Are "epic-level" Dungeon Fantasy games viable... and fun?

[Calliban]

There are books for running a lower-level GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game, but what about more high-powered games, the D&D equivalent of Epic Levels and such?

Say we double standard DF point budget to 500pts - what would be be caveats and probable issues a GM would have to deal with? Would this party even be a DF party anymore?

What about at 750, 1000pts? Is there a point where you basically can't have a DF-style adventure anymore due to the PCs becoming incompatible (not fun to play) in that type of game?

What would be some advice on running this kind of game? Also, at higher point budgets it is easy to just buy everything from a Template and still having lots of points to spare... are there any DF templates adjusted for higher points?

[Witchking]

Away from my books for a moment and it has been a while since I looked at 3rd E GURPS Supers...

But IIRC the low end 'gritty' Supers yardstick was 250 pts and the 'mid-tier' standard Supers campaign was recommended at 500 pts.

I haven't personally run in a DF campaign and IME with (mostly) GURPS Fantasy and SciFi mostly at 100/150 pts. (and perhaps a dash of Action/Supers) things get a bit mushy when pushed to the edge cases. (FREX as the Player Roster changes and some PC's may approach 2x or 3x the starting points value and others are closer to the starting values).

IMHO I guess it would depend on how well the individual GM can handle issues of scale.

Take that for what it is worth...

[ericthered]

Since you're ASKING about resources for DF with higher points:

DF3: The Next Level has a bunch of lenses and add-ons to increase the power of DF characters. Its not going to get you to 500 points, but it will happily get you to 350 and maybe 400.

I've never played high-point DF, but its one of the genre's I see people play at high point levels. The well-documented campaign Felltower seems to have a curse where characters that hit the high 400's die in total party kills, but it gets these characters up there. I've seen people talk about getting DF characters to 700 occasionally, and I might have seen someone who claims they've gone to 1000. Most of this these characters earned their points one chunk at a time, I think.

And then there is Kalazz (no idea if he'll turn up), who seems to play these wild 1000+ point games in every genre he runs and makes it work.

[mlangsdorf]

My Fantasy Mass Combat game involved PC demigods, who started from humble beginnings but were 350-400 point characters with another 200+ points of magical gear[1] by the end of the game. And dungeon crawling was a regular part of the game.

Dungeon crawling was plenty of fun at that level. The threats had to be tough to challenge the PCs at that level, but there are plenty of tough monsters in DF, as well as tricky puzzles and weird encounters. I mostly treated it as an excuse to go crazy with dungeon design, and set up encounters that were weird or unfair - combat in teleport mazes, foes running up the walls or ceiling, battlefields were the floor periodically became a wall to force people to move, massive pit traps, whatever.

Epic level characters need to face epic level challenges and earn epic level rewards. If you keep that in mind, and have them delve at the accursed and time-warped library of the Fae[2] where they fight various Elder Things to recover proof that their patron is rightful Queen of the Fae, it's fun and works. If you send them into the basement of the inn to fight giant rats, it's going to feel stupid and unsatisfying.

Of course, it's also important to keep in mind what the PCs can do, and to prevent them in advance from getting abilities that you don't want them to have. Many high level adventures from the D&D tradition have some kind of BS limitation on teleportation and scrying. It would have been simpler, and better for the design of the game, to limit that kind of magic in advance instead of giving it to the PCs and then making it useless in practice.

I didn't give out a lot of teleportation and scrying magic, but I didn't restrict them from using it when they had. That did mean that past a certain point, the PCs could scry and 'port past some of the trivial challenges in a dungeon. Which was fine by me - that's the point of being epic characters, that you have more options to deal with or avoid problems than you did at less epic levels.

[1] I was using an alternate magic item system where all magic items were bought with a dedicated pool of CP, and the high end magic items were pretty crazy.
[2] The Fae discovered, to their horror, that putting thousands of books and ledgers, each protected against decay by various magics, in close proximity to each other created a kind of toxic waste dump of magic where time, space, and entropy were kind of optional. Also, that toxic waste dump attracted Elder Things. So they sealed it up. It was a great epic dungeon - a twisted mana zone with wacky time and distance effects.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Calliban

There are books for running a lower-level GURPS Dungeon Fantasy game, but what about more high-powered games, the D&D equivalent of Epic Levels and such?

Say we double standard DF point budget to 500pts - what would be be caveats and probable issues a GM would have to deal with? Would this party even be a DF party anymore?

What about at 750, 1000pts? Is there a point where you basically can't have a DF-style adventure anymore due to the PCs becoming incompatible (not fun to play) in that type of game?

What would be some advice on running this kind of game? Also, at higher point budgets it is easy to just buy everything from a Template and still having lots of points to spare... are there any DF templates adjusted for higher points?

I ran a 1250 point game of "20th level" PCs. Worked just fine.

[Dalin]

My second DFRPG campaign reached 430 points when we paused it. Seemed like there was plenty of room to continue playing. I wouldn't have said it was "epic" tier yet. Higher powered than 250, certainly, but DF magic doesn't scale up as rapidly as D&D magic does so the PCs still felt pretty grounded.

[Lancewholelot]

I haven't run a DF game but my GURPS 4e fantasy campaigns regularly have (or had) 350 to 400 point starting characters. I wouldn't suggest such a high power starting levels to an inexperienced GM as it can require some flexibility and creativity on the fly to keep things challenging, especially if your PCs are min/maxed rather than built for breadth. For me it definitely works best with small parties of 3 to 4 players.

My most epic powered GURPS fantasy game (3rd edition) was 750 points and was more like fantasy supers. The PCs were a small dragon, a spell casting shadow spirit, a bestial spirit of the hunt, and Heracles. Demonic hordes went down like mooks and I recall a huge dragon getting steamrolled by Heracles. Oddly, while the player of Heracles was usually the biggest murder-hobo at my table, in this game he used his intimidating might to keep the worst impulses of the other players mostly in check. I guess playing a legendary "hero" had an effect on his play style.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by Lancewholelot

*snip* I wouldn't suggest such a high power starting levels to an inexperienced GM as it can require some flexibility and creativity on the fly to keep things challenging, especially if your PCs are min/maxed rather than built for breadth. For me it definitely works best with small parties of 3 to 4 players. *snip*

IME the most challenge is when the players are a mix of min/max'ers and flexible broad builds, worse with a difference in current point totals. If the party builds or bends their PCs with/to similar goals it can help a lot.

[whswhs]

I do want to say that while it's possible to run GURPS with high point totals (I've run a supers campaign with a base of 1500 points), "epic" isn't a matter of point values; it's a matter of attitude. If you look at the practical details of what characters are doing, you have a realistic campaign; if you go with the narrative momentum, and don't let small details take away a character's success, you have an epic one. (Often what GURPS calls "cinematic" is equivalent to "epic.") You can run a cinematic campaign with a modest 150 points, or a realistic one with 500.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I do want to say that while it's possible to run GURPS with high point totals (I've run a supers campaign with a base of 1500 points), "epic" isn't a matter of point values; it's a matter of attitude.

While that was my initial reaction as well, Epic Level in D&D basically just means "really high level where players get access to massively powerful abilities". It usually runs close to Fantasy Supers in power scaling, with parties or individual often being able to challenge large armies in direct combat.