I'm just finishing GMing my second AP, so that's given me a lot of experience with high-level play. I've also played in a homebrew campaign that got to level 13ish, and a ran/played a few modules & PFS scenarios above level 10. I'm actually running Academy of Secrets right now (for the second time). I guess I enjoy high-level play much more than the common wisdom should indicate.
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All of them.
The story doesn't end until all the heroes are either level 20, or dead.
One. The main protagonists of the central campaign. However, those characters are heavily tied up in their realms and organisations to do much adventuring and most of the adventures are undertaken by their henchmen, or their henchmens' henchmen.
Most, though they tend to start at lvl 7 and go to about lvl 11-13 before they fizzle out. The last campaign went from Lvl 1 to lvl 20/mythic 5.
I've been running (and playing) these games since ... 2004? Started with 3.0E D&D and moved to Pathfinder after the 4E kickoff. I can still count on a single hand how many games that I've DM-ed that have sputtered out before 10th level (I've had a few more fall away around level 13 and 14). I have been a player in about a dozen games that didn't quite make it there. I am not counting short adventures where we never planned for, or expected, to reach level 20 (those are 'filler' games).
For the most part, the games I run make it to level 20 and beyond, if the interest is still there to play those characters. I am currently running a Gestalt/Mythic game in my own homebrew setting with a fairly robust houserule system (mostly from Unchained) and hardly any 3rd party material. Players are 14th level and mythic tier 7.
Not counting games that fell apart due to scheduling conflicts, player disputes, or an unfortunate loss of all prepared work and data for a custom campaign setting…
All of my groups campaigns have run past level 10… we usually aim for between 14 & 18… rarely do we go all the way to 20…
Not many. It's hard to keep a campaign going from level one all the way to the higher levels. Life often interferes. Work schedules change. Players or the GM moves to a new city. Or simple attrition sets in and people lose interest. Most of the games I play or run seem to top out around eleventh level.
I've been lucky enough to make it all the way through Return of the Runelords to the end and the game I'm currently GMing just hit level 12 for Rise of the Drow. I'm also in book five of Iron Gods, so that one is currently level thirteen.
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I'm also in book five of Iron Gods, so that one is currently level thirteen.
I've run that one to completion and a bit beyond. Good to see you made it past book 4, which I thought was the weakest in the series and had to spruce it up a bit. Had zero issues with keeping the player's attention once we got the book 5 and beyond.
It used to be pretty rare, but I've had a good run lately. It's hard to find that mythical GM that really enjoys GMing, at least as much as they enjoy being a PC. Personally, I really enjoy GMing, but find I don't have the time and energy I once had to do it.
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Not counting games that fell apart due to scheduling conflicts, player disputes, or an unfortunate loss of all prepared work and data for a custom campaign setting…
I think that you should count scenarios like those. Those considerations are probably part of the question.
Pretty much all of them. I have GM'ed all but three AP's I started to conclusion (scrapped two concurrent Kingmaker games at about level five or six, stopped Reign of Winter after module five, i.e. level 15, because the last module was a let-down after Rasputin Must Die!). I've GM'ed about nine or so APs to their natural conclusion.
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Even if it is becoming a bit more difficult because of age and jobs, almost all the campaigns I GM (including those for the first and second editions of AD&D) have gone above level 10, Only specific scenarios have lasted less, but these were short term mini-campaigns from the start.
One of my advantages is that the core group of my players is people I have known for 40 years and have played with for 40 years, so we generally are dedicated players.
I'm also in book five of Iron Gods, so that one is currently level thirteen.I've run that one to completion and a bit beyond. Good to see you made it past book 4, which I thought was the weakest in the series and had to spruce it up a bit. Had zero issues with keeping the player's attention once we got the book 5 and beyond.
Iron Gods is probably my favorite AP so far!
I ran Rise of the Runelords to 17th level, followed up with the same characters in The Witchwar Legacy to get them to 19th, and then homebrewed up to 20th level. I ran Jade Regent up to 17th level. I ran Iron Gods up to 18th level.
I am currently running Ironfang Invasion, converting it to PF2 rules. That is designed to end at 17th level. However, my players added several side quests and gained an extra level. So I decided to increase the challenges myself and see whether they can reach 20th level. Two weeks ago they earned 17th level. They will have the final battle of the 5th module today.
The campaigns I have played in ended before 10th level.
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Of the three Paizo AP where I have been a player two ended halfway through the last module so at level 14.
The first for a combination of problems for the GM and the loss of the oracle without a way to bring it back. It was Carrion Crown and we were in the middle of the mountains near the Whispering Tyrant prison and on a timeline.
