The Ten Commandments of Epic Gaming

[Riastlin]

All in all I really liked the article. I especially like the idea of "units" at epic to represent an orc swarm and the like. The only real issue with this is in order to show the fighter how far he has truly come, and his ability to take on 100s or 1000s of orcs single-handedly, it becomes somewhat complicated to represent the battle on a grid. Obviously, the key here is to use your imagination and/or to effectively grant the PCs extra movement in combat. The point being that a thousand orcs still take up a thousand squares on the grid. Even if you were to compress them into a swarm, a thousand orc swarm is still going to take up a ton of squares (I suppose I could see a 10x10 orc swarm). But, you could just use the grid as a relative expression. Sure the orcs are taking up a thousand (or even a hundred) squares which means the fighter probably needs additional movement to conceptualize this, but you can simply tell the party that rounds in this encounter are say a minute rather than 6 seconds, etc.

A single 10 x 10 swarm wouldn't be too bad for a party to handle in terms of a regular scale mat, but if you want each player to take on a single swarm, then it becomes much more difficult. So just tell the players that the grid is more or less relative, etc. Hmmm, sounds confusing, hopefully somebody understood my ramblings.

 

[Ajar]

While there are definitely good ideas here, I have some trouble with the notion of them as "commandments." They're thoroughly infused with your take on what "epic" means, which is most clearly visible in the frequent references to video games and anime. But as this thread has shown, not everyone shares your view. Epic tier can be that way, and that can be awesome, but I don't think it's the only way to run a fun epic game.

 

[Barastrondo]

The point was not to say you should wipe out whole cities, but more a case of saying embrace bad things happening to large areas and don't be afraid if cities do get wiped out.

I would add the rider of "if your players are also willing to embrace these things." Having broached the topic, I've seen remarkable pushback from some players who are wholly averse to the idea of entire cities being wiped out for the sake of an epic campaign: the appeal for these players is being able to play multiple campaigns in the same sustainable world, and there's not much love for the idea of one campaign winding up with fewer enjoyable toys* to play with for the sake of another campaign feeling properly dramatic.

I would stress sweeping change over collateral damage, largely because collateral damage is a basically subtractive process, and some players prefer successful campaigns to be additive. You might have much better success hooking some groups if the promise is not "entire cities may be wiped out if you don't spend your dailies in a clever fashion," but "you may have the chance to build something colossal and beautiful." While subtracting large piles of bad guys along the way, of course.



*(Assume for the sake of argument that for said players, a blasted field of rubble and bones, monsters prowling and a few survivors struggling to get by, is not as enjoyable a toy as a familiar city. Obviously for other players, the former is much preferable.)

 

[NewJeffCT]

Hey all!

I just created a new article on my website about the ten most important things an epic game should have.

Article: The Ten Commandments of Epic Eternity Publishing

Let me know what you think and what you would (and wouldn't) have on that list.

The article is also being discussed on the General Discussion forums (although I didn't start that thread) but I think its probably more at home here where there has been a lot of debate about epic gaming in recent weeks.

good article - however, your unit combat idea kind of conflicts with the idea of millions of combatants on a side. If you're creating units of 10 orcs, you're still going to need a gaming table the size of a football stadium to handle hundreds of thousands of units of 10. I would think some sort of mass combat rules would be in order to handle wars of millions.

 

[NewJeffCT]

10. Thy Weapons shalt be outrageous

I like it, but it does kind of go against the grain somewhat for fourth edition game design. Fourth edition has no truly outrageous weapons - even things like the awesome Holy Avenger are fairly underwhelming - it's all part of designing a well-balanced game system. Still, I like the idea and i think it can be done, but it must be handled carefully.

As somebody that is still learning 4E as a DM, I was wondering about this. In past editions (and I've been DMing since the late 70s) I could easily make up unique weapons. Since 4E is driven by DDI, it seems like it would be more difficult to customize a powerful magic weapon/item.

 

[Upper_Krust]

I have to agree here. Too big is just silly and to me less heroic. After all you're no longer crossing swords with the biggies but act more like a virus attacking their cells.

...reminds me of Thor #387-389 Against the Celestials storyline.

I mean, just put the gargantun Orcus mini next to the medium-size Graz'zt mini. That's no aspect or Graz'zt or avatar of Graz'zt, that's him in his true form, his full splendor. Now imagine these to rivals to fight.

I'd expect Graz'zt to be faster but less powerful, while Orcus would be slower but stronger.

I mean imagine the situation with the planet size baddie in this one link. The small guy trying to push up her thumb would only see a flat featureless wall pressing down from above. He couldn't even see that it's supposed to be part of a thumb, because he's just too small compared to it. He can never really look at his adversary unless she's a million miles away. It's like standing right in front of Mt. Everest with your nose to the stone and trying to see the whole mountain or even just enough of the mountain to get a rough idea that it's anything than a flat wall without moving back.

The way to circumvent this is twofold. Firstly by having dynamic movement that that gets you around it (great leaping, flying, teleporting etc.).

The second is to increase the collateral damage of the PCs own attacks. This is something we see in wuxia movies, comics, superhero movies, anime and so forth. In D&D, a character might be able to slay a dragon in one hit, its not that far a stretch to say they could just bust through a wall or to take that a step further, destroy a building and so on and so forth.

 

[Upper_Krust]

All in all I really liked the article.

Thanks very much.

