this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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So there's a book called "The Road to Stalingrad" by Benno Zieser that's one of the best war books I've ever read in terms of the day-to-day reality of war for the little person on the ground. One of the more terrifying parts of it is Zieser talking about the experience of being in a trench with fighting going on between planes and tanks and artillery up above the trench-level, and feeling just totally powerless to influence events in any way, like a little vulnerable flesh-blob with invulnerable metal monsters duking it out to determine his fate.
If my players started MWW, I think I would try to put them into that state. Have some enterprising wizard produce a few hundred (thousand) fireball wands and train an organized battalion to use them tactically in a massed group to accomplish a strategic objective which involves where the players are standing. Have ethereal spies everywhere, learning the details of how things the party depends on as safe home base are defended, and then have all the pivotal pieces explode in magical fire all at once at 4 in the morning, and then the shock troops roll in. Etc etc. It's like, if y'all want to suspend the rules and create a hostile world, then you're going to be in a hostile world with suspended rules. We can have some fun and some exciting times (behind the scenes I'd be rooting for a good outcome for them), but some of the parameters you'd been relying on to be able to control your fate are going to be suspended 'cause you guys broke the seal.
I like the idea of familiars as spys, perhaps demons make pacts not with individuals, but with batalions to get eldritch blast and some imps in an effort to gain the upper hand. Also, the idea of a magical superweapon arms race seems like another good excuse to "why do we have so few wizards on the batallion", magical Openheimer is doing its thing.
Right, high demons would thrive in war. Maybe the demons make pacts with various warring factions, the magical weapons and fiendish allies come to "help" start getting turned up to 11, cities explode and burn, or just disintegrate away to some entire other reality, hell comes to earth, and by the time the people realize that they're not even theoretically in control of the forces they've unleashed, it's almost too late to even unify and save the wreckage that's left from being dragged down to hell continent by continent. Great mute devils, a mile in height, are already screwing into the earth long chains with links the size of villages, fixed to winches, down at the other end.
Maybe a little roving squad of high-level wizards begins traveling around, once their study is complete, and wherever they stop to concentrate for an hour, a city flickers and fades and becomes a place where no sound can be emitted or heard, where thousands of long animate shadows hunt any living thing that enters. We have to do it, because they're working on the same thing.
One other lore-building thing for your consideration: Fire on the Velvet Horizon has an awesome little slice-of-life of one possibility of what a magical war and the soldiers in it might have been like, as part of the lore for "Hex Dragoons." I can recommend it 1,000% for that among any number of other reasons. If you wanted ideas for doomsday weapons for different factions to be working on, it also has a number of top-notch possibilities to pick from for those.
Also, necromancy would become a must for both sides, after all, a the death of a legion may generate revenants or wraiths. The idea of mass destruction magical weapons or crazy magical creations has been explored somewhat in earlier editions. I'm talking about things like the frostforged wyrm, or the crazy nethereese spells of levels above 9. There is literally a "conjure volcano" spell that a wizard just made for flexing and no one actually casted, until now of course, until now.
I have downloaded the pdf of FotVH, man this is gold. I have read like three monsters and these things are a wild ride. Thank you kindly for the recomendation.
Yah. It is hands down my favorite sourcebook; nothing even comes close. I find I have to insert stuff from it in severely reduced and partial form, because if they're inserted as-is, they're too vivid and wild and they wind up taking over the adventure. You have to apply it sparingly, in extremely diluted form, and even then it's great stuff. It's just too powerful to be used as written (or I'm not capable enough or my games not wild enough to apply it that way.)