Is a world primarily focused on intrigue and politics widely sustainable?

[Vrock Bait]

My second point is mostly that players' actions would be constrained to the point where they won't have any ability to not start a war while still having fun. Only having one political "hit point" before all-out war means that there's very little middle ground between playing excrutiatingly safe and saying "screw it, let's start a war", so players may feel railroaded into one of the two approaches. Having a cushion means that players have more ability to sacrifice portions of their safety net for specific objectives- they might be able to steal an artifact, but at the cost of food rationing and forced conscription as the city gears up for war.

You’re right, maybe I should give them a few more political hit points. I have issues with railroading, so you can probably think this through better than me.

What sorts of adventures do you envision the players going on (pre-war, that is)?

Mostly helping with exploration and various non-war skirmishes. Every nation is vying for as much territory and resources as possible, so kings and nobles are going to pay a lot to say, clear a cave system of kobolds or take over a mountain dungeon from a lich.

While trapeze-based travel systems sound cool as hell, I'd maybe look at a few other items:

- Are these nations monolithic? Are there any factions or people who can be pitted against each other? Are there political parties within a nation, for instance, who could be manipulated into a civil war or a coup? I've found that the more factions (and sub-factions!) you have, the more fun intrigue becomes as a pillar of play. Keeping them straight can be a challenge, but it's quite rewarding, especially when your players start linking a faction in Country A with a heretical sect in Country B in order to supply arms to revolutionaries in Country C. Or they just burn it all down. That's cool, too.

Well... there’s a single human nation with a government-in-exile off continent and a single on-continent city-state which is basically ignoring the original government. There’s also a ton of denominations of only three pantheons, as well a bunch of secret organizations like a necro-army and such. But I’ll keep that in mind, I definitely think I need a lot more factions for my elven democracy.

- Are these nations all equally lawful?

Nope.

You don't have chaotic evil orcs, but do you have bandit gangs?

The orcs here are actually refugees pushed out by Goliath invaders, so they’re seen as savage invaders by the “civilized” races. I’ve never really liked the concept of bandit gangs in high fantasy though, seemed so anachronistic.

Elven death squads killing journalists for an autocratic regime?

Yes, actually.

Manticores who enjoy disemboweling their prey and then playing jazz trumpet to entertain the target while they bleed out?

Dunno about that, but seems cool so I should probably go through my MM again.

A gnomish Manhattan Project?

It’s Halfling, but they stopped after they bombed their magical metropolis by accident and now it’s the headquarters of the undead army.

A church full of life clerics who kill some of their acolytes every year to ensure scarcity of clerical healing, thus commanding higher rates?

One of my churches is about treating religion like a bargain or business, so that’s actually a very good idea.

You can do a lot with groups of people who either don't conform to or actively subvert archetypes.

Mostly what I wanted to do was enhance stereotypes, by giving them reason to exist in the world like in the default setting but also subverting it.

- Finally, to actually answer your question, it's very much dependent on group. Hell, sometimes it's dependent on the day - if someone's had a terrible week and they are not here for complex political machinations tonight, it can really crimp things. You can still run a group of murderhobos in an intrigue-heavy setting, though. For an example, look at how you would run a murderhobo group through Eberron or Ravnica. That's where you can really leverage intrigue or political actors as patrons for the party, and the murderhobos start to look like highly skilled mercenaries or retainers for a lord, who tolerates their disruptions because darn it, they're just really, really good at their jobs.

Thanks for the answer, I’ll keep that in mind.

I'm curious - why can't you have chaotic paladins? I mean, how else would you characterize Ancients or Vengeance Paladins (assuming you're playing 5e here; if I'm wrong, let me know).

I play 3.5e, so don’t really know about that. I... guess that could work?

Did I just... did I just read gnomish manhattan project?
coz if I did... If I did... I want. I want that so bad.

Mostly it was the halflings accidentally detonating a Locate City on their magical capital. The gnomes are really downtrodden in this world because they weren’t included in resistance talks during the fall of the last great empire, so don’t have their own nation.