It's frequently a matter of doing something personal. I hate to invoke the specter of video games, but going to a very dangerous place and having a very dangerous boss fight is something I can get elsewhere.
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You have to let the players decide why they're interested in what they're interested in. You can't tell them that they should also care about the metaphysical, otherworldly aspects of their physical, worldly concerns because that's what epic level assumes.
I agree completely with your second paragraph. But I think that your first paragraph sells short what a fight with Orcus in the Abyss means - if it's just a very dangerous boss fight, in my view the GM has done something wrong.
What I think is missing to an extent from WotC (although they hint at it in the campaign outlines that they sketch in Underdark and The Plane Above), is an account of how epic D&D
can speak to the personal concerns of the players (as developed and expressed through their PCs actions in the gameworld) while at the same time connecting to the metaphysical and otherworldly aspects of the game.
It's not as if there aren't other games that show how this can be done (eg Runequest, HeroWars/Quest). And of course I'm not saying that every player has to like it - to reiterate, I agree fully with your second paragraph that I've quoted. But I think if WotC put a bit more effort into explaining how the mythical can also be personal - and
not just a Really Big Boss Fight - then they could make epic a lot more appealing to a wider range of players. They could make the mythical more clearly part of the D&D experience in the way that 4e appears to assume it will be (for me, this is a big departure from earlier editions).
If they're not interesetd in doing that - that is, if they
don't have any conception of epic as something other than a bigger boss fight - then why bother including it in the game at all? (And I think they
do have a richer conception of epic, as shown in Underdark, The Plane Above and Demonicon, but they haven't actually set out to explain it in their rulebooks.)
I would argue that the "you go to a very dangerous place and have a very dangerous boss fight" paradigm has elements in face-to-face play that it lacks in silicon-based play, and 4e takes advantage of these facets well.
True.
If I want more setting/situation theme as a focus - or even deliberately kicking theme for story - I use other systems than D&D. Some stuff I have read leads me to think D&D could maybe handle such play - but I still have to see it for myself.
This is what I think epic can be pitched as. Look at Underdark - there are excellent reasons for wanting to destroy Lolth, but if you do you risk freeing Tharizdun. And now look at The Plane Above, and the notion of journeying into Deep Myth (ie Heroquesting by another name) to restore some element of the world to rights. There are ideas in the published WotC stuff that show how epic adventuring can be linked to thinks that players (via their PCs) can personally engage with.
I'm not saying that this is going to be the greatest fiction ever written - I think D&D produces pretty hackneyed stories - but I think it does show how the problem that Barastrondo has identifed - of epic being too distant from the concerns that link the players to the gameworld - can be overcome. Not that there's any reason, in the abstract, why they
should be overcome. But surely it's in WotC's interests, in publishing all this epic material, to try and overcome them and to get the game played at epic tier.
I agree that the character's motivations should be in the player's control, but if the player has no interest in playing Epic tier, I think it's a cop out to blame the character's motivations. There are ways to engage this sort of character to 'Epic' play - e.g. having turned the Thieves' Guild to good, s/he finds that the old, evil god of thieves' cult is still working against that goal. After putting them down a few times, it becomes clear that the real source of the trouble lies beyong this world - but if the problem is that the player doesn't want to engage in Epic play, the charater motivations seem highly unlikely to be the real reasons.
Having said that, of course, the player has a perfect right to be uninterested in Epic play - but even so, the reasons might be worth examining.
I agree with all this.
Oh, totally agreed. I'm only speaking up for the possibility that the reasons they might have can also include a disinterest in some of the core assumptions of epic play -- for instance, that every player would be interested in fighting demon lords or saving the world regardless of what character they're playing.
Another way to put my point, not in order to disagree but just to try to suggest a somewhat broader scope to what epic can mean - WotC's own published examples (in Underdark and The Plane Above) show that they have richer ideas in play than just "saving the world". Good support material for epic would develop this, and leverage it to address other questions like designing and running player-focused scenarios.
So I don't think DMs are necessarily scared, but I think many are uncomfortable. We realize that we have these varying quests that need to be weaved into the overall story and weaved in such a way as to make them appealing to all of the players.
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This is where support for epic tier can really come in handy, imo. Not just monsters (which would help a lot), but also advice on how to run it.
I think this would be useful stuff
independently of its contribution to running epic tier. At the moment, for example, the DMG strongly encourages player-designed quests but gives the GM no advice on how to actually incorporate these into the game - all the adventure-building advice assumes a GM-directed rather than a player-directed approach to play.
), so I'm not sure I could design them properly, but I can think of a half dozen novel creature types that would work great at epic. Really, every deity, primordial, and similarly-powerful being should have its own unique followers that can fill these roles. There are also all the gaps created by how narrowly the various planes have been used so far.
