Campaign Toybox
Story: It’s a terrible thing, getting old. You slow down. You get absent-minded. And even the things that were supposed to last beyond health – kingdoms, conquests, glories, even families and friends – they start to slip through your fingers. And while your old enemies are aging too, they aren’t ceasing in their attempts to destroy the world, or everything you care about. Time and tide are winning, wearing you down with each passing year, but the world is still in terrible peril, still needs to be saved. The question is, will you go down swinging, or will you run and hide?
Style and Structure: This is basically a template to put on top of any game, although it fits best for fantasy or superheroes, and it only works in a game with clear levels and a long progression track. The conceit is that the players begin by making characters at a high level, perhaps the highest level, and then with each passing adventure they level down instead of up. Thus, as the campaign proceeds they go from godlike beings who can make dragons whimper to weaklings who can barely hold their own against zombies or kobolds. Can that be fun? Yes, if it’s done right.
Certainly a lot of players will balk at the idea of losing their cool stuff. However, in most leveling games you tend to ignore your weaker powers and it is in fact change that players tend to like as much as powering up. After all, their bad guys tend to power up with them – it is a rare game where they are still fighting kobolds at level 20. So by playing up variety and the thrill of having to change tactics as your options shrink, you can get the rules-fans and butt-kickers in on this. As for getting the method actors and story-tellers, that’s simply a matter of highlighting the drama of it all, of dealing with the irrevocable loss of everything you once had. And to bring it all together, you need a really strong campaign to make it feel worthwhile for them. Don’t fight your players on this, but if you can seduce them to the concept, you might just blow their minds.
PCs and NPCs: The key to this game comes from the PCs. It’s important to not just make up high-powered types, but also develop their history. For each level or point value above starting, each character should develop an important moment they experienced. Create a list of cherished memories, because that will form the background of both the character and the campaign, as those memories come back to haunt them. When magic weapons, strongholds or other such powers are bought, there should be a key story element developed around that. Players should do this collaboratively too, because the successes and acquisitions of their fellows will affect theirs. As they reach higher levels, the players might end up designing the entire world, if their achievements were big enough – a world you can then use for other games too. This is a length process that may take many sessions of discussion but it is a huge amount of fun, even without a subsequent campaign. It’s kind of like roleplaying at high speed, and it gives the feeling of having been through an epic campaign without the years of play.
NPC design is equally important here, perhaps even more important. Success tends to bring attachments, and in many games there are even rules for this. Old school D&D provided lists for just how many followers you attracted as you leveled; even without that, sidekicks and loyal companions will accrue to even the most solitary hunters. After leveling too, between that time and the start of the campaign, there will be time for spouses and families if they aren’t accrued on the way up. These NPCs are vital because they will drive the plot, even if they aren’t villains. Indeed, smart PCs will realize that as they get older but the threats continue to grow, they will do better controlling NPCs in combat than fighting themselves. Look at Batman in Miller’s Dark Knight 2 for a great example of a lone hunter turning into a distant general, and you’ll see the potential here.
Plots and Villains: As NPCs and past events are created, so should villains and enemies. When you acquired the Sword of the Dragon, who did you take it from, and does he want it back? Very often it is the villains that define our heroes, and vice versa; again, look at Batman for a world where the Joker really only exists because Batman does. Don’t forget though that, as age comes, all the NPC allies and families discussed above are also potential villains. Go rent The Lion in Winter right now to see the tale of an aging king (Richard Lionheart) not keen for either of his three sons to take his throne from him, but knowing full well he can’t last much longer. After training three different young wards as sidekicks, how might a superhero decide who gets to wear his cowl when he’s too old for it? And of course, villains and allies interact. Perhaps your wife was once the villain’s beautiful consort – or maybe, after the mind-ray incident, your son decided your arch-nemesis was a better father after all.
Such events provide a big part of your game’s plots, just waiting to be resolved, but not all players will want to develop such things in advance or even play them out much during the game. Which brings us to plots. Decay on its own isn’t fun to play for long, even for the most methody of method actors, and it’s absolutely vital for the success of such a campaign if the PCs have something to fight and unravel and defeat. Their incremental victories over evil provide the balance to the fact that they lose their abilities between each adventure, and its that balance that keeps things fun. It’s even a good idea to have this plot mostly, if not entirely separate from their pasts, as that keeps your players interested in the unknown, a massive part of most RPG campaigns. So don’t rest on your laurels: dig up a proper big bad with a massive scheme and plenty of world-spanning adventures and new mysteries to uncover and keep all of that hidden from the PCs. You can weave their pasts into it once things start; indeed the PCs will have no choice in this regard: as they grow weaker it is only their pasts that can help them defeat the threat. The theme will write itself, leaving you to concentrate on the rest.
Sources: As mentioned, Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and its sequel, Dark Knight 2 are great sources for looking at an aging hero. As a counterpoint, though, examine Cohen the Barbarian from Pratchett’s Discworld novels, the octogenarian who maintains much of his combat skills but never quite figured out how to get old, and thus has no castle or family or armies and has to keep doing wandering adventures despite how cold his feet get. The western often features aging heroes: John Wayne’s dying-of-cancer sheriff in True Grit being the best example, but heroes who have given up the gun and tried to retire include Clint Eastwood’s character in Unforgiven, Gary Cooper’s character in High Noon and of course, both the real and fictional Wyatt Earp and Will Bill Hickock. Captain Kirk has pondered retirement a lot, also, and found it wanting (see Star Trek 6 for the best example) and The Godfather is, primarily, about the retirement of the Don and the chaos that follows finding his replacement. Many tales of old kings and rulers end up lost in the past: A Song of Ice and Fire begins with aged friends from the days of a rebellion who haven’t done very well in peacetime; Tolkein’s Theoden is in much the same spot after his son dies; Shakespearean kings from Lear to Richard III have also pondered such things. Finally, make sure you read Ulysses by Lord Tennyson, as it’s the best poem ever written about old men wanting to ride back out one more time.
RPGs: With its hard-coded levels, it’s D20 in all its iterations that leap to mind here, as does D&D 4E. D20 gives you an enormous field to choose from, be it fantasy, superhero, pulp, western or sci-fi – and even Star Wars. Palladium games also have levels, and there are pseudo levels in Savage Worlds and Unisystem but any game with point values also fits the bill, be it GURPS, or White Wolf or Warhammer. As long as experience comes in increments, it can be subtracted and it doesn’t all have to come off in leveling chunks. Indeed, there’s a lot of fun to be had in games where people lose abilities in completely different pathways and directions than they gained them: what if the mage loses his physical strength first, becoming a totally crippled weakling long before he loses any magical ability? The wizard in the wheelchair has a lot of potential – just ask Professor X.
