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Pros and Cons of Epic Level Play?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6283175" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>If I had a motto, it would be: first level characters; epic situations. There is no reason that a game needs big numbers in order to be epic. The Lord of the Rings manages to be fully epic arguably without anyone being above 6th level. George Martin's Game of Thrones likewise has an epic sense of scale, again arguably without anyone being above 6th level. </p><p></p><p>Beyond a certain point, number inflation doesn't lead to more epic situations; it leads to less epic situations. Eventually numbers become meaningless, the tribulations of characters stop being relatable, the imagination first boggles and then recoils from the vision as it begins to assess the logic of the situation and finds it ridiculous. At some level, the 15th level character is more epic than the 100th level character. The second number buries itself in its pomposity and ridiculousness. It's so out of scale with the rest of the universe as to be comic rather than awe inspiring. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>There are probably two reasons.</p><p></p><p>First, the scale of an epic game in the 3.X D&D sense is such that it becomes unrunnable. When stories involve the clash of whole civilizations and worlds, it all becomes either a meaningless backdrop simply painted on to the scene or less an attempts to simulate it bog the game down to a halt. You can't reasonably run WWII as process simulation, much less a galaxy spanning war or a war between universes. </p><p> </p><p>Second, as you scale out in power toward the divine, the characters and the situations and challenges that they face become increasingly inhuman and probably incomprehensible. Even if you could tell the story and run it, would it be anything we could care about in the way we care about stories of more human beings? </p><p></p><p>In general the two things feed off each other, so that story tellers either flee from such vistas so that in effect, demon princes and cosmic forces become little more than orcs or ogres in dungeons with just bigger numbers, less balance, and clumsier resolutions systems, or else the world becomes impossibly convoluted and perhaps beyond the ability of the human imagination to conceive and the whole attempt explodes in its excess of ambition. Playing the game as a 'realistic' 3.X deity requires realizing you are fighting a hundred front or thousand front war against scores of potent enemies simultaneously. Who can reasonably pretend to a be an Int 30 character capable of multitasking dozens or scores of situations at once?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6283175, member: 4937"] If I had a motto, it would be: first level characters; epic situations. There is no reason that a game needs big numbers in order to be epic. The Lord of the Rings manages to be fully epic arguably without anyone being above 6th level. George Martin's Game of Thrones likewise has an epic sense of scale, again arguably without anyone being above 6th level. Beyond a certain point, number inflation doesn't lead to more epic situations; it leads to less epic situations. Eventually numbers become meaningless, the tribulations of characters stop being relatable, the imagination first boggles and then recoils from the vision as it begins to assess the logic of the situation and finds it ridiculous. At some level, the 15th level character is more epic than the 100th level character. The second number buries itself in its pomposity and ridiculousness. It's so out of scale with the rest of the universe as to be comic rather than awe inspiring. There are probably two reasons. First, the scale of an epic game in the 3.X D&D sense is such that it becomes unrunnable. When stories involve the clash of whole civilizations and worlds, it all becomes either a meaningless backdrop simply painted on to the scene or less an attempts to simulate it bog the game down to a halt. You can't reasonably run WWII as process simulation, much less a galaxy spanning war or a war between universes. Second, as you scale out in power toward the divine, the characters and the situations and challenges that they face become increasingly inhuman and probably incomprehensible. Even if you could tell the story and run it, would it be anything we could care about in the way we care about stories of more human beings? In general the two things feed off each other, so that story tellers either flee from such vistas so that in effect, demon princes and cosmic forces become little more than orcs or ogres in dungeons with just bigger numbers, less balance, and clumsier resolutions systems, or else the world becomes impossibly convoluted and perhaps beyond the ability of the human imagination to conceive and the whole attempt explodes in its excess of ambition. Playing the game as a 'realistic' 3.X deity requires realizing you are fighting a hundred front or thousand front war against scores of potent enemies simultaneously. Who can reasonably pretend to a be an Int 30 character capable of multitasking dozens or scores of situations at once? [/QUOTE]
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