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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 2763682" data-attributes="member: 8447">I define "epic" two different ways -- both of these are simply immediate reactions to seeing or hearing the word.First up, when I see "EPIC" on a rpg chatboard, I immediately thing "over-the-top pointless munchkinism for people who are more interested in numbers than in story -- god-killing at a minimum".  I know this is utterly a kneejerk reaction, but this is due to many gamers I have met over my 30 years behind the screen, both in public and at cons, but almost never in my own games.  The emphasis is on ego and showing off, outlandish descriptions, no thought towards the implications of one's actions, and of a constant game of oneupsmanship to show each character is more important than the others.  The Planes, absolutely, must be involved!  There is no real sense of accomplishment or of goal, only of constantly advancing in power into the stratosphere and beyond.Secondly, I think, due to books that I have read, movies I have seen, and the best campaigns I have been in, of tales that matter -- characters, of almost any level of power, trying to change things for the better (or, in a nod to another thread, occaisionally trying to stop bad things from happening, a la LotR).  The phycisal scale of such epics could be very small or very large, but it involves a seachange in the area -- finding the Holy Grail, bringing the gods back to the Shadowed Valley, discovering the name of Lower Corte, revealing the final secret of the Bell of Calebais, etc.  You don't need powerful characters for this, but you need to have the characters truly involved in the story.  Often this is Campbellian, but not always.  Once the object of the epic is complete, so is the game (or book or movie or whathaveyou).  Obviously, I am a fan of #2 and an anti-fan of #1  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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