Quote from: tenbones on January 06, 2025, 11:43:55 AMThis is very illuminating for me. I never thought to ask this about OSR aficionados before. There has always been this peculiar "thing" that people here privately have asked me "why I'm not into OSR" or inversely, I get friendly ribbing about the "heresy" of me being into Savage Worlds (which I'm planning on making a thread about).

But it appears to me based on responses here that OSR GM's effectively are running games that don't go regularly beyond 10th level (average). In hindsight this makes sense (the math of D&D leans that way), as St. Gygax outlined this himself in terms of his original intent.

My fantasy games, and I'll specify them to my D&D setting-based games (regardless of edition), are set up to go to "their natural conclusion". Which means however far we can push the game until everyone is satisfied or dead. The only real limit is my ability as a GM to keep the plates spinning to keep the funtrain rolling.

If I were to choose an OSR game, I'd instinctively go BECMI simply because my games can/do run to high-level play, which due to the pacing of my campaigns (long, dense and slow) I need maximal scaling of mechanics and system for my players to hatch their world-shaking plans IF they can survive to that level.

Getting to 6th-9th level of play is *generally* a foregone conclusion to my games, I don't suffer at all from using d20 mechanics of any edition in this range (the Sweet Spot). Where it falls apart for me, is post 11th level. Where the assumptions of super-heroic play is very much a thing.

I'm not running CHAOS-Difficulty Vermintide scenarios with 8th level characters, they'd be getting devoured. 12th+ now you're talking. But stopping the hordes of Chaos themselves? 12th-level characters aren't going to cut it.

So the issue for me is scalability. BECMI *can* do it. I'm just not a big fan of those mechanics at the deep end. No hate on it, it just doesn't feel right for me. Rather, I think other systems operate at that end of the scaling pool better for what I do. Don't get me wrong - MOST of my campaigns never make it this far. The conceit is I *want* my games to get this far, and I want a system that going to handle it smoothly if it does.

It's very interesting to see this might be the only real cleavage point for me. I *assumed* OSR GM's regularly rolled up post-11th level (I know some of you do), it took me a bit by surprise so many of you don't. Interesting.

It's not just scalability, though.  It's also the power-level you and the players are comfortable with.  Neither I nor my players are particularly interested in being D&D-superheroes.  They generally don't want the "saving the world... again" type of play that high level tends to lend itself to.  In fact, I'd argue (on the spur of the moment... I haven't thought about this deeply yet) that the world-ending type scenario doesn't lend itself to sandbox games beyond a certain point.  If we've got to stop Grondar from getting the Staff of Pestilence or the entire continent withers, there's not really the same gameplay space as being a badass "Doc Holiday" type wandering from town to town.  At higher level, you can't just choose to engage or ignore the same way you can at low level.

So I'm not sure that mechanics make the biggest difference here, especially for my particular groups.  Some of it is the loss of gritty, low-level, dangerous situations.  If we run across 20 goblins, even at 5th level your party is cautious about the encounter.  At 15th level, you ROFLSTOMP them without a thought and walk away.  It's a different attitude, too.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 06, 2025, 04:06:05 PMIt's not just scalability, though.  It's also the power-level you and the players are comfortable with.  Neither I nor my players are particularly interested in being D&D-superheroes.  They generally don't want the "saving the world... again" type of play that high level tends to lend itself to.  In fact, I'd argue (on the spur of the moment... I haven't thought about this deeply yet) that the world-ending type scenario doesn't lend itself to sandbox games beyond a certain point.  If we've got to stop Grondar from getting the Staff of Pestilence or the entire continent withers, there's not really the same gameplay space as being a badass "Doc Holiday" type wandering from town to town.  At higher level, you can't just choose to engage or ignore the same way you can at low level.

So I'm not sure that mechanics make the biggest difference here, especially for my particular groups.  Some of it is the loss of gritty, low-level, dangerous situations.  If we run across 20 goblins, even at 5th level your party is cautious about the encounter.  At 15th level, you ROFLSTOMP them without a thought and walk away.  It's a different attitude, too.

I wanna pin this for the Savage Worlds thread I'm gonna make tonight or tomorrow.

*I* don't plan for games to become world-ending issues that need saving. I'm perfectly find with the players as a group deciding "We've done all we've set out to do. Now we all retire with our asses generally intact, and whatever treasures we've earned/stolen and managed to keep."

