC's carry over from one campaign to the next as part of the greater world? Or are your groups adventures usually more self contained?


It is common for DM's the use the same world and setting for every game. This really goes back to the Forever Campaign idea common in 1E and D&D. The idea was you generally did not play a character to much after they got to a high level. The character would ''retire'' and then do something else in the world. D&D took this a step further and had a set plan for each set of levels of a characters life. After 12th level or so you were set to more run a kingdom/church/guild or such and not ''adventure'' much.

But modern play does not reflect this much. First off games often go it high levels. Though the high level games don't out grow the humble roots: A modern 25th level character still stumbles into a bar and orders a drink and looks over at the wall of 'help wanted' adds.

But even more so, modern play is often compact and separate campaigns. The DM might do a ''Pirate Campaign'' or a ''Dragon Campaign'' each with radically different rules and house rules. So much so that they can't really be in the game game world reality. So they can't carry over much from game to game, as each game is in it's own ''alternate reality''.

And few modern players even like the idea of randomly just ''retiring''. They often just want to be ''an adventurer'' forever. And that is why you get the 25th level character, still getting into bar fights, just like they did when they were 1st level.

I have always done the legacy Forever Campaign. As a DM, I think of every game I have every run set in the exact same world with the ton and ton and ton of backstory, history, characters and flavor.