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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Serge" data-source="post: 1426789" data-attributes="member: 4049">It's been my experience that the most fulfilling high level games are those that occured after starting the PCs at 1st or 2ed level.  This has been the case for me since 2ed in which I ran a four year college campaign that took the PCs from 1st level through to the mid 20s by the time we finished.My 3ed experience was great for a variety of reasons (largely because I'm more mature and was playing with more mature and sophisticated folks than in college), but it was wonderful to start at 1st level and allow the PCs to sort of develop and be impacted by the environment while the environment simultaneously developed and was impacted from their actions.  Thus, the PCs developed an internal history as time progressed that had reprocutions for mid and high level interaction and allowed me to introduce high level NPCs/monsters without them ever knowing it, but slowly releasing information that would come back (usually to haunt) them later.For example, I introduced a pit fiend when they were like 3rd level.  He was polymorphed and had on an amulet that masked his alignment.  He would offer them assistance and information and send them down what appeared to be the right path.  Over time, with clues that they picked up on, the PCs began to get suspicious of the friendly NPC, but it still took time before they added everything up and realized what they were dealing with... and that happened around 12th level or so.  It wasn't until they were like 14th or 15th level that they actually defeated him.  And this was just one example of how "novel" type of play occured in this two year period.  They exorcised Devils, they got involved with local and regional politics, they took over a town, and they've made a lot of enemies and a lot of allies.  And they've only really involved themselves in a small bit of the world (my homebrew).  This only really happens, IMO, in games that begin between 1st and 3rd levels.Now the PCs are all about 20th level.  They've already took on an epic monster (stone colossus... there were six or so of them, so they equaled the CR of the thing).  They know of all the enemies and potential allies out there and are really ready for some earth shaking stuff.</blockquote>

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