Out-leveling the base setting?

[K]

Ok, here is an esoteric question: should anyone every get too big for the setting?

By that I mean should anyone ever get to such a level that they are the most powerful thing in the setting, thus forcing PCs into "higher-powered" settings?

An example might be that you rule the kingdom, killed the dragon, and set up paper money and basic sanitation for your people. Should you then be forced to go to Sigil or the Realms to find adventures?

I'm asking because lots of settings don't seem to be able to survive high level heroes and the common expectations of them. I mean, if Gandalf was a 20th level DnD Wizard he's be chain-binding balors to build waterworks and earthworks, and not fighting them in dirty caves.

The alternative is the Russian Doll setting. This assumes that there are ever more powerful things in the setting that keep a low profile until the deeds/magic/enemies of the heroes summon/awaken/activate/create the baddies. This makes less sense, but it is playable as long as you don't think tooo hard about it. The Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk work like that.

[Psychic Robot]

I'm not sure what you're asking--do you mean, "Should the PCs be pushed into a new setting (even if you're in a completely different setting to begin with)?"

[K]

I'm not sure what you're asking--do you mean, "Should the PCs be pushed into a new setting (even if you're in a completely different setting to begin with)?"

I guess the idea is specific settings have core conceits. For example, Eberron is pretty lame once you can teleport because lightning rails and airships are just for low-levels to get around.

So should you just say Eberron(1-10) meaning that it falls apart past 10th level and you need to play with those characters in a setting like Planescape(10-30)?

Or should settings be built with a mechanic/conceit that enables "rare" evils that happen to pop up when an adventure is needed. An example is Paizo's Pathfinder setting where another chunk of super-advanced Runelord magic gets found and starts off a new adventure path whenever the previous one is done.

[Ice9]

I'm of mixed feelings on this.

On the one hand, having an established level range for the setting gives you a more consistent world, as well as a feeling of achievement once you reach the upper eschelons of that world. Not to mention, the russian-doll method can feel like running in place.

On the other hand, if everyone really enjoying, say, Dark Sun, then having to switch to Planescape because you fell off the top of the level scale could be a downer.

Overall, I'd say yes, go with a level range. However, what could be useful is some "template settings", that add an expanded range to an existing setting. Planar travelling/invasion is a common one, but there could be others - how about going "behind the scenes" and finding that the world you know is a skin over an elemental maelstrom, held together only by the efforts of those in the know? Or that the gods literally do play chess with the world, and you've just been promoted past pawn.

[RandomCasualty2]

Yeah, I don't ever believe that PCs should be pushed off their setting, unless they want to be.

If your campaign is a series of one shot adventures without recurring NPCs, or even recurring cities or anything, then it's probably not a big deal to start your adventures on the planes instead of on Eberron, but if your PCs are used to a more connected campaign, suddenly throwing them onto the planes for every adventure can be rather annoying, since it means leaving behind all their friends.

It also tends to feel like railroading, because for the most part, the PCs don't really want to go to the planes full time. It's a lot better just introducing higher level threats for them to have to deal with. It's always possible some new threat shows up, who could actually be from the planes or could just be some dormant evil in a can that got woken up lately. And PCs tend to buy that a bit more instead of "Ok, so you decided to head out to the planes for no apparent reason."

[ckafrica]

I think your dead on. Power levels should be attached to the game world. You start a game out with rat and goblin killing, saving milkmaids and becoming the town sheriff. At the point where you power up beyond what it takes to do this, you should leave. I mean if you don't you're going to call down all the big nasties the gun for hardasses like yourselves.

At this point you should be called on by national issues. Big dark nasties which are aiming to do serious shit that make a village hero soil his hose. Once your powers will make a quantum leap. You won't be asked to fight a band of ogres any more because it's fucking beneath you and people know it. It would be like calling in the FBI for a shoplifter.

Once you've gotten to the point that almost no one sane would dare fuck with the kingdom you protect, it's time for the gods to give you a boon to become their champions and do their bidding. You are now beyond the concerns of mere nations but are fighting the ultimate battles of light and dark.

