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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 5391833" data-attributes="member: 54710">In my game, the extra-planar nature of epic foes is problematic because my game is about the PCs and their interaction with their world and its institutions.  Their objectives are to change the world in ways they want and prevent it from being changed in ways they hate.  Because success and failure is all about the repercussions, the game wouldn't have much meaning if it took place in a place where they weren't invested.I don't think the Star Wars example applies here.  In a Star Wars game, the galaxy is the game world.  It's not about the planet -- it's about the scope of where the PCs have interests and connections.  If you want to play a Planescape style game, the planar nature of epic foes isn't a problem at all.  In fact epic foes are very nicely integrated into the Planescape gameworld (notwithstanding issues of edition conversion).I don't think the epic tier is limited to the campaign ender for every game.  I just think it's properly limited to the campaign ender for many games, and that's just because it's in the nature of the game.  Your list of epic adventure themes is great, but it's a great list of a particular genre.  If my game revolves around Court intrigue and the politics of a set list of  nations, it's a major genre-busting curveball to introduce a giant alien trying to eat the planet.  To take a more specific example, I think it was a mistake (game design wise) for War of the Burning Sky to stretch from levels 1 to 30.  I tend to think the foes at the end of that game are more appropriate for low-epic tier play, which makes sense if you consider that it was originally design to stretch from levels 1 to 20 in 3e.  (Quick aside: WoBS isn't flawless, but it is fantastic.)  Similarly, my 13-year campaign ended with a glorious time-travelling, demigod-fighting conclusion in which the PCs concluded the campaign by deciding to destroy their own planet.  That's clearly epic play in my book, but it was only the last adventure.  The existence of a single time-traveling, demi-god-making epic device had been the central focus of the campaign for almost a decade.  It would have been totally bizarre to add a second or third epic threat on top of it.So, yes, I agree that there's no limit to the amount of epic gaming you can do.  But there is often a limit to how much epic gaming makes sense for a given campaign, and I don't think the current epic rules do a very good job of supporting those scenarios.-KS</blockquote>

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