Help needed in handling a party consisting of different level characters

[Max Caysey]

So simply put, I’m looking for ideas or solutions to how I can run a game where people can have fun on their own terms. Meaning that players can play the character they want even though they are basically on different levels and different t levels of optimization... one player likes mid level play, another high epic. One player likes a hardship campaign where stats, magic items and treasure are hard to come by another like high magic campaign where magic items are commonplace and where treasure is abundant...

I want to have both players have fun, and let them play their respective characters... but how?

Any ideas are great at this point... naturally we have played both the high level and the low levels campaign before, now I want to see if I can make everybody happy!

Cheers!

[Biggus]

I assume they both like combat? A roleplaying-based adventure could accomodate both, but a hack-and-slash game is going to be very hard. The nearest I can think of is to miss out the middle bit: play a story at mid-levels, then fast-forward a decade or two and have them level up their characters by 15 or 20 levels for the second half. Maybe in the first section they have to make long-term plans/alliances etc which will determine what opportunities are available to them in the second.

[ciopo]

can you pair up the various qualities?
I am going to assume that the one that likes high level play and likes lots of magic item is one of your players, and the other one has the other preferences.

First thought that comes to mind is a mentor/mentee relationship between them, that justifies the level disparity a bit.

On that, define the level disparity a bit better for us? because "one will be level 12 and the other will be level 18" is a lot different to "one will be level 8 and one will be level 14".

On the magic item abudance : the mentor wants the mentee to have an hard time because "hardship shapes characters" so he goes out of his way to make "mundane" magic items artificially scarce for his mentee. Perhabs the mentor is one of the only VERY FEW people capable of crafting magic items, so HE has all the toys, but the world at large is low magic?

With all that said, I'm having a big headscratching on how to keep the mentee relevant.

A possibility is : play a lot of oneshots that last 1-2 sessions, and you alternate between two sets of characters/campaign. One campaign caters to the preference of one player, and the other campaign caters to the preference of the other player and they agree to alternate playing something that the other dude likes?