What makes an Epic Level Campaign?

[Mythic_Justice]

I'm really curious what people feel makes an Epic Level Campaign?

What do you do with near godlings and who do you pit them against?

Have any of you ran such a game and what did you learn worked and didn't work?

What did you wish you had available to you from TSR or WotC?

Chad

 

[Crothian]

An Epic Level Game for my group is one that starts out as a normal camapiagn and we don't want it to end. We take the characters from 1st to 20+ and still want to play. It's not hard to challenge people of that level. And the plots just become larger. Instead of savbing a town, you save a country. Instead of defeating the leader of the orc clan, you rough up Grumsch.

 

[Longdale]

What we have done traditionally is play ye ole standard dnd to about 21st-22nd level. At this point we feel we are "epical" although that is left to debate...

What do we do?
At this point the dnd aspect as in fight fight fight takes more and more of a smaller role to political intrigue, running of nations, and vieing for power.

Some charecters don't want to rule a country, that's for sure. But even clerics become the "Pope" and have duties that can be fun. Go to this town, throw down a monarch, excommunicate a couple evil peeps. All fun.

And for epic fights it's usually quite rare they are really challenging. We keep the game fun... imagine 30 level 1-5 charecters against two 22-25. It's fun to play...

But there are some things we still do. For instance we (my epic group) took on the "council of chromatics"... a ruling council of chromatic dragons cr 17-22. There were about 5 fights (PC's and wurms dieing) before the adventure was done (over 2 months). The wurms retreated from the territory they took over, and fun was had by all...

There are also the planes. See how long 25th level charecters last trying to "bust up" hell... even it has it's generals.

Longdale

Birthright type play... that's epical fun. 25th level Cleric who runs a "fanatical zealot" country.

 

[gothwalk]

I've just finished a high level campaign, starting a new one with some of the same characters next week. Characters are levels 26, 22 and 16 - the level 22 character benefitted from being multiclass in 2nd Ed, and the level 16 character is a new player. The original third character would be about level 24 now, had her player not moved away. (The new campaign will be the same level 26 character as a mentor and ruler of the Kingdom the campaign is based in, and three level 16 characters)

As in Longdale's experience above, the main focus of the new campaign will be become political. The basis of the last was high-epic, war among the gods, but even then, there was more politic-ing, negotiation and mystery solving (often outright problem solving) than fighting or "dice-rolling stuff", as one player rather disparagingly says. Although when it comes down to that, they do kick butt and take names - most fights are over in a matter of three rounds.

One approach I did find useful was to present "insoluble" problems - things I couldn't think of a solution to. They're high-level characters, given a little time to prepare, there's not much they can't do, so usually they were able to overcome it. In the event that they didn't, I reasoned, it'd improve the realism of the campaign. (It never happened, really... )

Drew.

 

[MythandLore]

I'm really curious what people feel makes an Epic Level Campaign?

Epic scope, world effecting evens in which the players have much more control of the possiblities.

What do you do with near godlings and who do you pit them against?

Have them fighter other "near godlings", heads of Nations, Champions from other sides of the world, from other worlds or other planes.
Worlds and Planes themselves can be great "foes" also, natural disasters work well.

Have any of you ran such a game and what did you learn worked and didn't work?

Large groups of weak monsters don't work for crap.
Any spell caster worth his salt can kill massive amounts of weaker creatures at will.
Another thing is, it's very very very very very easy for high level characters to come back to life, very very very very very easy.
You can destroy a persons body 'poof' 10 minutes later he's back.
Attack the possesions, friends, family, and allies works best.
A 25th level fighter is going to be more angry his two +10 swords broke compared to him dying.
It's easier to fix him then a shattered powerful item.

What did you wish you had available to you from TSR or WotC?

The "Epic Level Handbook" and "Demigods and Deities".