Thoughts on superpowered peace-keepers and festering issues

[PhoenixPhyre]

Preface: this grew out of a realization I had about my D&D setting. But I think it generalizes somewhat to other settings where there are a group of superpowered (relatively speaking, not necessarily as to source of power) individuals who go around shutting down conflicts by forcing both sides to the negotiating table. Or even where there are super-powered organizations (even of regular people) who do the same.

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In Western Noefra (the continent where most of my groups have played), there are several groups of retired adventurers who are both individually powerful and tightly connected to each other. And they have allies (including several adult+ dragons). While in principle a major nation could take them on and win, the cost would severely weaken the nation and leave them very vulnerable to others.

These adventurers and their organization has made a habit of airdropping in on brewing armed conflicts and shutting them down by threats of extreme violence, mainly directed at the leadership. As a result, there haven't been any large-scale wars in the area for decades. But they don't really care who is "right" or who is "wrong" or what the underlying grievances/causes of the conflict were. As a result, while the various nations don't go to war (because no one wants to wake up to an annoyed dragon with an annoyed T3+ party on its back in their bedroom), the underlying causes of conflict never really get solved.

In one case, there was a nation that had grown too fast and, due to other events, suddenly lacked the external threats that allowed it to remain cohesive when bad actors showed up. Instead of a short, sharp, hot civil war (because of the supers), a decade of subtle raids, village against village, family against family. More...terrorism than war, if you get my meaning. When they finally did formally break up into several smaller states, there's still a lot of lingering resentment and unsettled borders.

In another, two nations started expanding into the same large region, formerly off-limits due to a mystical threat that went away. Both had reasonable historical claims but very different methodologies and civilization styles (one was very industrial and "rational", the other much more "hippy"...in the "wrath of nature" sense). But the Caldera Conflict was aborted early on due to super-powered intervention. So now they're engaging in cold-war style backstabbing, false flag operations, etc. And neither one is quite sure where the real borders are.

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Is war good? Heck no. In fact, it's pretty darn awful. But is letting tensions simmer for decades much better? Especially as a new generation of "heroes" arises that may not be so tightly bound to the whole "there shall be no war" thing? That original group is getting pretty darn old and tired. So now you've got nearly 4 decades (in some cases, a decade or so in others) of built-up resentment and pressure. What happens when something happens and the supers aren't there to stop it? Or maybe there are new supers who decide to take sides?

[Mechalich]

Is war good? Heck no. In fact, it's pretty darn awful. But is letting tensions simmer for decades much better? Especially as a new generation of "heroes" arises that may not be so tightly bound to the whole "there shall be no war" thing? That original group is getting pretty darn old and tired. So now you've got nearly 4 decades (in some cases, a decade or so in others) of built-up resentment and pressure. What happens when something happens and the supers aren't there to stop it? Or maybe there are new supers who decide to take sides?

Your question is predicated on whether or not warfare is capable of 'solving' conflicts, and that's...tricky. Doubly so in a D&D setting where you have not only fantasy superheroes, but the reduction in value of factors like traditional natural barriers that make it possible to produce stable long-term borders. Additionally, the traditional way warfare has 'solved' conflicts in human history has been through ethnic cleansing/genocide, and that's really bad.

It seems to me that the supers need to do a better job of addressing the underlying causes, or, if that's too difficult, positing solutions that should naturally stabilize over the long term. For example, if border tensions are the issue, draw some lines on the map (note that with airborne resources like dragon riders, extremely accurate maps can be made), and then enforce those lines. Maybe even mandate depopulated buffer zones. If those lines can be held for a generation or two, especially if they respect ethnic boundaries, they are likely to translate into facts on the ground via demographic turnover (admittedly, fantasy scenarios can make this challenging, since dwarves, elves, and the like may take a long time for that to happen).

Also, over time the facts on the ground may change. Due to variations in economic growth, internal stability, and the like the power balance of the groups on the sides of these simmering disputes may change, possibly allowing one side to solidify their security situation and advantage, though this depends on things like the weapon systems involved.

