Longevity: What Purpose Does it Serve?

[Nolgroth]

I wish I could maintain a campaign for 30 months, let alone 30 years!

[Christopher]

6E1 246 actually mentions that LS: Longevity might not be worth anything in game. From the toolkitting section:
"[...]Second, you can change the cost of some
part of Life Support based on campaign
preferences. For example, in many campaigns
a character’s lifespan really doesn’t matter for
game purposes (except perhaps as a defense
for AVADs that manipulate a character’s
age), so perhaps Longevity costs nothing. If
the game only covers a few years’ time, what
does it matter that one type of character has
double the lifespan of another? Similarly, in
a campaign where the GM plans to run a lot
of underwater adventures, perhaps Expanded
Breathing and Self-Contained Breathing are
half cost (to encourage PCs to buy them) or
double cost (because they’re so much more
important)."

(Bolding added by me)

 

That Longevities point cost might not make sense for every campaign is as well known and predicted as the fact that Relativity does not apply in very extreme cases (like Black Holes).

You do not need to invent off-chance uses for it. Just realise it had none by the books own admission.

[Sean Waters]

Say what you like, sometimes it is worth three points just to know that the character you built isn't going to die of old age, even if it never comes up in the campaign.  It's cool.  This is an economics problem: is it worth the cost to you?

 

Just because a character is immortal does not mean it has been round a long time (Majik from new Mutants, for example) and just because a character has been round a long time does not mean that you have to buy LS: Immortal.  You might have lived a long time but no longer be immortal or it might not matter if the campaign is only going to run over a short span of game time.

 

Having said that, I would if I were GM, try and make something of it occasionally.  There would be a NND that did not affect you, or you would get maybe a temporary contact or favour occasionally from back in the day.

 

Base line: it is 3 points.  As a player is it worth that just to know I have it, even if it never comes up?  

 

Aging is a meta effect that the game imposes and, arguably, shouldn't.  Perhaps all characters should be immortal, not have to breathe, eat or sleep and 'human' or similar characters should then take a complication 'human metabolism'.  OK, the reason the game does it that way is bookkeeping: easier to note the exceptions than the rule, still, its worth thinking about.

[Duke Bushido]

 or you would get maybe a temporary contact or favour occasionally from back in the day.

 

 

 

Sean!  Delighted to know your still about.

 

I like the ideas you present, particularly this one.  For some reason, that had not occurred to me.  Well done. 

[Sean Waters]

Hello Duke; still alive

 

I do drop in occasionally, but if I get too involved in discussions I never know where the time goes.  Self restraint has never been one of my principal features.

 

Nice to see many familiar signatures and some new ones too!

[Hugh Neilson]

Wow, do I hear that, Sean! I envy you your restraint.