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Yora
2016-09-26, 10:57 AM
I've recently read the post Off-the-shelf fantasy worlds (http://rolesrules.blogspot.de/2014/12/off-shelf-fantasy-worlds.html) which laments that American fantasy works almost universally depict their worlds pretty much like America some 100 to 150 years ago,without gunpowder but with magic. People think and act just like people do today in North America and Europe. And to that I would add that predominantly magic is treated as an ordinary part of life, such as electricity, nuclear power, telephone, or aircraft. Pretty amazingstuff actually, but nothing we really think much about.
I've also been playing a lot of Dark Souls over the last weeks and previously gave another shot at Morrowind. Which are settings that really work in quite different ways on a fundamental level from our own world. Why don't we really see such things in campaign settings? Yes, D&D has it's various multiverses, but the way they treat demon lords is basically the same as an orc shaman king or a dragon. The closest thing I can think of would be many of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventures which are set in what basically comes down to 16th century Europe with Lovecraft monsters.Oh, and Yoon-Suin. That one has to b mentioned as an actual example of what kind of material I am talking about.

But coming back to Dark Souls and Morrowind, when was the last time you fought an actual god in a campaign? An immortal who ruled for thousands of years and who has priests and temples all over the land? Somehow fantasy RPGs tend to limit themselves overwhelmingly to content that is about mercenaries doing mercenary stuff. Not about legendary heroes doing legendary things. Exalted comes to mind as an exception, but I don't know how that actually works out in practice. Videogames certainly have the advantage that they can wreck the whole setting with the final boss fight and make the world unrecognizable. Nobody is going to miss anything in the future when there's only a single story. But I think it's not just that. I think another big reason is the impact of D&D and its level system on RPG campaign settings. D&D tends to come with a level range of 20 or 30 levels (or even more than that) and so its settings need to have content for adventures of 2th or 30th level parties. But the vast majority of played adventures take place in the range below 15th level and so playing in the top tier league of heroes, gods, and monsters is constantly staying very elusive. I think people got used to that and so almost all RPGs and settings are designed with the assumption that players won't have meaningful interactions with gods and legendary superhuman mortals. People don't like Elminsters and so we see very little settings that have such top tier supernatural fantasy elements instead of taking the other available option and making the mythic wonder much more accessible to player characters.

Looking at my own worldbuilding material from the last years I see myself having done the same thing. I frequently planned to work fancy mythical supernatural elements into the world as very central elements, but the I didn't actually do anything with them and still did almost entirely low-magic mercenary stuff.
Is it really so hard to make campaigns in which the players can play like Hercules, Elric, or Isildur?

Afgncaap5
2016-09-26, 12:13 PM
I don't think it's necessarily "hard" so much as it takes time, training, and intention. The standard mentality is one that works, and it's also one that people understand. Doing something different is easy enough, but you have to take a little extra energy to get started to go against the grain (and there's also the issue of figuring out how things work in this. A lot of the same old tropes and tricks are just the same, but a lot of them would be different as well.)

I also think part of the problem is that a lot of games have a kind of "plug and play" mentality to the monsters and magic and people and problems. You have players and GMs who feel "Well, the book says you can do X, Y, and Z with magic, so X, Y, and Z is what magic does." The books tend to become limiters for us instead of starting points; if you want to raise an army to rage across the lands of an evil emperor-god, the standard GM mentality is to say "Well, let's make some diplomacy checks, and maybe you can find someone with a pre-existing army who can let you borrow its use for a couple weeks..." Similarly, if you want a legendary weapon capable of fighting a mythical beast that's invincible otherwise, well... first you need to hope that your GM is going to invent a mythical beast that's invincible.

Yora
2016-09-26, 03:05 PM
There's plenty of settings that have their own custom made rules to be a perfect match for the way the world works. But those also tend to play it very safe and staying very generic.

hymer
2016-09-26, 03:26 PM
There may be a further reason. You can have a game that can handle from goblin stomping to god stomping, and which can be sold to and played by people who want either or both. Exalted and its like offers just the one end of that spectrum.
So there may be simple, commercial reasons.

Edit: That's not to say that most games handle both ends of that spectrum equally well. In fact, none I know well do.

2D8HP
2016-09-26, 04:15 PM
I also think part of the problem is that a lot of games have a kind of "plug and play" mentality to the monsters and magic and people and problems. You have players and GMs who feel "Well, the book says you can do X, Y, and Z with magic, so X, Y, and Z is what magic does." The books tend to become limiters for us instead of starting points
I think that comes when you try to quantify "magic".
My favorite "magic system" is from all but the 4th edition of (King Arthur) Pendragon, which was just a list of "tropes" for the GM to use, the players all being non-Spell-casting Knights (the 4th had rules for PC spell-casting, but the 5th did not as PC Spell-casters really weren't the point of the game).