[PhoenixPhyre]

1) Your question is predicated on whether or not warfare is capable of 'solving' conflicts, and that's...tricky. Doubly so in a D&D setting where you have not only fantasy superheroes, but the reduction in value of factors like traditional natural barriers that make it possible to produce stable long-term borders. Additionally, the traditional way warfare has 'solved' conflicts in human history has been through ethnic cleansing/genocide, and that's really bad.

2) It seems to me that the supers need to do a better job of addressing the underlying causes, or, if that's too difficult, positing solutions that should naturally stabilize over the long term. For example, if border tensions are the issue, draw some lines on the map (note that with airborne resources like dragon riders, extremely accurate maps can be made), and then enforce those lines. Maybe even mandate depopulated buffer zones. If those lines can be held for a generation or two, especially if they respect ethnic boundaries, they are likely to translate into facts on the ground via demographic turnover (admittedly, fantasy scenarios can make this challenging, since dwarves, elves, and the like may take a long time for that to happen).

3) Also, over time the facts on the ground may change. Due to variations in economic growth, internal stability, and the like the power balance of the groups on the sides of these simmering disputes may change, possibly allowing one side to solidify their security situation and advantage, though this depends on things like the weapon systems involved.

1) I agree. I don't think that war would necessarily solve the issues much better...but one side or the other would be less capable of continuing on afterward.
2) I think that in the long run, the issues will go away if the status quo holds out. Or at least will change enough to be unrecognizable. But the supers don't actually have the manpower to really police much except in the "drop in and wreck stuff" way. They're limited basically to their presence--the dragons have their own concerns most of the time and the supers themselves have roles in their societies (one group of them are the rulers of a nation Way Over There, for instance). So they can't be everywhere and have to depend on the threat of imminent decapitation of the command structure in retaliation for anything that people do. Which doesn't seem very stable.
3) I agree. And that's something I'm working through right now--the big push for stability was now 30 years ago or so. And the supers are getting old, and the leaders of the nations have changed. For better or for worse. What I'm seeing is that this international "peace" that was forged is not likely to stay that way one way or another--either by "peaceful" consolidation of states, devolution into smaller treaty groups, outright war, or whatever. I guess a lot depends on what the newer crops of heroes do.

[brian 333]

An obvious solution: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Supers won't let you fight out your problems? They become the problem. The sides begin cooperating to get the supers off their backs, and find they have a lot more in common than they thought.

Scenario 1: Distract Them

Industrial and Ecological factions put their best (PC) characters on the job of creating a situation in a more distant land which requires Super intervention. In so doing they discover their abilities synergize, their talents compliment, and in joining forces they are more powerful.

These characters retire to become a new local Super faction that advocates both sides cooperate and develop respect for and synergy with each other.

Scenario 2: Co-opt Them

Supers are recruited specifically to deal with the issues.
Industrial Faction: Those Econuts won't let us use coal and attack us every time we set up a charcoal production facility. Without fuel, our children will freeze to death!
Ecology Faction: Those gearheads pollute our streams and clear-cut our forests. Without healthy natural biodiversity our food supply will collapse and our children will starve to death!

Now the supers are fighting each other and have no time for the petty border skirmishers. By the time the Supers have resolved their issue, the conditions on the ground have been resolved.

Scenario 3: Beat Them At Their Own Game

By financing adventurers from their society, (training schools, subsidies, active recruiting in impoverished areas,) hundreds of adventurers loyal to the government become dozens of mid level adventurers, become tens of high level adventurers, become a handful of epic adventurers whose loyalty to the government is unimpeachable. The nation now has the means to give pause to the interventionist Supers.

Scenario 4: Set Them At Each Others' Throats

A clever band of PCs work to convince some of the Supers that other Supers want their gp and the exp they can get by defeating them.

