Quote from: GamerforHire on March 24, 2023, 09:47:43 AM
I have thought higher levels are really interesting in the abstract, but once I began DM-ing, I saw it as very frustrating and difficult because it was hard to anticipate the options I needed to plan for given the abilities of the player characters. I think you have to adopt a different mindset to get past that, but that is easier said than done.

Yeah. I think this goes with what I said about complexity. The sheer number of abilities with all the spells and caddies full of magic items can be difficult to anticipate.

I think a bigger issue than scaling in combat is the added options for PCs to completely circumvent encounters. For example, use scrying/spying to see all the defenses, then teleport to the end and nuke the boss with an alpha strike. I remember a high-level AD&D1 adventure where there was a castle to defend with constant Detect Magic from gangs of mages. Since the druid's changed shape didn't register, though, he could scout - and the rest of the party all got in a Portable Hole that he put in his pocket before transforming. So we just skipped past all the castle defenses. If it hadn't been for that loophole, though, there's no way we could have fought through the defenses.

Quote from: SHARK on March 23, 2023, 10:42:55 PM
Having said that, however, the campaign "Texture" also experiences a transition, a gradual transformation in flow, pacing, and dynamics. The Player Characters have typically become involved in very high positions within the local society and community. The Player Characters become drawn into diplomacy, rulership, raising, funding, and leading armies. Along with all of this, there are romances, marriages, children, illicit affairs, betrayals, assassination plots, and seeing to the various relationships of numerous family members, children, friends, and henchmen.

These are all interesting possibilities -- but I'd note that they aren't tied to being high level. Low-power characters can still have high positions - just within a smaller scale of community. So they could be the most respected patrons of a local village, and become involved in raising and funding militia for local defense, becoming involved with the local leaders, and so forth. These sort of plots were a feature of several of my relatively low-power RuneQuest and HarnMaster campaigns.

I had a recent-ish D&D campaign that was similar, where the community was a small band of apocalypse survivors (similar to The Walking Dead). With civilization fallen from a plague of dragons, the PCs were the protectors of their own small band.

I've only ever touched on the edges of high level D&D play (12th level in AD&D) but the biggest issue I had was feeling disconnected from the game.  At high level, play starts to lose its resemblance to real life and it's harder for me to feel connected to and care about the characters.

When I run high-level campaigns, I typically use BECMI / Rules Cyclopedia.

For me, the way to run these campaigns is to

1. Involve PCs that are more than simply adventurers. They are barons, dukes, or generals, and their objectives are not simply to crawl through dungeons and gather loot. They will be involved in fighting full-scale wars, protecting the realm from awesome creatures (dragons, et. al.), or rescuing a prince / princess. The PCs will be engaged in diplomacy, statecraft, and tournament.

2. utilize mass battle rules. I love the War Machine and Sea Machine in the BECMI set.

3. Domain management (in the Campaign Set).

Encounters against deadly foes will not be drawn-out affairs. You either dispatch the ancient dragon quickly, or you die.

But I have also used AD&D for some high-level stuff as well. The "Lich Lords" module is awesome--not easy to run, but rewarding.

Quote from: MerrillWeathermay on March 24, 2023, 06:16:40 PM
When I run high-level campaigns, I typically use BECMI / Rules Cyclopedia.

For me, the way to run these campaigns is to

1. Involve PCs that are more than simply adventurers. They are barons, dukes, or generals, and their objectives are not simply to crawl through dungeons and gather loot. They will be involved in fighting full-scale wars, protecting the realm from awesome creatures (dragons, et. al.), or rescuing a prince / princess. The PCs will be engaged in diplomacy, statecraft, and tournament.

2. utilize mass battle rules. I love the War Machine and Sea Machine in the BECMI set.

3. Domain management (in the Campaign Set).

Encounters against deadly foes will not be drawn-out affairs. You either dispatch the ancient dragon quickly, or you die.

But I have also used AD&D for some high-level stuff as well. The "Lich Lords" module is awesome--not easy to run, but rewarding.

Excellent points.  And I think the War Machine is better than the Battle system rules for mass combat and can easily be used for other editions of D&D.  There are super simple mass combat rules in Swords & Wizardry, but we haven't tried them yet.

High level campaigns are the best. All the players know their characters and each other's stories so well, and the setting itself. Play goes from local at low levels, nation-wide at mid levels, and outer planar at high levels. Challenges ramp up with the player's abilities. OSR play is fantastic at it.

