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

[Vrock Bait]

That sounds as though most of the adventure would still be combat-oriented, which should satisfy any murderhoboes in your party.

Thanks for the advice, I now realize that the setting is probably able to sustain both play styles well enough.

So I'm seeing only a few organized nations from your description, which I'm also seeing as a lot of blank space to explore. The great point here is that you can apply that to both types of players along the political-to-murderhobo spectrum. Murderhobos just need a patron to point them at a dungeon. Politically savvy players will enjoy having multiple patrons with conflicting goals, all of which can collide either in the wilderness or in a civilized setting, so it's more a question of how you present the hooks.

That makes a lot of sense actually. I can see how this could lead to a lot of great plot hooks for most players, not just people who enjoy intrigue.

I guess I'm a little confused by this. How would you say bandit gangs are anachronistic? I would say that bandits arise from a breakdown of central authority. Central authority can be either present or absent in high fantasy, so I'd argue bandits are perfectly viable. However, if you're thinking that bandit gangs couldn't compete with powerful mages, then the solution is simple: the bandit gangs are run by magi. Maybe some of these gangs are run by mage-school dropouts, little better than sadistic thugs with heat metal and a rod. But maybe some bandit gangs are actually run by a mage patron who handles arcane countermeasures (casting nondetection or supplying the bandits with amulets of proof against detection and location for example). What if a powerful mage has several bandit gangs on the payroll, and each of them have contingent spells set up so that if the bandits try to rat them out under interrogation, the bandits suffer some horrible fate (fireball? dominate person? brain melting? Knock yourself out!). There's a lot you can do there.

Well... most areas have pretty decent central authority, but the former human and gnome territories are heavily contested, and the Halfling country is just Fall-of-Rome’ing at this point, so it would make sense to have people start forming bandit gangs.

Now that I think about it, I already have several political movements in the area, so it makes sense to fill some of the gaps.

Yeah, I'd definitely recommend Eberron as inspiration, then. Sounds like exactly what you're going for.

Ugh, magical trains... Eberron is my favorite first-party campaign setting, but I’ve never felt it went far enough in either breaking down alignment stereotypes or showcasing the societal acceptance of magic.

Disregard this point; it doesn't apply to 3.5. I remember the Dark Times.

I actually first started playing in the age of 5th Edition, but my first D&D books were dusty 3.5e tomes I dug out of my local library because I thought the illustrations were cool. Never really liked 5e, I’ve always felt like it was just knockoff Pathfinder Lite. It’s not that I like Pathfinder very much either, but I even like 4th Edition a bit more because it at least tried to do something new.