In any scenario the idea is that you use your players to defeat those overbearing, oppressive Supers, who they might eventually recognize as their character. They will be tempted to try to assume control of their old character and dictate some friendly meeting of the minds. You can explain it from both perspectives:
New PC: This is the character that humiliated your homeland, shamed your leaders, and made you a second-class citizen subject to their whims. To allow them to continue is to accept your role as their pawn forever.
Old PC: If this character succeeds in standing up to you, everywhere you've imposed peace will erupt in war again, and worse now because of the long term simmering resentment. He must be publicly and utterly defeated, or your life's work is wasted.
For either side, to accept any condition except victory is to accept defeat.

The idea here is for your players to turn the Pax Romana their old PCs created into a new age of dispersed power where freedom to make even bad choices creates opportunities for many more.

As an example, how many nations were held in bondage by the Roman Empire, which remained culturally stagnant until the Empire fell apart, only to rise in its absence to become superpowers themselves? Defeating the Supers, by whatever means you choose, will allow the 'provinces' to flourish and grow.

[Martin Greywolf]

First thing we need to do is look at pre-modern wars, and how different they often were.

Pre-modern wars and culture

First, and by far the most important, thing we need to look at is cultural background. Since there was absolutely no Geneva convention whatsoever, any war is a total war, there are no civilians (especially because a farmer with a flail can be an effective combatant, just ask the Hussites) and everything is permitted and often even expected. In wars like these, well... it gets grim. Carthage was completely destroyed, Mongol conquest resulted in a mountain of skulls, Crusades weren't happy fun time either and we all know how conquest of Americas looked like.

This kind of war is neither the norm, nor the exception in real history, sometimes you got these, sometimes you didn't.

The second kind of war happens between two groups that do have a common cultural background - this is rarely an ethnicity, it usually comes down to language or religion. This common cultural basis usually means the two groups have similar views on honor, mercy and lenience, and you end up with a sort of unwritten, or semi-written Geneva convention. Once Europe leaves early medieval period, almost all wars in participates in (yes, including the Crusades in Outremer, there is commonality in religion there) are this kind of war to a greater or lesser degree.

This not only drastically influences behavior at wartime, but also how smaller groups of people will behave. When the Mongol invasion hit, everyone in Hungary fled to the hills or was enslaved/killed, when Austrian count started a war with Hungary a few years later, everyone stayed where they were and opened the city gates if they thought they couldn't resist the invaders.

Pre-modern wargoals

This is where we start to get complicated.

Usually, there are three goals to a war:

1. partial conquest
2. resolving a political issue
3. looting

Partial conquest is pretty clear, conquer a chunk of something. Note that it is almost always partial, because pre-modern armies simply do not have the manpower to occupy a large territory. There are only very few exceptions to this in history, when the conquering side had some sort of system to integrate what they conquered into their fold in a semi-peaceful manner that let people keep their cultural identity to a degree. That doesn't mean the conquerors were nice, because, well, two examples are Roman empire (taking a whole lot of slaves) and Mongolian empire (don't make me come over there and kill absolutely everyone, otherwise just pay taxes, we don't care about administration).

Resolving a political issue is what almost every European war was about, even those that may look they were about conquest. Thing is, most of conquests were done with the official reason of "we have a rightful claim on this city/crown/province", which more or less meant that the people living there were a lot less opposed to the conquerors staying there - they weren't occupying or conquering per se, they were just replacing the head that wore the crown. This is why you see a whole lot of sieges simply not happening, people were well aware that the consequences would be to pay the same taxes to someone else, so taking part in hopeless sieges was pointless.

Looting is a weird one. Looting per se was a part of any war, and was in fact an expected supplement to soldier's income, and the reason why many joined despite poor pay. Yes, this did bite the leadership in the ass fairly often when troops decided battle was over and started looting and got wrecked by enemy reserves. But, there are wars that had acquiring plunder and then retreating as their explicit wargoal - Mongol invasion of Hungary and Poland is one such example, where getting slaves and destroying the invaded countries was the goal, as punishment for a political act.

