World War in DnD

[ToranIronfinder]

So if I wanted to start a world war in a realms or greyhawk campaign as an ongoing background plot, where new nations get sucked into two sides of an ongoing conflict, how, where and when would I set it up?

Specifically are their any alliance systems that would suck everyone into a conflict after an event such as happened with the assassination of the Archdale Ferdinand? If none exist, what alliance could be started, ie, would the enemies of Thay come to some type of pact that would require Thay to look for allies etc.

*What would the the two sides be, and which nations would be allied with which?

* Where would battle lines be drawn?

[the_david]

You're describing the Last War from the Eberron campaign setting. If I remember correctly, the king died and his 5 heirs started a war among themselves. I can't tell you which book would give you the best info on the Last War, though.

[ToranIronfinder]

You're describing the Last War from the Eberron campaign setting. If I remember correctly, the king died and his 5 heirs started a war among themselves. I can't tell you which book would give you the best info on the Last War, though.

Thanks, I am not familiar with that setting. I'll look it up.

[the_david]

Oh and obviously, Birthright would be an even better setting for this as it's all about politics.

[Mechalich]

This sort of thing depends heavily on system. In traditional unrestricted D&D personal power > state power and therefore "war" is actually a struggle between small groups of extremely powerful individuals - mostly high-level spellcasters but also including dragons and some other monsters - who drag nations and armies along with them mostly as cannon fodder. Several wars in FR have been written up this way, such as the Return of the Archwizards trilogy and the War of the Spider Queen. FR actually does have a system of alliances that can drag nations into wars: the Chosen of Mystra and their buddies are all close friends and anyone who seriously makes a move against one of them is going to get the whole squad coming at them in retaliation.

[Ashtagon]

|Are you familiar with the 2e product Greyhawk Wars?

[Yakk]

I'm messing with this in a 5e homebrew world. The world war will be a distraction from the real problem.

But, to make it somewhat realistic, what I'm doing is recording the power of each of the powers by doing a "sum of CR" of that side.

With a bit of recursion I can get "realistic" models of the forces involved. Ie, a horde of 1 million orcs -- is that the same power scale, or not, as the elven forces?

I can either start from the top down (I want elves to rival the orcs; the orcs have 500k CR total. So the elves need the same ballpark) or I can describe an organization and work out where it fits in the global power scale.

Next, because this is an adventure game, I need to give things for the players to do that will swing the balance significantly. Part of this is making the game take time; so going for 5e gritty rests, and have downtime mechanics, and things to stop constant grinding for levels. (In my case, the way PCs gain levels is going to be macguffin based; simply practicing takes far longer. So the PCs have to track down the next MacGuffin and travel and get it to get their next level: this travel and exploration and research time means that the world can advance and change without PCs exiting the power scale band)

The balance of power can swing drastically as the plots of one side or the other come to fruition, as allies are convinced to join, and as the battlefield is favorable or not to a particular side.

Meanwhile, the players are engaged in a race for the MacGuffins, and (as it turns out) the entire world war is akin to GoT's war of the kings while the real menace gathers off screen. There are 4 onion layers planned (evil empire and world war problem, manipulative dude who is after the same stuff the PCs are after, something seemingly even worse, and then a real outside context problem).

[Trask]

Greyhawk's Greyhawk Wars or Eberron's Last War are perfect for what you describe. I'm not extremely familiar with either, but I know that the Greyhawk Wars has more of a "main villain" in Iuz (and to a lesser degree, Overking Ivid and the Scarlet Brotherhood), mixed in with other more mundane conflicts simmering over. It feels more like the good and the grey nations having to set aside their differences to prevent the world from falling into the hands of the many evil forces that assail it.

The Last War AFAIK is more of a grey afair (more grey than greyhawk ha), very much about power and nation states competing to be the heir of the Kingdom of Galifar, complete with an entire region devastated by an analogue to nuclear weapons.

I wouldn[t consider the Forgotten Realms to be designed for this kind of concept as there are few true "Nations" in that world and no real defined borders in the areas most focused upon by official products.

From your last post, I think Greyhawk Wars seems more up your alley. It has an evil empire run by a demigod of evil (Iuz, Tasha's son btw in D&D lore) but also a once great kingdom now ruled by a mad King which provides a more grey foil to the purely evil Iuz. Not even mentioning the Scarlet Brotherhood, there are plenty of evil empires to go around, as well as a sort of slightly corrupt Gondor in Nyrond, an old kingdom, once great, now weak, seeking to take advantage in Keoland, and things even worse than Iuz stirring in the background in the Cult of Elemental Evil and Tharizdun.

There's even a bit of metaplot going on with the Prince of Furyondy being kidnapped before his marriage to the Princess of Veluna (Furyondy and Veluna are the two capital G "Good" nations), which weakens the forces of good. Who kidnapped him? It could be a whole adventure as the Greyhawk Wars begin and could lead to a rabbit whole of conspiracies and consequences. Sounds like a great campaign idea, even if you just steal the concepts and make everything your own.

I reccomend looking at the Greyhawk Wars boxed set on DMsguild, WotC sells it as a PDF.

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/174...5385_0_0_0_0_0

[Bohandas]

Similarly, Dragon 277 has a version of the Greyhawk setting that's jumped forward a few centuries and it mentions another large scale war with Iuz that ends with a small scale nuclear exchange