While I like 5e, it is terrible at mid level and beyond, combats become drudgery, the numbers are so out of whack that it is virtually impossible to moderate the game.

I've run high level games in AD&D 2e, 3.0, and 3.5.  The system definitely fights you at high levels- you can't easily put a bunch of monsters in the room and have a solid and meaningful encounter as you can at low levels, winning initiative is extremely impactful, and by the default rules a powerful hero or villain will only rarely be rendered actually dead.  Further, there's incredible impacts to worldbuilding- things can buff and teleport in to the PCs, which the PCs can also do, limited wish is very disruptive, and wish even moreso, and there's reasonably bullshit combo spells and things which allow multiple actions or immunity to entire classes of threats.  Ground can be created and destroyed, castles are a sucker's game, etc. 

You can, and should, fix all of these.  Can you smear something on the wall to disallow teleportation in?  Or teleportation out?  Are there certain specific wishes that are well understood to not work?  Are castles built in a way that disallows trivial magical destruction, and armed with battlements that are somewhat effective against flying troops? 

Then there's mechanical system oddities.  Dispel magic in AD&D is a pile of dispel checks versus a bunch of different target numbers, spells have extremely harsh effects and the progression of saves in OSR games indicates that they will only rarely take effect- exacerbating the "rocket tag" complaint, as a save-or-die is balanced around bouncing off the high level party but will sometimes kill like three dudes who can't roll above 2.  Scenarios where combat is a give and take become very rare, and combat becomes easy to enter into and escape from- until there's no escape for some reason.

Processing out of game stuff is hard, and most systems in the day didn't offer enough support directly.  Supplements required you to piece together how to run the keep, and did the player want to play sim city or populous?  If you had some players that didn't engage with that, they would tune out for portions of that game play.  These days this is easier, as there are better systems you can glue in to things.

I think it's absolutely worth all that though- I've never started a game that I didn't assume would go for a long time and a high level.  But I totally understand why there would be people who don't want all that.  The world described by high level D&D is pretty alien, after all.

3e/PF is the only D&D edition I've found where high level really doesn't work. 1e-2e is fine, as is BECMI of course. 4e 11-20 is fine; 21-30 gets painfully slow, but still works. 5e I actually find is great for high level play. It's a lot more constrained than earlier editions. Stuff like "20 Vrock Demons attack!" can get a bit slow to resolve as some WoTC monsters are just bags of hit points, but overall I can run it like high level AD&D and it works fine. I've run a couple 5e campaigns up to 20th and beyond, both were fun.  The Wilderlands sandbox game was especially great.

You play Godbound.

Alternatively, make tools for people to dial up or down the craziness of their campaign as much as they want. You want Dragon Ball? Okay, just pick these options. You want Conan? Okay, pick those options.

I've decided to take a more adversarial stance in this thread!  This should liven the thread up a bit.  Here's my argument:

Most of the OSR has great support for midlevel play, and not much support for traditional highlevel play

I'm going to define "traditional high level play" as stuff you would see if your AD&D campaign went to max level- past 18 in all versions.  In this worlds, the party has access to coming back to life, combat involves getting through stoneskin, project image, and protections such as "I'm actually on the ethereal plane", "I'm immune to non-magical weaponry", "I only take 1 point of damage from sources that are not magical and bludgeoning", etc.  The exact protections vary from version to version and depending on which high level casters are around, but generally they require being removed via dispels or blown through via certain special powerful attacks.  Additionally, high level parties and their enemies can transit between anywhere pretty fast.  The party likely has at least one pocket plane that is their own, assuming they haven't made alliances with some actual good faction on some version of heaven to hang out in if they need.  Enemies have similar protections and capabilities.

While old games have this- OD&D going to 36, AD&D being well defined to 20 and with rules for beyond, in both versions- not many OSR games do.  I struggle to think of a single OSR game where Prismatic Spray is on the table, to say nothing of Timestop, or the full set of Power Words.  Most games have some alternate epic-style advancement starting between 8th and 14th level, some way to access things that go beyond the normal set of powers.

So what do we mean by high level?  If it means "the PCs have a large ability to interact with the world and are well known to the powerbases of that world, or are their own powerbase", then I think OSR does fine.  There are much better campaign-level rules in OSR products than actual old games, and they are generally better than what you'll find in new modern games as well.  AD&D told you that you could build a castle; ACKS gives you the rules for that, 5ed replaces that with Action Surge.

