High Level Campaign Diary – Dec. 11, 2024
By Jason Campbell
I’ve been running a weekly 5e campaign in Monte Cook’s Ptolus setting since January 2022, the player characters are currently 18th level. It can be difficult to run a 5e game with higher level characters while keeping the game challenging and the players engaged. This campaign diary series features notes from my players and I about the challenges of playing high level 5e.
Open Ended Questions
The characters are currently exploring a mystical uninhabited island where they've been told they might gain new powers to help in an upcoming fight. They aren't sure exactly what they'll encounter, but they went anyway. In one area on the island, the heroes entered a tower, but found they were magically separated, each character dealing with their own problem.
The problems they encountered were not combat challenges or intellectual puzzles, but ethical dilemnas. A celestial warlock found himself alone in a room with a shadow fiend who nearly killed him in a previous battle, but the fiend was incapacitated and a clock ticked down rapidly towards an end point marked on its face. The warlock killed the fiend on principle as his code makes him hate undead and fiends. A fighter found himself alone in a room with an assassin who had hunted the heroes previously. The assassin was dying of thirst, unable to reach a bucket of water suspended over his head. The fighter fired a magic missile at the bucket, giving the assassin a large drink, and then he left the room.
What Was the Answer?
The island is overseen by a diety who the heroes can meet if they get through all the challenges of the island (which later will include combat and puzzles.) The players and their characters were confused by the above challenges. Likely they expected a puzzle with a definitive solution, and now they don't know if their choices were the solutions.
In truth there were no absolute solutions, the dilemnas were there for the characters to comtemplate their own values. The confusion the characters might experience was the effect the diety expected. They wanted the characters to travel the island unsure of what they would find.
Conclusion
Puzzles are great for giving characters a feeling of accomplishment when they solve them. Questions without a single answer can move the story on in a different way, as the decisions of the characters can be evaluated by others later.
What do you think? Have you had open questions in your TTRPGs? Let us know in the comments.
