I am a couple months into our AoW AP, and one of the things that concerns me is the overall sense of time in the game. Running in Greyhawk we started in the begining of the year 595 to coincide with the weather in real life. Chronologically I have been keeping a very realistic track of time, and we are about 1 month into the campaign (game time) and currently into "Three Faces of Evil".
That seems on track timewise as the Champions Games will be in the Spring, as I think they should be. After that is where I forsee problems. Personally I have an issue with my players PC's shooting from level 1 to 20 within the course of one game year.
In past my campaigns that where module based. There were long spans between adventures (and in real life) where PC's did other things, phasing in new / replacement PC's, regrouping only to head out on the next adventure. entire campaigns could have a timeline of 5 to 10 years or longer.
With the urgency of AoW and wealth of material I have prepared, running the AoW has become one long 20 level Mega Adventure with one group of PC's
Currently I am looking for ideas on how realistically increase the span of game time and still keep the momentum of game going.
One of the obvious ideas I had was making the Ziggaruat in the "Spire of Long Shadows" a time sink where while inside the obsidian ring time came to a crawl, While the time on Oerth rapidly passed the group by. The result being while the adventure seem to only last several days for the PC's, Six months had passed in the outside world. Tenser ( manzorian) and the rest have assumed the PC's were destroyed.
During the groups abscence several new prophecies have materialized and stopping the Age of Worm's has become ever so more urgent. Outside of that and possibly running a side trek to Hellspike Prison while the PC's wait for Tenser to return to Magepoint in the opening of the "Spire of Long Shadows"
I am stumped on idea's on how to push the whole path to hopefully at least a two year game timeline.
I am curious if anyone else has had a similar dilema? What options have you used?
I tend to have the same problem with a lengthy adventure. My crew started a couple days before Growfest (They spent just shy of a week on the Whispering Cairn), and they just met Tenser about three months later. To space things out, rather than teleport to the Armedio Jungle (which is well beyond the limits of the party mage) I have them traveling via airship. It's going to take about a month each way.
I did the airship because I think it's cool, but if you wanted to have it be a sea voyage it should take at least twice as long. I'm also planning on having Zeech's ball happening a couple of weeks after the group arrives in Alhaster. Once they meet Lashonna, things look like they move pretty quick, I figure Last Resort is your last chnace to add some time in--being a pocket dimention and all time can move differently--once they know where Dragotha's phylactery is, they really have to move pretty quickly.
Realistically I don't see any way to stretch the campaign out much longer than a year (game time). I say don't worry about it. I doubt anyone is going to stand up in mid-adventure and say "the quick rise to power of my character is ruining my fun!" But worrying about it can ruin your fun. Just go with the flow.
And I would say that I agree with you about too quick advancement when it comes to adventurers that are going to explore this or that or with a campaign with only a loose theme, or a lot of side treks and asides.
That having been said, these are adventurers that have happened up on a potentially world ending plot. Its entirely possible that they are "chosen one" type characters. Savants of their given abilities.
You may want to play up, as they start to gain in power and level up more and more, that the NPCs around them start to comment on how naturally they learn their skills. You may even want to drop some hints that its their destiny to be the heroes that oppose Kyuss in this endevor.
That way, if you play a campaign after this that is a little more "down to Oerth" and they take five years to get from 1st to 10th level, they don't feel like you are being inconsistant, because they have it in their heads that their last characters were destined for greatness, and their current characters may have to work harder to earn it.
In addition to the long sea voyage to the Amedio Jungle, I'm going to have the PCs have to do research at the manor of Matreyus outside Gradsul (I'm doing a Greyhawk campaign)--Bucknard/Balakarde's journal doesn't actually reveal anything about Kuluth-Mar, and the party only knows that he took a long trip to someplace in the far south and that his first stop was to consult the records of the Matreyus expedition, which explored the region near K-M sometime in the 570s (about 20 years before the campaign starts). Only there will they find the clues to lead them to the jungle city. (Sea travel time won't actually take so long in Greyhawk--I figure about two weeks by sea from Hardby to Gradsul and another three weeks to the mouth of the river the PCs have to ascend by canoe to get to K-M. Of course, contrary winds and other factors can cause delays.
I'm also going to make it so that the party has to travel by sea to Alhaster from Magepoint, and overland to Kongen-Thulnir. Basically, I'm taking away the visual references that allow teleportation to those places the PCs have never been to.
All told, though, such travel probably won't add more than a few months to the campaign. Just think about those guys who enlisted in WWII, fought from D-Day all the way to Berlin. In about a year, they went from farmboys to hardened veterans, in some cases heroes. Or think about how changed the hobbits are in Lord of the Rings when they go back to the Shire. (And that's after maybe 10-15 "encounters." Not all that different really. The heroes just happened to have the right stuff. Those who didn't just didn't make it. (And probably some who did).
In one of the Gord the Rogue books, Tenser brings Gord and crew to a Sea dragon to help them move quickly to somewhere (can remember where). But the basic idea is in the bottom of his tower he has a sea dragon that can make an air bubble for his riders. I definetely want to have my PC's travel somewhere on this (they have all read the Gord books so it will be cool). I will either use it for Alhaster (across the Nyr Dyv) or for the Amedio Jungle through the river, and then through the ocean... but it probably might be a little stupid for this water dragon to swim through a river....
Some great ideas there, thanks! Nixing the teleporting is a great idea, that with Ziggaraut and Library as time sinks, real overland travel and a side trek or two could stretch the the time between arriving in Magepoint and discovering existence the pyhlactery to quite a while. In the end I just want the epic feeling of the campaign to continue to really mount, if it all comes too fast it ends up seeming a bit too linear or directed. To me a nice sense of time gives it that epic scope. Good point on LotR, I think the whole LotR sage takes place over 18 months or so, if can get that Im good.