The reality is, since I'm pretty high-bandwidth in terms of what I can muster, my players just keep wanting to raise the stakes. I totally can see why you'd say as an instant reaction it seems that a sandbox is antithetical to super-high level play. It's not. I'd have thought so too, but the reality is once you understand the formula of your sandbox and how big it is, you already know the exit-points to expand the sandbox.

The *hard* part is making sure your system you use has mechanics that can "get you there" assuming you know, generally what is at stake.

Pacing is a huge part of this. The slower the pace, the more precarious the climb. Because the vagueries of running sandbox slower and more deliberately automatically includes more possibilities of scenarios developing that could cause campaign ending TPK's, especially if your players are deeply engaging with the setting itself: claiming territory, engaging in regional maybe even national politics, which have their own needs to address.

Ironically BECMI can do most of this, as long as the GM is willing to put in work. Later editions are even more difficult to do it with because their designs are so tightly bound but have too many widgets to deal with, it becomes onerous. Looking at you 3.x.

You can do the wandering Doc Holliday stuff all you want - IF the players want to do that stuff. I'm here for it (it's easy) It's the Players that have ambitions that will push the scope of the game.

Skip to the TL/DR part if you don't want the condensed blah-blah
Case in point - I had a small tiny sandbox, it was a run-down dwarven duchy, fallen onto hard times, in the Realms near the Great Rift. There were several villages around the core city, those enclaves had halflings and humans and a tiny contingent of elves. All these locales were founded by the adventuring party members of the dwarven duke when they were young, they all retired on his ancestral lands, where only he and the elf are last living members of that team.

The goal was for the PC's to be any of the standard races, they would be tied to the duchy based on the fact they grew up here, and the day-to-day stuff that was required to maintain the place were the starting point for all their characters regardless of class. The scope of that small little hub grew until started building temples to dead gods, had brushfire wars with the local gnoll tribes, discovered a secret ancient cult of Orcus worshippers in these adjascent regions, and having to deal with them. Expanding the game beyond the duchy to go to the Great Rift where the other dwarven dukes and their families and clans were dealing with intra-generational politics, lots of RP to open opportunities for the PC's make names for themselves under their ducal banner, adventures that further expanded their reputation until finally they achieved so much clout, some of them were given titles and land for their services.

Now we could have halted there - that was almost a year of play just to get there. But of course they're super-invested, they want to go on. Now their adventures had to do with regional threats, (did I mention they discovered a cavern system that lead to the Underdark and now drow scouts were detected! Oh my!) which turned into the PC's diving into the bowels of the earth because one of the half-elves in the party finds out their parents aren't just elves, but they're Imperial Elves who have been stationed here for the last two-hundred years as guards for one of the secret weapon vaults. Which tied back to an adventure they had a year earlier where they discovered the wreckage of this weird ship in the middle of the savannah... later to be revealed as a spelljamming ship. So now we're doing Underdark politics (Keep the Drow from discovering the bio-weapons of the Imperial Elven fleet) and Spelljammer? The exit points of this sandbox into a larger more encompassing sandbox...

And a year and a half later- now the duchy is a spelljamming port, massive dwarf vs. Drow wars, genocide, diving intervention... Lolth herself mysteriously dies... and now what?

The players are now rulers themselves... Spelljamming adventures are on the menu, Underdark problems and politics are on the menu. Their duchy is statted out, they responsibilities galore. Tons of NPC's have become part of their respective retinue - some have been with the PC's since the first part of the game years earlier. Some PC's are married with children. The cleric has his own temple to Moradin, the sandbox is massive. We could easily have stopped it there. But now these fuckers are more invested than ever. Because of the slow pacing they've come to accept "this is what we do in our games". We'd have whole 12-hr game sessions with no combat... just politics. Then when combat happened, it would be JLA vs. Legion of Doom type shit.

So now I have to expand the game further... naturally... a God has died. Why? Worse... what if the macguffin - the essence of that god fell to earth. Any immortal that could claim it would get that power... Simple premise...

Now we're doing Planescape shit. The sandbox is now multi-dimensional. The PC's in their attempts to claim the Godspark have kicked off a war between the Demons and the Devils by opening up a permanent dimensional rift from the Abyss into the first layer of Hell. Wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that at the bottom it all were Gods of the realms getting caught up in it, and the PC's all in the middle of a cosmic assassination plot. The end result of which lead to: Mystra dying, and Hecate taking over as Goddess of magic, and elements of the Greek pantheon "returning" to the Realms, several other Gods dying - several players became demi-gods, and others were just mega-powerful heroes.

