The Generation Spanning Campaign

(No.  Not that kind)

I have been toying with an idea of late.  Last summer, I wrote out a Western campaign (that I am still waiting to run) based on a combination of the old Boot Hill Modules with some Deadlands and Fistful of Zombies thrown in. 

I had also planned another set of adventures using the Gangbusters boxed set and modules mixed with Cthulhu by Gaslamp.  And then I said, "what if the characters in the 20's are the grandchildren of the characters from the Western?"

How far could I take that idea?  What if the characters from the Western were the great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren of another group from the American Revolution?  And what if the children from the 20's characters were involved in the fighting during World War II?  What if there was an overarching story that combined elements of each of these campaigns?

The players begin the campaign during the American Revolution.  Everything seems all fine and well, they’re fighting for independence against the British and undertaking secret missions assigned to them by assorted Founding Fathers and so on.

Ben Franklin’s scientific endeavors have expanded into the realm of alchemy, John Dee is a secretly a wizard in the service of the Crown, monsters and witches stalk the New World and so on.  The group, over the course of their missions, comes to learn about this hidden world boiling just beneath the surface of false normalcy and have to adjust accordingly.

Fast forward one-hundred years and four or five generations to the settling of the American West.  Magic has grown even rarer and is generally disregarded as superstitious nonsense by almost everyone outside of the Church.  The Civil War ended just a few years prior to the start of this chapter and the players now assume the roles of the Revolutionary characters’ descendants.  They are suddenly confronted with the fact that magic still exists and that supernatural creatures aren’t quite as make-believe as they’ve grown up thinking.  Searches through family archives leads to the discovery that previous generations were well aware of what was really going on behind the scenes and worked hard to keep those things concealed.

From there, we move ahead to the 1920s and Prohibition.  The newest generation of characters learn the same hard lessons about the supernatural but now we add a little bit of pulp science to the mix.  In addition to facing off against otherworldly horrors as various cultists attempt to awaken Cthulhu and other Old Ones, the heroes, now the grandchildren of the characters in the Western campaign are faced with an assortment of Dick Tracy-inspired gangsters.

Finally, the children of the 20’s characters are drawn into the events of World War II.  Nazi scientists and occultists have made significant inroads into the worlds of magic and genetics, unleashing threats no mere man could face alone.  Super-soldiers take on battalions of regular troops, fighting their way across the Eastern and Western fronts before moving on to the Pacific.  As the looming German menace endangers the very fate of the world itself, these brave men and women, descended from a long line of humanity’s defenders must risk everything to bring an end to the war before Armageddon itself is unleashed upon the earth.

Systems by Era

Colonial Gothic: American Revolution
American West: Boot Hill, Deadlands, Aces and Eights
1920s: Gangbusters, Cthulhu by Gaslamp, Noir – the Film Noir Role-playing Game, GURPS Cliffhangers

WWII: Weird War II, Godlike: Superhero Role-playing in a World on Fire

All of these could also be handled by the d20 system while you cherry-pick adventures from each system to add to your own version of the campaign.  I plan on lifting several of the old adventures from the DC Roleplaying Game for the WWII-era