I'm curious for all the OSR folks here: how far in terms of power-level do your OSR games go? For those that do more historical stuff, obviously "power-level" might mean more temporal, but that counts.

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've probably posted this fifty times before, but one summer when I was in high school we ran BECMI all the way through Immortals and one of the characters actually tried to become an Old One. In junior high everyone had 50th level thieves with giant bags of scrolls and killed countless gods. Typical nonsense.

Outside of that stupidity, I really don't like running campaign games when the PCs get over ~8-9th level. It just sort of breaks down in my opinion, going from Conan to Fingolfin, which isn't as appealing because of the constant need for world-altering events. There are only so many Ragnarocks I can plan before it becomes old hat.

HOWEVER, I do think it's fun to do multi-session games that start the PCs off at high levels and let them go kill demon lords or whatever, otherwise what's the point of even having 9th level spells in the book? But these are more mission-specific, not sandboxy, and it scratches the itch of doing some high-level play without investing a ton of time and effort like I would with a regular campaign. It's fun seeing some 20th level paladin wade through hordes of undead and devils like he was stomping on ants, but I can't deal with that long-term.

If I had pick an optimal range, I like levels 3-6th because the PCs are powerful enough to deal with actual threats without being boring-ass Elminster clones. 6th level characters CAN kill an ancient red dragon with enough ingenuity and planning, but that dragon is still extremely threatening. That would probably be the pinnacle of the campaign for me, and after something like that I usually reboot and start over.

Limited power.

My players can grow to be notable, but they're never so famous that they become THE legendary heroes of their age. 

As for power, they've been leaders of a small nation.  Not one of the big ones, but a sovereign nation is still a sovereign nation. 

Palladium only goes to level 15, and they were various levels from 13 to 11.

I'm only OSR-adjacent.  On the BECMI scale, both what I've done in the past with that rule set or AD&D, as well as what I do now translated, it's roughly:

B - fair amount, of introducing new players or starting a new short campaign.
E - the majority of play.
C - edge into in some campaign, spend more time in others, never make it in a few.
M - only hit this, briefly, less than a handful of times.
I - zero interest.

Like Brad, I'd rather do my M levels as one-off (or playing Fantasy Hero in super hero mode or something like that).

In about half of my campaigns, hitting the C levels makes the PCs definite movers and shakers in that setting. Anyone higher than that is either non-existent or so tied down with responsibilities that they are effectively a plot device more than a character (like Elminister done correctly).

My homebrew setting goes in reverse. The early age when gods were numerous and magic was extensive led to world destroying events. Following those events in the New World, magic has been limited along with levels so as to avoid the same cataclysm which destroyed the Old World. So the early age, I use 3.x while the later age uses B/X limits like OSE.

To work with simple, basic numbers:

If a PC character can take 3 strikes from a sword or equivalent threat, and "still live"; that is definitely beyond low fantasy, in my opinion. 

If they can take 5 strikes, and "still live"; that is beyond mid fantasy, in my opinion.

What lies beyond 5 hacks of a sword, is the realm of high fantasy heroes.

The more this is stretched out, the less immersive realism remains.  It starts to become boringly repetitive.  I find low to maybe mid fantasy, the realm of most fun for me.

I am going by the open-ended definition and not just including TSR-era games as OSR. In my TSR-era games it seems that level 10-12 is mostly the top and characters are retired, or a new campaign begins or other prompt. For something like Barbarians of Lemuria or RuneQuest style games where a character starts out more competent or powerful and there are no levels the character DO become quite powerful and can become household names. In my experience it is more a matter of class vs classless games that define how powerful players get. Even way back in the V:tM 1e days it wasn't unusual to become super powerful and hard to bring down.

I've been playing B/X and I think the game starts breaking by level 7-8.

(maybe except when facing dragons, those are scary).

PCs seem impervious to random encounters. The MU has a couple of 7d6 fireballs every day.

If they die, well, the cleric can raise the dead by level 7 (I know BECMI does things differently).

Fighters aint much but with some magic armor they can rarely by harmed by orcs, zombies, etc.

That's probably why PCs should be running domains by level 9.

Twice, once in high school, and once in the early 2000s-2012, I ran BECMI campaigns up through the Master level.  We never wanted to play Immortals.  I've run several AD&D campaigns into the mid-upper teens in level.  I find the sweet spot for AD&D to be levels 8-12.  You're powerful, but the serious creatures like demons can still kill you.  The various retroclone campaigns I've run have ended at around 10th-12th level, lower in a couple cases.  Even in the past few years we've had TPKs at 7th-8th level in games like Hyperborea. We did max out an OSE party (14th) back in 2020-21.

Greetings!

Well, in my different Thandor campaigns, I have one group--"The Viking Group"--that have reached Level 8, and are Viking Jarls. They rule over various towns and villages, and control a raiding fleet of Viking Dragon Ships. The group is occupied with politics at home, while also developing and fortifying some lands that their marauding armies and warbands have taken on the Alben Shore. Between these two main concerns, they also deal with an on-again, off-again war between their kingdom and a Fomorach Kingdom. Exploring various mysterious islands, as well as mist-shrouded forests and mountains in the Northern Reaches, keeps them very busy. Periodically, they must also deal with attacks at sea by rival Viking marauders, as well as dreaded sea monsters.

Another group--"The Steppelands Group"--they have reached Level 8 as well, and are a cultural mix of Medieval Slavic Humans, and Steppe Barbarians. One of the group became a Khan, and leads a tribal group of some 100,000 people, and has an army of about 30,000 Steppe Warriors. "The Steppelands Group" serves their Lord, the Great Khan, and engages in exploration, trade, diplomacy, and war against rebellious tribes, as well as enemy peoples from various civilized kingdoms and empires. They are also concerned with inter-tribal rivalries, various warlords jockeying for prestige and authority. Beyond their immediate area of control, they must deal with terrible monsters, marauding bands of Bauk, as well as the growing strength of Orcs from the northern wastes and forests. Huge, exotic cities stretch out along their south-western frontier, and strange, unusual cultures.

How's that sound for "Power Level"?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

So, as far as "OSR" goes (let me know if you want some of the other games and power levels; for this I'll stick strictly to OSR), our games usually peak at about 8-11th levels.  By the time we've gotten to about 10th level, either the players have accomplished whatever is driving the characters' motivations, or we've played in that head-space long enough that everyone is looking for some variety.  This is primarily stuff like White Box, C&C, OSE, and other OSR games we've tried.  Mostly White Box.

Also, by about 10th level, the players have usually made enough powerful enemies that they are better off just riding off into the sunset of their retirement, anyway...

I have 1 BECMI character that managed to achieve Immortality, but never played as an immortal character. I have a high level campaign going on but its in a game im playtesting. I really wanna try to play a high level AD&D campaign after reading Dream House of the Nether Prince, but havent had the time to start any kind of AD&D.

I also really enjoyed running Godbound which basically starts you as a demigod. It was one of my favorite campaigns ive run. Granted it had the bonus of being during Covid while i was running a quarantine site with my unit. A quarantine site with no people in it for the first two weeks at that.

Once the PCs start getting to levels 12+ it seems like the campaigns trail off. I'd say 12-15 is the top end, in my experience.

I'll go as far as the players want to in this regard, lvl 30+ with named epic magic items and weapon mastery is an acceptable bone i can throw to any anime fans in the party, fine, you may bend air now, but so help me god if colored lines come flying out your head every time you are surprised i will try to send a shadow-you assassin after you over and over until such is rectified.

This 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.