I want an invading army from beyond this dimension. Tell me about it.

[Mishihari Lord]

Orz.

 

[Kesh]

`

What advantage? My wand of fireball trumps your weeny pistol!

Great Idea btw

You've obviously not played in the Dragonstar setting. Firearms really do make a difference vs. Vancian spellcasting. Your wand is both far more expensive and more rare than a good laser rifle.

 

[Cage-Rattler]

And all that assumes that the arcane Nazi rituals that didn't quite work in the RW continued to be ineffective in the fantasy realm. What if those Nazi SS "Warlocks" suddenly found their spells effective at raising an army of undead?

Ever hear of the "Weird War II"? (originally GURPS I think, now D20 via Pinnacle Entertainment).

Lots of supernatural-Nazi wackiness to be had in there: Waffen SS Blood Mages, corpse mines, wehrwölfe, flugzeuggeist...

While it's geared for d20 modern, it's a great idea-mine for a "Nazi-invasion-of-D&D" adventure.

 

[Slife]

And all that assumes that the arcane Nazi rituals that didn't quite work in the RW continued to be ineffective in the fantasy realm. What if those Nazi SS "Warlocks" suddenly found their spells effective at raising an army of undead?

How about giving them exclusive access to the incantation rules variant? http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/incantations.htm

With some of the d20 modern ones as well. The create clone incantation seems very Nazi Sciencey. (Especially with the focus component of a genetics lab)
http://www.mayhemgaming.net/CaptSRD/MRDv35/SRDMODERN/MRD/Arcana/Incantations.htm

 

[avr]

Or reverse the invasion? Mages from another world have opened a rift and are pleading for assistance against hordes bent on their destruction. For a nasty twist, the mages bear strange weapons they call firearms and are wearing an ancient symbol of health and well being, the crooked cross.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Lots of writers have played around with fantasy & Nazis- two of my faves are Michael Moorcock and the new series by Katherine Kurtz & Scott MacMillen.

Slife- I wouldn't give the Nazis exclusive use of incantations...but perhaps they'd have the biggest library of them. Mass-produced books with movable type are sooooooo much easier to get to SS Warlocks in numbers than those silly scribed scrolls the natives use...

Create Clone would also be kind of nasty...imagine these guys thinking like the whackos in Boys from Brazil...little Hitlers & Goerings running around, possibly even a Rommel or 2 commanding groups of Warbeasts.

Green Ronin's Modern Magic seems like it would be another natural starting point for the SS Warlocks.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Maybe turn the situation around, or get a triangular thing going.

You could go with either the invading or seeking help angle for the fantasy Nazis and still have an interesting invasion. Maybe then go for a counterinvasion?

The Allies discover what the SS warlocks have been up to and speed up the pace of the Manhattan project. Take the apocryphal tale of Pvt. Murphy who in the myth was sent to reattach a loose wire and basically on top of the bomb when it detonated and riff with Banestorms. They set off the bomb on top of a dormant ley-line and the sudden influx of power combined with the blood sacrifice of pvt. Murphy reawakened the ancient line. In the process creating a path to the other world.

So on the magical side there's an earth-shattering kaboom and mushroom cloud of enormous destruction. Leaving behind the faintly glowing outlines of a road. From which come strange foreigners. From here possibility abounds. Maybe they put the two together and realize they've opened a new front. The allies seek to site and emplace a second nuclear bomb on the other side where it corresponds to Germany so they can launch an invasion directly into the heart of Germany? Using their massive industrial might to set up an invasion and logistics staging area on the magic side.

 

[Slife]

Slife- I wouldn't give the Nazis exclusive use of incantations...but perhaps they'd have the biggest library of them. Mass-produced books with movable type are sooooooo much easier to get to SS Warlocks in numbers than those silly scribed scrolls the natives use...

Good point. I was thinking that since just directly casting a spell is a lot simpler than researching and performing an incantation they'd be almost non-existent in the normal fantasy setting. Since instructions for incantations are non-magical, the printing press gives a significant advantage to the nazis. If nothing else, every spy would have some sort of suicide incantation printed on something easy to hide to avoid being tortured for their secrets (which, incidentally, would cause a lot of collateral damage)

 

[S'mon]

Or reverse the invasion? Mages from another world have opened a rift and are pleading for assistance against hordes bent on their destruction. For a nasty twist, the mages bear strange weapons they call firearms and are wearing an ancient symbol of health and well being, the crooked cross.

Given the tendency of PCs to bite on any plot hook and slaughter anyone they're pointed at, that's a cool and scary - chilling - idea, at least for the right group.

I did the opposite in one of my deity-level games, the deity PCs Thrin (Upper_Krust) and Mirv Sheelon were summoned to a fantasy-medieval version of 1940s England by Merlin to help Sir Winston of Churchill and King Arthur fight against the invading Third Reich and their god Wotan.

 

[Testament]

Or reverse the invasion? Mages from another world have opened a rift and are pleading for assistance against hordes bent on their destruction. For a nasty twist, the mages bear strange weapons they call firearms and are wearing an ancient symbol of health and well being, the crooked cross.

Yoink. Just YOINK