How big is the Blood War?

[mythusmage]

Not as big as it used to be. I mean, back when it was basically the only metaphysicist war in town most anybody who was anybody showed up. Now that you've got The Deconstructionist War and The Meme War the whole thing has essentially lost its luster. I mean, you've got one location in parareality holding The Saturnaliac Flower War and the Sacred Diurnal Period War simultaneously. Getting so you can't keep track of who's fighting who regarding what pressing existential conundrum.

Then too the quality of The Blood War participants has really slacked off in the past few years. Recently there's been a call to open it open to other teams.

 

[Terath Ninir]

The blood war is the silliest farking thing to come out of Planescape.

Oh, wait, sorry, the silliest thing was the slang that they stole from Shadowrun. (Yes, I know the individual words were all different. But the sum total of the feel of them was exactly the same, making Sigil feel like a weird-shaped Seattle.)

But the blood war was horrendously dorky.

Of course, the stupidest extra-planar thing they've ever done was the crap they did with Asmodeus, but that's not Planescape's fault. It was an innocent bystander on that one...

 

[Shemeska]

The blood war is the silliest farking thing to come out of Planescape.

To be fair, the Blood War originated prior to Planescape in the early 2e Monstrous Compendium: Outer Planes Appendix. Planescape just developed it and fleshed it out, gave it history, etc.

 

[Andor]

So big it's meaningless. It can't interact with your main campaign world without eating it, so it's always somewhere else. At most it's a backdrop in some nasty landscape your PCs have to trudge through to destroy/deploy the macguffin of infinite haddock.

 

[ruleslawyer]

The blood war is the silliest farking thing to come out of Planescape.

Oh, wait, sorry, the silliest thing was the slang that they stole from Shadowrun. (Yes, I know the individual words were all different. But the sum total of the feel of them was exactly the same, making Sigil feel like a weird-shaped Seattle.)

[minor threadjack]WHAT?

The Cant has nothing to do with near-future Seattle; it's quite directly based off 17th-century London slang, FYI. Just as Shadowrun's colloquialisms are based off any number of cyberpunk and dark sci-fi slang conventions. The fact that you liken the two suggests that in your view, all slang is the same, and by your logic, any game product featuring any form of slang automatically resembles Shadowrun.

So does that mean that an urban d20 Modern game set in the Bronx would make New York feel like "a weird-shaped Seattle"? Or that Firefly's Chinese-inflected argot makes space feel that way?
[/minor threadjack]

 

[Land Outcast]

How big is it?

Already Adressed

Is it on such a scale that not even the gods can comprehend it?

Adressed too

Will it ever tip in favor of one of the other side?

Who knows, my vote is it wouldn't

Which major players have a vested interest in seeing the Blood War continue?

Everyone, noone wants the multiverse ruled by Demons/Devils

What are some good sources for information about the Blood War?

Hellbound: The Blood War planescape boxed set

Can it ever be influenced in any major way?

Yes, but not by weakening or empowering either side, rather by lockign up one side (somehow block transplanar magicks say, in the abyss, or in the hells)

 

[DarkKestral]

That is in my opinion the most cool and yet horrifying aspect of it. That the worst apocalyptic nightmares of the entire cold war would in the Blood War be considered simply normal. That the fiendish idea of a minor skirmish involves eight or ten million combatants in a single pitched field covered with clouds of chemical agents and swarming disease vectors lit by the strobing flash of the arcane equivalent of tactical nukes fired by seige engines that weight tens of thousands of tons and fire projectiles the size of houses. Dead and dying winged fiends crashing to the ground like bloody hail in a monsoon of offensive magic. Dretches and Lemure are considered munitions rather than combatants and used that way by units of higher fiends.

That is a EVILLY beautiful description of the war...

Not as big as it used to be. I mean, back when it was basically the only metaphysicist war in town most anybody who was anybody showed up. Now that you've got The Deconstructionist War and The Meme War the whole thing has essentially lost its luster. I mean, you've got one location in parareality holding The Saturnaliac Flower War and the Sacred Diurnal Period War simultaneously. Getting so you can't keep track of who's fighting who regarding what pressing existential conundrum.

Then too the quality of The Blood War participants has really slacked off in the past few years. Recently there's been a call to open it open to other teams.

This is just funny as all get out.


I wish I could sig 'em both.

 

[jollyninja]

it's so big that when it sits around the house, it REALLY sits around the house.

 

[Dragonbait]

The Blood War is so big that when it goes to the movies, it sits next to everyone.

 

[diaglo]

To be fair, the Blood War originated prior to Planescape in the early 2e Monstrous Compendium: Outer Planes Appendix. Planescape just developed it and fleshed it out, gave it history, etc.

or further back. if you extrapolate the text about the Demons of India in Supplement IV (1976)