The second ended because of COVID, a dislike for the majority of the players for playing on Skype, and the changes the GM has made to the module (that, honestly, from what I have seen, wasn't one of Paizo's best products).
In the third, we reached CL 17, with 2 Mythic levels with limited powers.
Maybe it is simply because I have more endurance as a GM, but with the 3.5 and the Epic rules my players reached level 25, and with Kingmaker and homemade additions my players reached level 20+1 (the Mytich rules didn't exist at the time, so we made some homebrew rules, based on the suggestion of the CRB).
The others reached the end of the AP, so they ended at levels 15-17.
I'm currently running my 7 campaign; all of the previous ones finished above level 10 and all of them were run to completion.
(6 APs, including the current campaign, one was a group of modules I strung together)
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I find myself wondering if all of us responding aren't horribly biased in favor of higher rates of high level play? Which is to say how many people would still be with 1E after this many years if the campaigns don't last terribly long?
Terribly long? 3.x-Pathfinder1 is fast.
You have no idea how long it did require to reach level 15 in AD&D. That was the highest level we reached.
I find myself wondering if all of us responding aren't horribly biased in favor of higher rates of high level play? Which is to say how many people would still be with 1E after this many years if the campaigns don't last terribly long?
Uh, 2E AP's go to level 20 and I am pretty sure combat takes just as long if not longer. I don't remember the old pre-third edition campaigns I was involved being any shorter, although that was more than 20 years ago (yeaaaah.... getting old), so my memory is a bit spotty in that regard.
In the latter 2 of 3 home games that went to 20th we used 20hrs or so per level once all the players and GM agreed... FAR EASIER and a bit slower so you get to enjoy the play. Freeing players from XP moves the game away from combat.
Well, at least it makes me skip encounters which are just filler. ^^ I've been using milestones for the last ten years or so, if not longer.
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We’ve played to completion 5 APs, which ended between levels 14 and 17. Had a couple of homebrews that got into the low/mid teens.
My personal feeling is that the system stops being fun around level 15-ish because of the rocket tag nature of fights and wizards being able to remake the world, so I’ve never had any desire to push on to level 20.
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The PFS scaling of (3)*5hr game sessions per level is about right if not a bit fast. Yes - they claimed 4 hrs but few ran comfortably in that time period.
In the latter 2 of 3 home games that went to 20th we used 20hrs or so per level once all the players and GM agreed... FAR EASIER and a bit slower so you get to enjoy the play. Freeing players from XP moves the game away from combat.
So 300 hours of play from level 1 to 2. That would mean something like 60 game sessions or a little more than a year. When playing an Ap at a home table it takes about 18 months, approximately 70 sessions, as we spend more time doing role-playing.
To compare with AD&D, going from level 1 to 14 required something like 8 years, playing more than 5 hours once a week. We had sessions that started at 14:30 and ended at 2:00 in the morning (with a pizza in between). The record was 9:00 AM-2:AM.
Sadly today we can't do extra-long sessions, families matter.
I find myself wondering if all of us responding aren't horribly biased in favor of higher rates of high level play? Which is to say how many people would still be with 1E after this many years if the campaigns don't last terribly long?
This might be my bias speaking but the mayflies that flock to the newer game systems, one after another, tend to have issues with game permanence simply due to the nature of their approach to the game. Most of the 'drama' that I have seen around the game system tends to rapidly diminish once they have moved on to the next one.
I think the trick to lasting games is use a fairly harsh filter to make sure you don't get those kinds of players in your games.
Iron Gods is probably my favorite AP so far!
It is definitely high up on my list as well. So much so that I've incorporated a lot of the technology into my own home-brew setting.
All of them, we play Adventure Paths and stretch them to go to 20th level.
Between scheduling issues, GM burnout, and other factors, I've rarely played or run a campaign that lasted past 10th. A lot of them fizzle out earlier than that, even in my core gaming group, for one reason or another.
My three Freeport campaigns went from 1st to 6th (3.0, original trilogy), 6th-8th (3.5) and 2nd to 9th (3.5, converted to PF1 at 6th). I ran one 3.5 game that started at 10th and went to 13th, but have GMed very little above that level at all. My last PF1 campaign was intended to go from 1st to 20th, but I hit some serious burnout around 5th, and we may or may not ever return to it.
OTOH, I've played in a couple of APs that have gone to very high levels. I was in a group that alternated books of Giantslayer and Shattered Star (one GM for each series), with a few levels of Emerald Spire to fill advancement gaps in PFS-mode play, then a handful of high-level PFS scenarios and modules to get us the rest of the way to 19th level (and some of us recently played in a special that tipped us up to 20th). I'm currently playing in a Legacy of Fire AP campaign (using PF1) that just reached 10th, and IIRC, we should reach around 14th in Book 6.
