D&D vs. Military - Discussion of 4 scenarios detailed in the first post

[kiergon]

@Forum Explorer

@kiergon
Thank you for adding your thoughts!

you are welcome

@Forum Explorer
I thought the Twisted Rune is more interested in controlling than destroying? They are playing chess with nations, not Battleships.
War is not a given in most scenarios, but might happen. Do you think the Twisted Rune would let their minions attack Iran/Spain? If so, which minions? Keep in mind that they seldomly interfere directly, for whatever reason.

Yes, but they do outright kill people that fall outside their plans and that could be a threat, it all depends on what spain/iran does, if they dont change the status quo that much, then they will be manipulated same as any other country, if Iran starts an all out war with its neighbours, then They are more likely to take offense.
I think the twisted rune would end up controlling either Iran or Spain if they wanted to, but would use a lot of subterfuge, and would be kind of like the Illuminati are for conspiracy theorist, except this guys have a ton of magic, and they play their game out of boredom (more than outright evil).

@Forum Explorer
Most of the other epic level threats you mentioned (Sarrukh, Dragon God-King, etc.) behave in the same way.

The Sharn would intervene if the Iranians or Spaniards are being a threat to the world, they wouldnt probably out right kill them, but would put a magic bubble around them or something along those lines, otherwise they would be ignored.
I have no idea when or why would the Holy Golden Emperor act really, just that if it fancies him, he could anihilate anything he put his mind into destroying.
The Sarrukh, well they could even be benefactors to Iran, like they were for Netheril, and teach them Magic and such. It all depends on which Lich of Oreme is awake at the time. (this btw, would be a very interesting thing, Iran become the next Netheril)

@Forum Explorer
The only ones that actually would behave imperialistically/hostile that you mentioned are the Aboleths and the Mind Flayers. The Aboleths shouldn't be a problem in any of the scenarios, as the Underdark isn't directly linked to the Modern World in any of them, and they rarely leave because of the living conditions they need. The Mind Flayers are different. They might actually be interested in this. Do you think a group of them would leave the Underdark and try to wrest control of Iran, or do you refer to the Portal/Khorvaire scenarios?

Aboleths love having new slaves and new knowledge, since they pretty much know everything about everything on dnd, new knowledge would tempt them. They act through their slaves tho, and this could include anything from Drows, Kuo toas, Derros or even Illithids. It depends on what the grand Savant of any city wants, if he just wants the information, they would abduct people who know a lot of what he wants to know about and that could be it, if he wants a ton of slaves tho, he would send armies from the underdark to conquer, say Iran. when they see Iran can defend itself, they would send more scouts, and then find out this nation has no divine or arcane casters, and then they would send big guns, maybe a couple of aboleths lead by a normal savant plus an army of slaves.
I dont think the aboleths would cross the portal to Spain.

The mind flayers, they are more inquisitive and more scientifically oriented that pretty much any dnd race, except tinker gnomes, perhaps.
in the Case of Iran, they would send a Druuth (a group of doppelgangers lead by a greater doppelganger who is itself lead by a cult of Illithids) first to check what this new country has to offer. Then to replace powerful individuals, and that way control the nation, then they would slowly (at first) send the brightest Iranian thralls to their city and study them and their new science. Then send more and more slaves to the underdark to become food, this could bring a new enlightening era for the Illithids and might be the reason why they become the new (old) empire, how they solve interplanetary travel, mixing nuclear energy with psionics and such.

And I have no doubts they would cross to our world, and start conquering country after country bly replacing the political leaders and army officials with Druuths, then slowly becoming the masters behind the scenes (think about the reptoids or reptiles, or however those aliens are called by conspiracy theories, just this one can read minds and mind rape you, without the need for machines)

@Forum Explorer
If the Shades wake up the Tarrasque and send him towards Suzail, that's primarily a problem for Cormyr, and not for Spain on the other end of the portal.

yes it would be a horrible problem for cormyr, but if the shades are feeling particularly nasty, they could make sure the Tarrasque goes down the Portal street way. This wouldnt be the end of the world here on earth, not even of Spain, but madrid would be devastated as if hit by an earthquake, and europe would have a new catastrophe along the lines of an earthquake or volcano that randomly awakes every 20 years, devastates the land then dissapears for another 20 years. I guess by the 3rd time the Tarrasque awakens biologists and geologists would understand him far better than anybody did in Faerun, and would be able to predict where he would strike next. Europe would have their own Gojira.