Each grouping should be discreet and vastly different. An 11th level character should eat a 10th level for breakfast. They should probably be completely separate classes. They also should be completely cool to play in exclusion of the other levels.

[Username17]

The world as a whole should be written to accommodate every power level that the rules allow to exist. And yeah, that means that Eberron doesn't really work in the D&D system. The D&D system only works in a world where people think long term about resurrection counters, global communication is handled by Lantern Archon post (50 pounds is a lot of letters), and cities are expendable enough to have the world keep spinning when people toss a few storm of vengeances around.

The rules you write are not separable from the world that is painted on that canvas. The 4e thing where you say "Fuck it, ignore the rules, only 12th level characters fight Cyclops minions..." is completely unacceptable. It shouldn't be possible to outgrow the setting, because the setting should be resilient to the grown-up portions of the rules.

If you're dead set on having a world where teleportation can't solve all your travel problems and you need to sail around on steam ships - you need to use a rule system where teleportation actually doesn't solve all your damn travel problems.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

Having a 'high level setting' is fine. I disagree with the idea of forcing characters to abandon their world in search of greater challenges, but it should be an option.

In Dark Sun, for example, the high-level setting is fairly different: rather than adventuring around dealing with bandits and desert monsters while trying to avoid notice of the templars, you're doing politics with sorcerer kings from your lava-shrouded forest or your templar-defended city-state.

That doesn't mean that the world has changed. The nature of the game is different. Ideally, leveling up should integrate characters more and more into the setting. As the character develops, the game adapts.

I would not have a problem with shifting to one of the more Magic-esqe ideas that was proposed long ago. Capturing, using, and defending mana is a fine goal for high-level characters.

[JonSetanta]

Out-leveling a setting would be like Katamari by the final stages.

Your ball grows so large that you're scraping clouds. That whole small town you flailed around in is now part of your collection.
It's still the same setting, but as a whole it's .... changed. The world shrinks in comparison.

It wouldn't be a matter of being pushed to a new one as much as your old setting has become ineffectual of sustaining your interest in the wake of your new perceptions and influence.

A demigod could sit in a small tavern drinking mead, but other than quaint nostalgia what purpose would it serve?
There are other demigods to fight and they usually aren't there.
And if they are , the town is screwed and a new setting must be found anyway.
I see it that a new setting isn't a choice. It's forced upon powerful characters because they can't afford a narrow worldview.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The rules you write are not separable from the world that is painted on that canvas. The 4e thing where you say "Fuck it, ignore the rules, only 12th level characters fight Cyclops minions..." is completely unacceptable. It shouldn't be possible to outgrow the setting, because the setting should be resilient to the grown-up portions of the rules.

If you're dead set on having a world where teleportation can't solve all your travel problems and you need to sail around on steam ships - you need to use a rule system where teleportation actually doesn't solve all your damn travel problems.

You don't really outgrow the setting in 4th Edition, because you don't do anything to change the setting.

I mean, at a certain level in 3rd Edition you could pretty much be all 'fuck the government'. This does not happen in 4th Edition. While you could still beat up all of the king's soldiers and kill the peasants, you can't build your own government with blackjack and hookers.

You could do such a thing in 2nd and 3rd edition. Therefore it was possible there to actually break out of the setting. But you can't in 4th. You can raze a city to the ground... but then what? Since you can't build another city or even start up a mining camp, it's no better than if the Dark Lord did it.

[RandomCasualty2]

You don't really outgrow the setting in 4th Edition, because you don't do anything to change the setting.

I mean, at a certain level in 3rd Edition you could pretty much be all 'fuck the government'. This does not happen in 4th Edition. While you could still beat up all of the king's soldiers and kill the peasants, you can't build your own government with blackjack and hookers.

People say this stuff, but I honestly don't know what it means.

Theres no reason you can't make your own kingdom in 4E. Granted you don't' have the shortcut cheats that you've got in 3E. You can't fabricate for infinite money, and you can't have infinite wishes. But shit, people in the real world have made kingdoms and castles without that stuff.

Why is it impossible to make a kingdom using mundane resources?

[K]

You don't really outgrow the setting in 4th Edition, because you don't do anything to change the setting.