Apart from that, I have a handful of other Seeker-tier characters in PFS 1E, but organized play is its own unique creature.
Personally i dont think any campaign should go past level 15 anyway cause past that point encounters become full on "Touch of Death" territory where everything and anything can just one shot you.
The characters in games that I run are exceedingly hard to kill with level appropriate encounters, so I can honestly say that I've never really had that problem. The only actual player character deaths that I have witnessed have been the result of exceedingly poor judgement on the part of the player, and most of those have been in the lower level range, not the 15+ range. There have been a few deaths near the higher levels but with the resources available to them, it was not something that really slowed them down.
Now, if you run your NPCs or monsters with optimization levels to rival a player character seriously focused on such as the norm, I can see why that is an issue.
Personally i dont think any campaign should go past level 15 anyway cause past that point encounters become full on "Touch of Death" territory where everything and anything can just one shot you.
If things are one shot killing you, then maybe your builds aren't done well. Once the party has access to Raise Dead, we become fearless and not long after we become near invincible.
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Personally i dont think any campaign should go past level 15 anyway cause past that point encounters become full on "Touch of Death" territory where everything and anything can just one shot you.If things are one shot killing you, then maybe your builds aren't done well. Once the party has access to Raise Dead, we become fearless and not long after we become near invincible.
Doesnt that kind of take away all sense of urgency? And i thought past this point all encounters become a game of rocket tag?
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Doesnt that kind of take away all sense of urgency? And i thought past this point all encounters become a game of rocket tag?
No. If every encounter you throw at your players has a high probability of outright killing them if the enemies go first, you are not playing the same kind of game that the system was designed for. You are engaging in an arms race with your players, whether you know it or not.
Most encounters should not be highly dangerous and should actually serve to whittle down their daily resources. Most encounters should easily be in favor of the party emerging as the winners. The really dangerous ones should be fewer and far between, something that is normally not as dangerous, but after you have used up their resources, much more of a threat than normal. Even rarer should be the fights that are quite dangerous to the party even when they are at full strength.
But, as I said before, you might be playing a very different game than is expected. A lot of people end up doing that when the power creep of a system gets to a certain point. It is up to you and your players to intentionally tone it down and play within a certain range.
Urgency, on the other hand, begins to mean something very different at higher levels of play. In the beginning, it is usually time sensitive missions. At the later stages, it should more resemble serious consequences occurring no matter what the players do and they have to purposefully decide which things are a higher priority, and hope they complete the objectives quickly enough to possible save everyone. It is always (usually always) about resource management and how the dice add just the right amount of chaos to the mix to keep everything from going just as you expected.
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Doesnt that kind of take away all sense of urgency? And i thought past this point all encounters become a game of rocket tag?No. If every encounter you throw at your players has a high probability of outright killing them if the enemies go first, you are not playing the same kind of game that the system was designed for. You are engaging in an arms race with your players, whether you know it or not.
Most encounters should not be highly dangerous and should actually serve to whittle down their daily resources. Most encounters should easily be in favor of the party emerging as the winners. The really dangerous ones should be fewer and far between, something that is normally not as dangerous, but after you have used up their resources, much more of a threat than normal. Even rarer should be the fights that are quite dangerous to the party even when they are at full strength.
But, as I said before, you might be playing a very different game than is expected. A lot of people end up doing that when the power creep of a system gets to a certain point. It is up to you and your players to intentionally tone it down and play within a certain range.
Urgency, on the other hand, begins to mean something very different at higher levels of play. In the beginning, it is usually time sensitive missions. At the later stages, it should more resemble serious consequences occurring no matter what the players do and they have to purposefully decide which things are a higher priority, and hope they complete the objectives quickly enough to possible save everyone. It is always (usually always) about resource management and how the dice add just the right amount of chaos to the mix to keep everything from going just as you expected.
I guess i just got so used to killer DM's i build my character with the expectation that my DM is actively trying to kill me.
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These days almost all of them, as the only pf1 games I play now are full APs or other campaigns that usually last for a year or more.
Homebrew starwars- ongoing, currently 11
Ironfang- ongoing, currently 12
Ruins of Azlant- never finished, got to 14
Carrion Crown- finished at 15
Crimson Throne- finished at 16
Hells Rebels- finished at 20
Wrath of the Righteous- finished at 20
Legendary planet- never finished, got to 11
Homebrew fantasy- never finished, got to level 13
Homebrew steampunk- finished at 7
I remember high level 3e play being super deadly compared to high level pf1 play, but then again I was a lot younger and we played a very different game back then with less focus on story and more on making ridiculous encounters to challenge my players (I was almost always the GM back then). These days we're less focused on the combat challenge (and other people GM so I get to play a lot more).
