D&D General Adventurers in Faerun-The Book of Low and Mid Level Adventures?

[Parmandur]

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and Queen of the Demonweb Pits were considered high level in their day - indeed the whole arc starting with Against the Giants was. But anything over level 9 was high level back then.

They still are high level.

 

[DragonLancer]

IIRC, Odyssey of the Dragonlords and Raiders of The Serpent Sea both go from 1-20 as well.

I had not heard of these so I've just looked them up. They sound like they could be fun but, and I appreciate this only relevant to me maybe, they are specific to their own internal campaign setting. My group had the same issue years and years ago, when I ran War of the Burning Sky for Pathfinder 1. The group wanted a full campaign for use in Golarion but there was no real way to modify it so we accepted and played under it's own internal. We had fun, weird but fun, but it wasn't Golarion.

I know it's harder but campaign's need to be more generic so that they can fit into any campaign setting. I can take nearly any Paizo adventure path and translate it over with minimal effort. Again, I accept personal perception but this is probably another reason why higher or full length campaigns don't do so well sadly.

Okay, here is what you need to know about running D&D at high level. Don't write adventures. Because the PCs have hundreds of ways to break any pre-written plot. Create a world and let the PCs play with it. Gygax had this right 40 years ago. High level characters are not jobbing adventurers. They are the kings, rulers and arcane sages of the world. They are playing politics, raising armies and sending out low level characters on adventures.

I disagree, respectfully. If the players want to be kings, heirophants, archmages and run a county, that's a different campaign entirely. Maybe run Birthright. What I find is that some groups forget that low teens and up is meant to go big. Either planar or the threat becomes something world ending if they don't stop it. Normal D&D adventures don't work because spells and abilities at those levels are too much for a standard adventure concept.

My Sunday night 2024 campaign based on Ghosts of Saltmarsh just finished the last scenario in the book and the party hit 9th. It now goes to a player driven rescue mission for 4-5 levels and then it goes planar. The big bad at 20th level will be facing Orcus himself on his home plane surrounded by demons and undead. A big epic challenge where they get to show off everything they can do.

High level adventures/campaigns have to be built around what potential options a party can have at those levels. It doesn't take much to look over the character sheets or read through the books to see what might be ticks to consider when writing a given adventure/campaign element. That is where you move to high end play.

 

[aco175]

Sam principal applies.

One of my favorite Sam principals.

I cannot get to 20th level if I do not go to Mordor. Although, I do not thing they were 20th level at the end of the world-spanning campaign.

 

[Reynard]

I think high level adventures would sell better if they weren't SAVE THE WORLD adventures. You can do personal stakes at high level: gods, demons, dragons and other powerful entities still care about things beyond conquering the multiverse.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If the players want to be kings, heirophants, archmages and run a county, that's a different campaign entirely

Yes it is a different campaign - but it’s the only thing that works. If you don’t want to play that, restart. Pre-written adventures simply do not work. The players are more powerful than any rails you might try to put them on.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think high level adventures would sell better if they weren't SAVE THE WORLD adventures. You can do personal stakes at high level: gods, demons, dragons and other powerful entities still care about things beyond conquering the multiverse.

You can do a role play heavy high level game if you know what the PCs care about and threaten it. What you can’t do is write it and publish it, because you don’t know some other table’s PCs.

It’s like writing a Superman story. Superman is only threatened if you know what he cares about and his weaknesses. If you don’t know that, you can’t harm Superman.

 

[Weiley31]

It’s like writing a Superman story. Superman is only threatened if you know what he cares about and his weaknesses. If you don’t know that, you can’t harm Superman.

The Superman Returns movie tie in game follows this to a T. Your Health Bar isn't Superman's Health Bar. It's the City of Metropolis's Health Bar.

It's open world so all the enemy attacks can't hurt Superman. The city can suffer though. If it hits zero, game over.

 

[Maxperson]

no, you are still publishing something most people do not want, it’s just that you now ‘force’ all those people to subsidize the handful that do want it so it does not get the lower sales that would reflect actual interest

If you removed one adventure from those books, they'd sell just the same. There's no subsidizing going on. Instead of removing one adventure, they would be making it high level.

 

[Maxperson]

Right, the former is not something repeatable so is just "DM Fiat", and m a fix items are not bound by the Spell Levels. They aren't used sf all times by all channellers.

Sure it is. The male channelers of the breaking, without aid from women or items, created and destroyed mountain ranges, shifted oceans and rivers, destroyed cities, and more.

 

[Rushbolt]

pretty sure Spelljammer is more niche than Dark Sun. Also, Vecna was the high level campaign, so we got that already too

Character power levels have changed with the 2024 release of D&D, so technically there is not a single quest for high-level at this point There’s plenty of low-level content though in the Forgotten Realms Adventures and Dragon Delves. We’re walking down the same path here. I’m not sure if Wizards of the Coast wants to encourage more high level play, but this is definitely not a good start if they do.

Wizards has lost quite a few experienced designers in the past few years. This is very much a statement that no one can prove, but I wonder if they have designers capable of producing good high level content anymore even if they wanted to make it. They wrote 51 quests and didn't even devote 5 or 6 of them to level 14+ while touting this world as epic fantasy. Are you doing that because you don't think anyone wants high level content or do you have no clue how to write it?