Does anyone else find that the stakes in fantasy RPG campaigns tend to escalate far too quickly?

>the alternative is coming up with a natural-feeling succession of challenges and antagonists that continually up the ante while keeping the players invested in what is at stake.

Gotta admit this is terrifying. How do I do it?

Well, that's you and yours. D&D 5e, at least, actually suggests a gradual scaling up.

Yes, it also irritates me that campaigns often involve intercontinental globe trotting with travel often glossed over.

Depends on the DM.

I traumatized a lvl8 team with a pack of regular wolves the other day. Granted there were two dire wolves among them, but the rest were normal wolves. Free tripping attempt every attack ain't no joke.

To clarify a bit, what I mean is that I'm talking about the speed of escalation more than I'm necessarily talking about the threat being a world ending threat. I have no problem fending off the apocalypse or fighting the Big Bad of the setting, I just feel like most games I've played in jump to that point way too quickly.

Like in the last campaign I played, we were sellswords doing stuff like tracking down missing daughters or killing raves-infected blink hounds for just a few session, and then immediately got thrust into the middle of an interdimensional planes-spanning war

And in the game we were in now, we were witch hunters fighting witches terrorizing some small settlements from a bog for all of one session before the scale of our danger became "doomsday cult."

Official books don't really reflect that though.

>In the first tier (levels 1–4), characters are effectively apprentice adventurers.
>The threats they face are relatively minor, usually posing a danger to local farmsteads or villages.

Yet they're already facing off against dragon cults trying to take over the world, elemental cults trying to take over the world, and demon lords trying to take over the world.

I haven't played/read the others but I'll bet they're something about giants trying to take over the world, and Strahd comes back (he's trying to take over the world).

The Lost Mine of Phandelver was decent.

>This sort of thing IS really cool in a hexcrawl though.

Yeah my current hexcrawl.is basically 4 different bbeg in each corner of the map fighting amongst one another with the players in the middle. Their main reason for wanting to thwart one at the moment is 'fuck him we're the ones who are going to take over this land'.

That's not always true. I know at least one official D&D 5e book has the entirety of levels 1-4 at bare minimum spent breaking out of jail in the Underdark, and then escaping the Underdark.

Where do you think this shift to heroic fantasy is coming from? Last I knew people were into much grimmer and grittier stuff like GoT.

Originally Dragonlance, then probably the Lord of the Rings films, plus a few video games.

People want epic quests, not a world to explore.

Look at video games. Skyrim pits you against a dragon in the one of the earliest quests, Fallout 4 does the same thing with a deathclaw. People expect big epic setpieces ASAP.

People are into watching grimmer and grittier. If they're actually playing, and investing themselves into an avatar that has to put up with all the grimness and shittiness, they lose their interest fast in my experience.

>lose an arm
>time to roll a new character

Is there a system that avoids this somehow? In television or literature this is an interesting development, in most RPGs it's basically a reason to start over.

>>lose an arm
>>time to roll a new character
>Is there a system that avoids this somehow?

Engine Heart.

Ironically D&D where losing an arm is resolved by a trip to a priest to cast regenerate on it by RAW, killing yourself then casting reincarnate/raise dead works as well OR any other justification by the GM such as a trolls blood potionrestoration or whatever.

Likewise some classes don't need two arms to be effective.

It depends on how your GM feels - there are guys who will want to give you huge stat penalties, and others that either won't want to bother or let you off lightly.

I had a character lose an arm, and frankly they were one of the best characters I ever played because of that.

Then how about you give the progression you desire OP?

Go ahead, I will wait, what do you want the players to deal with between helping the assaulted granny to saving the world?

What is there for them to do? Kill wolves or something? Go ahead, OP. I will wait right here for you to give me options about what can adventurers do before saving the world.

>It feels almost necessary
nu/tg/ everyone

>save the village
>save the town
>save the country

I keep hearing about this hexcrawl meme but it seems I missed the memo on what this is? I think I have lurked enough and I deserve an answer in how to hexcrawl.

