How do you take over a D&D world?

[MortalPlague]

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

As an aside, my current campaign has something like this going on. My PCs are 19th level and pretty mercenary. We wrapped up the previous arc with 2 PCs inheriting 12 manor houses throughout the countryside and the title of Count / Countess in the city. So they spent a year of down time touring their houses, and accumulating a bandwagon of strange and wonderful followers. Their retinue consists of:

Catherine - Deva Butcher
Noddil - Deva Baker
Sephestro - Deva Candlestick Maker
Quira - Eladrin Tailor (and her assistants)
Antonio - Purveyor of Alcohol (modelled on the Most Interesting Man In The World)
Moller - Fire Genasi Apothecary
Xialla - Shadar'Kai Dancer
Lixle - Half-Elf Tiger Tamer
Montgomery - Human Treasurer (who they allow nowhere near their precious treasure)
Pear - Tiefling Chronicler
Portmouth - Dragonborn Lawyer
Eclaire - Lightning Genasi Painter
Jannoxel - Drow Ex-Slave (rescued in a previous adventure)
Fizzban Whistlesnout - Gnomish Alchemist
Tallera - The Boy (who is, in fact, a 12 year old girl)
A Troupe of Halfing Acrobats

 

[Doug McCrae]

There are so many centres of power in a D&D universe, I don't think violence would work. Be a politician, forge alliances. To hold your alliance together you need an enemy, a group everyone else has reason to hate. I would suggest humanity.

 

[howandwhy99]

How do you take over a D&D world?

One D at a time. :rimshot:

Somewhat more seriously. Find your world. Place it under your boot heel. Crush vigorously.

 

[Viking Bastard]

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...

The Mage already pledged her servitude to The God of War in exchange for a powerful magic item, so that's a hook/interesting complication/convenient plot device.

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...

[MENTION=9327]Halivar[/MENTION]'s post is excellent and is helping me visualize this in possible arcs. I don't think they're really that into the finer details of politics, nor am I truly confident in my ability to work that.

So exposition-bots are probably a good idea. The Butler seems like the logical first step.

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.

They could do Against the Giants from the Drow POV.

 

[Rechan]

I was part of an Exalted campaign that went about this task. The suggestion from @Halivar is somewhat on the mark.l

What we did was first topple despots. Just go in and kick in their teeth. There were a lot in the region we started in. Then, when we had a nice little land base, we made deals with our neighbors, who were small, needed resources, etc. It helped that in Exalted, the Solars (all PCs are Solars or other Exalts, which are demi-gods) were hunted by the Big Empire, so we offered a safe haven for them in exchange for serving our nation. We built our nation up resource by resource, made sure our standard of living was awesome, made more deals - then took on the setting's Big Bads. What's important is that we didn't fully assimilate everyone - some countries/city-states we swallowed up kept their rulers/established bureaucracies, they just acknowledged fealty, shared in our bounty in exchange for some of their resources.

This is similar to what happened to Real World Spain and how the Moors took it over. Spain was a dozen or so little fiefdoms, and the Moors would invade and take over one, and none of the neighbors came to aid. So like dominos in slow motion, the Moors preyed on the Spaniards isolationism to take over.

In a fantasy setting, toss in a few extra tricks like Charm/Mental manipulation, replacing the rulers with doubles in your pocket, etc. And be willing to negotiate, make deals, and bribe, bribe, bribe.

Of course, if you wanted to go for a more low-key method, you could always go the Illuminati approach. Subtle infiltration of powerful governments.

 

[Living Legend]

Sorry but this leads my mind to an interesting side question: what would a highschool reunion look like for a DnD character?

There's gonna be your old pothead friend who is now an epic level alchemist with his chain of magic item shops, the captain of the football team who is now a drunken guard, and the amazon chick who used to look great an a chainmail bikini who is now 8 moons pregnant. But what about you?

Sure, you're gonna mount orcus's head over your mantle some day, you did save that town from those orcs, but if that isn't good enough just tell em to check out theose kick ass 48" rims on your war wagon and tell that tired old story about that time you crit'ed an Eye of Gruumsh.

 

[was]

slay the gods

 

[Janx]

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.

This is true. You need to create products that inspire people and instill a sense of brand loyalty.

The iPack is just such a device. It's sleek, stylish, and holds all your things. No one should be without their iPack stylishly slung over their shoulder.

Each year produce a new model, with advanced features that excite everyone to own the latest iPack.


Or you could invest in Contagion Charm spell research. Charm a friend, who tells 2 friends who tell 2 friends who tell 2 friends and so on.

 

[Relique du Madde]

1. Find an ancient insanelt powerful artifact capable of razing entire cities.
2. Start a cult dedicated to peace.
3. Manipulate events to start an equivolent of a world war.
4. Use the artifact on several cities to cause mass histeria and worsen the war.
4. Become "folk heros" dedicated to ending the wars.
6. Assassinate/defeat the rulers of the warring kingdoms to end the war and bring peace to tthe kingdom.
7. Establish an autocratic government.
8. Use your cult to eliminate threats to your rule.
9. At the sign of a rebellion use your artifact to obliterate the inserection and have your cult say the God of Peace will punish all who desires war.
10. Reward individuals who exibit the three ps, pacifism, passivity, and placatability.



-Sent via Tapatalk

 

[Hand of Evil]

“I mean if we even had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.”