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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 9191987" data-attributes="member: 2629">Let's go over this one more time.People.  Play.  High. Level.  Successfully.  And.  Enjoy.  It.I do it.  A lot of other players have told their stories.  It is undeniable that it takes place.So - why do so many games fail and end at 10th to 13th level?  Because people have not learned how to play high level games.  They try to run them like low level games - and they are very different beasts.  If you try to run a murder mystery at high level it will fail.  If you try to design a dungeon with the expectation the PCs will slog through it you will fail.  The PCs have abilities that trivialize these challenges, usually, at higher level.  As such, you should not try to put these challenges before the PCs and expect them to struggle.  Instead, you want to celebrate the ability of the PCs to dominate these challenges.  High five the party that teleports past the dungeon.  Have the NPCs be amazed that the powerful divinations solved the murder mystery.  The PCs have risen up the highest levels of power and should feel like it.So what do you throw at the PCs at higher levels?  More open challenges for one.  The PCs may need to contend with an army on the march.  What will the PCs do about that?  Are they going to single handedly try to take on 5,000 troops?  Will they try to convince thre enemy leaders not to march?  What else might they do?  Don't come at them with problems with a single answer - come at them with large problems that they can be creative in solving and praise them for coming up with solutions.Look at Matt Mercer's high level games in Critical Role for inspiration.  What did he expect Vox Machina to do against The Whispered One.  Answer: they had a lot of options.  What did he expect the Mighty Nein to do againsy Uk'otoa and heavily armed Archmages?  They had to come up with solutions to the problems.  It wasn't a "walk this path" situation ... it was a "here is a problem, figure it out" situation.If you don't enjoy high level games - watch successful ones and ask why the DM made the decisions they did - and what the PCs could have done differently (and how that might have changed everything).</blockquote>

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