What this means for us - conflict resolution mechanisms

What this adventuring group did is pretty much artificially imposed a common culture - then and again, all culture is artificial, we don't get born with knowledge of what attire is appropriate for a job interview.

One of the thing the kingdoms would have to do is set up some alternate systems of conflict resolutions - diplomatic channels, combat by champion, resolving issues on tournaments and so on. Having a small pretend-war to get around the prohibition on proper wars and so on. These systems wouldn't go away after the adventurers disappear, and would still get used if the cost-benefit analysis of the two sides was low enough to not warrant a war. There are enough examples of political issues up to succession of major countries being solved diplomatically in Europe, usually via third party arbitration - you just tend to not hear about them, because they aren't as exciting as war.

Moreover, this sort of enforced peace would mean that merchants, traders and common people in general would become more interconnected, and while people a few valleys over would still be foreign, you'd see "us vs them" mentality shift to include more of "us" - which means less enthusiasm for looting wars, because those tend to mean your trading partners have a lot less to trade. Type 1 and 2 wars would still happen after your party is gone on the regular, but with less severity and perhaps less frequency. Arguably all type 1 wars become type 2 wars, medieval Europe-style, but that does depend a lot on the cultural specifics.

Balance of power and transition point

The question of what happens when the party disappears is a complex one. Sure, now everyone can go to war over everything instead of sending assassins - but can they afford it? Because of the status quo, you have several kingdoms about as strong as each other, and if two of the go to war, their neighbours may well pounce.

There are many ways this could shake out, from proxy wars in smaller kingdoms, to Cold War-style MAD peace, to WW1 massive conflict sparked by some sort of diplomatic crisis.

[Yakk]

One of the thing the kingdoms would have to do is set up some alternate systems of conflict resolutions - diplomatic channels, combat by champion, resolving issues on tournaments and so on. Having a small pretend-war to get around the prohibition on proper wars and so on. These systems wouldn't go away after the adventurers disappear, and would still get used if the cost-benefit analysis of the two sides was low enough to not warrant a war. There are enough examples of political issues up to succession of major countries being solved diplomatically in Europe, usually via third party arbitration - you just tend to not hear about them, because they aren't as exciting as war.

So, one of the things of "culturally limited war" is that if the other side doesn't obey the conventions, it can escalate to non-limited war. Defeat in the limited war implies almost certain defeat in the non-limited war, so it often doesn't happen.

The cases when it doesn't, support for the limited war and support for the non-limited war doesn't agree (ie, you have troops that won't follow you into total war). The "superheros" might do that; as crossing the (hard to determine) line results in superhero veto, nobody becomes willing to cross that line.

But: what happens when you do combat by champion, and then the side that loses doesn't follow the rules? The winning side can't escalate to real war (due to superheros) unless they can do it as an unorganized horde (sacrificing the leaders).

This means that combat by champion needs an enforcement mechanism. And that enforcement mechanism, in turn, needs to be better to agree to than the alternative of not agreeing to it. Ie, you can imagine "the leader of each country's life is on the line", but why would the leader agree to that when the alternative is not agreeing to it and not doing combat by champion?

[brian 333]

An unanswered question: why do the supers all cooperate?

Meta information is that the PCs are all controlled by the same players. However, in story there should be many potential flashpoints between the supers.

This is the problem, and as much as the other posters have made great historical and philosophical points, none of the suggested fixes even acknowledges that your campaign's real issue is that a single group of players solve all of the problems in such a way as to mitigate the obvious reactions of older PCs.

Example: Spider Valley was an early campaign, and now is home to some powerful PCs that keep the drow and high elves from fighting. Then along comes a new set of PCs who prevent the elves and dwarves from fighting. But, doesn't Spider Valley have the resources the dwarves need? If the new PCs let the dwarves mine there instead of elfy-land...
But the new PCs know of the old PCs and their deal with the drow, so that's never considered. Sigh. The dwarves have to do without.