Breakdown for campaigns I GM(d):
Giantslayer, abandoned at level 9
Homebrew, finished at 21
Homebrew, put on hold at 5
Curse of the Crimson Throne, ongoing at 4
So, in a strict sense it's only 25%.
Breakdown of campaigned I played:
Homebrew, ongoing since 2013, level 8
Curse of the Crimson Throne, joined and left at 8, but I guess the GM finished the campaign at 17 (lost contact though)
Kingmaker, joined at 1, campaign imploded at 2
Rise of the Runelords, joined at 4, campaign fell asleep at same level
In a strict sense it's 0 of 3 (ignoring second one due to uncertainty), respective 0%.
I guess i just got so used to killer DM's i build my character with the expectation that my DM is actively trying to kill me.
Yeah, Killer DM's gave this game a bad history....
I guess i just got so used to killer DM's i build my character with the expectation that my DM is actively trying to kill me.
And most of that toxic lot has moved on to the next iteration of the popular gaming system, though a few of them are probably still around. People learn at different speeds and some take longer than others (or never come to the realization) that the role of the GM/DM is quite different than the other players. It is just a shame that their approach to the game taints the higher level experience of play.
We're level 16, almost 17 in our Iron Gods campaign, just started the last book. Apparently the AP takes us to 17, but the GM wants to do some homebrew stuff to take us to 20 afterward. I don't know if it'll happen though, he has a baby due in like 3 weeks, so 3 levels of late game homebrew campaign might be a big ask.
Our Carrion Crown game is on Hiatus at 8th level . We would have gone back to it after the 5th book of Iron Gods but the IG GM wanted to finish IG before his child is born and he loses all his free time. Carrion Crown hasn't actually gone past level 10, but I expect it to. It'll be our main campaign once we finish IG.
We're also playing a PF2E campaign: Extinction Curse. It's on the off-weeks when someone can't male it, but we're level 8. I expect us to finish it, so that'll go over level 10.
Just to include everything though, we did start Kingmaker a few years ago before any of the other APs mentioned. I think we got to level 7, but we won't be going back to that one. The GM was new to running games and gave us absolutely ludicrous stats at character creation. We ended up being way too strong and just stomping every encounter. The GM just wasn't having fun so we scrapped the game. I guess we could potentially go back to it making new characters, but we have a lot of other stuff going on and I don't think anyone's keen enough to fight for it.
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I guess i just got so used to killer DM's i build my character with the expectation that my DM is actively trying to kill me.And most of that toxic lot has moved on to the next iteration of the popular gaming system, though a few of them are probably still around. People learn at different speeds and some take longer than others (or never come to the realization) that the role of the GM/DM is quite different than the other players. It is just a shame that their approach to the game taints the higher level experience of play.
Never got what is fun in killing the group.
Challenging it? Sure.Having them in a position where they have to retreat? Yes.
Misjudging the challenge and killing the characters? Happened.
But purposefully making a scenario that I think will kill the whole party, without a way to retreat? Never.
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Never got what is fun in killing the group.
Challenging it? Sure.
Having them in a position where they have to retreat? Yes.
Misjudging the challenge and killing the characters? Happened.But purposefully making a scenario that I think will kill the whole party, without a way to retreat? Never.
I has a lot to do with maturity level and what I like to call 'real life alignments'. Some people should never be in a position of power over other people, even fictional ones. We all know why that is.
All of our regular games go to at least 16th.
Irregular games, where we perhaps need something to do for a month or two if a DM is otherwise busy... those are what they are. Meaning some of them might be low-level, some of them might be high-level, some might be in between, but they're deliberately so, and only for a brief time.
But of our nine campaigns, one is at sixth right now, and will be going to 20th with 8 mythic tiers and all of the rest completed at 16th* or above.
*Or whatever level second darkness actually ends at. It's been a while.
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I has a lot to do with maturity level and what I like to call 'real life alignments'. Some people should never be in a position of power over other people, even fictional ones. We all know why that is.Never got what is fun in killing the group.
Challenging it? Sure.
Having them in a position where they have to retreat? Yes.
Misjudging the challenge and killing the characters? Happened.But purposefully making a scenario that I think will kill the whole party, without a way to retreat? Never.
I always said tabletop gamers are very prone to power trips.
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I always said tabletop gamers are very prone to power trips.
yep, way too many gamers have the "GM vs the Players" Mentality, when its actually "The GM AND the Players" together telling a story.