The whole #mudcore debate seems to presume that D&D or OSR high level play is bad. It's not. In fact it's amazing, if you know how to do it right.
#dnd #ttrpg #osr

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.

For myself and my friends, Lvl 4-8 seemed to be the real sweet spot of the game for our characters. (Talking AD&D here) We played very few characters beyond 11-12th level. I don't recall ever having a character over 12th Level, although I might have had one go as high as 14. The character I considered my 'quintessential' character during those years I played off and on for a few years, and then he perished as an 8th Level Ranger in a home-brew version of Moria.

The problem for us was that we never stayed with a group of characters long enough to play 'high level.' It takes a looong time to get there, and honestly our attention spans weren't hardy enough to last it out before we got bored with a party and started over at 1st level .

It would be interesting to play some really high level characters at some point (15+) in an AD&D or 2E game.

Quote from: jmarso on March 22, 2023, 10:08:36 PM
The problem for us was that we never stayed with a group of characters long enough to play 'high level.'

My son complains that other players in our 5e Stonehell campaign keep making new PCs rather than stick with what they have, so his PC is now 14th level while newbies come in at 7th and everyone else is 7th-9th...

I do think most people who claim it "breaks," either had lousy DMs or never really played high level campaigns.  We made full use of the BECMI rules for domains and had a blast.  I've run two campaigns in BECMI that went into the 30+ level range, though we thought the Immortals rules were a mess and never played those.

For AD&D we've also done plenty of play above 10th level, mostly in an apocalyptic/journey to the Infernus campaign I wrote where PCs start at around 10th level.  The combats can be harder to run, but if you have good players, it's a blast.  We also had a great time playing the 2e module "A Paladin in Hell," which I think is probably the best high level module ever published by TSR for AD&D.  In that game we were using criticals and the exploding dice mechanic and there were some truly epic moments, such as when a samurai PC did a "Smaug" on a Linnorm dragon, burying a bunch of arrows in it and killing it from afar.

I think there is a reason why OSE caps at 14th level and many other OSR or OSR-ish games only go up to 10th level.

Quote from: Persimmon on March 23, 2023, 09:37:54 AM
I do think most people who claim it "breaks," either had lousy DMs or never really played high level campaigns.  We made full use of the BECMI rules for domains and had a blast.  I've run two campaigns in BECMI that went into the 30+ level range, though we thought the Immortals rules were a mess and never played those.

It's a matter of taste. I never played much BECMI, but in AD&D1, things get geometrically more complicated as characters go up in level. Especially, characters end up with golf bags full of dozens of magic items they are juggling, and spellcasters have dozens of spells to track.

In many other systems, high power characters mostly just have higher stats. So it's a lot simpler to run.

I've preferred the simpler high-stat for feeling epic, while high-level D&D felt more bogged down.

Haven't watched yet, but high-level B/X is doable - a 14th level fighter is no crunchier than a 1st level one, and the thief is barely the same. Sure, the spellcasters are much more powerful and fiddly; it helps that in my house rules a 14th-level MU has basically 14 spells.

(also, while I'm using feats, mostly "power ups" are simply augmenting abilities a little).

Playing 5e, however, my players forgot most of their powers by level 10.

Quote from: Rhymer88 on March 23, 2023, 10:27:02 AM
I think there is a reason why OSE caps at 14th level and many other OSR or OSR-ish games only go up to 10th level.

Yeah, it's simply that Gavin Norman is obsessed with Moldvay/Cook and didn't like the Companion Set.  He's pretty much said that straight up. 

I think B/X in particular, but also Swords & Wizardry, scales fine because the spells & extra abilities are fairly limited, as are the magical items.  If you add BECMI weapon mastery and other options, it's more fiddly, of course.  We finished Necropolis for Swords & Wizardry over Christmas with PCs in the level 9-13 range and it ran fairly smoothly.  In fact, the players enjoyed it so much that we'll be keeping those PCs for the even higher level Cyclopean Deeps campaign for S&W over the summer.

Greetings!

I have always enjoyed high-level D&D, whether the campaign was dealing with AD&D, 3E, or 5E. In every case, I have simply ramped up the opposition dial to 11. That's on a micro-tactical, mechanical level. High-level Player Characters do, of course, still set off on wilderness expeditions, and crawling into ancient crypts full of vampires, and go down into vast, subterranean fortresses full of all kinds of monsters.

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. Expanding from these dynamics, there are larger, "Big Picture" issues to deal with. Wars, rebuilding shattered allies, hosting allied refugee communities, invading enemies, resisting invaders, cultivating strategic resources, exploring strange, foreign lands, entertaining foreign ambassadors, engaging in political machinations, and more.

High-Level game play easily develops into complex, soap-opera-like episodes that often can take center-stage, and drive a campaign forward for many months or even years of real-time game sessions.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Persimmon on March 23, 2023, 09:37:54 AM
I do think most people who claim it "breaks," either had lousy DMs or never really played high level campaigns.