Your players never address this, primarily because they don't want to have conflict between their own PCs. I always made it clear that when a character was not being played it was an NPC. Some of our best sessions involved players putting one over on their old PC. I also had a rule that outside of a specific campaign any characters with control of an NPC population were retired, unplayable, and permanent NPCs, and I never hesitated to use a former PC against the party if it was a logical progression of the story.

[Bohandas]

Additionally, the traditional way warfare has 'solved' conflicts has been through ethnic cleansing/genocide

Well, when it comes to conflicts between different cultures.

But I had gotten the impression that in most feudal wars where the leaders shared the same basic culture the pesants were basically considered one of the disputed territory's resources, to the extent that they were considered at all. This isn't to say that there weren't plenty of massacres and destruction of food supplies and poisoned wells and so forth, just that these were generally more terror tactics (and/or scorched earth tactics, and/or indirect attacks on the enemy forces) rather than ends in themselves

[PhoenixPhyre]

An unanswered question: why do the supers all cooperate?

Meta information is that the PCs are all controlled by the same players. However, in story there should be many potential flashpoints between the supers.

This is the problem, and as much as the other posters have made great historical and philosophical points, none of the suggested fixes even acknowledges that your campaign's real issue is that a single group of players solve all of the problems in such a way as to mitigate the obvious reactions of older PCs.

Example: Spider Valley was an early campaign, and now is home to some powerful PCs that keep the drow and high elves from fighting. Then along comes a new set of PCs who prevent the elves and dwarves from fighting. But, doesn't Spider Valley have the resources the dwarves need? If the new PCs let the dwarves mine there instead of elfy-land...
But the new PCs know of the old PCs and their deal with the drow, so that's never considered. Sigh. The dwarves have to do without.

Your players never address this, primarily because they don't want to have conflict between their own PCs. I always made it clear that when a character was not being played it was an NPC. Some of our best sessions involved players putting one over on their old PC. I also had a rule that outside of a specific campaign any characters with control of an NPC population were retired, unplayable, and permanent NPCs, and I never hesitated to use a former PC against the party if it was a logical progression of the story.

In this particular case, these are EX PCs. Now turned NPCs. And this has played out in the background while other games were going on. And why do they cooperate? They're all friends, basically. And they all share various bonds together. It's actually based on what the players said before they gave up their characters at the end of the campaign(s)--we always run a "ok, and now what. How would you react to..." session of wrap up. Purely narrative.

[brian 333]

In this particular case, these are EX PCs. Now turned NPCs. And this has played out in the background while other games were going on. And why do they cooperate? They're all friends, basically. And they all share various bonds together. It's actually based on what the players said before they gave up their characters at the end of the campaign(s)--we always run a "ok, and now what. How would you react to..." session of wrap up. Purely narrative.

Exactly my point. However, the old characters are now the opposition of the new, not the buddies.

If the game world stagnates it no longer challenges the players and their new PCs. Those festering resentments of the imposed peace can be the stimulus for change, for a new dynamic movement. And it can be lead by your players.

Example of DM intro to a new campaign:

Many years ago a potential war was prevented by the intervention of a small group of very powerful characters, but the result has been festering hatred and secret murder. People go missing, and everyone knows who the guilty are, but they are protected by a treaty imposed by these ultra-powerful characters. Reprisals generate further reprisals, and people fear to leave what safety they can find. Banditry stifles trade, conscription siphons skilled laborers from the work force, and the weak and innocent are all too often targeted for exploitation. Kings and high councils fear to act to defend their subjects because the ultra-powerful have assured them that they will be held accountable if armies go on the march.

The raiders are a problem the king can handle. The bandits would flee if his army could be moved from their garrisons. What stands in the way is a decree, backed by threat of force, imposed by a half-dozen wealthy former adventurers.