But that's not all of high level play.  The really imaginative, open ended, and world-distorting powers, spells, and often monsters, are generally omitted from OSR rules.  I think OSR caps out at midlevel play with good support for the players pulling some levers that effect the powerbases of the world, but doesn't do high level the same way that AD&D did, or even that 3.X and 5e take stabs at.

Quote from: VisionStorm on March 22, 2023, 05:14:11 PM
Haven't finished watching yet, but like I said in the video comments, IMO D&D SUCKS at high level play in general, regardless of edition or variant of it. But the idea that old school D&D or the OSR specifically, is particularly bad at it is nonsense. If anything later editions of the game make the aspects of it (such as HP inflation) that make high level play suck even worse. So to single out the OSR just cuz it focuses on the only truly playable levels of play of the game is absurd.

There's a lot of things you could criticize the OSR for, but this one seems like silly nitpicking that's even worse in other versions or editions of the game.

My point in the video, however, is that the OSR is generally very good for high level play. And of course some OSR games are more great at it than others.

(1) I wish more RPGs cut things off around 10th level. I love the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, but like B/X more because the high level stuff isn't there at all. I'd love to buy a RC (or 5E player's handbook, or whatever) with only material needed for characters through level 10. The stuff for levels 11-20 could be in a "high level handbook" or some such.

(2) I've tinkered with the notion of adding levels in between the existing ones. Allows for characters to "level up" faster without really gaining power faster.

Quote from: finarvyn on March 28, 2023, 09:14:47 AM
(1) I wish more RPGs cut things off around 10th level. I love the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, but like B/X more because the high level stuff isn't there at all. I'd love to buy a RC (or 5E player's handbook, or whatever) with only material needed for characters through level 10. The stuff for levels 11-20 could be in a "high level handbook" or some such.

(2) I've tinkered with the notion of adding levels in between the existing ones. Allows for characters to "level up" faster without really gaining power faster.

I think there are so many things tied up into leveling pace and power, that it has to be examined as a package in every game that uses them.  I don't mind higher levels in a game where I'm not going to use them (much), as long as they are well thought out.  It sets some boundaries for the campaign.  Plus, there comes a point in every leveling system where any additional levels are "tacked on".  That's true no matter how you design it, though the design can move the point up or down.  For example, I don't think there's a problem having 36 levels in RC.  There's not a problem having a name level in the 9-11 range in RC. There's not a problem tacking on levels after name level (especially with some of the options added in).  There is, however a disconnect the way all of those things interact in RC.

Which makes it funny you should mention adding levels in between.  I took roughly the scope of RC, compressed it into 24 levels, but spread out more evenly.  There's no "name" level.  However, classes stop at level 24, even if the leveling doesn't.  (You get things after 24, just not the core things the class gives.  And leveling is pretty darn slow in the upper reaches.)   However, my equivalent of "Hit dice" only improve on the odd levels, and there are other things that take 2 to 4 levels that would only take 1 or 2 in RC. 

In other words, I built the "in between" levels as the default.  Nothing would stop a GM who wanted less leveling from simply combining every 2 levels into 1 level each, and slowing the XP progression accordingly.  It's just easier that way than it is to try to stick the levels into a game already compressed.

Quote from: finarvyn on March 28, 2023, 09:14:47 AM
(1) I wish more RPGs cut things off around 10th level. I love the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, but like B/X more because the high level stuff isn't there at all. I'd love to buy a RC (or 5E player's handbook, or whatever) with only material needed for characters through level 10. The stuff for levels 11-20 could be in a "high level handbook" or some such.

(2) I've tinkered with the notion of adding levels in between the existing ones. Allows for characters to "level up" faster without really gaining power faster.

Why not just buy Old School Essentials?  It cuts off at level 14.

Quote from: Persimmon on March 28, 2023, 09:57:35 AM
Why not just buy Old School Essentials?  It cuts off at level 14.

ACKS too. Level 1-14 B/X cuts off at level 6 spells and is good for the OD&D feel, avoiding the god-level spells Gygax introduced in the Greyhawk supplement. You're definitely 'high level' at 9th-14th, but not a god.

Err, which notable old school products don't cut off between 10th and 14th level?  ACKS is mostly just to 14, worlds without number is 10, hyperborea is 14, a whole lot of them end there.  That's actually my earlier contention in the thread, OSR doesn't actually have many systems that even get to classical high level play, they cap out at mid level and then provide a bunch of rules to do important mid level things (instead of just handwaving "you can build a keep" as actual old D&D did).