how many of powerful beings and/or high-level characters do you think is appropriate in a typical fantasy world?

[kigmatzomat]

I've been pondering the various campaigns I've been in and realized that most of the parties get known as "heroes" but they almost never show their full power where other people see them. It's always on obscure mountains, hidden temples, or off the material plane. Most of them could easily be mistaken for 5-10 levels lower.

Maybe we should think of how many high level PCs decide to fade into the background to avoid waves of ninjas and cultists popping out of their closets at night. Or are tired of the gunslinger-syndrome, where people out to make a name challenge them to duels.

Yeah, a major city might have a 12th level wizard, but do they know if he's more than just some alchemist that sells a potion or two each month to make ends meet? Is that a 12th level bard, fighter and rogue or a minstrel, barkeep and locksmith?

Clerics, Paladins and Warlocks probably don't get to retire, so maybe they wind up with a half dozen different personas to separate the ninjas from the cultists. Perhaps they pass on personas, like Dread Pirate Roberts or Zorro. Or they just constantly travel, like Indiana Jones, never staying anywhere too long so the cultists and nazis don't catch up. And they can contact a few innocuous alchemists, minstrels, barkeeps and locksmiths if the need arises.

Maybe those high level NPCs can and do exist, but aside from "saints" and "the Swords of God", nobody really knows who they are and you only know where a saint or sword was by the smoking crater or the heaps of unrighteous dead.

And really, everyone is fine if they are somewhere far away, because it means where you are is less likely to be a smoking crater or have piles of unrighteous dead.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't have to think about it to improvise whatever I want. Like I said, we likely won't agree.

Oh no, we in fact agree entirely. It's that you don't understand what I'm saying or don't seem to think what I object to matters.

 

[Zaukrie]

Oh no, we in fact agree entirely. It's that you don't understand what I'm saying or seem to think what I object to matters.

My bad!

 

[Joanna Geist]

Because players don't have to improvise content on the fly. If you are a GM you are frequently improvising content on the fly, and there are two standards for doing that - invent what you think is narratively useful at the moment or invent what you think is appropriate for the setting. If you do the first, then the newly invented content is invariably exactly what provides a useful challenge or steers the party back on the narrative path the GM prefers because that's how your unchecked biases will steer you. But if you want to avoid that, you have to have given some thought to demographics and be able to pull a relatively "normal" character out of your hat. And what is "normal" is based on demographics of some sort.

There is no narrative to steer them to. The story is whatever my players do.

 

[Celebrim]

There is no narrative to steer them to. The story is whatever my players do.

This has become something people just say without the slightest understanding of what they are saying. You think you are asserting some powerful principle of player empowerment, when you are really just chanting something that has become meaningless and which isn't even particularly appropriate as a response in this contest.

Oh, and welcome to the boards, I hope you enjoy your time here.

 

[Joanna Geist]

You don't actually have any idea of what I do or don't understand.

The story is whatever my players do. I mean that completely literally, it isn't meaningless, and I have the game experience to support it.

 

[Celebrim]

You don't actually have any idea of what I do or don't understand.

The story is whatever my players do. I mean that completely literally, it isn't meaningless, and I have the game experience to support it.

Yes, I know what you meant, but that doesn't mean there isn't a narrative or you aren't steering it.

For example, rarely do the player characters appear on a blank slate. There are specific opportunities for them to avail themselves of - challenges they can choose to undertake. And in general, the player characters aren't the only actors in the setting. Even if you choose to not have the PC's have any backstory, the NPCs have backstory. Events occurred before the players entered the scene. The NPCs have motives. The NPCs have plans and desires.

So while yet it is true that the story is what the players do, this isn't actually stating anything particularly interesting or novel as you seem to think.

But more to the point, it's not even a relevant comment in the situation, because even if you start a game as a GM with no plans for how it will unfold and are just responding to player input, you are still going to develop preferences and biases for what happens next - conscious or unconscious. For example, you may not wish a TPK to happen as a conscious desire for the outcome of the current scene. For whatever reason, you don't want "everyone dies" to be what the outcome of the player story to be. So in that moment, how do you resolve what happens next? If you are improvising content on the fly, how would you do it in such a way that it was not influenced by your bias to not have a TPK outcome and end the campaign on this note? You can't metagame against yourself. If you go, "Well, since I don't want a TPK outcome and I'm aware of that, then I'll improvise content that makes a TPK likely to thwart myself.", then you are still in the moment influenced by your biases and preferences for the story, just in a negative way.

There is no perfectly realistic and naturalistic way to GM and if you think you are doing that, then you have deceived yourself. One common aspect of DMing is that regardless of what the PCs do, something fun needs to happen. Realistically, the fun doesn't happen where the PCs are at, and the opportunities don't fall into their lap. Realistically, if you were Batman hanging out on roof tops over alley ways, you could hang out for years without being there to witness a mugging. But in the game as in other fictional narratives, if Batman hangs out over an alley way he's guaranteed to witness a mugging or some other interesting event.

And let's make this clear; that's not a bad thing. In fact, if you don't do these things and steer the narrative through some sort of mechanism, then you create a Rowboat World, where the players can go anywhere but without purpose or plan it doesn't matter where they go. Adrift in a vast ocean with no landmarks and little content, the players can flail around with perfect freedom of choice, it's just none of their choices have any agency, like a man in a rowboat lost on a vast ocean with no land in sight. You row a lot and you get nowhere. And that would be the players story, because that would be what they do.

 

[Joanna Geist]

Yes, I know what you meant, but that doesn't mean there isn't a narrative or you aren't steering it.

Yes it does, since that's what I just said.

Since you decided to replace my post with something I didn't say and respond to that instead, there's no need to engage with anything else in your post.

Participate in good faith, or not at all.

 

[Reynard]

I am an intentionally shallow world builder (more Lucas than Tolkien) so it isn't something I would normally give too much thought to. But if I had to give it a number, I would put the number of Epic Level people at about 1million to 1 in a high population world, down to 100000 to 1 in a moderate population one. Basically, one in each of the very largest cities (though not a hard rule and of course not always IN a city).

As to extremely powerful monsters or enemy types: a lot more than that.

 

[Celebrim]

Participate in good faith, or not at all.

You just did a drive by shooting with a meme and you think I'm the one not participating in good faith? I'm not sure that your posts are substantiative enough to count as participating, but I know they are not meant to provoke any sort of good faith discussion on technique or theory.