I mean, at a certain level in 3rd Edition you could pretty much be all 'fuck the government'. This does not happen in 4th Edition. While you could still beat up all of the king's soldiers and kill the peasants, you can't build your own government with blackjack and hookers.

People say this stuff, but I honestly don't know what it means.

Theres no reason you can't make your own kingdom in 4E. Granted you don't' have the shortcut cheats that you've got in 3E. You can't fabricate for infinite money, and you can't have infinite wishes. But shit, people in the real world have made kingdoms and castles without that stuff.

Why is it impossible to make a kingdom using mundane resources?

Well, 4e neuters all the tools you'd need. You even can't make diplomacy checks because the DM can set them arbitrarily high, you can't have troops loyal to your cause as a class features so the DM can just say "you can't staff a castle", and you can't even accumulate the wealth needed to construct a castle or build roads. Any power in previous editions that would let you bypass these limitations like charm has also been cut out of the system.

4e doesn't allows PCs to affect the setting.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Why is it impossible to make a kingdom using mundane resources?

Okay, RandomCasualty.

With as little DM fiat as you can manage, why don't you tell me how:

You attract and convince people to come to your village in the first place.
You put up some buildings, walls, whatnot.
You supply your population with arms and equipment to protect them from invasion.
You start an economy of some sort, even a bullshit one like 'I grow daisies'.
You shave off some of the production of your civilians to make this whole enterprise worth it.

If you answer 'well, the peasants take care of all these things' to any of these, your name is fucking mud unless you demonstrate to me that the PCs could use these same mechanics if they really wanted to.

[baduin]

As for growing out of the setting, the Astral Projection is perfect for that. You build your mausoleum, fill it with traps, leave your body in suspended animation, and go on to live forever on the planes.

The spell should be probably changed a bit for that, but that are minor things (eg it shouldn't be possible to dispel it by casting Dispel on the astral form).

[Lago PARANOIA]

lol Astral Projection.

That spell was so broken that nobody even complained about it. It wasn't like polymorph or wish or gate where we managed to convince ourselves for years that if we just made a couple of rules tweaks it'd manage to work. Oh no.

[Manxome]

I would be in favor of having a single, consistent world capable of supporting all levels of play, if that can be managed. Naturally, I expect different parts of that setting would be in the foreground at different levels...

Though I'd have no objection to having additional settings on the side that only support restricted level ranges. "What would the world look like if we removed everything above (or below) level X?" seems like a valid starting point for an interesting setting.

[fliprushman]

I have to admit, it's easy for a world to be outleveled by the players if the DM is still trying to through the same type of challenges he used from lvl 1. So I don't think it's a problem created by the players or the setting but more based on the DM.

A solution to this would be to have the setting DM proof or to teach DM's how to make the game seem appropiate for the players at all levels of play. Since the latter is dang near impossible, and the former is just as impossible, I don't think there is a way to fix that.

[IGTN]

If the setting has some one-sentence (or two, or even three-sentence) adventures given for all level brackets of play, or some short descriptions of the kinds of adventures people at each level could do, prominently displayed for DMs, it might work better. Similar to what Frank and K did in the Tome of Fiends.

[NoDot]

The rules you write are not separable from the world that is painted on that canvas.

I've always found something odd about this argument, but I couldn't put my finger on it. If you meant "genre," then I might be able to agree with you, but "world" falls flat on one concept: reflavoring.

[Cynic]

Well, K's idea is worked into Frank's idea summat.

If a world is built for all power levels.

Let's focus on that a bit.

level 1 --

You are fighting the rat king dungeons

Great you are out of htat town.

Jump up two levels

Level 3 -- you are in the forest fighting nymphs who have been acting wierd and orcs and trolly stuff.

jump up two levels.

you found a waterfall in the forest that leads underground into the underdark.

