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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5392043" data-attributes="member: 42582">I can see where these comments are coming from, but I don't entirely agree. I fully agree that a game which simply switches location, from the world where play has taken place up until now, to the outer planes, won't work for engaging the players. (In my view, the city of Union in the 3E Epic handbook is a classic example of this sort of failure.) But Epic needn't be like that.I know from my own experience running high-level Rolemaster that it is possible to run an epic-style game - with wahoo magic, with ancient dragons, angels, gods and demons as the principal adversaries, with other planes as the site of many of these encounters, etc - in a way that is tightly integrated with a mundane homeland that the players (and therefore their PCs) care about. But what this requires is seeding that homeland with these connections to deeper mythical forces, and the other planes where they live and play out, from early in the game.Not only a deep story, but one which is linked to the mythic/other-planar features that (given what WotC is actually publishing) are going to be the core game elements of epic tier play.This means that you are right when you say that some lower-level adventures will work better than others for seeding Epic play. Not every god, every artefact and every campaign backstory is equally well-suited to the task. I think the lack of a discussion of these matters is one of the weaknesses of the existing GM advice for epic play.It's also interesting that (as I read it) the Plane Above appears to cater to multiple approaches to Epic tier - the discussion of the gods, the compact of heaven, venturing into deep myth and so on all seems aimed at the sort of epic play we're discussing in this thread, whereas the Outer Isles and the Githyanki pirates seem to me to be more relevant for an Epic tier which is just more dungeon crawling or adventure without a strong story integration into what has gone on at lower levels. Again, that book could probably be improved by talking a bit more frankly about the different sorts of play its contents are suited to supporting.</blockquote>

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