The break-down in believability at higher levels of play

[pemerton]

The failure is actually in setting/world building.

I don't agree with this - if only because it has the implication that I can't run a satisfying high-level campaign unless I put a lot of work into world building, which as a GM I just don't have the time/inclination to do (and I suspect I'm not alone).

I want to say more about this below.

My own answers to all these questions and concerns can be summed up in just two words: "narrative" and "solipsism". The demons in question have not already overthrown the local regime because the heroes are entering the story at just the right time and should be able to prevent them from doing so; it is all part of the narrative.

<snip>

There is no threat other than the current one. Only the current narrative counts. There are no heroes other than the ones in the party (okay and some other story-relevant NPCs).

I think this is more or less the right way to go, but as well as stating it in the sort of metagame language you use, I think it's also helpful to try to give it an ingame logic as well.

Assume for a moment that the campaign world is populated by dozens of adventurer types, if not hundreds (and the mere fact that the local tavern always seems to have two or three standing by whenever a party member gets himself or herself killed seems to suggest this is the case!).

Dropping this assumption helps give the solipsism an ingame logic. If the PCs are the only heroes, then there is no other high-level adventure taking place in the gameworld besides theirs. (This can be tricky if PC death is frequent, but in high level D&D raise dead/ressurection shouldn't be that hard to come by. If you need to introduce a new high-level PC, handwaving it shouldn't be that hard.)

characters are called upon to deal with threats and menaces that are so powerful that it is hard to understand why they have not already overrun the local area, the nation, the world. You can see his point. A party of 18th-level characters (not even particularly high-level, see; not these days) might be called upon to deal with an incursion of demons or what-have-you. Those demons are demonstrably powerful (excuse the pun) and it does bring us to ask why they have not already overthrown the local regime and taken control of everything under the sun.

In my last high level game, the demonic threat emerged more-or-less contemporaneously with the PCs becoming ready to meet it. And it was a threat that the gods couldn't deal with, precisely because it was the result of contracts the gods had entered into as part of the original settlement between the heavens and the hells. Events in mid-level adventures set up some of the basic ideas of these constraints on the gods, and then the ramifications were introduced as challenges for the PCs once they became high level.

In 4e, the ideas of the Dawn War, the Compact of Heaven, Primordials wanting to reassert their power, and the Primal Spirits keeping the world safe, all create ways to plausibly have threats emerge that only epic heroes can deal with, but which emerge only when you want to present thsoe challenges to the PCs. (The Plane Above also introduces the idea of travelling back in time to change mythic history - this is the perfect excuse for epic PCs to find high level opponents who aren't just hanging about failing to destroy the world.)

Going back to the world building thing - I think that developing an ingame logic that supports narrative and solipsistic solutions to the problem isn't about world building at all. It's about scenario design. In particular, the resolution of low- and mid-level adventures should always be opening up the possibilities and prospects of your gameworld, with suggestions that there is more to the machinations of the gods, the devils, the efreets, the lich lords, etc etc, than they have resolved in this current adventure. You don't need to give details, just hints and a general "vibe". Then when you get to high levels you start cashing this stuff out. You can make up the details at that point, as long as they aren't grossly inconsistent with what came out before (in my experience you'll generally get away with minor inconstistences unless your players keep very detailed notes).

That's how I like to do it, anyway.

 

[Quickleaf]

Yeah, I've heard this argument a few times. I feel like there were great answers in this thread, so I only have one thing to add...

Or what about the player characters themselves? At high levels, these become extraordinarily powerful. Fantastically so. What is to stop *them* from taking over the world?

Well, it's a simplistic question so here's simplistic answer: Minions.

If the PCs don't have support/allies they might find themselves facing an army, say upwards of a thousand minions, on their lonesome. No matter how high the PCs' defenses are, a minion still hits on a '20'. So, you could expect about one hit per every 20 minions, who would be a mix of melee and artillery. Obviously I'm leaving out the PCs' powers/rituals as well as the possibility of minions aiding each other, focused fire on the leader, use of trebuchets/ballistae, etc.

And let's say that each PC is attacked by 20 minions each turn (say 6 melee, 14 artillery), meaning each PC is hit once per turn on average. If the minions are 1st level, their damage is probably around 6.

Even if you assume the PCs each can take out 10 minions per turn, that means your party of five PCs is taking out 50 minions per turn.

In other words, they're taking about 6 damage each for roughly 20 rounds until they defeat the army... or 120 hp each.

Considering this is comparable to the hp of a 20th level cleric, I'd say an army of low-level minions constitutes a legitimate threat to high-level PCs.

Mystara4e. You know it makes sense.

Rock on We're starting a Mystara campaign in 4e soon. It's been a long time baby.

 

[DNH]

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts on this thing. Lots of good ideas and approaches. I should say that I specifically avoided posing this as a problem requiring an answer, because I don't think it is one. But I do think it is an interesting issue and I am enjoying hearing everyone's thoughts.

I particularly like this one ...

Another approach is the inherent nature of the campaign world itself as being balanced by both forces of powerful evil and powerful good. Take the Forgotten Realms for instance. We know that in 3.x, it was just filled to the bring with high-level and epic-level threats. So how come they didn't just try to bowl the world over? They are, but they are being opposed constantly by equally powerful and epic-level good guys. This is the inherent design (for good or ill) that the players can buy-in on suspending their belief. When it's the PC's turn in the campaign world, it will involve the one threat that saw an "opening" and is moving forward with a plan and the PC's the only ones at the time able to stop it.

