Let's Talk About War as a Backdrop to Adventure

[Talltomwright]

I’m playing the sadly out of print World War Cthulhu (Call of Cthulhu in London during the Blitz and then being parachuted into occupied Europe as part of the Special Operations Executive) and its proving a hit with my players.

The Blitz is such a rich environment for a horror scenario and I’m very much looking forward to watching the players juggling military objectives and supernatural ones once they are dropped into France.

 

[Tonguez]

Since medieval europe was almost constantly at war most every adventure ought to have war as a backdrop.

I've just finished playing an engineer during the War of Spanish Succession, my team of pionniers were specialist bridgebuilders and sapeurs sent ahead of the fighting legions to secure roads, maintain the dykes and sluicegates and reinforce fortications. We also explored old haunted monastaries, secured relics being sought by the Inqusitors, negotiated with fey and fought mad monks, ghost and nosferatu.

 

[Reynard]

I sometimes think of things like the trans continental railroad was completed during the American Civil War, and it reminds me that wars do not stop the world from turning. Even now, for eample, Ukrainian game devs keep working on their games, and there are people engaged in various kinds of field research in conflict zones all over the world. War as a backdrop -- rather than the driver of adventure -- is really interesting to me.

 

[Fenris-77]

War is great backdrop for RPG campaigns because there's a lot of shizz going on. Factions are acting, not plotting. Garrisons are deploying, not training. And fortunes are rising and falling in rapid succession. Volatility is a great for a lot of campaigns.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Have you played in or run campaigns in war zones that were not about the war?

Yes.

What did you do?

Generally things that are tangentially related to the war, but not always. As another poster said, Europe went through several centuries of what could be claimed to be a state of perpetual warfare, yet life outside of the areas directly involved in the war continue on, sometimes as if there is no war. I often use wars and battles as background noise or something akin to an environmental hazard than something the PCs need to deal with personally.

How did it go?

Great!