@Forum Explorer
@Khorvaire
If you know the details, please post them. Even if they include math, I'm not afraid

An Ice age is caused by several factors some of which reinforce each other.
We are in an iterglacial period, that means we have a cooling coming, in fact climate scientists believe its coming in at the most 50,000 years without human interference, more if we continue to release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

The factors are

Atmospheric composition (how much % of greenhouse gases are in the air): The less greenhouse gasses, the more heat is reflected back into space, so the cooler it is, the inverse is true as well.
Changes in Earths orbit around the sun (called Milankovitch cycles). This changes the angleon which Earth's rotational axis spins, right now it is 23.44 degrees and is decreasing. if it decreases the northern hemisphere receives less sunlight, which means a cooler norther hemisphere.
The solar output.This is specially true regarding the number of sunspots. One of the reasons we are having a colder than usual winter is becuase the Sun is passing through a minimum period of sunspots, the Nasa predicted in 2006, that 2010-2011 would have a huge numebr of Sunspots, and it didnt happen, we are in fact passing through a longer than usual minimun cycle, if this lasted for a decade for example, it could take us to a mini ace age.
The movement of the tectonic plates. This changes where the continents stand and as such changes the ocean currents and the wind jet stream.
The Jet stream and it water counterpart, the ocean themoaline ciculation currents moves hot air and water from the equator and tropics to the northern and southern hemispheres, and moves back cold water and air to the tropics and equator.
Water has a much higher heat capacity than air, that means it doesnt radiate heat as fast, which means it stays warmer for a longer period of time.
Also supervolcanoes and meteorites can change the climate by putting a huge layer of particles in the upper atmosphere, which blocks the sun, and that cools our planet.

A new continent on the equator would disrupt the jet stream and more importantly the thermoaline circulation current. This would cool down the northern hemisphere, which means we would get larger ice sheets, which reflect more solar rays, and so on. This is a very drastic change to our weather patterns, the changes in the jet stream would cause floods in places where it never floods and drought in other places, this is a much higher climate concern than man made global warning. This is orders of magnitude worse than man made global warming, in fact global warming is bad, but at least it has some positive effects, such as a higher output of food, it has been proven in labs that if there is a higher concentration in several % points of CO2, plants require less water for photosynthesis and grow more.
Cold kills plants, so much less food, and most of the food of the world is produced in the northern hemisphere. In fact if you take US, Canada and Russia out of the picture the world starves.

Im a climate geek, but not a climate scientist
Sorry dont know the math.

@Forum Explorer
@Drow&Alps
I agree that this outcome is likely. Do you have any specifics in mind?

Its a big if, but they would frist need to stop their infighting for them to be a real threat.
Then at first they would send shapeshifted spies to the major cities, say, in Switzerland (since they are in the alps) from them they would learn several languages, English, German, Italian and French. after a couple of years they would know the politics of the region, who the powerbrokers are and such. then they would slowly approach the bankers in switzerland first, they would either control them outright with spells or maybe even replace them with shapeshifted drows, from there they move a couple of hundreds of drow to Belgium, Germany and France. The Belgium agents start replacing EU officials for either drows or in some cases they simply charm them. Some would even cooperate outright due to sexual favors, gold (they own the banks now) and the promise of immortality (hey with a relatively minor spell they can cure the worst cancer, wouldnt you obey them if you had cancer or a son of yours?). The French start replacing the big bankers there (Societe Generale, and such), the Germans do the same but in Germany, and also take control of the captains of industry, and so now they have VW, Pfizer, Deutshebank, Siemens, and many other big companies under their control.
From here I see two different outcomes:
The Drow still cooperate and can control their inner backstaving instincts. The drow cause a major economic collapse the likes of which we have never seen, they control the banks, the EU central bank, and major industries, they let chaos rule the streets, and then suddenly a new political party has the answer (shapeshifted drows) they will bring order back, but now they need more power and they need to put more restrictions on their citicens, I bet you a dime that the people would accept. And there is a new constitution made, and such. We now have a new and completely dominated Drow Empire. I dont think they have the numbers to expand from Europe, but hey, the Matrons now own one of the major continents, I think thats more than enough.
The drows become the new aristocracy, underground they rule, they owuld have half drow bastards that would be probably their agents in the world.
The drow would dedicate themselves to outright hedonism, think of a cult of Slaanesh.
Europe would become more dangerous for tourists, now with drow cultists looking for humans to sacrifice to lolth, or just to sacrifice for the fun of it, of course this would be just a couple of thousand a year. But still horrible. And they would probably kill more tourists than Europeans, since that could cause revolts.