TL/DR
and we ended it. Started very S&S, but each stage of the sandbox expanded to transcend and include everything below it. IT also broke me. I have never run a 3.x game since. In fact this was what stopped me writing for Dragon, because the contortions I had to do in order to make the game run was *intense*. Mike Mearls consulted directly with me on some of this, Treantmonk, then famous from ENWorld for making "builds" for PC's based on class, helped me make NPC's expressly designed to kill the shit out of my PC's who were the servants of various gods. Some of these NPC's had stat-blocs 4-pages long. It was way way way overkill... but we did it.

When it was over... 3.5 years of weekly playing 12-hr sessions, PC's were 20-21st level in a 3.x/PF1 campaign that killed ALL my love for the d20 system.

What killed it was the fact that I (and Mike Mearls) realized how fucking broken and stupid D&D had become post-10th level *mechanically* despite the narratives it tries to promote.

It wasn't that it HAD to be that way. Narratively, there are systems that can easily handle this power-level without breaking a sweat. But D&D is marketed at people like they're actually DOING what we did. And I know damn fucking well they're not. This thread kinda shows that.

Not that OSR players make that claim - but that's because they're playing a different game which they put away once they hit a "sane place to stop" - whether that means you all "don't want to play superheroics" or you know the system won't let you do that reasonably easily.

I'm betting it's both. BECMI *can* do it. But it's messy. This is why so few people run their games to the MI portion.

Addendum...

Whereas with a better system - you can cleanly emulate your 15th-lvl characters being challenged by Goblins without losing fidelity. We have to come to agree "what is a 15th-lvl character, and what *should* it look like in play narratively (not only mechanically).

For me? a 15th level character is someone playing Dynasty Warriors with goblins. You're heroic-slashing through goblins like *butter*.

In the D&D system, they would be no threat to you, unless you're using bi-nomial roll tables to simulate dozens of Goblins swinging at your enmasse.

But your point is really asking "What's the point of even doing it?"

That's where the right system can matter and make you care. OSR largely won't do that in this scenario - nor should it. But OSR systems will definitely do this better than 4e or 5e.

This may sound strange as a reply to this topic but let me see if I can make it make sense:  One of the things that I realized that was a turn-off for me for demigod or higher level play in D&D-like games was that I liked the idea of a lot of levels and slow advancement but not advancement in such chunks that it is "zero to demigod".  Where as "zero to (maybe sort of super ) hero" appeals very much.

This isn't only a power level thing for me, either, as it's all tied up in mechanics, tone, advancement pace, and story elements.  I probably prefer more character levels than most, but I want each level to be more incremental in power and not so drawn out to get as in, say, upper mid-level AD&D.  If BECMI had the spell levels spread more evenly over the 36 levels, and then it took less time to get each level, that would be pretty close to what I want, though of course just making those two changes to BECMI wouldn't exactly work without other changes as well.

That's also the way I usually ran Fantasy Hero, with the characters getting the steady dribble of XP but capping what they could do with it to avoid the god-like powers.  My first FH campaign notably didn't cap powers, with results that I made work, but didn't appeal afterwards.

In their brief dual publishing, ICE/Hero had this Mythic Greece book that was specifically about playing near demigods in that setting. If I wanted to run that kind of thing, that would be one option, though I suspect I'd probably go with something more like Zelasny's "Lord Demon".  Characters in those stories don't usually go zero to super hero.  They are born with powers, or at least destiny, and that radically changes the expectations of the setting.  In my usual fantasy settings, no-one has extra demigod potential, which is a cornerstone of how those settings work too.  For that matter, I'd also be interested in running a short campaign that was explicitly "epic comic book", but that's be closer to the fated/destiny/born powerful than my typical fair, too. 

I don't find this a strange reply *AT ALL*. In fact I think we're 100% in agreement.

1) D&D was never really designed to go past 10th. Obviously that cat is out of the bad. But it is a very different game post-10th level both mechanically, narratively by implication, and in complexity.

2) Many players either don't realize it overtly, or never have experienced prolonged play past 10th, where it was *good*.

3) The marketing of D&D since 3e has always been heavily implied either by its art or the narrative of the game for players to do things that clearly only high-level characters were doing. Which in hindsight might be the atomic root of the Mercer Effect.

4) GMing requirements. It takes a lot of work for a GM to pull it off (post-10th play). Most GM's can't sustain it, or got there inadvertently (mudflation and magic-item prolferation) and didn't know how to put the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube. It requires a GM understand the constraints of their setting, and what demands are in play for the PC's to have such power and how the setting accommodates such beings in the world. And they have to do it organically and seamlessly without being adversarial to the players.

