Question for paper & pencil D&D players. Did you ever play a campaign with heroic, epic characters and adventures?

Yeah i played a fallen paladin. Was really fun actually

Absolutely.  I've had campaigns that fought, and defeated, a demon lord trying to control the world's oceans as step one of destroying the world.

We had another campaign where loyalty to his house (clan) caused a character to basically doom a whole race and start the slow, and mostly subtle assimilation of every person on the world.

It all depends on your group and what they make of it.  Tell your DM you want to be more epic, and see if he can do anything for you.

Of course we did.  About 50 years ago when I first played D & D we used historical events as well as factional events as a basis for games.

Yes, sure. The Dungeon Master can make-up all kinds of stories. 

My daughter plays on two D&D teams. She is the Dungeon Master for one of them. She writes all sorts of stories. Many involving team work, puzzles to figure out. Some Campaigns have centered around a made up world.

Absolutely, and I still do. My fellow players and I have each made our own individual worlds that are based on D&D but are completely our own design with our own maps, races, classes, histories etc. We take turns running our own worlds for each other, and we each have a stable of characters that we run in each of the worlds we play in. 

These are all campaign games, with epic adventures, political intrigue, world-changing events and deep, intricate plots. We barely use any of the D&D rules at this point. We have our own combat system, our own skill systems, our own unique religions, etc. 

We stopped playing the the old style games like you describe with pointless monster killing and loot gathering long ago. Our games are all about plot lines and character arcs now. If you can find a group of like-minded players who are creative and willing to at least HELP to make an individual world or worlds to play in and willing to go outside the traditional D&D or Pathfinder formats, I think you'll find it EXTREMELY gratifying and enjoyable for everyone.

During COVID, we've been playing on Discord which has voice, photo, video, and dice-rolling functions that are easy to use.

If you'd like more info about how our games work and what kind of work we've done on them, feel free to respond to this with your email address and we can correspond.