If the Drow can´t cooperate at this moment: I think it could easily turn into a civil war between several factions. Which would become a real war between countries, and then a world war.
It would be a worse war than WWI and WWII combined, since now the leaders of the countries are literally demon worshipers madmen. You would see a lot of senseless bloodshed and destruction.
Europe would be devastated at the end, and less then 50% of the original Drow would survive, they would have to replenish their ranks with half drow, and they could still rule, but now they would rule over a devastated landscape.

@Forum Explorer
@Western Heartlands
Yes, Larloch could do that. What would be the result?
=> Bhaal Spawn isn't canon, and if we go by the games, there's only one left, who took Bhaals position (or abstained)

Larloch, he wouldnt go to Spain, but if Iran apeared in his backyard, and he saw any toy he wanted, he would take it, he has done this in the past, of course the toys he likes usually are artifacts/relics like the Nether Scrolls and such, but if he liked the idea of nuclear energy, which might as well be an epic toy, he would take it, and wouldnt mind killing anybody for it, He wouldnt act personally, he never needs to, he has a cabal of tens of epic liches that serve him and also agents like Szas Tam, he would probably use Szas Tam since he has used him before, and Szas Tam could aproach Iran as a foreign diplomat, he looks alive, and he would speak Parsi as good as any Iranian, if anybody dare to oppose his wishes, he would never be found again, unless you go looking for him in the crypts under his palace, in which case you would find a new undead servant.
On the Other hand Larloch couldnt care less about what a new nation does to its neighbours, so he is the least likely to take action of the superpowers in faerun, if nothing in Iran catches his fancy.
My take on baldurs gate is that there were more Bhaalspawn than the ones you saw, just many hiding and such, I might be wrong, its been a while since I played those games.

[Ormur]

There's a kind of dichotomy between magic and science in that for the people of Faerun it would be relatively easy for them to understand the basic principles behind science but harder to apply them as technology whereas it wouldn't be very hard for us to apply magic (purchase some wands, enrol in a magic academy) but much harder to actually understand magic in terms we'd be content with.

Sure a very intelligent wizard might become an expert on a particular branch of science even more easily than intelligent students from earth but the scope of human knowledge required to maintain a modern society is too vast for the relatively few scholars of a D&D society to handle. Translating that to actual technology also requires armies of experienced engineers and craftsmen. Magic offers some workarounds but based on the description of D&D societies the scholarly elite isn't particularly adept at translating even the comprehensive knowledge of magic they have to something useful and practical. Why should they be better at applying their new-found knowledge of metallurgy and quantum physics.

[Eldan]

Just a minor nitpick in Kiergon's point:

We don't have any major cities in the alps

Actually, most of the alps is kinda uninhabited. The people living there are mostly in the lowest valleys. The higher up parts, well, let's say that there are villages which are completely empty during the summer and only fill up with inhabitants during the winter, when skiing tourism starts.

[Destro2119]

A bit late, but we really need to take into account specific settings.

This is because a 3.X world that is even remotely optimized would basically be Eberron/Starfinder on steroids. It would be like showing up with a knife vs the full military power of Gallifrey.

Because the "generic medieval (which isn't even that medieval) mishmash nonsense" of the average fantasy world cannot support its own weight 99% of the time. Historians would take one look at a DnD world and their heads would implode from the sheer nonsense that the game writers have scribbled down to make a "fantasy world."

If we go by fluff alone, then modern world destroys Dragonlance, full stop until some great power is tapped and all the forces of the evil Modernites are destroyed utterly. FR curbstomps us so badly it is laughable, and so does Greyhawk just on a lesser scale.

That is my 2 cents.

EDIT: Also, it is interesting to note that the VAST majority of DnD settings are postapocalyptic. As in, NOT at full strength like modern earth.

[LordCdrMilitant]

The other thread has become a bit cluttered, but I find the idea interesting, so I tried to make the scenarios a bit clearer. This may pose problems, as I sometimes refer to specific source books.