This may or may not be true, but you can't really dispute the notion that most D&D rolls are based on a d20, so at some point the mathematics can get wonky. Really high bonuses without corresponding really high AC mean that you get continual auto-hit situations. When I think of D&D "breaking" that's what I think about. Certainly there are ways around this such as restructuring the combat tables to account for number creep, or challenging characters with different types of challenge such as level drain, but none of this is really dealt with in the rulebooks. (So there is a "High Level Campaigns" book in AD&D 2E, but such resources are few and far between.)

Quote from: SHARK on March 23, 2023, 10:42:55 PM
High-Level game play easily develops into complex, soap-opera-like episodes that often can take center-stage, and drive a campaign forward for many months or even years of real-time game sessions.

They can do this, and such campaigns are very different in style from low-level games. Again, not a lot of guidance is provided for such campaigns.

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.

Quote from: finarvyn on March 24, 2023, 09:34:56 AM

Quote from: Persimmon on March 23, 2023, 09:37:54 AM
I do think most people who claim it "breaks," either had lousy DMs or never really played high level campaigns.

This may or may not be true, but you can't really dispute the notion that most D&D rolls are based on a d20, so at some point the mathematics can get wonky. Really high bonuses without corresponding really high AC mean that you get continual auto-hit situations. When I think of D&D "breaking" that's what I think about. Certainly there are ways around this such as restructuring the combat tables to account for number creep, or challenging characters with different types of challenge such as level drain, but none of this is really dealt with in the rulebooks. (So there is a "High Level Campaigns" book in AD&D 2E, but such resources are few and far between.)

Quote from: SHARK on March 23, 2023, 10:42:55 PM


High-Level game play easily develops into complex, soap-opera-like episodes that often can take center-stage, and drive a campaign forward for many months or even years of real-time game sessions.

They can do this, and such campaigns are very different in style from low-level games. Again, not a lot of guidance is provided for such campaigns.

To me, it's common sense that you're changing the play style and type of foes.  So 15th level characters aren't plowing through orcs; they're fighting devils, demons, and the like.  Those kind of monsters usually have a very high (or low in AD&D) AC, lots of hit points, spell resistance, multiple and special attacks, etc.  Hell, they can just keep gating in reinforcements.  I think there's also a default assumption, at least in earlier editions of the game (I never played extensively beyond 2e), that by the time characters get to those levels, both they and the DM have figured things out.  You don't need a bunch of specialized splat books telling you how to do it.  Give me a few outlines for domain play and or mass combat and let me go.

I've always enjoyed high level play so maybe I'm just an outlier.  And I've often had good players to work with so we really never had issues.

Quote from: Persimmon on March 24, 2023, 12:28:47 PM

To me, it's common sense that you're changing the play style and type of foes.  So 15th level characters aren't plowing through orcs; they're fighting devils, demons, and the like.  Those kind of monsters usually have a very high (or low in AD&D) AC, lots of hit points, spell resistance, multiple and special attacks, etc.  Hell, they can just keep gating in reinforcements.  I think there's also a default assumption, at least in earlier editions of the game (I never played extensively beyond 2e), that by the time characters get to those levels, both they and the DM have figured things out.  You don't need a bunch of specialized splat books telling you how to do it.  Give me a few outlines for domain play and or mass combat and let me go.

I've always enjoyed high level play so maybe I'm just an outlier.  And I've often had good players to work with so we really never had issues.

Well, part of the reason that high level WotC D&D play is messed up, even still somewhat in 5E, because of how saves scale.  I think sometimes people project that experience back onto their memories of earlier D&D, or in some cases just assume it without any prior experience of those earlier editions. 

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 24, 2023, 12:48:48 PM

Quote from: Persimmon on March 24, 2023, 12:28:47 PM

To me, it's common sense that you're changing the play style and type of foes.  So 15th level characters aren't plowing through orcs; they're fighting devils, demons, and the like.  Those kind of monsters usually have a very high (or low in AD&D) AC, lots of hit points, spell resistance, multiple and special attacks, etc.  Hell, they can just keep gating in reinforcements.  I think there's also a default assumption, at least in earlier editions of the game (I never played extensively beyond 2e), that by the time characters get to those levels, both they and the DM have figured things out.  You don't need a bunch of specialized splat books telling you how to do it.  Give me a few outlines for domain play and or mass combat and let me go.

I've always enjoyed high level play so maybe I'm just an outlier.  And I've often had good players to work with so we really never had issues.

Well, part of the reason that high level WotC D&D play is messed up, even still somewhat in 5E, because of how saves scale.  I think sometimes people project that experience back onto their memories of earlier D&D, or in some cases just assume it without any prior experience of those earlier editions.

I can't comment on save scaling in 5e, but I do know that some don't like C&C for the reason that saves are tied to the level of attack.  So, unlike in AD&D or OD&D, the attack level matters so if you're facing equally or more powerful foes, your saves are still going to be tough.  This ups the lethality factor quite a bit.  I don't mind this so much, but my players do, so they prefer Swords & Wizardry, where your saves are going to be pretty easy at the high levels.  But since we use a pretty brutal crit system, the lethality is there.