Anyway here are a couple of PDF's for it.
How to Play Pendragon™ Basic Overview of Rules (http://www.adnd3egame.com/documents/gk-pendragon-howto.pdf)

Pendragon 5th Edition (http://lolthefol.jdr.free.fr/phpBB2/fichiersjdr/Pendragon/Pendragon.-.5th.Edition.Core.Rules.pdf)

My second favorite magic system was for the Stormbringer! RPG. Instead of your usual spellcasting, Stormbringer requires sorcerers to summon demons and elementals to create various effects. The more powerful beings will require convincing before lending their help, and the GameMaster is encouraged to bargain hard.

BRC
2016-09-26, 04:18 PM
I'm a little confused by the OP? Are we talking about High-Power Games where you're Legendary Heroes fighting Godlike Beings, or campaign settings where the inclusion of fantasy elements have made things substantially different from our own?

TheCountAlucard
2016-09-26, 05:25 PM
But coming back to Dark Souls and Morrowind, when was the last time you fought an actual god in a campaign?(raises hand) Well, I-


Somehow fantasy RPGs tend to limit themselves overwhelmingly to content that is about mercenaries doing mercenary stuff. Not about legendary heroes doing legendary things.Um, I-


Exalted comes to mind as an exception, but I don't know how that actually works out in practice.You could ask. :smallsigh:


Is it really so hard to make campaigns in which the players can play like Hercules, Elric, or Isildur?My current game has one of the PCs inspired by Heracles. Relatively recently he un-beached a fully-laden bireme by shoulder-checking it. We haven't tried it, but I suspect he could sack Troy by himself. :smalltongue:

Yora
2016-09-27, 09:03 AM
There may be a further reason. You can have a game that can handle from goblin stomping to god stomping, and which can be sold to and played by people who want either or both.
You could, but such a campaign would either have to race through the levels really fast (like Pathfinder adventure paths) or would take a really long time. When you start a new campaign you can't reasonably assume that it will last for four or six years.


I'm a little confused by the OP? Are we talking about High-Power Games where you're Legendary Heroes fighting Godlike Beings, or campaign settings where the inclusion of fantasy elements have made things substantially different from our own?

Both. You could do a low magic setting with heavily unusual cultures that play a major role. But running a campaign in a highly fantastic setting would also be a great source for steering PC behavior into new directions.
The old GM guide for LotFP mentions that sanity rules in a Lovecraftian setting are unnecessary since very soon the PCs will be acting in ways that everyone around them will regard as insane anyway.

I think what I want to accomplish in my own game is to get the players to get used to see the world and interact with it in different ways than generic modern fantasy protagonists.
One big shortcoming in fantasy in general and D&D in particular is religion. You almost always have plenty of gods, but aside fron a few simple rules of proper behavior they don't stand for very much and there's basically no religious activities and the gods don't really fill any meaningful role in the working of the universe. The Dragon Age setting is a good example of what can be done with it, even with just a few pretty simple ideas. The big mainstream religion is constantly expanding because they believe their god will take an active role again when the whole world worships him. They have a belief that there used to be an afterlife awaiting them but human sorcerers accidentally destroyed it in their greed for power. And they call the gods of the minor religions demons, which might actually be somewhat correct. In some ways it's a very generic setting, but there's a lot of groups struggling over bringing the promises of their religion into reality.

Earthwalker
2016-09-27, 09:47 AM
Have you played any Runequest or read anything about the Glorantha (hope I spelled that right) setting.

It has a world different to generic DnD but still have a kitchen sink kind of deal.

I would say its worth a look if you have not ever seen it.

Milo v3
2016-09-27, 09:59 AM
I am starting the first session of running new campaign starting tomorrow around mid-day. The players are already considering killing one of the deities of the region as they don't want to be horribly inconvenienced by that god spontaneously deciding to surround an island they could potentially go to in the future because that god has a reputation of punishing islands via surrounding them in cyclones.

Magic is sort of an accepted part of life, with tribes and towns commonly performing rituals that work about 30% of the time and being able to talk to many gods directly, and I put a lot more effort into the tenants of the different regions religions than I normally do (to the extent that "Do not clap in jest" and "If you hear a woodpecker near your home, you must endeavor to find and kill it" ended up being understandable and reasonable religious tenants somehow), also there is major difference in how concept based religions function in the setting compared to deity based religions.

Hopefully it will end up being a more mythic world than previous settings I've experienced.

Yora
2016-09-27, 11:20 AM
Have you played any Runequest or read anything about the Glorantha (hope I spelled that right) setting.

It has a world different to generic DnD but still have a kitchen sink kind of deal.

I would say its worth a look if you have not ever seen it.

Yeah, I know what it is, but I found it impossible to get a grasp of it without working through a big tome.


Hopefully it will end up being a more mythic world than previous settings I've experienced.

