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My curiosity escaped and is currently running rampant*... and is causing me to wonder: Has anyone here ever created characters without tragic origin stories? By tragic, I mean origins that did not involve personal tragedies such as loss of loved ones, imprisonment, last survivor of home planet, loss of personal fortune, near-death experience, etc. Almost every game I've ever played in, the characters seemed to have a tragic circumstance that spurred them to fight evil... — *Not to worry... I've set box traps baited with signs saying "do not look inside this box." I should have it back under control momentarily...

I am planning on moving 20-30 years from 1 campaign to seed a new one, and have original characters show up at times. Potentially characters from 20-30 years ago will be played along new characters and so I have been giving some thought to experience points for this 20-30 year period. I was wondering if others had done this, had thought about it, had guidelines they had used in the past for dramatic time advance and 'blanket' EPs to fill in the period. My initial thoughts: A large portion of the EPs will go to knowledge, professional and 'day-to-day' work skills. It should vary from individual to individual - EPs already do when players switch between characters at different times - so _some_ variation is to be expected and is accepted. How much should it 'swing'? I don't think that the EP gain should be based on any particular Characteristics. The rate will be nothing akin to full-on adventuring as will not have been intense and the threat is likely to have been a lot lower. I would not expect there to be EPs for good role-playing, as I am not looking to 'play' the intervening period - though once a structure/total time and rough events 'along the way' have been worked out I will encourage players to create a story to cover the period. I would consider bonus points being available for good role-play in the writing of this. I had considered that the EP gain will reduce over the period as day-to-day existence reveals less that is unknown to the character - therefore less of an 'experience'. I had thought something around 3-4 points a year with a small variation (perhaps based on 3d6), with some of the points being assigned by the GM, certain disadvantages should also be targeted to be bought off - afterall, how long can one person remain 'young, innocent & naive'? Cheers for any thoughts.