My Greyhawk campaign continues in its fortnightly fashion, and the highest-level character in it at present is 15^th level.

By many players’ standards, that is a level higher than they are prepared to play.

There are lots of reasons why campaigns never get so high. The group can fall apart. The campaign can finish telling its story. (If you liberate the peninsula at level 10, why not just end there?) Or the players and DM may not be comfortable with the style of play required at those levels.

At this point, in the last 20 years, I have had one campaign in 3E go to level 21, two campaigns in 4E go to level 30, and one game in 5E go to level 15 – and I have run a few Tier 4 D&D Adventurers League adventures.

I typically choose the adventures the characters take, rather than the players goals determining them. These are “there is a threat the characters must stop” adventures. At times, I adapt existing adventures. (The final adventure of my 4E campaign was a scaled-up version of Return to the Tomb of Horrors). At others, I write my own adventures. The current 5E campaign is a mix of old classics and original adventures.

I think one of the major aspects of making an adventure feel high-level is to choose an underlying concept that feels high-level. Even if the form of the adventure is the same sort of dungeon delve that you have been using since level one, if the players feel that the stakes are properly high-level, then they’ll ignore aspects that aren’t.

Although, just using an unaltered first-level dungeon delve? You probably don’t want to do that!

When the players end up with plot lines like:

• Stop the Cult of Elemental Evil summoning Tharizdun into the world (and thus destroying Greyhawk)
• Stop a war between Ket and Veluna that has deities directly interfering in the world by finding the Rod of Seven Parts

You then have stakes for the characters that feel like they should need high-level characters.

When it comes to the challenges the players, I have a few techniques. I do use political encounters and scenarios when I can. One of the nice things about any intrigue scenario is that it often relies heavily on the characters’ reputations – about by the time they’re very high level, they should have them.

In addition, they are dealing with such high-powered individuals that the forces at play are significant. If they’re talking to the Overking of the Great Kingdom, then you’ve got battalions of high-level wizards and warriors at his command. (I do not believe that, in a D&D world, you should have 0-level people ruling or supporting the rule of the greater powers).

Another technique is to have areas of exploration relatively small. This is not a rule I consistently follow, but it’s useful – keeping the adventure focused means the players are spending less time wandering around aimlessly.

Coupled with this is movement away from concerning myself with how the characters do something. I want to think up an interesting challenge and then see in play what methods they come up with defeating it. Oh, there’s a secret passage warded from regular detection methods? I didn’t think they’d use etherealness to find it, but that’s great!

The assumption is that the characters will succeed. I do try to vary things so some of the more common methods won’t always work. Well, you could use knock, but given you’re in the Court of the Overking and you don’t want to be detected, is that such a wise idea?

Finally, we have combat challenges. And here I have a great advantage over the writer of a published adventure: I know what the make-up of the party is.

It is rather terrifying how much the game can change just because you have a wizard in your group instead of a druid. Especially as a DM wanting to create a challenging encounter. And all of this isn’t helped by the official monsters at higher levels being rather underpowered.

Or are they?

This is the thing: We’re not really sure against what metric they’re balanced. But it seems likely that whatever metric it is, it is often far below what our committed player characters achieve. But for more casual players? Those Challenge Ratings may be far more accurate.

When I started D&D, there were no good metrics of determining whether an encounter was balanced or not. Partly this was because some of the challenge of being a player was determining whether an encounter was too tough or not. When you don’t have to fight everything, and can retreat, then getting encounters exactly balanced wasn’t as important.

But, as a DM, you got better at seeing the stats of a monster and working out whether the party could take it on. That skill also exists in 5E. The more you run high-level play, the better you get at it.

When I want to have monsters with more challenging statistics, I pull out one of the Kobold Press monster books (like the Tome of Beasts) or one of 2cgaming’s. And then pay attention to what happens. “Oh, I guess I need to add another monster or two next time”.

I tend not to worry too much about encounters being too easy – because it does good for the party to know that they ARE high level and can deal with a lot of threats. And if an encounter turns out to be too difficult? They should be able to escape. I know they have teleport!

This is probably the biggest secret to DMing high levels: It helps if you are able to adapt. The players are going to surprise you. It helps to have a good idea of the heart and plan of the scenario, so that when the players go off-grid, you can keep the session running. But it’s a skill you develop as you run the game.

I see myself as a DM as an interpreter of a larger world. It exists outside the boundaries I have designed, and when the players go past those boundaries, it is time to extend them based on what has come before. This just happens more once we get to the higher levels!