In my setting the world, and every possible alternative worlds, are like icebergs on an endless ocean of primordial chaos. Everything in the world is made from the same substance as the chaos, but it has taken on structure which allows for such things like time, distance, and matter. Chaos is just pure unsructured energy. And any stable universe in the chaos is only temporary. After some billions of years they will disintegrate and return back to chaos.
It's not an immediate concern even for godlike nature spirits, but it's a commonly accepted truth that everything is temporary and nothing lasts forever. The planet of the setting is not suited for civilization either and kingdoms last for a couple of centuries at the most before they disintegrate and the cities are abandoned. There are far more ruins than inhabited settlements and the total number of people at any time always remains low.
Unsurprisingly, there is no afterlife either. Everything is ruled by the principle of impermanence and in a state of perpetual collapse. An environment perfectly suited for exploring ruins. Time also flows very strangely in the spiritworld so it's possible to find ancient ruins that are still in great shape and encounter people who have disappeared hundreds or thousands of years ago. It also means that PCs have to worry about losing several months or years when exploring places affected by irregular time.A nice effect but it shouldn't really be disruptive for players as in a campaign with loose continuity the passage of time is highly abstract anyway and most things will still be just the same as they last remembered them.

Most religion revolves around nature spirits. The most powerful are the gods of the land and they control the weather and the forces of nature. Rituals are about asking the local spirits to take the needs of the village into consideration so they are not accidentally killed by floods or famines. All settlements are in places where the local spirits are generally nice enough to do that in return for acknowledging their sovereignty through sacrifices. Where the spirits don't care people can't live and where they are hostile it's dangerous to just pass through.

Magic is the power of nature spirits to control the environment, which people also can learn to a limited degree. But it can only control natural forces and manipulate minds and health, it can't do anything that couldn't happen naturally. But sorcerers have found a way to use the power of the primordial chaos and sorcery is able to rewrite reality by breaking down the natural structure in a place and reordering the raw energy according to their will. It has limited potential and can create seemingly impossible magical wonders, but it's obviously very harmful to the environment and everything it touches. People repeatedly exposed to sorcery turn into ghouls or even more bizarre undead abominations and even being near sorcerous artifacts or places where a lot of sorcery was used harms the health and sanity of people and kills and mutates nearby plants. It's also believed that it weakens the structure of the universe and could drastically speed up its inevitable breakdown and dissolution back to raw chaos. Certainly not within hundreds or thousands of years, but perhaps within millions of years instead of billions. Which to many people is insane and irresponsible, but sorcerers think it's irrelevant and the amazing things that sorcery can do to improve life in cities are completely worth it. You just have to contain the undead monstrocities and properly seal of the death zones where the sorcerers are working.

Demons are like spirits but come from the chaos and have no shape. They have to possess bodies to manifest and usually take the form of elemental-like creatures made from ash, tar, or shadow. Or they fuse with the mind of a sorcerer, gaining all his knowledge and taking on much of his personalty. Though some say that this process really makes a sorcerer immortal by absorbing the power and knowledge of a demon, allowing him to live forever in the chaos once the body is destroyed. Normal demons have no sense of time and remember all their past experience in the world as happening just now. Though there is no time in the chaos they don't remember future visits as those have not yet happened in the world.

Lacuna Caster
2016-09-27, 11:32 AM
Yeah, I know what it is, but I found it impossible to get a grasp of it without working through a big tome.
Glorantha is like that. Your best bet is to pick a select region and treat that as 'the setting', so you don't need to learn off more than 2 or 3 pantheons. (To be fair, it's not like D&D has itty-bitty spell listings either.)

Thrudd
2016-09-27, 01:18 PM
I've recently read the post Off-the-shelf fantasy worlds (http://rolesrules.blogspot.de/2014/12/off-shelf-fantasy-worlds.html) which laments that American fantasy works almost universally depict their worlds pretty much like America some 100 to 150 years ago,without gunpowder but with magic. People think and act just like people do today in North America and Europe. And to that I would add that predominantly magic is treated as an ordinary part of life, such as electricity, nuclear power, telephone, or aircraft. Pretty amazingstuff actually, but nothing we really think much about.
I've also been playing a lot of Dark Souls over the last weeks and previously gave another shot at Morrowind. Which are settings that really work in quite different ways on a fundamental level from our own world. Why don't we really see such things in campaign settings? Yes, D&D has it's various multiverses, but the way they treat demon lords is basically the same as an orc shaman king or a dragon. The closest thing I can think of would be many of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventures which are set in what basically comes down to 16th century Europe with Lovecraft monsters.Oh, and Yoon-Suin. That one has to b mentioned as an actual example of what kind of material I am talking about.

But coming back to Dark Souls and Morrowind, when was the last time you fought an actual god in a campaign? An immortal who ruled for thousands of years and who has priests and temples all over the land? Somehow fantasy RPGs tend to limit themselves overwhelmingly to content that is about mercenaries doing mercenary stuff. Not about legendary heroes doing legendary things. Exalted comes to mind as an exception, but I don't know how that actually works out in practice. Videogames certainly have the advantage that they can wreck the whole setting with the final boss fight and make the world unrecognizable. Nobody is going to miss anything in the future when there's only a single story. But I think it's not just that. I think another big reason is the impact of D&D and its level system on RPG campaign settings. D&D tends to come with a level range of 20 or 30 levels (or even more than that) and so its settings need to have content for adventures of 2th or 30th level parties. But the vast majority of played adventures take place in the range below 15th level and so playing in the top tier league of heroes, gods, and monsters is constantly staying very elusive. I think people got used to that and so almost all RPGs and settings are designed with the assumption that players won't have meaningful interactions with gods and legendary superhuman mortals. People don't like Elminsters and so we see very little settings that have such top tier supernatural fantasy elements instead of taking the other available option and making the mythic wonder much more accessible to player characters.

