Aging character

[Joethegoblin]

My campaign has been running for a long ass time. So long that the players have all reached high age.
The highest aged character is 92 years old (a group of humans).
So, they have reached a place I really have to consider natural death. But I don´t want to do it arbitrarily (you go to sleep and die). I want to give them a fighting chance at staying alive.
So, has anyone encountered this problem and how did you handle it?

[Lollerabe]

Make a long story line that leads into the biggest and baddest adventure thus far, the reward? - a fountain of youth.

[uraniumrooster]

I ran a campaign back in 2nd ed that was starting to push the boundaries of realism when the characters started getting too old to adventure. I resolved it by letting each character select and groom an heir (some had had children, others chose apprentices, etc). They rolled up new stats for their heir, but got to add some bonuses to their rolls based on the abilities of their parent/mentor character, then each heir got to start with 15% of the senior characters' experience, and inherit a piece of equipment. They occasionally went back and visited their old characters in the keep they had established.

The players all seemed to enjoy it, it gave their old characters a fitting and well-deserved retirement, while continuing in the same campaign world without starting completely from scratch.

Edit: God, 2nd ed was so long ago... now I'm the aging character IRL :smalleek: