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I've started quite a few campaigns higher than 1st level.  Never needed any special rules or support for it. 

I only start at level 1, maybe 1/3th of the time. 

I cant remember any rules for it in 2nd ed, but I was rather small back then and could have been lost in memory

 I found the magic item selections in both 3rd and 4th a bit awkward; 3rd was a buffet of choices and you could quite quickly get an internally very unbalanced (uh oh, used the balance word) group that could be hard to make encounters for, like spread of AC between 12-35 at the same table. 4th seemed quite artificial to me with a few very powerful items and no small things, and you always had to have the holy trinity of weapon/armor/neck or the system couldnt cope.

I guess by scaling back magic items in the current edition they have accomplished some of that...but there is so far only official guidance in putting items in to our adventures by random rolling, and not much (nothing) help for starting at higher level, which is a bit sad if you want to test out their latest Mud Sorcerers Tomb.

Other than items I would love some guidance or help on contacts, previous adventures, enemies and so on. A bit like the background system at the moment, but for established adventurers rather than newcomers. I am doing all of this myself usually with the players, but a few guidelines would be rather nice

 My main motivation for writing this is that the system and 90% of character generation always focus on making level one chars, and as a side note explain how to level them up. But if less than 90% of the player base play that way is it then worth it to rethink the way its done?

/edited for clearity

Jan 20, 2013 -- 9:41AM, Keendk wrote:

 I am not a big fan of having to drag my players through ½ a year of goblin caves just so that they get to the level where my REAL adventure starts. So for this I tend to start my campaigns above first level.  D&D has had a mixed bag of success in supporting this over the editions in my humble opinion. I would personally like to see quite a bit more support on this than weve seen so far in DNDN, and especially during a play test period where my group genuinly want to help out testing the rules across the broad spectrum of levels.

1. Is this an issue for anyone else than me?

2. Does it "break the spirit" of D&D not to endure the leveling up from level 1?

3. What can be done, and what support/rules are needed to start at higher levels?

#1 Pre-4E, we started out at 3rd or 4th because we wanted a chance to survive one of the goblins from that goblin cave. In 4e, we again started at 3rd/4th, but it was because we liked picking out our magic items and getting the right feel of our characters. (IE: if your character's abilities hinge on an item or are just make a lot cooler by them, why not start with them instead of working up to competent/cool?)

#2 Enduring isn't fun(to me at least) and if you pile up a lot of not fun (re-rolling characters multiple times because you died on random monsters BEFORE the adventure starts) why are you playing the game? I play to enjoy myself not to grin and bare it until it is fun in a few levels.

#3 I'm happy with a section like in 3.5 or 4 that gives an expected wealth/equipment/magic when starting at higher than first. That's all I'd need. The fluff I can take care of myself.

It's pretty common, so I would definitely say that it's not "just you" and it doesn't "break the spirit of D&D".

I'm not sure what kind of rules you would need for that, though.  Maybe just some general guidelines, explaining how you got up to that point, for the purposes of introducing continuity.  There's no expectations of magic items, so it's literally just whatever the DM thinks is appropriate - some DMs like to hand out +3 swords to everyone, and some of them don't want anyone to have a magic item without having gone on an epic quest for it.  At most, they could offer out guidelines for what sorts of items would be equivalent in power, but magic items are notoriously difficult to compare across classes.