How do you take over a D&D world?

[Viking Bastard]

On last game day everyone was too tired and defeated to do any hardcore gaming, so we spent the night on character management--spending gold, retraining, clearing up rule questions, mapping out future options, etc and so forth. We also discussed the group's long-term goals--where did they see themselves in 5, 10 or 20 levels?

The girls were in agreement: TAKE OVER THE WORLD. It was obvious, dude. In addendum, muhahahah!

As it stands, this is their plan:

1. Acquire wagon
2. Pimp it up
3. Hire butler
4. ???????
5. World domination

Sounds potentially fun. I'll take a crack at DMing that. But it hasn't come up before in my games, not on this scale. They don't want a kingdom, they want ALL the kingdoms.

But it begs the question: How do you take over the (vanilla D&D) world?

• How do you DM that?
• How would they actually go about it?
• What, in general, is there to consider (without getting too realistic about it)?

 

[the Jester]

Depends on the edition. Am I correct in thinking you're playing 3e? If so:

4. Become epic level.

That's what the party in my campaign did, anyway.

 

[Halivar]

First, you need loyal henchmen. And by loyal, I mean fanatically loyal. To do this, you have to first adopt (so you can later co-opt) a cause. These become your holy warriors; men who will not question your orders, because you are one of them. Examples:

• Mua'dhib's Fremen Fedaykin in Dune
• Harry Potter's "Dumbledore's Army"
• Felisin's Army of the Whirlwind in the Malazan series
• Darth Vader's Ngoh assassins in the Timothy Zahn Star Wars novels.

To obtain such henchmen, you must set out with ostensibly altruistic motives. These are the people who must believe you are worth killing and dying for. Therefore, you must be that person to them. You must adopt and actually advance their cause. This also means that you can't start out as a BBEG, or you attract no loyalty (note that this fact should significantly nuance BBEG's in your campaign).

Second, you need a base of operations. This is one aspect of traditional D&D that is woefully under-emphasized in modern editions: the taking and holding of a keep. The secret base of operations is also a place to inculcate and reinforce, through proximity, exposure, and peer pressure, your world domination philosophy to your henchmen. The goal of the keep is not just a projection of power, and a defense against enemies, but also a place to isolate followers and more strongly bind them into the cult of personality that a BBEG must foster if he wishes to rule the world.

Taking over your surrounding country-side will be a task and a half. Sovereigns will not cede their lands simply because you're nice to them. You must take them by force. However, paradoxically, you must have the sympathy of the people or surrounding countries will rally to your target. If you win, the subjugated people will hate you. Low-hanging fruit in this regard is any local kingdom who abuses its people. These are areas where you can infiltrate, provide humanitarian aid, destabilize the government, and hopefully wage war with the support of the populace.

Once you have amassed to yourself some land and people, you enter the realm of international politics. This will be the hardest part. Attempting to forcefully take over the world almost never works. Ever. BUT, creating a sphere of hegemony is easy if you continue acting in the interests of other countries, especially smaller ones. Providing incentive to smaller powers to conglomerate into a confederation is easy enough, but will require significant military power. The hiring of skilled generals and mercenaries will be required. Obtaining the actual sovereignty of these smaller nations is unnecessary; the cohesive whole will choose a premier you can control, as long as you maintain a healthy spy network and control over local party politics in each canton. Examples from history:

• The Aegean League
• The Roman Republic
• The Holy Roman Empire
• COMINTERN/Warsaw Pact

So, you've got yourself a little empire, even if it's not technically called that, and you have a core of fanatical followers. Your people love you because you have been actively seeking out the resources you need to enrich your citizen's lives. Here the non-BBEG can retire, and go down in history as one of the greatest figures the world has ever seen. But that's not what you want, right? Take over the world, you say?

Well, from here, you can't unless you go full-bore BBEG. We're talking about going the whole nine-yards: subverting religion, assassinating unfriendly foreign figures, mercilessly destroying your opposition, and invading and enslaving whenever you get the opportunity.

And since this all is going to take you a couple hundred years, you might as well get started on that lichdom ritual while you've still got the time.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Minions - you got to have minions and a beer, got to have a beer too, mmm maybe an air force with an airport...yep, minions, beer and an airport!

 

[Viking Bastard]

Depends on the edition. Am I correct in thinking you're playing 3e?

We're playing (somewhat streamlined) 4e.

Minions - you got to have minions and a beer, got to have a beer too, mmm maybe an air force with an airport...yep, minions, beer and an airport!

Their faces lighted up when I told them D&D has historically had rules for hirelings. First minion: Someone to take care of the laundry.

 

[Dioltach]

Give the people something they can't live without: a new religion, a new commodity, a new foodstuff, a new form of entertainment.

Nobody says you have to sit on a throne to rule.

 

[Croesus]

As it stands, this is their plan:

1. Acquire wagon
2. Pimp it up
3. Hire butler
4. ???????
5. World domination

4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Just travel around the world with your wagon, dropping off pods at every habitation. Before you know it, everyone's a pod-person. That, or clone a whole heck of lot of dopplegangers...

 

[howandwhy99]

How do you take over a D&D world?

Clearly pimped out wagons and butlers will have a lot to do with it.

 

[MortalPlague]

You could always do the faustian pact... have the PCs make a bargain with Asmodeus. In exchange for a terrible demon army, they trade their souls, and an offering of souls each year...

Halivar's idea is fantastic. A campaign of that scope would be a great deal of fun, I suspect, if your players are politically minded. If you want to run that sort of thing with less emphasis on politics, you could simply have one of the PCs' followers be a political mastermind, and he or she could feed them the relevant political information and advise them on where to step. Kind of like the advisors in Civilization. In fact, it might not be a bad call to have a military, social, religious, and political advisor...

The great fun of this would be finding hirelings, I suspect. There are lots of ways you could create entertaining missions. They might need to break a legendary general out of prison, convince an epic statesman to join their cause, kidnap a wise sage, so on, so forth. There are all sorts of monstrous allies who might be invaluable too; mind flayers jump to mind immediately. Dragons too. They could both be bargained with, and would be excellent enforcers for the empire.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I'm the DM, if that wasn't clear.

Give the people something they can't live without: a new religion, a new commodity, a new foodstuff, a new form of entertainment.

Nobody says you have to sit on a throne to rule.

I like the out-of-box thinking, but I think they kind of want thrones. With shiny bits.

4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Just travel around the world with your wagon, dropping off pods at every habitation. Before you know it, everyone's a pod-person. That, or clone a whole heck of lot of dopplegangers...

I like that, but it does sound like a bother to keep track of.