A person who wears a cloth covering over his face and speaks in a feminine voice meets the PCs and asks, "What is to be done? Are we to simply die as a nation because some outsiders decreed our cause is not worth fighting for?"

Assignment 1: free a border village from terror.
Assignment 2: clear bandits from a region
Assignment 3: find a way to cooperatively eliminate a criminal syndicate that exploits the imposed border between rival nations.
Assignment 4: use the combined force to open trade between the trade-starved nations
Assignment 5: convince the opposed nation that cooperation versus their common enemy is better than slow stagnation
Assignment 6: organize the best units of both armies into a 'monster-hunting force while organizing the rest to defend the homeland.
Assignment 7: use the monster-hunters to clear threats around both kingdoms and establish the PCs as their leadership.
Assignment 8: build an offensive force, train and equip it, and exercise it's power by extending the borders of both kingdoms.
Assignment 9: destroy the power base of the supers who imposed peace between the would-be rivals.
Assignment 10: war or peace. The PCs now either mandate the two nations are one or they devolve into civil war as they were meant to do.

Keep in mind that as the PCs move and gain power, the leadership of both sides will actively set up countermeasures, such as appointed leaders corrupted by or loyal to them.

Another issue I see all too commonly is the tendency of DMs to set up 'no fail' or 'no win' scenarios. Both are equally to be avoided. No fail scenarios lead to the current situation of your campaign. No win scenarios lead to player frustration. There is a middle ground. A fair DM does not hesitate to assert the realities of his world. (It is a character of his creation, and he should play it for the win!) On the other hand, a DM should fairly assess the strategies and methods of the players and allow them to win or lose on their merits.

An example: Dearth Hammer is a character who chooses to attack a paladin company. Does his plan include awareness of paladin abilities and attitudes? If he stands outside their gate and challenges them to single combat, do they comply? Do they attack em masse? Do they ignore the obviously brain damaged dwarf?
It is your job to play the paladins as if they were your characters. If you have already decided they are so stupidly dogmatic as to accept single combat and have presented that as a fact of your world, then Dearth is justified in thinking his plan might work. If not, Dearth is guessing, and you are fully justified in responding with a hail of arrows from the castle guardians.

When the players base their current actions on what they know about their former characters, you should change the former character's response.
"But Bertrand The Wise knows this is for the best, so he would accept it!"
Nope. Old Bertrand set things up the way he wanted them. You are changing that. Bertrand is now angry. At you.
The old PCs are your characters now. The players can no longer dictate their actions. They may even have had cause to change their minds since last the players controlled them.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Exactly my point. However, the old characters are now the opposition of the new, not the buddies.

If the game world stagnates it no longer challenges the players and their new PCs. Those festering resentments of the imposed peace can be the stimulus for change, for a new dynamic movement. And it can be lead by your players.

Example of DM intro to a new campaign:

Many years ago a potential war was prevented by the intervention of a small group of very powerful characters, but the result has been festering hatred and secret murder. People go missing, and everyone knows who the guilty are, but they are protected by a treaty imposed by these ultra-powerful characters. Reprisals generate further reprisals, and people fear to leave what safety they can find. Banditry stifles trade, conscription siphons skilled laborers from the work force, and the weak and innocent are all too often targeted for exploitation. Kings and high councils fear to act to defend their subjects because the ultra-powerful have assured them that they will be held accountable if armies go on the march.

The raiders are a problem the king can handle. The bandits would flee if his army could be moved from their garrisons. What stands in the way is a decree, backed by threat of force, imposed by a half-dozen wealthy former adventurers.

A person who wears a cloth covering over his face and speaks in a feminine voice meets the PCs and asks, "What is to be done? Are we to simply die as a nation because some outsiders decreed our cause is not worth fighting for?"

