Ending at level 21...

[Lord Zardoz]

By a general consensus definition, Epic has basically the point at which your characters become living gods, and possibly able to take true gods in combat. That kind of game is pretty hard to keep going from a narrative standpoint, since there are very few fantasy tropes that can hold up plot wise.

Lets say the DM has a great idea for an undead cult worshipping some secretive and ancient demigod who has a standard issue evil plan. It is pretty easy to make this cult seem impressive and powerful for lower level play. It is more difficult when the players stand a reasonable chance of discovering the location of that deity, plane shifting over, and handing his ass to him when one of your players manages to remember some throw away plot element you mentioned back in the heroic tier about the location of a suitably powerful artifact. It also drives some DM's nuts when within the framework of the rules he is playing under, hunting down an evil demi-god and killing it is a perfectly reasonable course of action.

The result: What was meant to give the DM about 10 or so games of intrigue and mystery oriented gameplay ends up being distilled down to 1 game of intrigue and gameplay and 1 game of kicking down the door and killing the DM's poor defenseless plot device.

There is nothing wrong with this course of action for the DM though. And the great upshot is that for DM's who have been yearning for that kind of game, it should be mechanically stable enough to make running it a reasonable proposition.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[med stud]

A big problem with Epic campaigns is that it's hard to come up with convincing bad guys in enough quantities to last through several levels. Everything was calm until all of a sudden an explosion of super powerful entities descended on the World to be stopped by a band of intrepid adventurers. Then, everything suddenly calmed down as the adventurers put their sword on the wall and starts a tavern.

 

[VannATLC]

The whole Far Realm is dedicated to things nastier, stranger, and tougher than the Gods.

Its a perfect Epic level play-ground.

I'ma gonna have me a shot at Titus, and Randolph Carter.

 

[S'mon]

I'm not too keen on routine resurrection at any tier. In real world myth, resurrection is a big deal even for gods.

 

[VannATLC]

What RL calls death, and what the DND world calls death, are two different things.

The Animus and the Soul, together with the body, produce a very different thing to what (I, at any rate) constitute as RL 'life'

Losing the soul, and being able to keep it from travelling to the Shadowfell.. isn't as big a deal as actually coming back to life in our world.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I'm certainly planning on running the published adventures from levels 1 - 30, if I can find players that want to do that.

However, if the players don't want to play then I guess I'll be playing lower level games...

 

[Wormwood]

I'm not too keen on routine resurrection at any tier. In real world myth, resurrection is a big deal even for gods.

Yeah, but since when has D&D been good for modelling real world myth?

 

[Jack99]

I will give a level 1 to level 30- campaign a shot. If my plans work out, that will be the mythological foundation for games to come. The ones finishing at level 30 will be major figures in how the campaign world will look for coming characters.

Ideally, it will be a series of campaigns, with a time jump between 50-150 years between each cycle of lvl 1 to lvl 30.

Hey, that was my plan!

 

[Bold or Stupid]

Hey, that was my plan!

Me also.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

A big problem with Epic campaigns is that it's hard to come up with convincing bad guys in enough quantities to last through several levels. Everything was calm until all of a sudden an explosion of super powerful entities descended on the World to be stopped by a band of intrepid adventurers. Then, everything suddenly calmed down as the adventurers put their sword on the wall and starts a tavern.

You can avoid this with pro-active characters. "Hmm. So, you say this devil overmind thingy Asmodeus is a god, eh? Let's find a way to kill him dead!"
But this is rare, and hard to pull off.

An easier approach might me to make the lower tier stuff as part of the "explosion". The PCs have more or less unwittingly disrupted the world-changing plan of one of the Gods or Devils.
What they affected wasn't everything that was to the plan, so even with their recent success, this God or Devil didn't feel that bothered. But at the epic tier, they become aware of the larger plan, as do their enemies, and potential allies.

The important part is that the threat doesn't necessarily come down to them. It was, in a way, always there, but to address it, the PCs have to leave the world and face the originator of the threat on its own turf. They could try to stay on their world, and resolve all the small parts to wreck the master-plan, but this would cost many mortals lifes, and eventually it mightl provoke a direct reaction of the evil mastermind. Or, alternatively, the masterplan is just delayed, since eventually, the heroes will die from old age, and who will take their place?