I especially like the idea of "units" at epic to represent an orc swarm and the like. The only real issue with this is in order to show the fighter how far he has truly come, and his ability to take on 100s or 1000s of orcs single-handedly, it becomes somewhat complicated to represent the battle on a grid. Obviously, the key here is to use your imagination and/or to effectively grant the PCs extra movement in combat. The point being that a thousand orcs still take up a thousand squares on the grid. Even if you were to compress them into a swarm, a thousand orc swarm is still going to take up a ton of squares (I suppose I could see a 10x10 orc swarm). But, you could just use the grid as a relative expression. Sure the orcs are taking up a thousand (or even a hundred) squares which means the fighter probably needs additional movement to conceptualize this, but you can simply tell the party that rounds in this encounter are say a minute rather than 6 seconds, etc.

A single 10 x 10 swarm wouldn't be too bad for a party to handle in terms of a regular scale mat, but if you want each player to take on a single swarm, then it becomes much more difficult. So just tell the players that the grid is more or less relative, etc. Hmmm, sounds confusing, hopefully somebody understood my ramblings.

I think its something that harkens back to the pen and paper roots rather than miniatures based combat.

I suppose it might be possible to have paper templates for different sized units. Circular for chaotic hordes, Angled for Lawful regiments.

10x10 sheet of paper = Unit of 100
30x30 (or 20 x 50) = Unit of 1000

Units greater than 1000 are probably ineffective for the purposes of UNIT vs. PC combat simply by virtue of having no way to attack the PC beyond about 30 or so squares.

 

[Upper_Krust]

While there are definitely good ideas here, I have some trouble with the notion of them as "commandments." They're thoroughly infused with your take on what "epic" means, which is most clearly visible in the frequent references to video games and anime. But as this thread has shown, not everyone shares your view. Epic tier can be that way, and that can be awesome, but I don't think it's the only way to run a fun epic game.

Maybe it was just a tongue-in-cheek title.

Glad you like some of the ideas though.

I'm of the opinion that the advice can improve a given epic campaign, but that doesn't mean you have to incorporate some of it all of the time, or all of it some of the time...just try and use some of it some of the time.

 

[Upper_Krust]

I would add the rider of "if your players are also willing to embrace these things." Having broached the topic, I've seen remarkable pushback from some players who are wholly averse to the idea of entire cities being wiped out for the sake of an epic campaign: the appeal for these players is being able to play multiple campaigns in the same sustainable world, and there's not much love for the idea of one campaign winding up with fewer enjoyable toys* to play with for the sake of another campaign feeling properly dramatic.

I would approach this exactly the same as its often tackled in tv and movies. Have the massive collateral damage done to somewhere far afield - that the PCs can visit or see though. Then let them understand that threat is coming to get them.

I am reminded by the Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer movie (yes I know - not a great movie). But basically we see the random planet getting destroyed at the start and Mr Fantastic can chart the course of the destruction and its coming for them.

In the same way you could have the city of a nearby country destroyed and that threat is moving towards somewhere the PCs care about.

I would stress sweeping change over collateral damage, largely because collateral damage is a basically subtractive process, and some players prefer successful campaigns to be additive. You might have much better success hooking some groups if the promise is not "entire cities may be wiped out if you don't spend your dailies in a clever fashion," but "you may have the chance to build something colossal and beautiful." While subtracting large piles of bad guys along the way, of course.

Certainly a DM has to guard its resources to some extent. If your PCs only operate in one City of the world...don't just wipe out that city first.

*(Assume for the sake of argument that for said players, a blasted field of rubble and bones, monsters prowling and a few survivors struggling to get by, is not as enjoyable a toy as a familiar city. Obviously for other players, the former is much preferable.)

True...then they should have stopped the threat from destroying the [insert area].

 

[Barastrondo]

In the same way you could have the city of a nearby country destroyed and that threat is moving towards somewhere the PCs care about.

To clarify, let me emphasize that I say players, not PCs. Right now, I have PCs in various states of activity, gleaned from a couple of decades of play, in roughly... 10 different sections of one continent alone, and more could be added. Worse, I actually married a player who is an avid consumer of world content. She's told me "throw a dart anywhere at the world map, I can make a character from there."

A notable difference between what PCs care about and what players care about. The Tanglestone PCs don't even know that Tarleorin exists. If I wiped the City of a Thousand Princes out to make a point on how high-stakes epic play is, though, my wife would be ticked even though she hasn't had a chance to play a Chelindran yet. That's why I say your players have to be on board with the concept of collateral damage: it's not just a matter of whether the DM embraces it or not. Setting a sense of stakes might not be worth it if your players don't feel that the high-stakes pressure is a worthy trade-off for lost opportunities.

Certainly a DM has to guard its resources to some extent. If your PCs only operate in one City of the world...don't just wipe out that city first.

Sure. If you have a variety of PCs who might be reactivated, though, or players who are interested in someday doing a game in the Phoenix Empire when the current one wraps up, you have a rather different perspective about what is truly expendable. The idea is to get players to embrace the epic, I'm assuming, not resent it for destroying things they haven't yet gotten a chance to explore (or worse, places they have explored and feel fondness towards).

True...then they should have stopped the threat from destroying the [insert area].

I don't think that's a way to encourage players who like to build rather than to destroy to play epic games, to be honest. Saying "If you don't embrace the epic this city will no longer exist!" is... well, it isn't a carrot.