5) Player maturity. It takes players that are strongly grounded in their characters, and their progression-arc has to be fully understood and rooted solidly in the setting by intent. Hamfist the Dwarven Berzerker that has the +5 Vorpal Axe of Chainsawing that tosses all conceits of his in-game history once he nabs the weapon of his dreams, and goes full hobo is probably not the player that going to help the process. Unless the GM has containment measures within the world for such possibilities. But a group of PC's with stake in the game, can go as far as they can trust their GM.

This thread kinda hints that a lot of OSR peeps stay in a lane where the overhead on GM's are relatively low, their ambitions on pushing their campaigns are low and frankly the mechanics of the system-du-jour probably seals that deal nicely.

But it doesn't have to. Now it could be that you whip a dog once too many and that dog just stops hunting. I'm *not* judging anyone for their tastes, I'm merely pointing out that with limited information it could be that people don't like high-level play because any of the points above and stick with what works for them and their crew.

I've long had this notion of creating my own 10-level 1e/2e inspired system. No fat. Just pure meat. Each level is meaningful and robust. If you made it to 10th level, options for domain level play (passive and/or active) across different "archetypes" - so Thieves Guilds, Mage academies, Manor lords, etc.

But the secret idea behind it would be the creation of a 11th-15th level Advanced game that plugs directly into it where the concerns of the game would be elevating those games into Super-Heroic play. This is where the Greek Mythological heroes, Arthurian knights , Charlemagne's Paladins, etc. would be the thematics of this "tier". But it would give a GM all the tools, methods and mechanics for GM's to maintain this kind of play.

If the demand were there... 16+ would Immortal rules. Demi-god mythic type stuff. Extra planar adventures, rules for the Gods and their hierarchies. Interactions with mortals. Powers over "spellcasting". It would be true Fantasy Supers. Much like reading Thor comics when he's doing his Asgardian stuff.

The issue for *me* is primarily system oriented because I can handle all the rest of requirements. But getting GM's to try or even be open to option, which they've been hamstrung repeatedly, until they've settled into the narrow channel they're comfortable with is understandable, and The Big Ask.

Well, the reason I went specifically with 24 levels with my system was to support the incremental improvements with a different kind of high-end play.  (I considered 36 to imitate BECMI, but it left some filler levels that didn't do much.)  Specifically, it lets me spread out the character access to magic over a greater range, in a gradual way, making the non-magical characters more viable over the whole range.  In any case, it's specifically design to allow the collapse into 12 levels if the GM wants, which would be the same kind of density that your 10 level version would have (also similar to the way ACKS works).  I did this on the grounds that it is easier for the GM to collapse to 12 than to expand 12 to 24, and it makes that magic advancement smoother.

However, where I think we diverge is that my version of your "Advanced" game past the standard max level is instead not kicking into another gear, but rather deliberately slowing ability gain (like early D&D past named level for fighters/thieves but for everyone).  Characters past 24 need some serious challenges to advance very fast, and they get less and less from each new level.  This dynamic is a way to hint at aging without all kinds of aging mechanical penalties built in.  My take on Arthurian knights is that Arthur is still a bad ass at level 25, 30, or whatever, but the trouble is everyone else is catching up to him, and a couple of 20's can take down a level 30 more often than not. 

Yeah, it's a form of GM laziness on my part, though not the one I think you are referencing here. I wanted a way for players used to modern D&D (and video games) to feel the level progression, but not outstrip the power curve.  It's not because I couldn't handle the power curve.  It's that the setting makes more sense to me without the crazy power curve.  Anyway, this lets me more or less ignore that aspect of things entirely while the players can chase levels to their heart's content. 

I started with OD&D, and I took the level names to heart. 4th level is a "hero" and 8th level is a "super hero." In my mind, parties of characters in literature should be around 4th level. Single heroes in literature would be around 8th.

In Lord of the Rings land...
1st = hobbits at the start of the trilogy
4th = hobbits at the end of the trilogy
4th = Boromir, maybe Legolas and Gimli
6th = Aragorn, as he was often a lone hero
6th = Ringwraiths, who could challenge Aragorn but not so much challenge Gandalf
8th = Gandalf the grey, Saruman, Radagast
10th = Gandalf the white
12th = Sauron (bad guys get to be stronger)

By this rule, Conan would be 8th. Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser probably 6th as they adventured as a pair (lower than individual, higher than party). Elric in the 6th-8th range.

According to Warriors of Mars, levels capped at 12. Only John Carter got to be 13th.