That happened to me in my 5e game and in most rpg's I've been a player in.
At level 3 we were waging a geurilla war against a local town with allied lizardmen, level 4 we had taken it over with hired help of an orc warband, level 6 we were fighting a chaos lord and at level 8 we were defending the town against a crusading army.

The big issue is that after level 4 we seemed to get stronger than our enemies at an exponential rate so the gm was just throwing all kinds of shit against the wall. Really, I think the issue is that most rpg's level too quickly or increase in power too fast. A couple of level 8 casters dropping AoE's and a level 8 barb leading a formation can end up doing an absurd amount of damage to an army of level 1-2 fighters.

>save a person
>save a family
>save a hamlet
>save a village
>save a fort
>save a town
>save a castle
>save a country
>save the world
Is this the progression we need?

runagame.net/2014/03/the-hex-crawl.html

As a side note to this article, it's not a passing fad -- this is just how D&D used to be.

>millenial shithead who couldn't even maintain an attention span long enough to finish reading the OP

>"fledgling heroes deal with local monsters and thieves"
People that start with this concept.

Fucking trash.

Not OP but he mentioned hexcrawling, where the progression is usually dictated by the players.

Have a map with points of interest. Wildernesses to travel through and get lost in, dungeons to explore, towns where the locals hear rumors about the wilderness and dungeons.

A farmer tells you there's a mountain to the east where a great dragon lives, you can go straight there and save the kingdom! Or you die to a dragon because you're an idiot for trying. Or perhaps it's actually just a winged kobold because the farmer's an idiot and rumors aren't always true.

It's actually more work to plan out a progression, just map some stuff and let the players do it for you. The rest should be obvious (if there's a wasteland ruled by powerful ogres then people will know, even if it's rooted in misinformation and superstition).

>MILLENIALS GET OUT REEEEEEEEEEE

>epic level heroes kill a hundred kobolds a turn
>Starting here for some reason
You're the trash

>>The elemental cultists have a literal nuke. This'll come up three chapters and ten levels from now, so don't worry about it for now.
hated this so much. Maybe I'm just not a great DM but where the fuck was this in terms of "relevant information the DM ought to know about"?
That's OK though, my players have gotten bored enough after clearing one elemental temple that they're gonna fuck off and be pirates now. So that's exciting.

>responded before he finished the sentence
the kind of people who say things like "nu/tg, everyone," everyone.

I find that they tend to de-escalate usually. Most of my group is more interested in shopping, conversations with unimportant npcs, and slice of life stuff than fighting monsters or saving the world.

Mastering the slow burn is an art form. No shame in struggling with it, and it can be just as annoying to feel like the story escalates too slowly, as well.

I dunno what to tell you dude. My 5e group hadn't even left the first main "quest hub" before level 6ish.

(Town in the middle of dangerous-as-fuck troll-and-wyvern-infested forest gets overrun, due to fey being butthurt about a deal the local lord mayor accidentally broke. Suddenly the town is struck with zombie plague and when the main gate is suddenly left unmanned, trolls smash through. This left only pockets of survivors. Also, some demon worshippers were involved. Also, the trolls are suceptible to the plague and are now zombie trolls. Also, even traveling to the town along the main road is super fucking perilous. Points of Light motherfucker.)

And while I had been dripfeeding them little bits of hints and lore, they had no clue what big trouble was brewing for the world before they were level 9 or 10.

Personally I couldn't given a shit about progression. I want an interesting story arc with a goal and an ending. And when it's done it's done, no "but then the bbeg reveals their great plan to power his multiverse death laser with 10 billion orphans!". Its never good.

>over 35 and still on Veeky Forums

Boomers and Gen X please go.

Maybe because I've spent the last 20 years old my life playing cRPGs. The majority of which are dungeon crawlers which have you whittle down mob trash for most of the game, with some low tier goal at the end. I enjoyed these games to be sure, but when I play around a table without limitations of technology, I want to be heroic on a grand scale. I've waded through enough fucking sewers fetching someone's lost ring.

I feel like the pace is really a lot more up to the players than the campaign itself. My current game is going a lot slower than normal, mostly because people keep getting distracted.

