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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 2778901" data-attributes="member: 7177">There is no need to make them "wholly evil". Just empathize that while there are political leaders on both sides who are good and decent people, there are others who are far more... ruthless. Who have "special projects" seeking magic artifacts and creating magic "super-weapons". Who order assassinations of their enemies. Who blackmail people on their own side who are "too soft". All "for the good of the nation". And even the "good guys" will have to make moral compromises in a climate like this.Ideally, both sides should have some moral stances and ideals that most of us can agree with - but both sides should have people who secretly betray those ideals for the sake of expediency. This creates the possibility for some great stories of intrigue and betrayals, and offers the chances for the PCs to be confronted with moral dlimmas.One thing I have been thinking off is that one famous military unit of one side is an order of paladins. This order is universally adored by the populace and is great for morale. But its leader "snapped" a few years ago and massacred prisoners after a personal tragedy, and lost his paladin powers in the process. Some of the country's political leaders have realized this, and conspired to keep his new, fallen status secret through magical means, because the morale of the country would suffer a terrible blow if this came to light. The low-ranking members of the order are still paladins and don't suspect a thing, but the leadership is slowly becoming more corrupt...None of the politicians should be exactly what they seem. All should have secrets and hidden agendas...I think we should have some more than those. I mean both NATO and the Warshaw Pact at he height of the Cold War had lots of members.I'd say that we should have a dozen major countries or so that have aligned themselves with one side or another (in other words, five to seven on each side), and slightly less than that who haven't, not counting a larger number of city-states and small fiefdoms who either support one of the sides or are trying hard to remain neutral.And note that countries within one alliance don't neccessarily have to like each other - all it matters is that they have some sort of incentive for joining their respective alliance...Another question: What area size should the whole map represent? That will tell us how big we can make the kingdoms...Well, the monsters and dungeons won't go away just because there is political intrigue going on - there is no reason why these things shouldn't still be possible. All this setup does is provide additional opportunities for adventures.And this setup also allows some additional twists for classical adventures. Perhaps the monster was released by the other side to weaken defenses and morale. Or perhaps some ruthless politicians on one's own side were responsible to make it seem like the other side did it, thus making people outraged and even more eager to support the war.Or let's say that the PCs are hired to retrieve a magical artifact out of a dungeon. Maybe it will be useful in the war! But then agents of the other side might show up and try to get it for themselves! And if they discover that their patron didn't tell them all the details about the artifact, and they realize that it allows its user to summon powerful demons and undead - will they still turn it over and live with the burden on their conscience once they see the horrible use it is being put to? Or will they try to destroy it, making some powerful enemies in the process?Politics can make a bad situation worse. And of course, adventures thrive on bad situations...   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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