Life path campaigns

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Back in the day when I was introduced to roleplaying, life path games (not sure how it is called in other places) was a thing that I heard a lot about. Basically this is a game where the player characters start at the lowest level possible (in every sense of the word), and then the stories follows them through their journey to greatness or death. Whichever comes first.

Needless to say, almost nobody have done this right or actually went really far with it. It requires a lot of effort and dedication from the players and the GM too, and a lot of things can come in, and break this. Player gets bored of their character, they want to change, but that would break the whole side story the GM prepared for them. The GM could just give up for one reason or another. Or just life gets in the way.

But I like the idea. It gives the players a lot of immersion and GM can weave really interesting stories not just about their impact on the world, but about their deeper relationships and self-growth. And it is really fun to look back on after years of playing where the characters came from and what they went through.

I managed to GM a couple of games that were life paths and went on for years with the same characters (a Shadowrun one that even changed editions midway, and a Mage the Awakening 2nd Edition one). All of them are unfinished, they are still open to continue. Not sure if we ever pick them up, but we still talk about them years after. And I think that is what makes them really satisfying: not how they ended, but how they went. Because no story will ever ends.

I had another attempt after these, because the players also really wanted another life path exactly because what the other campaigns gave them. So I planned a fantasy this time in a homebrew world I was working on for years using The Witcher TTRPG as the system. I was excited about this, because I wanted to show my own world and also because I wanted it to be a true life path game.

By true life path, I mean that the players would have started around the age of 14 and each year there would have been 1-2 adventures as they grow older and have their important life events. The whole childhood part would have been a campaign in on it self. And after that they would have left their hometown to see the world and do other stuff. They could have been participated in a war, been there as a country changes do to a revolution, found old friends and saw what happened to them, how they have changed. I planned so much I could write a novel series about it. And I already imagined how fun will it be when they return to their hometown and think back, how this whole story started.

It was short lived.

Sadly after a couple of stories, it ended abruptly. I had to end it. One reason was, that the players just wanted to play another game that I just did not want to GM for them, because I wanted something different. At first they seemed to be okay with it, but as things went on, it turned out, they weren't. The other reason was, that the players were impatient. They found the childhood part, that I wanted to be like a cozy, kind of scary campaign, boring. They wanted to jump ahead, but that would have killed the buildup of the whole campaign.

So, I decided to leave it instead of forcing it and just ruin it. After that I GMd them the game they wanted so bad, but I hated it. So much in fact, that I just stopped GMing for a year after that. Even after I came back, I only GMd one-shots and short stories.

I still think about that campaign. I still have all the plans for it. But without the dedication, effort and patience from the players to see through a story properly unfold to a satisfying conclusion, a life path game cannot work.

I could make a parallel here with fast paced life of the modern age and the expectation of instant gratification and that nobody has time for anything anymore, but I won't. I see that a lot of ttrpgs comes out with fast preparation and short, one-shot sessions in mind. I have nothing against these, they have their target audience. But I like the long campaigns - playing and GMing too. I like the immersion, the character development, to look back at the achievements, to make the hard decisions and see their long term effect unfold over multiple sessions.

Life path games are not for everybody. But I still think that this is the most immersive and satisfying type of game to play in any roleplaying game out there.