Preserving the Sweet Spot - A Rebuttal

[Gold Roger]

I disagree that high level play is less popular because stuff like teleport beats the classic dungeon delve.

I love that scrying and teleporting, but I'm intimidated out of my mind from high level D&D because of all the accounting of thousands of effects going in and abilities to keep in mind.

 

[BryonD]

There's another alternative.

<snip>

Unless I'm wrong about the majority of campaigns starting at 1st level, of course. But I would be willing to bet that starting levels are skewed heavily towards the lower end of the spectrum.

I think in a lot of ways that is really the same answer.
There is definately an appeal to high level, high power play.
If there was more desire to play at high levels, more people would start out at higher levels.
I don't believe there are great numbers of people out there who REALLY want to play 15th level but grit their teeth and say "oh well" when a campaign ends at 9th so they are forced to start over at 1st. If they wanted to play higher level, they would.

 

[delericho]

If there was more desire to play at high levels, more people would start out at higher levels.

I disagree. I can only speak from my own experience, which is obviously statistically meaningless, but every campaign I've begun at 1st level I have begun with the intention of going on all the way to 20th level. (As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I really dislike the current Epic rules, which is why I planned that as the end point.)

In each case where the campaign had folded early, it has done so not out of a lack of desire to play at high levels, but for other reasons. The reasons I don't start at a higher level are twofold: firstly, it's just the 'done thing' to start at 1st level, and secondly characters feel more real/more earned when they've been built from 1st level up to phenominal cosmic power.

 

[D'karr]

I disagree. I can only speak from my own experience, which is obviously statistically meaningless, but every campaign I've begun at 1st level I have begun with the intention of going on all the way to 20th level. (As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I really dislike the current Epic rules, which is why I planned that as the end point.)

In each case where the campaign had folded early, it has done so not out of a lack of desire to play at high levels, but for other reasons. The reasons I don't start at a higher level are twofold: firstly, it's just the 'done thing' to start at 1st level, and secondly characters feel more real/more earned when they've been built from 1st level up to phenominal cosmic power.

I currently have 2 campaigns running at higher levels (15 and 18). Both of those campaigns started as low level campaigns.

On the other hand I have started several campaigns at higher level (10-14) only to have them unravel within the first few levels. I've noticed two things that impacted heavily on this. Players became more attached to the character that they build from the ground up. They earned every bit of XP / Gold / Equipment that they had. So they "grew" with the character. They were more invested in the character. In addition the teamwork that developed over time for the characters was stronger. The team "grew" together. There was an added level of cohesion and "believability" at the risks they were taking for each other. The whole group was more invested in the team.

Most of the High Level campaigns that started out as high level campaigns seemed to lack those two elements. Even when the characters were created with that in mind and everyone worked on that group cohesion, it seemed to lack believability for the players. They were really not as invested in the characters or the team.

The two successful campaigns are chugging along fine and everyone seems to be having a blast. Even some of the intraparty conflicts have made the game more enjoyable because the conflicts have been resolved and the group "grew" through the experience.

 

[BryonD]

I disagree. I can only speak from my own experience, which is obviously statistically meaningless, but every campaign I've begun at 1st level I have begun with the intention of going on all the way to 20th level. (As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I really dislike the current Epic rules, which is why I planned that as the end point.)

In each case where the campaign had folded early, it has done so not out of a lack of desire to play at high levels, but for other reasons. The reasons I don't start at a higher level are twofold: firstly, it's just the 'done thing' to start at 1st level, and secondly characters feel more real/more earned when they've been built from 1st level up to phenominal cosmic power.

That's cool. But I'm not talking about your specific case.
I'm talking about the D&D gaming community at large.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Maybe this has come up, but I don't recall seeing it so I'll say it.

What about time constraints? Leveling characters from 1 to 20 is a long haul. Nothing wrong with that, but life gets in the way. School ends, people move, take on second jobs (like me! ), get married, have babies, etc.

I think part of the problem is that most people don't have the time to advance to high level play. 1-12 is very doable; those first five levels are quick. The last seven offer a slower but steady advancement along with some goodies. Once everyone gets to 12, it's likely one or two players have dropped out for one reason or another.

Life is just not conducive to high level play.

 

[delericho]

That's cool. But I'm not talking about your specific case.
I'm talking about the D&D gaming community at large.

Of course. Hence:

I can only speak from my own experience

Now, here's the question: do you have any actual evidence for supposing that people aren't playing high-level games because they don't want to play high-level games, as opposed to they're not playing high-level games because their campaigns fizzle out before they get to that point?

If not, then surely you're not really talking about "the D&D gaming community at large", but rather talking about your own preferences? And if that's the case, I have to respond:

That's cool. But I'm not talking about your specific case.

 

[Hussar]

Heck, look at the amount to bandwidth that people dedicate to castigating players for planning characters up to 20th level. People call these players metagamers and wrongbadfun players. For many DM's, apparently presuming that a campaign is going to last into the high double digits is bad.

I do agree with D'karr on the point about starting high level characters. It's just so difficult to get into the head of a character that's starting where almost all my characters have finished. Without any real gaming experience to draw from, I have a difficult time wrapping my head around what a 15th level Wizard should be doing.

I would say that the majority of campaigns out there start at low levels because that's what DM's are most comfortable with and that's where 99% of the support is. It's really a chicken or the egg sort of thing. We won't see higher level play until the support is there to help it and we won't see that support until people start playing at higher levels.

Sigh.

 

[Cor Azer]

Maybe this has come up, but I don't recall seeing it so I'll say it.

What about time constraints? Leveling characters from 1 to 20 is a long haul. Nothing wrong with that, but life gets in the way. School ends, people move, take on second jobs (like me! ), get married, have babies, etc.

I think part of the problem is that most people don't have the time to advance to high level play. 1-12 is very doable; those first five levels are quick. The last seven offer a slower but steady advancement along with some goodies. Once everyone gets to 12, it's likely one or two players have dropped out for one reason or another.

Life is just not conducive to high level play.

I think the idea has been bantered about, but maybe not specifically called out. From my experience, this is why my group rarely gets into high levels - Considering the normal rate of advancement and starting at low levels (because we like organically building our characters), real life just seems to hit us about the time we're reaching the mid- to high- teen levels. When we're later able to resume playing, interest in the last campaign has diminished and people want to try new things.

 

[delericho]

I find it interesting that most games are run in the low- and mid-levels, and this thread has a lot of people saying that high-level games don't work nearly as well, while a few months ago we also had huge numbers of complaints that FC1 had had the gall to reduce Demogorgon from a stately CR 30 to a puny CR 23. Surely, if your PCs top out at 12th level, it doesn't matter - unless the DM is incompetent, they can't touch him either way?

Just an observation.