So far the most they've managed to accomplish is getting the wizard killed (it's okay the player had a spare sheet already rolled), get sidetracked while going back for her pieces, get sidetracked while going to try finding and taming terror birds, and get sidetracked while wandering around the island they're supposed to ESTABLISH A FUNCTIONAL GODDAMN COLONY ON.

They're having fun though I guess

and where are you supposed to start, sucking dicks at the local tavern?

>Local

Why limit yourself to that

In FATAL, Yes.

Lmao

i kind of like heroes way over their heads
reminds me of chrono trigger where our everyman characters are suddenly thrust into world ending scenarios

Don't play DnD then

Evaluate the challenges that are appropriate for your players, and create those challenges in the context of what they've already done.

The escalation from one antagonist to the next should make sense, but you shouldn't feel the need to always escalate. They defeated Tim the Enchanter, who was serving the demon lord Ankhu. If this was a series of adventures that carried them a couple levels, it's probably better that Ankhu plot and scheme for a little while, and not come for them. Have them investigate a new threat of the newly emboldened kobolds, threatening a nearby hamlet, who are being commanded by an upstart young drake. The campaign to defeat the drake is probably pretty level appropriate, certainly moreso than the demon lord. Maybe after all that, Ankhu has been spying on the party, and wants to enact his revenge.

The point is, you should feel free to pause a story if it is escalating too quickly, and move to a different story until the party is appropriately powerful to tackle the first. Like, if you're playing a published campaign like a Paizo AP, and you're not sure that the pacing is going to work for your party to immediately tackle the next thing, move off to a couple different modules for a romp.

Maybe I'm talking out my ass. Definitely chew on a couple GM books. I've enjoyed Robin's Laws of GMing. There are a few collections in the share thread.

Everyone's tired of pissing around with goblins and rats and shit. Fighting fire giants is way cooler.

I feel a fantasy game is unrealistic if you aren't tripping over massively overpowered bullshit all over the place.

Do you even COMPREHEND how many apocalyptic precursor races and sealed evils there are?

However, all these 'world ending' threats are quite livable. Sure, releasing tiberium on the world sucks, but now you get to be a mutant.

Oh Christ shut the fuck up

You skipped the fire goblins and giant rats though

Fuck you for making me think of front mission: gun hazard.
That game was so fucking amazing and ended in duking it out with the killer of your president on the orbital elevator to prevent him from causing an equator-spanning catastrophe.

I don't feel they escalate too quickly, but I also suspect that you might feel my games escalate too quickly.

I try to intentionally emulate the style and feel (though not the pre-determined structure) of the fantasy novels and series that I loved as a child, and that got me into the hobby to begin with. The PC's are the protagonists, so yes, eventually, someone will probably have a destiny, some world-level threat will arise that only the destined heroes can face, but that's only at epic tier or maybe late paragon tier (I run 4e,)

The game's definately going to escalate to that level, but it does need to go through the tiers.

You could always look for a setting where the world already got fucked up so you never really end up with a "save the world" scenario.

I fucking wish. In a land where one is forever level 3, it's nothing but slow-burners that inevitably peter out a few sessions in forever.

But what about goblin rats and giant fires?

I wonder if my players would be interested in a firefighting one shot.

Actually now that I think about it it's the kind of thing that would work better as a cooperative boardgame.

Characters need to die more. PCs shouldn't be getting to level 20.

>but muh snowflake
Tough shit, roll a new character.

Yes. It's a common problem in movies, comics, and video games, as well. It's partially a lack of creativity, and also that a lot of people presenting genre entertainment feel, often correctly, that the audience won't care as much unless the fate of the entire world hangs in the balance.

But that leads to overexposure. If you consume a lot of this sort of media, you will eventually start to find it redundant. I myself feel this way a lot. It's one of the reasons I lost interest in all the super hero movies, because every time it was just, "we have to same the world from the most baddest bad thing ever since the one last week when the same shit happened", and it feels insane.