Looking at my own worldbuilding material from the last years I see myself having done the same thing. I frequently planned to work fancy mythical supernatural elements into the world as very central elements, but the I didn't actually do anything with them and still did almost entirely low-magic mercenary stuff.
Is it really so hard to make campaigns in which the players can play like Hercules, Elric, or Isildur?

I think this is not really a problem that exists in the game systems. It is simply a setting choice. Even with D&D, you can choose to have a high or epic level game, and to depict gods and demons and cosmology in any way you like. It isn't hard at all to make games where people play as fantasy super heroes who challenge gods, it's done all the time and is, in fact, the default assumption/preference for many people around these parts. Sticking to low level and low magic play and returning to the assumptions of early D&D is the less popular stance, I think. It's a struggle convincing a lot of people that it can be fun to tone down the superheroics, while few need encouragement to get crazier/more powerful.

For any given game, you just need to choose what tone you feel is appropriate. You can't have gritty swords & sorcery with amoral mercenaries at the same time you tell the tale of the Argonauts or some other demi-god heroes. If players want to be Elminsters flying through the cosmos dealing with deities, there's nothing stopping anybody from setting up a game for that.

Yora
2016-09-27, 01:48 PM
The games from recent years that I've seen are Dragon Age, Simbaorum, Shadows of Esteren, and various OSR games and those all follow a pretty consistent low-power approach. Though of course that's what you find when you're looking for stuff like that. (I wonder how Shadow of the Demon Lord actually does in this regard.)

With D&D and Pathfinder I think the default assumption seems to be continuous 1-20 campaigs. But you have a lot more games starting at 1st level than games reaching 20th level, so in practice most play takes place at the lower end while the world shaking adventures are found at the upper end. If you want to set up a game at the higher end the best options are probably to either start the PCs at 10th level or so, or to play inan E10 type setting where 10th level adventures are the high level worls shaking stuff.

In games without a fixed level system and a big established monster roster the second approach is probably the easist one.

However, in my experience there are relatively few adventures around for any game that deals with "epic content". One complaint I've seen about many high level D&D adventures is that they feel like low level adventures with inflated numbers. Has anyone seen good adventures that manage to capture the high power feel well?
I think the second half of Savage Tide might qualify, though I've not read any reports how well they play in practice. Slumbering Tsar also looks interesting, being a huge D&D adventure for 6th to 20th level set in a dead city taken over by minions of Orcus.

BRC
2016-09-27, 02:33 PM
The games from recent years that I've seen are Dragon Age, Simbaorum, Shadows of Esteren, and various OSR games and those all follow a pretty consistent low-power approach. Though of course that's what you find when you're looking for stuff like that. (I wonder how Shadow of the Demon Lord actually does in this regard.)

With D&D and Pathfinder I think the default assumption seems to be continuous 1-20 campaigs. But you have a lot more games starting at 1st level than games reaching 20th level, so in practice most play takes place at the lower end while the world shaking adventures are found at the upper end. If you want to set up a game at the higher end the best options are probably to either start the PCs at 10th level or so, or to play inan E10 type setting where 10th level adventures are the high level worls shaking stuff.

In games without a fixed level system and a big established monster roster the second approach is probably the easist one.

However, in my experience there are relatively few adventures around for any game that deals with "epic content". One complaint I've seen about many high level D&D adventures is that they feel like low level adventures with inflated numbers. Has anyone seen good adventures that manage to capture the high power feel well?
I think the second half of Savage Tide might qualify, though I've not read any reports how well they play in practice. Slumbering Tsar also looks interesting, being a huge D&D adventure for 6th to 20th level set in a dead city taken over by minions of Orcus.

I mean, that Epic Feel is a big reason for starting campaigns at low-levels. Low-level adventures provide context that make the later stuff seem epic and impressive. "Look How Far We've Come" and all that.

I've been in a Deadlands Classic game for coming up on two years now that has managed to feel pretty epic at times, largely because Deadlands Classic leans heavily on increasing PC survivability with meta-resources (Chips). Within the Narrative (And mechanically, if we're short on chips), our characters are only marginally more durable and dangerous than your average farmer with a shotgun. Most of us have some form of armor and very nice weapons, but it's not like D&D where a high-level character automatically has ten times the hit points and twenty times the damage output of a commoner. The most dramatic difference is that the PC's (And certain NPCs) have meta-resources being spent to protect them from damage and boost their rolls. The resulting narrative is suitably epic.


I suppose a question is, what sort of Epic Hero do you want to emulate. Odysseus or Hercules?

Odysseus is a mortal man. What allows him to achieve Epic Feats is his skill and intellect (The Batman Model). When Odysseus faces the Cyclops, it's impressive because the Cyclops could squash Odysseus in a single blow, so it's a testament to his skill that he succeeds.