This is the way.

I should note that my own personal best solution is to put "half levels" in between existing levels rather than pushing the charts higher. That gives more tiny advancements without breaking the scale that I imagine the game works best with. I'm sure many will disagree with my opinion, but it works for me.

From an OD&D perspective I like this a lot. 8th is the *sweetest* spot.

The problem today are the literal hordes of gamers that have now grown up on 2.5 editions worth of 20th level bullshit marketing to ween them down to a 10-level spread is tough.

BUT I think it very much IS THE WAY.

My BECMI game that was roughly 2015-2019 went into C, ending around 19th/20th level with PCs ruling swathes of the Known World - Karameikos, Alasiya, & the Northern Reaches except Vestland.

My original 1e campaign in the 1980s-1990s got well into god tier play - https://immortalshandbook.com/shrine.htm

Since then, highest played was 4e 1-29th over 2011-2016, PCs reaching 30th end of last session.

My current Shadowdark game is intended to support unlimited play, certainly to 60th or so, with no ascension. Only early days, highest PC is 6th.

Quote from: finarvyn on January 07, 2025, 03:22:19 PMI should note that my own personal best solution is to put "half levels" in between existing levels rather than pushing the charts higher. That gives more tiny advancements without breaking the scale that I imagine the game works best with. I'm sure many will disagree with my opinion, but it works for me.

Right. So short of backwards compatibility with existing material (other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?), why not take the next step and break out the half levels into levels, and only give the existing power stuff every other level?  It's the same thing mathematically, but a lot easier for players to grasp.

To me, not getting a new Hit Die every level really puts some feeling of mortality on the players, though maybe that's just my testers.

Quote from: tenbones on January 03, 2025, 11:28:31 AMI'm curious for all the OSR folks here: how far in terms of power-level do your OSR games go?

Do any of you extend into the CMI portions of BECMI in your respective OSR rules in your campaigns? Which systems are you specifically using?

I primarily play and DM in AD&D 1e, and have run quite a number of campaigns over the years, with varying levels of PC power (some of which is linked to character levels, but not all):

- pre-middle-school gaming was all playing one shot modules, no campaigns; the levels of those games were dictated by the level ranges of the modules, and the pregens that came with them; so we played high-level PCs when in the D-series, and played low-level PCs in B1 and U1, etc.; our "campaigns" consisted of the module serieses:  A1-4, G1-3, D1-3, WG4-S4, U1-3, etc.
- high school gaming was marked by the first extended campaigns where we ran about four stables of PCs: one at high-levels (highest were Paladin/Cleric 8/17, F/MU/T 5/15/17, F/MU 10/14 or so, with followers/henchmen in the 7th to 11th range), two at mid levels (PCs ranged from 6th to 9th), and various low-level groups
- college gaming at home grew one of the low-level groups into mid-levels, but the PCs were movers and shakers, serving various demon princes, arch devils, the druidical hierarchy, the high council of timelords, etc.: they wielded artifacts, and travelled the planes; they also overlapped with the Penn State college group I DM'd, and some play overlapped and intermingled between the home and PSU group (both were in the same 6th-10th level or so by the time both college campaigns wound down after I moved to the midwest for grad school)
- while at PSU, I played in another group for 3-4 years, and it grew from a mid-level group of 7th-10th level PCs into a high-level group of 12th to 17th level PC; also very powerful, wielding artifacts, serving gods/demons, etc.

My contemporary games are at low-levels (the solo campaigns my 16 year-old and I DM for each other), and coming into lower mid-levels (PCs are levels 4-6; this game has been on hiatus since September 2024 due to job schedule chaos on my end, but it seems likely that pick it up again this month).  But that's also not quite indicative of power level for the groups, since the mid-level PCs have already adventured in the Astral Plane, and invoked/been subject to divine intervention several times (to both their weal and woe!). 

My favorite levels to play and DM are 9th+, when the gloves can really come off and we all get to play with the coolest of D&D's toys---the 5th+ level spells, the best magic items including artifacts, and the coolest monsters (demons, beholders, demons, dragons, demons, demon princes, demons, Iggwilv, demons, liches, demons, daemons, demons, etc.).

Allan.

The highest level games that I want to remember went to around 16th in 1e AD&D. One of the players wanted to get the Mage class title. However, when working with a game shop owner and going through some boxes of old books that people were trading it as I like to be on the lookout for early edition stuff. It was amusing to find people's old yellowed character sheets with stuff like 147th level magic-user and such. Yeah, high level play isn't exactly a new thing.