If you are a GM, you can solve this problem yourself. If you're not, you can discuss it with your GM. That works like, 5% of the time. You can also try to find a new GM who does things differently. It can be a lot of fun to take part in adventures with smaller stakes, if only for a change of pace.

try harnmaster or runequest

Fuck you for spoonfeeding the newfag. You are the cancer that's killing Veeky Forums
And fuck you for not taking a minute to go on Google and search for hexcrawl you shitheel

shut the fuck up

Because DnD.
Other systems allow not being half-god after advancing your character a dozen or two times.

Also, some GMs see sending in a tougher guy as the only way to differ problems their players encounter.

Any that has prothtetics that allow using weapons (Warhammer games, wfrp included). Or social-focused characters.

No, YOU are the cancer. Veeky Forums used to be a helpful bunch of calm guys who discussed games, not a bunch of stuck up assholes who can't handle people having badwrongfun.

Not really. What 's describing is a GM problem, not a game problem. I'm pretty sure you can do that in any game if the GM feels like it. I know for a fact you can screw your players out of everything for lots of levels in D&D and make them baby-weak. Ever heard of WBL?

I love 4e, and I know it was meant to be played that way, saving kingdoms at level 10, saving the world at 20 and saving the multiverse.

This is bigger than Veeky Forums you twat.

On Veeky Forums, people didn't spoonfeed the babbies and now that we do, we are being overrun you piece of human shit

like he said, its a d&d issue

Any system that isn't a gamist pile of trash.

D&D sure sucks.

I've never played a worse game.

Maybe when you were new, you had a bad time, and nobody was helpful. Boo-fuckin'-hoo. If someone has the manual and tells them to read the fuckin' thing, there's no reason not to hand them the resource.

Asking a question of someone with experience is like curating a google search, and thereafter the person asking should have a clearer idea of what is good quality. Maybe they wanted to have a conversation with someone about it, take advantage of the nature of a board, and clarify and check their understanding.

Sperg on people somewhere else, faggot.

>you had a bad time
Not really. It was a great time to laugh at and mock the people who wanted help.

...

In my reading today I found a good blog post about this. Here's a link: runagame.net/2014/07/pacing-1-what-can-pacing-do-for-you.html

This is not /a/

Veeky Forums has always been one of the more helpful boards, so long as you aren't an ass and at least pretend to have put forth some form of minimal effort ("it's not coming up on image search" or the previous poster's "I couldn't figure it out by lurking").

>>>>>

I think that comic is funnier without the last speech bubble.

look at this summerfag, he doesn't even
>lurk moar, fagit

He's got a point though, the way character progression works in D&D means the stakes always end up being raised massively

doesnt this happen with those new 5e books?

characters level 1, by that or the next book theyre fucking up tiamat or some shit

I wish I could click 'like' for this post. Hope a (You) is just as nice.

now imagine how funny it would be without all the speech bubbles

Nah, the rest of the dialogue is fine; it builds up the absurdity of the situation. I just felt the punchline lacked requisite punch. Sometimes a reflection upon the absurdity itself is a better joke.

I don't know, I honestly think it works in its own way.

>Group of no nothings team up to do odd jobs here and there, stop some tiny monsters and minimal threats
>But OH NO, they've stumbled onto something much bigger than they're ready for, something that can effect the entire country/land/world!
>Despite their limited experience, they are called to action and must do their best to save the day
>They do so, and are praised as heroes
>Now they need to continue to keep that up, as they go on more world saving quests and realize just how threatened the world truly is
>By the end of it all, they are forces of myth and legend, defeating god-like beings and saving reality itself.

I think you just summarized the plot of most JRPGs.

See you can still have your players fight world ending threats at a low level, you just give them a smaller stake. Instead of fighting Bazog the Pit Fiend, they fight a horde of demons along with an army while the court wizard and his entourage and fight Bazog If they can't fight the weaker demons or let them through the wizard gets overwhelmed and the world is lost.
As they grow in strength and renoun, transition their role from support to proactive. They start out scouting caps for stronger heroes and knights to go clear, to being the ones clearing those encampments. Instead of spying on the big bad, or killing a low level bodyguard, once they're stronger they go and kill the big bad directly. It's not necessarily about how dire the setting is, it's about giving them a believable role in that threat.

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