For a band of Odysseus-type characters (Odyssei?) some sort of deadlands-style meta resource probably works best, representing the flashes and luck or inspiration that allow them to survive peril and achieve what others mortals could not. Theoretically, they could be killed by a one-armed blind man with an axe, which makes every confrontation with The Thousand Armed God Of Axes so much more thrilling.

On the other hand, we have the Hercules, or Superman, model of Epic Hero, who has some inherent trait that makes them capable of Great Deeds. Hercules was able to slay the Nemean Lion because his immense strength allowed him to wrestle, and strangle, the lion, killing it despite it's invulnerable hide.

For a Hercules-style game, my first thought is to create a world that is 99% E6, then start the PC's at level 10 or so, and sprinkle the world with worthy challenges. Nemean lions and Hydras and the like, legendary creatures that ordinary mortals could not hope to defeat. Make the Deeds Epic within the context of the world.

Where standard D&D falls apart is by taking an MMO style approach. The bears over there are challenging for low-level characters, while the Bears over HERE are challenging for high-level characters. The High-level Bears have always existed, as have high-level NPCs that can fight them. By leveling up, the PC's are just joining the ranks of more-powerful NPCs. The feel is less Achieving An Epic Destiny, and more akin to climbing the corporate ladder.

Sure, you started in the Mailroom, but now you're in Middle Management! Eventually, you could become the Assistant Vice President of Dragon Slaying!

The numbers go up, but the Dire Hellbears you're slaying in the Forest of Blood are not neccessarily any more special than the ordinary bears from the Forest of Trees.

Yora
2016-09-27, 03:26 PM
I think most heroes from ancient works are people who stand apart from normal mortals and have been born for superhuman greatness. Not necessarily Hercules level, but they were well above the masses right from the very start. Zero to hero seems to be a concept of mid to late 20th century fiction, which D&D happily latched on to during it's reinventing in the 80s. (70s D&D is much more mercenary treasure hunters.)
D&D (and the only other example I know is Fantasy Age) is a system that allow zero to hero campaigns but that either takes a long time or very rapid advancement (the later of which fits well with hero's journey type fantasy). I am not a fan of it as it promises epic adventures in the future. Maybe in a year or three. If the campaign actually goes that long, which it might very wel not.

Which is why I think it's interesting to consider a campaign in which starting characters are already playing in the top tier. OD&D and B/X kind of seem to assume that with considering nonheroic NPCs to be 0 level. No 5th level fighter inkeepers and no 12th level wizard ones either. If you stick to that, 1st level parties are already exceptional (say Indiana Jones) and 4th level ones a small army. I don't know where that idea came from that 6th to 8th level is average, maybe from DMs not liking players always walking around like they own everything and wrecking things since nobody could stop them? As the average mid range moved up, new challenges were added to the top but also old high level opponents moved up even higher. It's particularly visible with dragons and giants in AD&D 2nd edition. This lead to having more levels to get to the same relative power level in the D&D food chain, but at the same time access to high level spells remained the same. So either it takes much longer to be able to take on larger numbers of giants, or you gain levels faster and end up getting powerful magic and items very quickly. I think in D&D the monster manuals no longer line up well with the character advancement.
My favorite approach to that, though it's a work intensive one, is to flatten the power curve by consistently reducing the level of all monsters by the same ratio. Orcs remain level 1, but a level 10 monster becomes level 5 and a level 20 monster level 10, for example. (Since I made my own custom monsters for my setting that wasn't any actual extra work, but converting a monster manual probably would be quite annoying.) The result is that you can have both slow advancement and relatively access to top tier monsters.

To me monsters are a major factor in what makes an adventure feel epic. You can still end up with something that feels like a low level adventure with funny looking goblins if for example you use bebiliths just as stronger giant spiders or have agang of rakshasa robbing merchants on s forest road. But I think epicness comes to a large part from knowing that you're fighting in the top league and not somewhere in the third or fourth division.
Which is why I like the idea of gods being nature spirits living in the environment instead of cosmic forces. You can much easie fight them without having power over space and time.

Cosi
2016-09-27, 09:37 PM
I think this is not really a problem that exists in the game systems. It is simply a setting choice. Even with D&D, you can choose to have a high or epic level game, and to depict gods and demons and cosmology in any way you like.

I think Yora's problem stems more from the fact that D&D doesn't have a default setting (and that most of the settings it does have are kind of dumb), rather than any intrinsic lack of stuff to do that is "epic" or "gonzo" or "awesome". You can fight Demon Lords, Princes of Elemental Evil, Lich Kings, and all sorts of other things that are god-like. You can even fight actual gods (though the rules for them are dumb and bad). The issue is basically that there isn't a default setting, and there is very little effort put into outlining what sorts of Fae Queens or Dragon Emperors exist for you to fight, why you might want to fight them, and what sorts of resources they have.


It's a struggle convincing a lot of people that it can be fun to tone down the superheroics, while few need encouragement to get crazier/more powerful.

