Semi-sensible thousand-year plans?

[Quartz]

Some things in RPGs are often very long-lived. What sort of very-long-term plans and efforts might they have?

At one end, in Shadow World, Lorgalis has a tower continually built up over thousands of years by the secretions of snails; at the other, in Dune, the Bene Gesserit (granted that that's an organisation) breed a messiah.

I'll exclude having to wait for certain external events like eclipses, the magic fire in She, etc.

Over to you, but let's not mention that failed Austrian painter, okay?

 

[GrimCo]

Opening savings account and enjoying benefits of that compound interest over looong periods of time. One italian bank is operating continuously since 1476, so 550 years more or less. Or invest in good business. Oldest one operating in continuity was founded in 578 and was family owned and run until 2006 when it was bought, but it's still up today as part of larger company.

 

[Quartz]

Opening savings account and enjoying benefits of that compound interest over looong periods of time.

What interest? It used to be that you paid for someone to hold on to your money.

 

[MarkB]

Bury some trinkets in out-of-the-way places, then dig them up a thousand years later and sell them as antiques.

 

[jian]

What interest? It used to be that you paid for someone to hold on to your money.

Yes, passive compound interest has sadly only been around for about a century or so and can’t be guaranteed to last a millennium in any given version of society.

Basically, if you can expect to live several thousand years or hand down plans over that sort of time frame, it’s not much use for planning unless you also have some way of reliably predicting the future. For instance, if a modern person is thrown five thousand years into our past and gifted with functional immortality, then depending on their talents and knowledge of history they may be able to ride or manipulate historical events to their benefit. But they can also expect to endure millennia of starvation, disease, and other deprivations while waiting for the next cool historical event to come along, assuming they haven’t changed history by just being them.

As for actual ideas - I’m reminded of one of my favourite sci-fi authors, Kage Baker, who sadly died 15 years ago. Her main work was the Company novels, which start with the premise that in the next few centuries, somebody (Zeus Inc, AKA the Company) work out two technologies - functional immortality and time travel. However, the former involves some very painful cyborg surgery and gene therapies and can only be done in children; the latter is extremely limited and cannot change history. The Company therefore monetises these discoveries by travelling back in time, choosing children who would have died in various disasters, and turning them into immortal indoctrinated employees whose main purpose is to preserve lost artworks until the present day for sale to collectors.

(The plot, of course, comes from the fact that this is a clever use of two limited technologies and can be very lucrative but is an incredibly terrible idea in that it creates an army of disaffected immortal cyborgs who think that after several millennia of working for the Company and enduring any number of traumas, they should get some slice of the pie when they reach the 24th century.)

 

[GrimCo]

What interest? It used to be that you paid for someone to hold on to your money.

Some banks in renaissance Italy did give modest interest if you gave money to them. They then loaned that money out with bigger interest and keep difference as profit. It was early banking system, but it evolved, compound interest as we know it today started to appear more broadly in 17h century, in early 18th ct Bank of England started to use it with savings and investments.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

even in modern times, a savings account is a terrible place to put your money if you are trying to make money.

If you’re an adventurer, spend one year adventuring to build up capital and then spend the next 999 years backing various organizations. That’ll have a bigger return on investment.


I think one of the advantages of being long lived is to build up a network of contacts. Open various businesses, owner have contacts within mercenary companies etc…

All of this requires money though. So assuming you are industrious enough to spend 1000 years making something of yourself. Otherwise, as an artist, you can work on something that will take 1 thousand years to complete.

 

[MarkB]

Otherwise, as an artist, you can work on something that will take 1 thousand years to complete.

And run the risk that either

A) Tastes have changed, and nobody's interested in buying that style anymore (though if you can hang in there it'll probably come around again eventually), or

B) That style actually is still very popular, which is why, in the intervening centuries, someone invented a way of achieving the same results in a tenth the time, for half the cost, at a higher quality. Early-adopter syndrome's a bitch on these timescales.

 

[Krachek]

Asimov, Foundation. A plan to rebuild a civilization.

 

[Reynard]

I think there is a difference between a long term project in a society of(relatively) short lived people, and a long term project in a long lived society. A avant garde elf artists, for example, may well engage in a 1000 year project that holds the attention of their fellow elves. To humans, though, it would be a weird, baffling thing a couple generations in.

One long term project that would be useful is the slow shift of a planetary body by way of gravity "tug boating." Maybe the sun is growing to hot and the people of the world nudge the planet ever farther out in order to maintain a livable environment. Or maybe the goal is to draw in a resource rich asteroid or planetoid to forma second moon that can be mined by future generations. In a fantasy world, perhaps a dragon sleeps for 1000 years and while it slumber kobolds mind its continuously growing scales.