Rules:
Nothing from TO is assumed to be used by the D&D side. There was a PDF called "The Very Best of CO", but I can't find it right now. I have it at home, so I will add items to this list. Right now, the things I remember, plus some that were proposed in the thread

• No Pun-Pun
• No Omniscificer
• No Dorfls
• No Thought Bottles
• No Nanobots
• No Consumptive Field Abuse
• Nothing from the Jakeverse
• A wish can never give you more wishes in any way, therefore, no infinite wish chains. (proposed by Eldan)
• The gods do not interfere
• Magic: Magic does continue to work on earth, but you need the spark of magic to cast spells. It's still discussed wether our side can learn magic after this spark has come in contact with earth.
• Physics/Science: Physics and science that make the scenarios flat-out impossible is ignored/explained away with magic. Generally, d20modern rules are used to model aspects of our world. If you object to a specific part, please state the reason in the discussion.
• Please use canon NPCs where possible. If you don't want to do that, use NPCs generated by the DMG advice for generating settlements - i.e., core, single-classed characters only. Information on city population sizes can be found in the setting-specific wikis, a town generator can be found here.
• Nuclear weapons: 1MT warheads deal half energy, half force damage, 160d8 (based on discussion here and here, and roughly on the rules in the d20 modern SRD) .
• Nonnuclear heavy weaponry (high-yield bombs, artillery and tank ammunition) deals the damage values given in the d20MSRD, but is half force, half sonic/bludgeoning (The Glyphstones Proposal)
• In the scenario-world, the exact D&D rules aren't known on Earth. Similar games may exist, but it's not a situation in which our side can realize and exploit the rules just by looking them up in a sourcebook.

I'm not really able to engage with these questions as stipulated, because IRL BULLETS AND SWORDS KILL PEOPLE. [Unlike in D&D, where it's kind of like trying to kill someone with a whiffle bat after the first level.]

In D&D, a 120mm gun [regardless of the variety of available ammunition], fails to kill an 8th level fighter with a direct hit half the time and has a range increment of 400ft, and a 70 ton vehicle with ceramic armor is also only slightly harder to kill than said aforementioned 8th level fighter.

Obviously, this is a terrible representation. Even the basic facts are wrong. The range increment is listed at 400ft, giving a maximum range of 4000ft, less than a mile, when the main gun is ranged out of 5km, 16000 ft and armored vehicles usually engage at range over a mile.



That said
Via the most Fantasy-favoring approach short of wish, essentially your suggestion, the modern world wins though virtue of numerics and logistics. The modern world has a absolutely massive population relative to any medieval fantasy world, and because of modern automations in logistics and agriculture, can also support a vastly larger force at war and make war more continuously in all seasons and weather. That alone is enough to drown all the dragons and level 20 fighter and all that in a tide of bodies and guns [short of wishing us to go away. Wishing us to go away always works]. The modern world can also easily decimate cropland without retaliation visa-vis a variety of missiles and aircraft that essentially can't be stopped by anything in a fantasy arsenal including magical creatures, so the fantasy world would be force to capitulate within a year facing famine and economic collapse. You can only conjure so much food. The modern world would be mildly affected by the mobilization [and essentially unaffected in the portal case], though I would expect there to be some political fallout from conducting such a genocide.

Via a more realistic approach, the fantasy world stands even less of a chance at war. In addition to the logistical advantages, when the advanced weapons and integrated warfare of the modern battlefield actually mean something, even a company with ample support packages would be essentially unstoppable [though admittedly, it would take more than a company to hold all the ground they capture.] It would also be a lot better for the fantasy world, because well, it's very likely that after a rapid capitulation with limited damage to the lands and casualties limited to the armies mustered for war, money and trade would start flowing in and the worst case is they would end up like modern Africa or the Middle East [which is still generally an improvement over the medieval period that fantasy worlds generally are in]. Things would probably get worse for the present day though, since the influx of new abilities would open up a massive space for individual abuse of power and increase the relative threat level of the individual pretty drastically. Your posited thing where only the predestined limited few could gain access to magic would create a massive societal imbalance and possibly upheaval from within.





In essence, TL:DR, while I ordinarily really like modern vs. fantasy things, if you want to model anything, you probably shouldn't be modelling it with D&D. D&D and it's system family is exceptionally poor at modeling something that resembles reality to any degree even for simple things without magic.

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: Thread Necromancy. This one's nearly a record.