Obviously, continuing down this path will derail the thread, but I don't think the issue (for me at least) is that people are opposed to playing low-powered characters. It's that designers seldom give any serious thought to high-powered characters, and the systems designed for them tend to be bad.


If you want to set up a game at the higher end the best options are probably to either start the PCs at 10th level or so, or to play inan E10 type setting where 10th level adventures are the high level worls shaking stuff.

If you want a high-powered campaign, you should start at high level. One of the most overlooked flaws in D&D is that it's advancement system isn't designed to support the campaigns people want. This leads to stupid decisions like the Fighter not getting meaningful abilities at 20th level because people want to keep playing a mundane warrior, and the game doesn't bother to suggest that if they don't want to advance, they could just not gain levels. There should be more meaningful discussion of how fast and what kind of advancement is appropriate for what kinds of games.

Some stories (like LotR, Conan, or Spiderman) don't have any real advancement once characters get their powers. You might have an adventure where Spiderman gets his powers and becomes a hero, but once he is a hero he doesn't pick up new abilities at any meaningful rate. Ditto with Conan or Bilbo. They might get new gear, but that isn't even a given and it often doesn't last past the end of the adventure. Some stories (like WoT or The Matrix) have rapid advancement throughout the whole story. Rand and Neo keep picking up new and better powers as they have to fight bigger and badder enemies.


However, in my experience there are relatively few adventures around for any game that deals with "epic content". One complaint I've seen about many high level D&D adventures is that they feel like low level adventures with inflated numbers. Has anyone seen good adventures that manage to capture the high power feel well?

I haven't seen a lot of good adventures period. The people writing the adventures thought Fighters were balanced and that Weapon Focus was a good feat. They tended not to produce anything good except by dumb luck.


I mean, that Epic Feel is a big reason for starting campaigns at low-levels. Low-level adventures provide context that make the later stuff seem epic and impressive. "Look How Far We've Come" and all that.

It's not necessarily about "How Far We've Come", it's about feeling powerful. And while you can do that relatively, you can also make PCs feel powerful by having challenges like "a lot of minions" or "a puzzle one of our utility spells solves". Those don't even necessarily have to be trivial encounters. Mind Flayers are horde monsters for high enough level PCs.


For a Hercules-style game, my first thought is to create a world that is 99% E6, then start the PC's at level 10 or so, and sprinkle the world with worthy challenges. Nemean lions and Hydras and the like, legendary creatures that ordinary mortals could not hope to defeat. Make the Deeds Epic within the context of the world.

You have to be careful though. If power is rare, the setting is going to be very unstable. If the PCs are the only people who can challenge the Faerie Courts or Dragons or Vampire Princes, you have to explain why the world is not being crushed under the heel of Baron Von Fangula. And you have to be careful that your explanation leaves a reason for people to go adventuring. If the Faerie Courts don't rule the world because they are totally uninterested in the mortal world, it's not very clear why the PCs should want to deal with them.


The numbers go up, but the Dire Hellbears you're slaying in the Forest of Blood are not neccessarily any more special than the ordinary bears from the Forest of Trees.

This is not really true. In 3e, a 15th level monster like the Marut is radically different from a 5th level monster like the Troll. It has dozens of new abilities. Blasting (mass inflict light wounds, chain lightning, Save-or-Dies (circle of death, fear), Strategic Mobility (plane shift), Strategic Utility (locate creature), Tactical Mobility (dimension door, air walk), Tactical Utility (true seeing), and Battlefield Control (wall of force). It' also got a reasonable attack routine, and defenses that make it all but immune to low level threats.


I am not a fan of it as it promises epic adventures in the future. Maybe in a year or three. If the campaign actually goes that long, which it might very wel not.

That's not a problem with the game, it's a problem with the advancement. If you want epic adventures now, start at 13th level, optimize a bit, and go chow down on armies of the undead lead by Ghost Dukes.


OD&D and B/X kind of seem to assume that with considering nonheroic NPCs to be 0 level. No 5th level fighter inkeepers and no 12th level wizard ones either. If you stick to that, 1st level parties are already exceptional (say Indiana Jones) and 4th level ones a small army.

That's only true if levels represent huge power jumps. If you expect 4th level characters to be fighting armies, you're looking at a power curve even steeper than 3e's. That's not necessarily a problem, but I don't see why it's better than just advancing faster if you want a game that ramps up quickly.


My favorite approach to that, though it's a work intensive one, is to flatten the power curve by consistently reducing the level of all monsters by the same ratio. Orcs remain level 1, but a level 10 monster becomes level 5 and a level 20 monster level 10, for example. (Since I made my own custom monsters for my setting that wasn't any actual extra work, but converting a monster manual probably would be quite annoying.) The result is that you can have both slow advancement and relatively access to top tier monsters.

I don't understand how the bolded bit follows. You've compressed the number of levels. If you haven't increased the required XP for each level, people now advance faster. If you have, all you did was reduce the granularity of power available. Also, why not just have people advance twice as quickly? If you do 1 -> 2, 5 -> 10, 10 -> 20 instead of the reverse, you get the same mathematical effect but you don't have to modify anything.


