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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 402684" data-attributes="member: 3146">In order to have heroes you need to give them something heroic to do.Had Grendel not been terrorizing the Danes, Beowulf would probably have ended up as just another warrior-prince. He probably would have ruled well but nobody would have thought of him as heroic.Similarly, if Bilbo hadn't gone with the dwarves, Frodo probably would have just been one of the big group of hobbits who stood with the ringbearer at the scouring of the shire.If there are no burning buildings, firemen won't run into them to save peoples' lives.If there our worst criminals were tax evaders, double parkers, and speeders, we wouldn't have television shows about the police.Now you can have a different kind of heroism if you put battles in terms of my people versus their people. That's the heroism of the Norse sagas  or perhaps the heroism of Sgt. York. (I don't think the Germans and Austrians we fought against in WWI were a particularly bad bunch).Your party's composition precludes that possibility though. Since members have sympathies with both sides and neither side is clearly the bad guy (which might convince some people to switch sides--it's one thing to betray your people when they're Evil and trying to stamp out Good, it's entirely different if there's a level moral playing field), it's unlikely that the party as a whole will be willing to side with either.Consequently, if you want the party to be interested in the war and to take a side, you'll have to make one of the sides Evil. (The other side needn't necessarily be good but it would help if you want a heroic rather than a dystopic feel to the game). Alternately, you could finish off the war and have Evil villains on both sides spring up in the aftermath--groups that won't quit fighting or that want to start the war again for their own reasons.</blockquote>

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