Assignment 1: free a border village from terror.
Assignment 2: clear bandits from a region
Assignment 3: find a way to cooperatively eliminate a criminal syndicate that exploits the imposed border between rival nations.
Assignment 4: use the combined force to open trade between the trade-starved nations
Assignment 5: convince the opposed nation that cooperation versus their common enemy is better than slow stagnation
Assignment 6: organize the best units of both armies into a 'monster-hunting force while organizing the rest to defend the homeland.
Assignment 7: use the monster-hunters to clear threats around both kingdoms and establish the PCs as their leadership.
Assignment 8: build an offensive force, train and equip it, and exercise it's power by extending the borders of both kingdoms.
Assignment 9: destroy the power base of the supers who imposed peace between the would-be rivals.
Assignment 10: war or peace. The PCs now either mandate the two nations are one or they devolve into civil war as they were meant to do.

Keep in mind that as the PCs move and gain power, the leadership of both sides will actively set up countermeasures, such as appointed leaders corrupted by or loyal to them.

Another issue I see all too commonly is the tendency of DMs to set up 'no fail' or 'no win' scenarios. Both are equally to be avoided. No fail scenarios lead to the current situation of your campaign. No win scenarios lead to player frustration. There is a middle ground. A fair DM does not hesitate to assert the realities of his world. (It is a character of his creation, and he should play it for the win!) On the other hand, a DM should fairly assess the strategies and methods of the players and allow them to win or lose on their merits.

An example: Dearth Hammer is a character who chooses to attack a paladin company. Does his plan include awareness of paladin abilities and attitudes? If he stands outside their gate and challenges them to single combat, do they comply? Do they attack em masse? Do they ignore the obviously brain damaged dwarf?
It is your job to play the paladins as if they were your characters. If you have already decided they are so stupidly dogmatic as to accept single combat and have presented that as a fact of your world, then Dearth is justified in thinking his plan might work. If not, Dearth is guessing, and you are fully justified in responding with a hail of arrows from the castle guardians.

When the players base their current actions on what they know about their former characters, you should change the former character's response.
"But Bertrand The Wise knows this is for the best, so he would accept it!"
Nope. Old Bertrand set things up the way he wanted them. You are changing that. Bertrand is now angry. At you.
The old PCs are your characters now. The players can no longer dictate their actions. They may even have had cause to change their minds since last the players controlled them.

I don't actually have any problem with this. And this isn't really a question regarding new PCs--I don't have anyone in that position right now. It's more just a musing about the general scenario where you have externally enforced stasis without resolving the underlying issues, but that enforcement becomes unstable (in this case due to age of the enforcers, among other things). The reason I posted it here, instead of in the general RPG or a system specific subforum was exactly that I wanted to muse/discuss about the general case, disconnected from the specifics of this one world at least in part.

There's any number of ways that things could go when new, active players get involved. That's utterly out of scope, because that gets planned for those characters, in those circumstances. But one of the parts of running a living world is that things evolve over time even when the players aren't involved. Time marches on. And deciding how things fit best absent player involvement (which kinda trumps the prior "status quo" projected line) is important because players may or may not even decide to be in those areas, touching those things. And if they do, they might decide to stay neutral. Which is also an option.

[NichG]

One thing I haven't seen yet in this thread (unless I missed it) would be the formation of dependency on this status quo. That is to say, knowing that war is not possible, some nations might shift investment of resources away from their militaries. This becomes an advantage for those who shift the earliest, but if the enforcers of peace start to flag in their activities that may mean a lot of dry kindling to be caught up in the flames of a conqueror who didn't divest from military strength.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One thing I haven't seen yet in this thread (unless I missed it) would be the formation of dependency on this status quo. That is to say, knowing that war is not possible, some nations might shift investment of resources away from their militaries. This becomes an advantage for those who shift the earliest, but if the enforcers of peace start to flag in their activities that may mean a lot of dry kindling to be caught up in the flames of a conqueror who didn't divest from military strength.