Level 5 -

you find the the drow wizard and his cadre of cadavers who have been controlling all the fey in the forest.

jump up two levels.

level 7

in a last ditch effort, the drow wizard uses a scroll of gate to acheron but as he uses it, he gets killed.

great, you've got to close it. from the other side.

you get the idea.

it seems silly and one-shottish. but that's the best i can come up in migraine form.

if you do it right it can be done well.

otherwise,

you do it the normal way.

you are on the prime for a few levels and then you plane hop.

if you don't like that.

but the russian doll approach is only pliable if the player knows that it lies out there.

if you play it as a game where these unknown dangers pop up and get them out of the setting that they have grown attached to, what do they have to fight for?

[Tequila Sunrise]

Ok, here is an esoteric question: should anyone every get too big for the setting?

'Should' has nothing to do with it. Does your group really like the setting they're playing in? Then the Russion doll solution is best; or starting again at level 1. Is your group ready for something new, or perhaps the setting isn't really important to them? Then the Planescape/new horizons solution is best.

I mean, at a certain level in 3rd Edition you could pretty much be all 'fuck the government'. This does not happen in 4th Edition. While you could still beat up all of the king's soldiers and kill the peasants, you can't build your own government with blackjack and hookers.

Lago, I love how you present your wild misconceptions and rabid fear of 4e as fact. D&D hasn't had anything approaching real rules for PCs becoming campaign bigwigs since 2e, and you know why? Because for most gamers, those kind of rules are boring and unnecessary. Seriously, do you actually play D&D or do you just bitch about what you read? Because the vast majority of D&D players realize that changing the setting by doing things like building castles and cities is one of the many things that are more easily handled by a bit of role play, DM judgment and overall creativity rather than rules. You want rules for building houses of ill-repute, attracting hookers and making profits? Go play Administrators and Accountants, because no edition of D&D has what you're looking for.

TS

[Lago PARANOIA]

I love how you singled me out be for laughter and your mischaracterization of me as the only person wanting these things, TS.

Fuck, man, people on this board have been saying for months about how 4th Edition does not allow you to break out of your tiny cardboard shell of fighting monsters the way you do in a video game. I mean, D&D has always had these problems but it's never been this bad. 4th Edition exacerbates this problems by not allowing rules for crafting a fucking sword or running an inn.

This isn't just an issue of there not being rules on how to throw a festival. These are basic fucking things to fantasy like attracting followers and figuring how much to charge people for services.

So eat me for the strawman. It was unnecessary to make your point, whatever it was.

[IGTN]

(e: Response to A_Cynic)

I was thinking more along the lines of:

Low-Level Adventures:
The baron/mayor/chief/wizard/guild contact/magistrate summons you to speak with him. You get there and he asks you to. . .

- Slay the wererat that has been sending sewer rats to assault the city.
- Investigate the newly-opened/activated ruins outside of town
- Rescue his daughter from the goblins
- Carry a message to a fortress three days' ride away
- Protect this season's tribute to the Sahuagin as it is taken to a hidden cove.
- Meet a VIP whose boat is docking at the next town, and escort him overland to yours.
- Protect a merchant carrying your town's product (ore/wheat/whatever) shipment to the market to avoid a salt shortage.

Mid-Level adventures:
A messenger of some kind tells you. . .

- A dragon has been terrorizing trade routes, and numerous merchants and kings have offered a reward for its head.
- The neighboring kingdom is rumored to be planning an attack. Rewards will be rich for those who can stop them with discretion.
- The PCs are invited to a secret war council with the king.
- The king is holding a secret war council, and the PCs are not invited.
- A farming village in the Valley of Songs was destroyed. Apparently, while digging a well, they stumbled on to some kind of ancient ruin.
- The giants of the Valley of Songs have begun to form larger bands and raid outlying cities together.
- The crown prince of the next kingdom over has been captured by a hobgoblin warlord, and his mother is surreptitiously putting together a large ransom.
- An earthquake has opened a chasm into an illithid city a day's ride from a major town. The illithids' psionics have kept the city intact, and they'd appreciate it if others were kept from discovering their secret.
- An earthquake has opened up a chasm into a portion of the underdark inside of a major city, flooding a Drow city. Now angry Drow have been forced onto the surface.
- Skum have been sighted by enough people that your friends believe them. Why are the Aboleths on the move now?
- Sahuagin are raiding coastal villages. It's time to take the fight to them.

