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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sircaren" data-source="post: 762175" data-attributes="member: 2391">My group recently tried an Epic campaign; we were able to play it for about 8 sessions (once a week).  I thought I'd share my experience running the game.  Overall it was a negative experience for me, but I'll try to be subjective.First off, I'll describe the campaign concept.  We wanted to give the Epic rules a whirl, so decided to do some combat heavy things for a while.  The campaign was inspired by the Dragon issue about gladiators (don't have the issue number with me right now, sorry).  Being epic level, we decided to play in the city of Union, slightly modified.  We didn't want to simply be a new combat every week, so there were plans for some good city RPing and political plotlines.  The owners of stables had quite a bit of power in our version of Union, and often political debates were solved in the ring so to speak.  Also, all trials were trials by combat, but you were allowed to appoint a champion for yourself, or have a court appointed champion if you couldn't afford one (we got a chuckle out of that).  PCs were allowed to volunteer to champion for this, leading to PCs fighting each other if the occasion arose.  In addition, Union was occasionally invaded by different monster types.  These monsters were always captured and allowed to fight for their freedom.  It was considered a great honor among stable owners to have their champions fight these creatures.  The players played as the star gladiators for one of the stronger stable owners.  The players all started at level 30(we usually play mid levels, like 7-10 so was a jump for us).  So that sets the stage...The first problem I had was prep time.  Each game session took about 12-18 hours to prep for; depending on who combat was with.  If that week was about PC vs. PC fighting, it was easy on me, but rather boring.  If I had to stat monsters...oh boy.  Not to mention if there were spell casters for that week.  After statting, equipping, and picking spells I still had to design tactics for the battle.  That is just way too much time, while still having to develop some plot (admittedly, not a lot of it at the beginning).Next were electronic aids, which I normally like to use both for prep and in game.  To keep it short and simple, there aren't any that work with Epic very well.  It was easier to just do it on paper, which is really hard for a computer nerd like myself.Then came problems with the scaling of the rules, as the levels got higher.  Several things just didn't seem to work anymore.  Skill checks were mostly pointless, as were saving throws - Making a lot of spells pointless.  I just don't like the idea of an Orc barbarian bullying my 80' tall mountain giants - without having to even roll.  Talk about a boring gladiatorial combat...  What about a vorpal weapon with all the feats to increase threat range?  Bye bye huge hit point monster that happened to have a head.  I found myself having to make more changes to the rules every week as we found stuff that just didn't seem to work well.  Metamagic feats...I don't ever want to see another twinned, enhanced, maximized, stilled, quickened spell again, ever.  And concentration checks - another gimme.  Grapple generally ruled the day; all our battles eventually degenerated into wrestling matches it seemed.Now don't get me wrong, we had a lot of fun too.  It was fun brushing noses with exceptionally powerful creatures who had come to watch the match, and having all that power was pretty damn cool, in it's own way.  I mean to look in the stands and see Demons and Celestials sitting side by side (well ok, maybe not side by side, but you get the idea) to watch the fun - all kept in line by the god of the gladiatorial ring, which was fun.  But when a single battle lasted 4-6 hours (no joke), it was hard to get anything done.  In the end we switched to a new campaign because I just didn't have that much time to prep for a game.  Anyway that's my take on it, anyone else have similar experiences?</blockquote>

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