That's an interesting point. And one I'd subconsciously done--of the nations in this "treaty area" (the area where the enforcers have committed to enforcing the peace), only one-ish has substantial standing military, and that was for legacy reasons.

Byssia never really had one, because it didn't have neighbors until after the treaty zone came into being (due to natural barriers and just sheer distance). They have ad-hoc militias and roving monk-enforcers, and can call up a lot of metaphysical might if directly threatened, but their active military tradition is basically null.

The Windwalker "Confederacy" (a loose collection of goblinoid tribes united basically by their hobgoblins saying "we'll let people transit through our territory as long as they don't go off road. If they do and get beaten, that's their fault") could, in principle, muster the tribes. But that would take time.

Crisial Kingdom has militia and a small standing border patrol force. They're the closest to feudal, but mostly rely on the supers (one of whom is their queen) for external enforcement.

The Duarchy isn't very feudal (they're still figuring out the whole aristocracy thing) but mostly rely on local militias.

Rauviz is a city state with effectively no military. Just money and being surrounded by states that have interests in keeping it neutral.

Fuar Uulan is a dwarven state that is itching for an excuse to shut its gates and ignore everyone else.

Shinevog is...well...Shinevog. Slightly insane inventors with experimental weapons.

Tuura Adam has the mountains as a defense, and the people there all practice militia service. Invading them would be painful, but they're not suited for invading others.

The Holy Kaelthian Republic would be poised to invade others, but they just got hit with a major crisis in the form of their primary god getting deposed. So they're an "ish".

The nations of the Jungle of Fangs have militaries, but they're kinda isolated from everyone else by significant barriers. So at most they'd be fighting each other or non-treaty-zone people.

Wyrmhold has a standing military and a significant military-industrial complex because they just (a generation or so ago) got out of a 90-year war (well, active during the winter) of extermination waged against them. Of the recent trouble spots, they've been implicated in most of them. They're still working through the "ok, we have this big military and our society is oriented along martial/war lines...and now there's no war. Now what." process. The queen there is dedicated to peace and has a strong local following, but there's a significant fraction of the nobility and industrial classes that derive their power from leading or supplying wars.

Which is what brought this up--they're the main source of instability right now, with the HKR as a second one depending on how they take the whole god thing (either curling up into their navels or deciding to go conquering). The HKR has several of the newest, most powerful supers living right on their borders who have already expressed that they're kinda pissed at them right now (being the ones who participated in deposing the god and everyone knows it) and would rather they stay quiet. So I don't think the HKR is going to (officially) start anything soon. Wyrmhold (or internal, unofficial factions thereof), on the other hand...

[brian 333]

I don't actually have any problem with this. And this isn't really a question regarding new PCs--I don't have anyone in that position right now. It's more just a musing about the general scenario where you have externally enforced stasis without resolving the underlying issues, but that enforcement becomes unstable (in this case due to age of the enforcers, among other things). The reason I posted it here, instead of in the general RPG or a system specific subforum was exactly that I wanted to muse/discuss about the general case, disconnected from the specifics of this one world at least in part.

There's any number of ways that things could go when new, active players get involved. That's utterly out of scope, because that gets planned for those characters, in those circumstances. But one of the parts of running a living world is that things evolve over time even when the players aren't involved. Time marches on. And deciding how things fit best absent player involvement (which kinda trumps the prior "status quo" projected line) is important because players may or may not even decide to be in those areas, touching those things. And if they do, they might decide to stay neutral. Which is also an option.

Noted.

I tend to think in terms of stories, in which the background is an emergent property rather than an immutable being, or in terms of, "What's the next adventure?"

Considering the situation as you have described it, why have the various nations not invested in developing supers of their own to pit against the PC supers? If conquest is their goal, one would think they would have thought of that.

Given that you assume hostilities continue, the situation is inherently unstable. The former PC should be occupied in dealing with the myriad problems that crop up, with an ever-increasing demand on their time and material wealth. How long can they continue to intervene before exhaustion, frustration, and poverty set in?