So, has anyone ACTUALLY run an epic level campaign?

I've previously run a set of campaigns from 1st to 20th, slowly growing in scale. During the first 'Season', they went from 1st to 9th and the plot concerned the fate of a frontier country they all found themselves in, looking for glory and gold on a new land. This ended up with an ancient warlord rising from the dead and trying to retake the land that was stolen from him centuries ago, led to quite a few interesting moral and political questions for the group, and they really learned to work together. Final Battle culminated in them gathering allies they'd made along the way and forging an army to retake the capital city, ending in fighting a Famine Daemon that the warlord conjured to defeat them.

Second Season saw them crossing back along the sea due to a letter from an old companion from the first season, (there was a gap of half a year between the seasons, although one and a half had passed in game), asking for help. They then travel along a continent which has been indoctrinated to deny worship of any gods and follow a mysterious monarch who has built walls around every road and city in the land to keep the people safe, and brought ultimate law upon the people (which manifested itself in some very questionable things which tested the party's idea of what the difference between 'Good' and 'law' was). They find an old sage who gives them guidance and eventually they discover that the ruler of this land is a paladin who helped lead their forces, (One of my main NPC's, Lysander), who has been driven to extreme measures by something terrible. In the final steps leading up to the confrontation the party finds out that uprisings of ancient evils didn't only happen in the first land, but everywhere, and the reason is that The Four Horsemen are coming to put an end to the material realm. In desperation, Lysander prayed to his gods but found to his horror that Ao, the overgod of the realms (I use Forgotten Realms deities) has forbidden the gods to take action. Lysander then went mad and decided he would build a force to defeat the horsemen and destroy any non-good creature who would not stand with him, innocents included. The party stopped him and had a brief meeting with a messenger of the horsemen who basically told them to make their time. It was at this point that the sage who helped them also turned out to be Tyr, the god of justice in a mortal guise. He was taken by an angelic host and sentenced to be tried in the court of the gods. (For which the party felt very guilty, as they quite enjoyed the sage's goofy but pleasant manner)

Third Season started half a year later in IRL time, but immediately after in game time. I drew up a world map for them to explore and they went to the task of following the legends of so-called 'legendary weapons' that they could use to hurt the horsemen, as normal magic and blades would simply shatter against their powerful auras. During the quest they discovered many plots and issues to solve, and even hunted down creatures of reknown to aid in gathering what they needed. In the final stretches they resolved a war between two countries to gain an army and finally started doing battle with the Horsemen Proper. The first they fought was War, who defeated the party handily, being the strongest of the four in martial combat. Seeing that the horsemen would succeed if these mortals were the strongest that the world could offer, War nursed them back to health and offered to help them, as if the horsemen wiped out all mortals, there would be no more war for her to enjoy. She then aided in the party's efforts to find Famine and Pestilence, which were hard fought battles indeed. Finally they had to defeat Charon, Death itself. This involved killing four of his copies who resided over the estuaries of the river styx, and then finally defeating the real Charon within 24 hours of ending them. In order to do this War tricked them into dying to Charon on the material plane, and then fishing them out of the styx as a means to bring them to his realm. They defeated the copies, losing war to one of charon's traps in the process. Finally the party went to the realm of Abaddon and challenged death, only barely defeating him, saving the souls of the loved ones he'd stolen from them in their crusade, and bringing peace to the prime material.

So this was about 2 years ago now, and I've recently been asked if I could continue the campaign by my group. I did leave a hint in my epilogue that I had more things planned for epic (the party all finished at level 20, save for the druid who was level 21 and the Ranger/Wizard/Arcane Archer/Paladin who had a combined level of 22... Don't ask.) Suffice to say, this leg of the journey will take them to the Planescape city of Sigil, where they will begin their quest to gather evidence and try to save Tyr from the judgement of the Gods, and find out exactly why Ao stopped the gods from interfering, all the while working through the controversy and intrigue happening throughout the city of doors... I'm currently writing up stats and plotlines for it now.

As for epic encounters, I find that the epic level handbook is very poorly written in terms of the actual monster balance. But thankfully after running the three campaigns I have a lot of experience in making my own monsters and I believe that by tweaking things myself I'll be able to keep combat interesting, fluid and fun for my players. It is a lot of work, but anything is possible when you can have fun with the rules :)

Apologies for the essay, given my current situation I was quite inspired to add something onto this dicussion, albeit 4 months late!

/r/DnD Thread