High-Level Adventures:

As you sit in your throne room, you see. . .

- An enormous wyrm soaring between the mountain peaks that give your throne room its view.
- An Efreet teleport in and offer rich rewards for whoever can help him deal with a rival in the City of Brass.
- One of your vassals informing you that your Lich rival is dead, but that Orcus is not happy about losing his greatest servant on the Material plane.
- Your vassal informing you that the Lich has betrayed Orcus, who is sending forces to assault the Material.
- A Gate opening in the sky and a Githyanki astral fleet pouring through it.
- Your harbormaster, telling you that your ship is ready to sail in retaliation against the Sahuagin.
- Your court sage, telling you that the recent rain of diseased blood was probably due to a once/millenium magical event being finally harnessed. Interestingly enough, though, there's another magical event every 17 years that can be made stronger by a large amount of plague blood. It happens next week; who is benefitting from all of this?

Although, of course, this works better with a better-defined world; you cannot do politics on a blank-slate world, which is why there aren't any here. The high-end list, also, includes a lot of Planar things; a better list would have more Material things.

'Should' has nothing to do with it. Does your group really like the setting they're playing in? Then the Russion doll solution is best; or starting again at level 1. Is your group ready for something new, or perhaps the setting isn't really important to them? Then the Planescape/new horizons solution is best.

If the rules make the characters outgrow the setting, then they are forced on to new horizons. If they don't, then they can choose to leave for a higher-level plane of existence, or they can choose to stay.

If they do outgrow the setting, then they will be the biggest fish in the pond, able to eat anything in the setting. A 15th-level party could easily divide a world that ignores the consequences of anything that happens after 10th level into four empires, one for each of them. Once you rule the entire world, though, you don't get to have many adventures; putting down rebellion isn't much fun, and new evils waking up because your big and mighty only works if you don't think about it too hard or lampshade it.

Personally, I'd say that PCs should not be forced to leave the material for Sigil or Union by the default setting, but should have the option of doing so. Any official setting that does so should have a level range on it and suggested continuations; a setting made as a small pond should lead into a bigger one, but playing in the ocean (with everything from plankton to whales) should be the default.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I think TS is onto something in a way. The rules for pre-3e D&D assumed that you were going to become some kind of bigwig at Level 9-10. There were two problems with that assumption. First, the rules never gave you detailed advice on how to make the politics and logistics of running your kingdom interesting. Second, most players (at least partly because of the first reason) preferred to do dungeon crawls until Level 20 and beyond.

WotC's solution was to build 3e on the assumption that all PCs were going to do from Levels 1-20 was dungeon crawl. Unfortunately (from WotC's perspective), you had all these legacy mechanics that allowed characters to circumvent the kinds of limits they wanted to impose (all that "world-affecting stuff"). So WotC's answer for 4e was to make it virtually impossible to do anything but a dungeon crawl at any level of the game without seriously bending the rules.

Of course, the problem is that, if you have nothing but ever tougher dungeons for the PCs as they level up, outgrowing the setting (or at least the game premise) is inevitable. At some point you start to wonder why people who became independently wealthy by the game world's standards several levels ago still want to risk their lives by crawling into dungeons with bigger and badder monsters.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Really, all I'm asking for is the game not to break when PCs do the same basic setting things as NPCs. I'm okay, though not thrilled, with NPCs not being able to do the same things as PCs but the reverse situation is unacceptable.

I don't mean things like 1st level PCs being able to summon demiplanes or breath fire. That's an issue of game balance. The game not being able to support the universe blowing up is fine as well. The game should not collapse on itself because there aren't rules or even guidelines on how to run a grocery store or becoming a god. Those are basic fantasy precepts.

Now, 3rd edition rules were out-and-out broken in this respect. Even if you wanted to be a king, you couldn't get a castle because it costs more than what you'd ever get in wealth pre-epic. You couldn't have more than a tiny town's worth of followers unless you wanted to invest in golems and skeletons and the like. Bullshit like that. But there was at least an attempt and the game should've continually tried to build on that so that D&D resembled a world instead of a video game.

Edited to remove an untrue statement.