But I think epicness comes to a large part from knowing that you're fighting in the top league and not somewhere in the third or fourth division.

The idea that something is "epic" because it is higher level than other things is a tautology that leads to stupid design decisions. The way to make things epic is to make them different from low level things. The Avengers fighting Loki and the Chitauri feels epic even though we know Thanos and Galactus exist and are more powerful than either side is.

Thrudd
2016-09-27, 10:09 PM
I think Yora's problem stems more from the fact that D&D doesn't have a default setting (and that most of the settings it does have are kind of dumb), rather than any intrinsic lack of stuff to do that is "epic" or "gonzo" or "awesome". You can fight Demon Lords, Princes of Elemental Evil, Lich Kings, and all sorts of other things that are god-like. You can even fight actual gods (though the rules for them are dumb and bad). The issue is basically that there isn't a default setting, and there is very little effort put into outlining what sorts of Fae Queens or Dragon Emperors exist for you to fight, why you might want to fight them, and what sorts of resources they have.


Well, there is Planescape and Spelljammer. But I have never considered published settings, adventures or monsters, or the lack thereof, as any sort of barrier or indication of what a game can or can't be. That there aren't many adventures written for epic levels doesn't mean anything, that doesn't stop anyone from playing the game at those levels. The game is full of powers and spells. There are lots of demon lords, dragon gods, even actual deities given game stats. Those are a clear baseline for an idea of what sorts of things such beings could do, besides looking at high level characters and spells. Never mind simply making up new stuff to suit whatever you want to do, even at levels of power unaddressed in the rules at all, which is a time-honored D&D tradition. If there is little effort put into high level play, it is on the part of the DM, not the publishers. Once we have the basic game system, we don't really need them for anything else.

There is no barrier at all to running a game where players are high level demi-god heroes who have demon princes and titanic monsters as foes. If most people aren't doing it, that just means most people don't really want to.

Lord Raziere
2016-09-27, 11:16 PM
Well, there is Planescape and Spelljammer. But I have never considered published settings, adventures or monsters, or the lack thereof, as any sort of barrier or indication of what a game can or can't be. That there aren't many adventures written for epic levels doesn't mean anything, that doesn't stop anyone from playing the game at those levels. The game is full of powers and spells. There are lots of demon lords, dragon gods, even actual deities given game stats. Those are a clear baseline for an idea of what sorts of things such beings could do, besides looking at high level characters and spells. Never mind simply making up new stuff to suit whatever you want to do, even at levels of power unaddressed in the rules at all, which is a time-honored D&D tradition. If there is little effort put into high level play, it is on the part of the DM, not the publishers. Once we have the basic game system, we don't really need them for anything else.

There is no barrier at all to running a game where players are high level demi-god heroes who have demon princes and titanic monsters as foes. If most people aren't doing it, that just means most people don't really want to.

No barrier doesn't mean people think its possible. what if your wrong and people want to, but feel as if people saying that most people don't really want to discourages them from trying because they think they won't find anyone that wants that as well? if everyone is saying that everyone else wouldn't want that just based on their assumptions without actual info, who would argue against that, since the starting assumption is that people don't want it, and therefore discourages someone who disagrees from speaking up? after all, you hold an opinion that isn't receptive to people who want to do that, therefore why would they talk to you?

Thrudd
2016-09-27, 11:53 PM
No barrier doesn't mean people think its possible. what if your wrong and people want to, but feel as if people saying that most people don't really want to discourages them from trying because they think they won't find anyone that wants that as well? if everyone is saying that everyone else wouldn't want that just based on their assumptions without actual info, who would argue against that, since the starting assumption is that people don't want it, and therefore discourages someone who disagrees from speaking up? after all, you hold an opinion that isn't receptive to people who want to do that, therefore why would they talk to you?

None of that makes any sense. If people don't think it's possible (referring to high level play), they are wrong. It is possible. Many people have experienced it.

If someone wants to play a certain game, they just need to speak up and say what they want. If nobody wants to play that, then you put it on the back burner or try asking different people. If you never try to start the game you want because you are afraid nobody else will want to play, then you'll never know and you're only fulfilling your own unfounded belief.

TheCountAlucard
2016-09-28, 12:14 AM
Of course, there's a difference between wanting to play a high-level character, and the desire to assemble a complex spreadsheet allocating the massive amounts of resources a high-level character often has in certain RPGs. :smalltongue:

A lack of the latter, as it turns out, can very much be a barrier to the former. :smallsigh:

NichG
2016-09-28, 12:23 AM
The last couple of campaigns I've run:

- A nation-building campaign taking place on floating fragments of a continent, where the PCs each played a guardian spirit of a nation or clan, and could draw in new lands to expand the continent during play (but also brought with them attendant problems). Each guardian spirit maintained an 'heir', a person they could control and exert power through on the mortal plane.

