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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5512486" data-attributes="member: 42582">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.)True.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 with all this.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.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.</blockquote>

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