I' d argue that it does.CatharzGodfoot wrote: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.
One of the core assumptions I'm designing is the simple idea that level should equal power. This means that the power of characters to affect the setting also needs to be tied to level.
In a russian-doll setting like Forgotten Realms, individual PCs can attain any level of power up to living god without changing any core conceits; in a setting like Dark Sun or Ravenloft the setting ends once you are a credible threat to a Darklord or a Sorcerer King since your power directly conflicts with the core conceits of the setting. Sure, in Dark Sun that happens at 15th level and in Ravenloft it happens at 6th level, but it does happen.
I mean, Ravenloft is not Ravenloft when a Darklord is a joke, and Dark Sun is a different setting entirely if you can clean out all the Sorcerer Kings in a week. That means once you reach a certain power level you either play in a new setting or deal with the fact that you need to build a new setting out of the bones of the old.