I have often wondered how, in a gaming culture where people my age (mid-40's) have grown up with D&D, and gone through all the editions, very few of them have ever played "high level" or "epic" games.
Let me give you some history. I started in 5th grade (circa 1979) with what I call "Red Cover" Basic D&D. [This one: ]
and I played that [Along with the Expert Rules] until about 7th grade. That's when everyone was switching over to First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
I played AD&D 1st Ed all the way through junior high, high school, and into college. I was always in the same group of about 10 guys, and of those, about 3 of them were DMs. The rest of us were players (only.)
We ran A LOT of characters, some of whom survived, but many of whom did not. But the ones that did survive, session after session, became our favorites, and soon, attained "high level" (20th level) status.
At that point, we would make up other characters who were henchmen for our high level guys, and we would do things for them. (Retrieve lost artifacts, gather rare spell components, etc.) Basically, what we were doing, to put it in more up-to-date terms, was creating cohorts, and then playing them as characters, in order to increase the power of our other characters. Ha ha.
Well, after our high level guys had acquired a bunch of stuff from their "henchmen," we started creating homebrew tables and rules for beyond 20th level. (We had no concept of "epic," we still just called it "high level.")
Then we just kept playing and playing and playing, until our characters were INSANELY high level (mid-60's!)
Of course, in those days, the difference between 20th and 60th was an extra 40-120 hit pts (depending on class) and of course the level itself; in those days, being a 60th level magic-user meant that you could cast a 60HD fireball. But past a certain point, the only real advantage you got for being that high level was the prestige of having lived that long. And a hoarde of money and magic items that would make Smaug's hoarde look like a small-town garage sale.
The only thing we had that really gave us a big advantage was that we all had one or two artifacts apiece. One of us had the Sword of Kas, another guy had a Sphere of Annihilation, one guy had the Staff of the Magi, and my guy (Hawke) had two artifacts that were custom made for my friend Cody's campaign, Elvensword and Flyshield.
Of course, when 2nd edition hit, we had to re-assess what we had been doing. So we "demoted" our high level guys back down to 15th level, and started playing around with the new ways of doing things. We didn't make 1st level 2nd ed characters until our high level guys had made it back to 20th. [We didn't go past 20th in 2nd ed, because the book just sort of said you shouldn't do it. So we didn't.]
The new characters that we made were all descendants of our high level guys, and we fudged a bit, and were thus running around at 1st level with +3 swords that we picked up from "uncle Hawke's" castle, ha ha ha
Eventually, we discovered The Throne of Bloodstone. And we thought, "Ok, finally, someone has realized that a lot of us have these powerful characters that need to be challenged!" and we played it.
Of the seven high level guys that went into that module, only 4 made it out alive, but we did indeed defeat Orcus, and through Wish spells, we even recovered the three dead guys, although they each lost 3 levels as a result of having to be brought back in that manner.
When skills and powers came out, we re-made the high level guys again, and this time, they were very streamlined. Of course, that was 1995 or so, and we were all in our mid-20's, and we realized that some of the stuff we had attained was unfair or unbalanced, so we stripped the high level guys down to what we called "bare bones;" We put them back to 15th level (again!), re-rolled their hit points in front of witnesses (there was a big debate about 2 of the characters, who always seemed to have close to maximum hit points) and took every magic item away from them, including the artifacts. They all had the finest, non-magical armor and swords that money could buy, but none of them had ANY magic whatsoever. Not even a potion.
Then we took their money, and divided it by 10. Believe me when I say, they were still enormously wealthy, even after that.
After that, we started playing again, and the only magic items we had were the random loot we got from adventuring. Even so, it didn't take long for us to acquire some really nice magic items, and reach 20th level AGAIN. Ha ha ha.
At this point, we still wanted to play the high level guys, but by now, that original group of 10 guys had dwindled down to 6, and changes were coming (people getting married / moving away / etc.) and it wouldn't be long before the 6 were down to zero. But during this "dwindle down" era, we did make 2e S&P rules for characters up to 30th level, and we used those to keep playing the high level guys. Some of us multi-classed, and in those days, that meant you couldn't use your old class powers until your new class level exceeded the original class level by 1. So the 20th level fighter who became a magic-user was just a low-level magic-user with a "bag o' hit points" until he reached 21st level. THEN, THE GLOVES CAME OFF! Ha ha ha ha! Having a 20F/21MU in 2e S&P was AMAZINGLY powerful.
Anyway, by the time the original group of "school buddies" had scattered to the four winds of adulthood, I found myself with two extremely powerful characters. Tellerian Hawke was a 20F/21MU/17T (Basically, a high-level thief who had 5 levels to go before he attained near-godhood, ha ha) and Nimbar The Watcher was a 10R/11C/20MU who was pretty much the "Gandalf" of his day.
So really, before 3rd Edition ever came out, I (and my other school buddies) had amassed many hours of "high level" play. And I just sort of assumed that every other D&D group out there had been through something similar. We still experimented with low level guys, even in the high level heyday, but our high level guys were always in the background, kind of like those old portraits of "the founders" that you see in the lounge room of a typical country club. Our high level guys were the "old guard," the ones who came before, the ones of legend.
And friend, if you haven't experienced that, you're missing out.
The cool thing is, when 3rd Ed came out, and then later the Epic Level Handbook, I took those old characters, and re-tooled them into epic-level NPCs for my campaign. They became the guys that could make that cool magic item for you---provided you could pay, and provided you could locate the components for it---or the ones who might know where to find the lost tomb of Peritropus. Need a research library to design a new spell? Nimbar rented his library by the hour, the day, or the week---provided he wasn't in the middle of his own research.
And then, in the longest continual campaign I've ever ran (1999-ish / 2000 - 2005, during which time we were playing once/week or more with an almost religious fervor) I actually had a group go from 7th level to Epic Levels (average party level 42) through a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. They started as "common men," i.e., everyday people who had somehow become locally famous, and those guys went on to become legendary defenders of all of Oerth. (The leader of the party started as Commoner 3 / Warrior 4, and gained 3 more levels in warrior before switching to Fighter. Now, he is Commoner 3 / Warrior 7 / Fighter 22 / Cleric 11!)
Those characters went from my NPC's favorite customers, to becoming their peers! And that was extremely rewarding to see! Especially since they did it "by the book," without having to demote / re-write their characters several times.
The sweetest part is that last November, I put the entire bulk of my old campaign materials online (on a Google Sites page) and have resurrected that campaign into a play-by-post game. It's slow, but it's also like a trip down memory lane, and it keeps the dream alive, so-to-speak.
If you haven't played Epic, you should. I would definitely call it my favorite tier.
