D&D General War! What is it Good For (in your campaigns)?

[BookTenTiger]

War pops up a lot in the genre of fantasy, but I've never found a satisfying way to tie it into a campaign.

How have wars been important in your games?

I figure there are a few different ways for wars to interact with a campaign:

Lore: wars are often important parts of the history of a campaign setting, and can explain things like the motivations of NPCs

Setting: wars might be fought during adventures, changing the landscape. Roads might be closed, cities might be under siege, and dungeons might be difficult to access because of raging battles.

Participation: the characters might be participating in war, as soldiers or leaders. The players might be playing as units in a battle.

Here are some issues I've had with putting wars in my campaign:

Timing: wars can take years, and adventures and campaigns happen over days, weeks, and months.

Adventurers are Individuals: it's a little weird to have, say, a Warlock of the Deep throwing on a uniform or fighting on the front lines.

Wars Don't Happen in Dungeons: a lot of time is spent in dungeons. Wars don't happen there.

So how have you used wars in your campaigns? Did the characters participate? Was it happening during adventures? What worked? What didn't?

 

[Lanefan]

Despite the fact that I've got these homebrew battle-system rules I've been itching to try out for decades now, I've found the best place for wars is in the background. They cause disruption and chaos, they sometimes provide plot hooks or reasons for adventuring, and a martial-type PC with nothing to do for a while can always do a quick tour on the front lines and gain some xp - or get killed, or both.

"Adventures and campaigns happen over days, weeks, and months" is at best a tangential issue, and (if not running an adventure path as the campaign) can very easily be solved by the DM simply slowing the pace down.

 

[payn]

There will be different opinions on war in RPGs, but I tend to look at war in my D&D flavor RPGS like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. In that film, three characters come across info that leads to treasure. It just so happens a war is happening right in the middle of their path. The war happens around them, but they are not really participating in it one way or another. It's a back drop, that the PCs can use in whatever way they need to.

Star Wars is similar in that Luke and Han are tossed in and have varying opinions. They participate in a major battle due to circumstances, but they are not leading troops or really any extensive part of the rebel military. Even later, when they are part of the rebel leadership, the focus isn't on basic training or fighting hill battles extensively.

I do like faction play, so I wouldnt mind doing a game where the PCs have to decide which side, if any, they want to back. I'd likely stick to having them as special forces or part of a clandestine unit so war would still likely be a backdrop. If I wanted to do a houses type of thing where each player is a faction id look at Birthright again.

Its good to remember that D&D came about to get away from a macro wargame. Nothing wrong taking back there either, I just think most folks dont think massive battles when they sit down to roll D&D type RPGs.

 

[aco175]

I had a campaign in 3e where there was a war going on and the PCs were part of it. At low-levels they were part of a side unit and sent on patrols probing locations in the early part of the war. I had some down time where they pulled back for a few weeks between some of the levels to allow for the war going on around them to develop. Eventually, they were noticed for the power and given some more important missions to raid a stronghold that needed to be sneaked into or diplomacy with a lich that controlled a secret mountain pass that each side could use the circle the other forces. The big fight at the end with the PCs defending a castle was not as great as it could have been. It was some staged encounters that they could choose from on where to go and each choice counted towards the overall side. So, if they went after the ogre catapults and not the undead wraiths, then the wraiths would take out some of the good guys and the ogres would be stopped from launching the goblin grenades.

I did have a side quest with a group of NPCs that the players used for one night. It was kind of like the Star Wars movie Rogue1 with them all dying, but managed to learn the location of the secret to taking out the BBEG. I was able to TPK and the players learned something .

 

[Bolares]

ABSOLUTELLY NOTHING!

sorry, had to do it.

 

[billd91]

Oh, my, yes. We've done war. Quite a bit of it actually. My first winter break when I went to college, I came home, and we played D&D pretty much every day - and we played a major war campaign. There were opposing coalitions of good vs evil and the scope was large enough that we played with multiple PCs each - some off on this mission, some off on that mission. It was pretty awesome, actually. One of the final confrontations ended up as a castle defense with a high level druid summoning a hurricane to disrupt the attacking armies. Some high stakes stuff.

Then a few years later, the way things settled in the previous war generated another, smaller scale one. In that series of campaign events, we were all playing characters that were some variety of fighter or ranger, some single class, some multiclass. But the hook was we had all joined a rag-tag mercenary company, the Border Rats, and got thrown into various events including the Defense of Fort Kaul and the Battle of Tunwilly Downs. One of the cool things we were able to do was come up with alternative rewards since money wasn't a major goal. So we got combat decorations and, of course, prestige with the court.

This was also all with 1st edition AD&D.

 

[Stormonu]

In the last campaign I ran (Ghosts of Saltmarsh), the campaign was building up to two wars. The party managed to avert one, and became an infiltration team acting behind enemy lines while the land/sea battle was underway (I tried to set it up dramatically like the Return of the Jedi Endor battle, in fact).

Other times, I’ve used war as lore to explain why things were the way they were, and have had several campaign games that were set “on the eve” of war, where a misstep by PCs or NPCs could tip things closer (or further) from a state of war.

 

[Yora]

I am working on a new setting in which past wars are hugely important to the current situation, and also the reasons why there aren't really any big wars around anymore.
In the setting's history, there hss been only a single time where one leader managed to conquer a majority of the land. The resulting empire is not remember fondly by anyone, and the huge civil war that followed the emperor's death was even worse. Now the idea of conquering empires has become hugely unpopular and associated with evil tyrants, and any ruler who manges to gain support from his population to expand calls down the combined anger of all neighbors, who are united in their fear what comes next. This generally settles most conflicts quite early, and with the Shatterd Empire being so thoroughly fractured, the forces anyone can field are quite modest.
Raiding and border skirmishes still happen, but they don't really do much to reshape the current constellation of power.

 

[Oofta]

The PCs are part of special forces units and strike forces. If they are part of a larger battle they're given a specific task such as "guard this section of the wall". As far as how long wars last, I generally have a significant amount of downtime between mini-arcs of the story. So the war rages on, people are doing their best to support with various downtime activities and then all heck breaks loose or they have to go on a special mission.

 

[Rabbitbait]

Shout out to Red Hand of Doom (3e) - Wizards of the Coast | Dungeons & Dragons 3.x | Dungeons & Dragons 3.x | Dungeon Masters Guild which I think is one of the best D&D modules and is definitely the best I have seen for addressing how PCs can get involved in an engaging way in an active war.

Worth downloading if you want a war setting just to see how they did it.