- A setting where the gods engineer a mass die-out every 10000 years to clean out the tangled tapestry of destiny and causality (every time a god takes action, they constrain the future to be a certain way and the past must adapt; eventually, there is no way to resolve the inconsistency and the gods weaken). This time, their plan backfired, as the super-scientist they were raising up to create the extinction event figured out a way to irradiate and poison souls as part of the weapon that caused it. Result being, everything gets broken, but the people who normally are there to put it back are dead and scattered around, and the PCs are left to cobble together a coherent timeline out of the bits and pieces of the torn tapestry of fate. This campaign had a mechanic where everyone started with amnesia but as they consumed the souls of others and grew in power and solidity, they were able to force the past to write itself by making choices in the present.

- A setting where personal power is strictly controlled and metered out in the form of medical treatments by a continent-spanning guild - literally, they hand out 'level up treatments' which are all standardized and kept track of and have different modalities ('classes') and so on. The level up treatments are kept extremely secret, to the extent of wiping out towns and cities for obtaining samples without the guild's permission. The PCs are enrolled as students to become guild members, but during an incident at the start of the campaign they encounter an entity which turns their blood into literal level-up serum. They later discover that the entire thing is part of a generation-ship travelling between the stars to colonize a new world, the entity is the ship's computer (which has become schizophrenic and insane over the past 100k years), and the 'level-up' serum is the 'wake up call' to prepare the crew for arrival. Unfortunately, another part of the computer whose job is to clean up glitches doesn't believe that the ship is arriving and wants to wipe out the PCs and their civilization after interpreting the 'premature' wake-up call as a 'glitch'.

- A setting where creativity is intrinsically magical. Great works of art, sculpture, poetry, etc exert supernatural influences over the world. The PCs were part of a spy agency attached to the fantasy-British museum to collect and contain dangerous works of art created by 'mad artists', genius creators who could break the normal rules constraining the impact of artistic works. The setting eventually opened up into an ambiguous cosmology. Creative figures brought to life have histories, minds, etc far beyond what the artist explicitly gave them; mad artists can open portals to those worlds. Are those worlds created by the artist, or did they exist beforehand? The campaign was in part about the PCs deciding the answer to that question (deciding, not discovering)

- A setting where the souls of the dead control the natural processes of the planet from the spirit realm, and the PCs are all characters who have just died. Unfortunately, while the population of the living can be kept in check, the population of the dead only increases, and the crowding of the afterlife points to an inevitable apocalypse. Worse, in this setting, reality has a fundamental conservation of detail rather than conservation of mass, and the number of sentient observers, etc, is putting strain on the coherency of the world and permitting Typhon, the seething chaos which is the dumping ground for all the things that are not, to leak in. One PC proceeds to initiate a romance with Typhon, kind of.

Each of these campaigns basically required me to write a new system from the ground up to support it. But, worth it.

Arbane
2016-09-28, 01:14 AM
One big shortcoming in fantasy in general and D&D in particular is religion. You almost always have plenty of gods, but aside fron a few simple rules of proper behavior they don't stand for very much and there's basically no religious activities and the gods don't really fill any meaningful role in the working of the universe.


Have you played any Runequest or read anything about the Glorantha (hope I spelled that right) setting.

It has a world different to generic DnD but still have a kitchen sink kind of deal.

I would say its worth a look if you have not ever seen it.


One thing about Glorantha is that religions are a REALLY big deal in it. And the gods are real in that setting, although currently noninterventionist. But that's what they have Heroes for.

Exalted was already mentioned/ As much as I love the setting and the idea in it, I have to admit the rules system is elephantine.
You might want to check out Godbound which is a lot like Exalted if its rules were based on Basic D&D instead of Vampire. (And it's free! (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/185959/Godbound-A-Game-of-Divine-Heroes-Free-Edition))


The last couple of campaigns I've run:


These all sound extremely cool!

---

I think part of the reason RPGs have so much Extruded Fantasy Product is because before people can play a game, they have to understand it, at least a little. Having a default set of cliche assumptions makes it vastly easier. (As much as I like Runequest, I'm put off trying to run a game of it due to my lack of the necessary PhD in Glorathan Studies....:smalltongue: )

Yora
2016-09-28, 03:42 AM
- A setting where the souls of the dead control the natural processes of the planet from the spirit realm, and the PCs are all characters who have just died. Unfortunately, while the population of the living can be kept in check, the population of the dead only increases, and the crowding of the afterlife points to an inevitable apocalypse. Worse, in this setting, reality has a fundamental conservation of detail rather than conservation of mass, and the number of sentient observers, etc, is putting strain on the coherency of the world and permitting Typhon, the seething chaos which is the dumping ground for all the things that are not, to leak in. One PC proceeds to initiate a romance with Typhon, kind of.
This makes me think of Ghostwalk, possibly the least well known 3rd edition book published by WotC. It's a pretty compact campaign setting about a city at the entrance to the underworld where a lot of ghost keep hanging out for a while before passing on to the afterlife. If a PC dies, you can keep playing as such a ghost.
I've not heard of anyone actually running a campaign with it, but when it does get mentioned occasionally it often gets praised for it's creative ideas.