Dungeons & Dragons can tell all kinds of stories. Whether they’re simple, short stories that you can tell in a single session, or complex, overarching storylines that can take more than a real-life year to conclude, many things just work here, and that’s the beauty of TTRPGs in general.
However, some stories are harder to pull off, depending on the party’s level. If your players can obliterate people with a single attack or spell, then a small-time gang dominating a village won’t be much of a hassle for them. High levels mean big stories, which often affect the fate of multiple people, whole nations, perhaps the entire world, or even beyond.
War
Simple And Effective
War is a straightforward topic for a story that works well in long campaigns and can be effectively used at any level. However, while war works at low levels of play for making it personal with characters dealing with the consequences, it also works well on high levels of play for increasing the stakes.
The key here for large-scale use is to make the war complex, involve multiple nations (or extremely big territories), and give your players some sort of leadership position. With their power and control over troops, the game will focus on their plans and strategies as well as their unique powers, and each failure can cost way too many lives.
Apocalypse
Also Simple And Effective
Destroying the world and having your players fight for the scraps is also a good topic at any level. Low levels of play will merely focus on surviving, but at high levels, their focus can be more epic than that.
If whatever ruined the world is reversible, like a curse that affects the land, the focus can be on destroying this curse. Alternatively, if reversing things isn’t an option, high-level players can literally attempt to start a new age, managing survivors and creating new civilizations. Your players can literally create the fundamentals of this world, crafting the places they’ll visit in the next campaign, too.
Some of these can also be teased and worked on with low-level characters, in case you want to start at a low level and reach a high level during the campaign itself.
A Powerful Entity/God Trying To Take Over
You Have Many Options
Vecna. Asmodeus. Orcus. Tiamat. There are many powerful, evil deities in D&D, with the goal of reshaping or destroying everything we know. These characters are perfect for a high-level adventure, and few players have actually had the satisfaction of fighting one of them.
Alternatively, if you’re in a homebrew world or just in the mood, you can create your own behemoth that wants to destroy all existence – we’re sure this monster has its reasons. They can have cults dedicated to helping them, warlocks, or whole nations that serve them and their destruction.
A Powerful Entity/God Is Hunting The Party
Turn Them Into Prey
If you want high-stakes but to still keep things more personal, then use whatever happened previously (or their backstories, if you are already starting at a high level) to create a personal vendetta being enacted by a powerful being.
The party can be constantly on the run from its powerful minions, or, even if they can take them on, they still have the issue that every time they’re hunted, a lot of destruction happens, making people disfavor the player characters for bringing death wherever they go.
A Celestial War
Like Our First Example, But More Direct
Let’s mix some ideas. Wars, as mentioned, are already a great way to have high stakes among powerful characters, so why not involve the most powerful beings in your campaign in said war?
Having literal gods fighting one another requires strong soldiers beside them, which is where high-level characters can help. If you don’t think that troop management will be that fun for your party and want them to be more direct, fighting devils alongside gods is a good take.
Feel free to mix some of these ideas together, as many of them can mix and match well.
Multiversal Adventures
Many Places To Visit
The multiverse has a lot to offer. Instead of having your players deal with cities and their problems, they can go straight to hell, the abyss, or many other places, and fight their enemies in their houses instead of being invaded.
With a plot that encourages all this hopping around, you can drastically change the scenery every now and then (along with the creatures), offering a nice variety for your players to experience throughout the adventure. You can also try stranding them in another universe, but a high-level spellcaster may have Plane Shift and just fix that.
Convergence Of Planes
If They Don’t Go To Other Planes, Then Other Planes Come To Them
Despite the idea of going to other planes, there’s nothing wrong with a multiversal invasion. Instead of a devil here and there attempting some deals, just make a full-on invasion with countless fiends popping out everywhere. It’s an apocalypse in the making.
Alternatively, you can merge everything in a weird, cosmic event, having fey, fiends, celestials, and many other beings appearing on the Material Plane for reasons they don’t even understand. It also does wonders for enemy variety when you can see all of this in the same room, where they’re all confused about what’s going on.
Adventures Through Time
Save History Itself
If you have a group that you have played with for a while now, and you guys spend a lot of time in the same setting, then why not go all nostalgic in an adventure across time, with a villain trying to undo history aka your previous party’s accomplishments?
Alternatively, you can go through important moments in your world’s history or official moments of D&D’s canon – it all depends on the setting you and your friends are playing. And, for every success or failure, the present can change, slightly or drastically, depending on what they intentionally or accidentally altered.
Age Of Dragons
Make The Game Live Up To Its Name
We’re using dragons as our key example here because they’re extremely high CR monsters who are also prolific. Most parties can maybe deal with one of those, but what if dragons are a constant problem? Can your players handle two or three dragons at the same time?
Still, as epic as being a dragon hunter is, you can choose other high CR monsters and make adventures focused on taking them down. Kraken hunters or Tarrasque hunters sound like fun, deadly ideas, too, as well as a group or legion of liches working together. The options are endless.
Broken Balance
Nature Always Wins
If you want to bring some elementals into the mix (and the multiversal ideas didn’t appeal to you), you can have a classic tale of people damaging the world they live in through their artificial constructions, and nature itself has a bone to pick with mortals.
This topic also allows you to use the environment as an enemy, with disasters occurring specifically to attack the party, and you get to use some monsters that don’t appear as often in more mundane stories.
- Original Release Date
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1974
- Player Count
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2+
- Age Recommendation
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12+ (though younger can play and enjoy)
- Length per Game
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From 60 minutes to hours on end.
- Franchise Name
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Dungeons & Dragons
- Publishing Co
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Wizards of the Coast