That balance thing sits well with my own thoughts and the way I run my game. There *is* a wider campaign world out there with lots of things going on in it (Jester, I am talking to you!). I play in Mystara and anyone who has ever read any of the Poor Wizard's/Joshuan's Almanacs (and the ongoing community-authored editions) will know that that world keeps turning.

Mystara also offers me another explanation for how things play out as it has a rich (too rich?) pantheon of gods and Immortals who constantly vie with one another, individually and across their various factions, for power and influence. These Immortals meddle in the affairs of the mortals on the surface of the Known World at least as much as the ancient Greek gods were supposed to have done, and that allows for just about anything to happen.

There are two words that I almost included in my original post but purposely did not: they are "sweet" and "spot". We all have our favourites, I suppose, and I guess any DM will look to keep his players in that sweet spot for as long as possible. That may mean constructing a campaign that does not advance beyond the Paragon tier, or even earlier than that. Or adopting E6/E10.

As it happens, I have planned a (sort of) campaign (I say "sort of" because it is not really much more than a string of adventures only loosely connected) that will take the characters up to about level 24, at which point we will most likely leave it. My brother may not enjoy the later levels so much but he will play through them, all the same.

On a parting note, Korjik, your wondering "why a game with magic and monsters is believable at low level but not high" is a valid point. More personal but very similar is the fact that my brother routinely berates me for poking fun at the believability of some movie or other, saying things like "It's a movie! Just sit back for two hours and be entertained!" There's an argument in there, I suppose, but we have enough of them over rules interpretations!

Thanks again.

 

[Coldwyn]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]:

maybe to read to much into world building?
For me, world building is having a X on a map or blank sheet as a starting point and working from thereon out, flashing out what needs more detail and adding to it as the game progresses. This includes throwing in stuff that may or may not have later ramifications, but with the intend to show that later levels and more dire threads do exist and are already in action right now, as well as showing that there´s more going on in the world than what is visible from the characters POV.

I´m not talking about a premeditated act of foreplanning and the creation of the world, including the campaign, in it´s enterity beforehand.
It´s only just to easy to forget about that stuff when you focus just on the task at hand and what is currently going on.

Something akin to watching the evening news and seeing what´s going on in the wider world, what wars are raging where, what nonsense politicians all over the world sprout now, what the ecosystem is doing and so on.

 

[Zhaleskra]

For reasons I'm not entirely sure of, I don't really like playing the Super Heroes genre. This gets a little weird when I'm perfectly willing to play In Nomine, where you usually play as Angels or Demons who would technically be above supers in power level.

Part of the explanation that I'm working on is something just doesn't seem right in the grind from "zero" to "pseudo medieval super hero". Maybe it's that D&D took 40 years to finally admit that that's what the game's about? Perhaps it's because my prefered play range is "compentent starting to efficient" and I've known about retirement rules for a long time. And at the same time, I also have a problem with "Big Damn Hero straight out of the starting gate".

Yes, I have seen the believability break down at levels that weren't even all that high. Early teens in d20 Modern, for example.

 

[Coldwyn]

[MENTION=20544]Zhaleskra[/MENTION]

Just some thoughts on that: I think this only really became noticeable when a level up occured every 11 EL-equivalent encounters. Some heavy dungeon crawling later and you´re a recogniceable force in the world.
Add to this that the end-game focus changed. From creating your own thiefdom/thieves guild/temple/you name it, to just slaying more powerfull stuff.
So, I guess, everyone need to find what his comfort zone is and just declare that as the campaigns level cap, much like E6.

 

[Zhaleskra]

A thought from 2E: You spend years learning arcane magic, and when you graduate you can cast only one 1st level spell a day? Something is seriously wrong with that ciriculum.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=42582]maybe to read to much into world building?

<snip>

I´m not talking about a premeditated act of foreplanning and the creation of the world, including the campaign, in it´s enterity beforehand.
It´s only just to easy to forget about that stuff when you focus just on the task at hand and what is currently going on.

Something akin to watching the evening news and seeing what´s going on in the wider world, what wars are raging where, what nonsense politicians all over the world sprout now, what the ecosystem is doing and so on.

Maybe. I still prefer to think in terms of scenario design rather than world building. For me, at least, it's not about a "wider world" with which the PCs might get involved - which is what world building seems to suggest. Rather, it's about adventures - scenarios - that introduce the PCs to the seeds of epic play (myth, history, gods, demons) and that start to engage the players in that stuff, so that the epic campaign can emerge naturally out of previous play.

In my view, for example, it's not a problem if the first that the PCs learn of an ancient heavenly contract, the fine print of which now results in a demonic invasion, is when they reach 20th level. What is more likely to be a problem is if nothing has happend earlier in play to get the players invested in this sort of storyline.

 

[FireLance]

Or what about the player characters themselves? At high levels, these become extraordinarily powerful. Fantastically so. What is to stop *them* from taking over the world?

I would just like to address this point. In my view, in a proper high-level campaign, the answer should be "nothing".

High level PCs ought to have the ability to take over the world if they wish to, or reshape it however they want: found empires, churches or other organizations, make sweeping changes in beliefs and society, or construct artifacts and other wonders of magic that will endure long after they are gone.

And (again, IMO) if a DM is not prepared to allow his PCs to do these, then he should not be running a high-level campaign.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I would just like to address this point. In my view, in a proper high-level campaign, the answer should be "nothing".

High level PCs ought to have the ability to take over the world if they wish to, or reshape it however they want: found empires, churches or other organizations, make sweeping changes in beliefs and society, or construct artifacts and other wonders of magic that will endure long after they are gone.

And (again, IMO) if a DM is not prepared to allow his PCs to do these, then he should not be running a high-level campaign.

My name is Raven Crowking, and I endorse this statement.


RC