I came to this thread late, so I'm just going to respond to the posts as they came up, rather than try to sort them into any sort of cohesion.
There are lots of reasons high level play doesn’t see action: Character fatigue; a poor fun to work ratio; the difficulty of challenging characters; slowed down combat.
This is what I am worried about. Nevertheless, my kids really, really want to level their characters all the way up, so we are going to attempt Tyranny of Dragons, followed by the Red Pasha, and ultimately descending into hell to slay Tiamet for good. We will see if we make it that far, especially since we are all relatively new to the game and aren't in a situation where we can include "veterans," but that is the plan.
As a DM for over half a decade, I can attest that my campaigns typically start at level 1 and end at level 10. I actually would like to start a campaign at level 10 and end at level 20 for a change of pace, but I can't find any good resources for lessons learned at running high level campaigns.
I welcome advice, to include campaign recommendations for a DM that wants to explore high level play for the first time.
I agree that there needs to be at least one published adventure that deals with levels 15-20 -- even if it isn't a true campaign, just a series of adventures.
The highest level campaign I have been in was Tiamat, my character made L9 at the end of HotDQ, then I became the DM and we reached L12 before IRL called me away and the campaign ended. I was not having trouble challenging the PCs - one week their L10 selves were driven to need a Rest by 6 Lizardmen using water as cover! - but I was doing about 8 hours of "homework" a week.
I am doing a ton of "homework" with that campaign as well, but a good part of that is that I am new to the game AND to being a DM. However, I am the only one in my family with the patience to take on the DM job, so if we want to play it, that is what I have to do.
There really needs to be a way to seperate out whether:
1) people don't play high level games because the games don't get that far.
2) people don't play high level games because they don't like high level game-play.
Of course both are probably true to an extent, but it would be interesting to know to what extent.
3) people don't play at high levels because it's not supported with products in current edition. And by products, I don't mean level 1-20 campaigns, I mean level 10-20 campaigns that are not sequels or continuations of other story arcs.
I agree. There doesn't have to be even as many campaigns with higher level characters as there are with the lower level characters. There just needs to be SOME.
i wish to god they would make their adventures for levels 1-20. I think that would go a long way towards teaching newer players how to play those higher levels.
Please.
They've absolutely solicited a lot of feedback for class and game design, just not sure how much is about level people would like to play. Which is different from levels they actually do play or have played in the past.
On a related note, I often wonder how many people never run homebrew games and rely solely on officially published mods. I never use published mods, so 20 is generally my ultimate goal. But if I wasn't comfortable doing that there aren't many options.
As I am completely new to this game, I use just published adventures. However, I do my homework and tweak them so that they work. Living in a very rural area, being a player while I watch an already accomplished DM is not really a feasible option. If I tried a homebrew campaign right now, it would fail miserably.
Personally, I would like to see WotC publish more high level material beyond Mad Mage.
I prefer to use the published modules and then modify them to meet my needs. I have run PotA and SKT, each of those went to level 11. Another person took over and DMed Tomb of Annihilation for our group, again to level 11. I will now be DMing Ghosts of Saltmarsh with heavy modifications and plan to take that to level 12. Each campaign took about 2 years: we meet about twice a month. None of us use D&D Beyond.
We would like to take these characters to a higher level but we are all working adults and more options besides just Mad Mage would be nice!
I think this is what many of us would like.
My point from the beginning has been that there is a niche, but profitable group of intermediate players who would like to start campaigns at level 10 (or 15) and finish at level 20 just to see what it's like, but there isn't an official, hardcover, printed campaign that does that, so the only people who play those levels are dedicated players finishing OOTA, Tyranny of Dragons, TOA, etc; those playing higher teired AL, or those in their garage doing homebrew. Most of the people who use DDB are probably newer players who probably started at an LGS or the Starter Set/Essentials Kit at level 1, so the data set is not representative of the entire player base.
Now, if there is some additional analysis that WoTC did that says players don't like high level games and would not buy campaigns geared toward them, then I'd love to see the data on that, because my players won't shut up about how cool it would be to play high level characters instead of starting over at level 1 every time we start a new campaign. The DDB data isn't making the argument to me because it's skewed.
Does it make intuitive sense that most players are low level and play in low level games? Absolutely.
Would more players play in high level games if it had more support with products?
I think so, and it's money on the table. Paizos used to do that sort of thing with their Adventure Paths, so it's not unheard of.
Exactly.
I think it's also worth asking whether, in general, there is even a problem?
Do people (in general - I don't mean specific anecdotes) want to be playing at a higher level? Do they feel that something (whether mechanical or something else) is keeping them playing at those levels which they'd like to reach?
Or are people, in general, playing for an amount of time that they're happy with, with at a level of power and mechanical complexity that they're also happy with?
My players/kids really want to play at the higher levels so they get all the toys.
In our case DM burnout has generally been the demise of our campaigns. And I think the difficulty of balancing encounters for high level characters is part of that. The characters are getting really powerful just as burnout from running a long campaign is becoming significant. In my experience, the large majority of DMs can provide a well-balanced and well-crafted challenge for 5th level PCs. But 15th level PCs? In my experience not many can.
I agree that it should not be a given that a campaign start at level 1. My group generally starts at levels 3-5. I think that is one reason why our campaigns usually last till levels 13-16, while the data would suggest most campaigns fall apart by 11.
This is what I am worried about as we are beginning ToD. However, the two supplements I bought to expand the storyline up to Level 20 weren't that expensive and could easily be used at another time.
To be honest. I could care less about that. I am more interested in the cool stories and adventures at higher levels. I am more interested in the plots and twists and character development. 6th level for me is just the beginning of character development. I am hoping my characters will see things that will transform their characters view of the world and their role and responsibility in societies and communities, and possibly the cosmos if it’s that type of game. I want my characters to be more than a stat block. I want them to have epic accomplishments and meaningful relationships.
This is what I am hoping for as well. However, it is to be determined as to how well my kids/players delve into the role playing aspect of the game vs. the slash and bash.
But am much as I like high level play. I will concede that many do not like or lack the opportunity. I think the goal of designers should be to make it more accessible. And find a way to get more people playing it. Otherwise just stop the game at 10th level and save space in the players handbook.
I just want to play a high level game with lots of teleporting darn it and Jedi mind tricks.
This and This.
I think any ongoing campaign is both hard work and rewarding in it's own way. But I sympathize with anyone trying to write a high level campaign for a module. I don't see how it could be done in any way that wouldn't feel like a railroad.
When doing a home campaign I can lay out options and let the players choose their direction which means the campaign can branch in any direction it needs to.
How I would do it would be to create several modules over the various tiers that could all be tied together in a coherent story, but could also be pieced together in a way that fit the specific campaign you were in.
On my wish list would be better rules for mass combat and resource management with followers and castle building guidelines. Because I agree, I rarely want to shift planes except for the Feywild and Shadowfell because of the way my campaign world works. I did it for my 4E campaign because, as I stated above, that's kind of the gonzo game play 4E expected when you got to epic levels.
But it would be fantastic to have rules where sometimes you're building up an army, or helping build and then defend critical structures. Then switch roles and lead that army or lead a strike force while the rest of the army is doing one of those Star Wars "the good guys are all getting massacred except for a handful of NPCs with plot armor" scenes. Right now if we get into that we just kind of RP some high level stuff and make it up as we go along.
Oh well, if wishes were rule books horses.
I would like this as well. Who knows, by the time any of my group's characters will have gotten that strong, maybe they will have been created.
