If a fantasy setting had an industrialized global war (think WWI or WWII) what kind of campaigns could you run in it? What sort of stories would you see?
If a fantasy setting had an industrialized global war (think WWI or WWII) what kind of campaigns could you run in it...
Christopher Thomas
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Wyatt Morales
Gunna say magic might take a back seat considering they have the whole gun thing, wizards would probably still be fucking important in logistical roles and support roles.I dunno, just a thought.
Adrian Martin
Depends on what magic can do in universe. If a wizard can cast fire magic and some sort of magic should he's basically a walking artillery piece with its own personal active defense. Would be a real nightmare in trench warfare.
>teleports across no man's land
>turns your trench into a river of flame
Andrew Garcia
Still they would be in the sidelines. The main thing about industrialized warfare are mass produced destructive weapons.
Xavier Clark
I see that but given how much time it would take to train a wizard compared to training a random ass to fire a gun you wouldn't see them used just to not risk losing them
Tyler Miller
>Magical Girl Squadron doing tacticool shit behind enemy lines
Eli Thomas
Literally what I'm writing up now. A collapsed empire that was propped up by undead workers who are mysteriously killing and burning and looting.
The setting works since it's the immediate result of a highly regulated, stratified and artificially hurried development process, with weapons 60 years behind the tech, and cultural attitudes 200 years behind that. Having an actual industrial setting would be a lot harder, since there's so much history and context to consider - moreso than your standard medieval fantasy where kingdoms can just exist largely unto themselves.
Jaxon Ward
This relys way to heavily on D&D meme wizard logic that magic is unstoppable and infintiely powerful.
In anycase, having a wizard that takes years to train is wasted as a frontline asset when you have bodies to throw at the opposition and invariably bullets are cheaper than spell components
"nuh hu? wizards r thu ultimates!"
>que derailed thread
Leo Anderson
literally Drifters
Thomas Brooks
Unless you want to go full magitek, it's usually best to either drop magic altogether, or make it mysterious, slow and rare.
The subtle impacts at every single step of social and technological progress if magic was even moderately common would be very hard to accurately predict and write.
Kayden Lee
Whatever you personal view of magic might be fore your personal preference it's still another technology to be used. If you're using crystals in your lamp instead of a lightbulb isn't it accomplishing the same thing?
Christian Young
Yes, but if those crystals provide a source of unlimited energy, you've then removed the need for fuel in any form - the wizards who are then able to call forth the aethers in order to form these light crystals hold every industry in the economy to ransom until a small group of droogs on the payroll of the second-largest rail industry gets a tip on an artificial means to reproduce them causing a massive economic and political shift rendering the wizards unable to upkeep their grand towers etc etc etc
It's a hell of a lot of moving parts, and while as with any writing you have a degree of 'eh, its just how I wanted the setting to be', if you add too many things that could and would completely upend their society (health potions, magical sewage treatment, scrying telecomms) and the people in the setting simply choose not to use them to do so, it tugs at the goodwill of the reader to overlook it until they can't anymore and suspension of disbelief collapses.
Which is why IMO magic works best when it's rare individuals who are either in the employ of governments or crazy hermits, it's temporary, and while it may be powerful it's limited to what one person can do and is unpredictable in its outcomes.
Ryan Thompson
You also have to consider the goal you have in mind. Writing a novel and writing a setting to play in are two completely different things. For the sake of story you can leave a lot of details in the wind depending upon how it serves the story. For a campaign that people play in those details may or may not be important based on the goal of the game.
If I'm just a chav doing a job for some slum lord than why is it important that I understand the depth and degree of world building involved in the citie's infrastructure unless it's relevant to the game at hand.
Leo Hernandez
I would say Full Metal Alchemist did this pretty alright. Alchemists are destructive, but can be overwhelmed/defeated by someone cool enough, all the while soldiers die in trenches.
Cooper Foster
From my little experience in GMing, all these things you have handwaved because the players couldn't possibly interact with that part of setting always come back to bite me when I least expect them.
Caleb Gonzalez
Well, that's the thing with a campaign versus a novel. The characters in the novel will only move in the direction you want them to while you don't have quite that level of power when it comes to directing a game.
Ayden Gutierrez
I'd argue you've got it the wrong way round there. In a novel you have full control, you can have scrying be a common wizard cantrip and yet they don't use it to locate bombing runs before they happen. You can write this novel, publish it, sell 20,000 copies and at worst you'll get it mentioned in a few reviews as jarring. Then you can get interviewed and bullshit an answer like "they only fly bombing runs when it's cloudy, which blocks scrying".
You write up a tabletop setting and have internal inconsistencies, your players are going to notice them and either use them to their advantage, or complain. They're going to outmaneuver the police by establishing a scrying comms network in their gang, they're going to use alchemical lifting gas to create the setting's first airships, they're going to make adamantine tank shells that rip through all known armour - either that or you're going to have to come up with a poor justification as to why they can't (which may open up more avenues) or tell them OOC to quit it (which makes them feel less like they're playing in a setting and more like they're characters in your story).
TTRPG settings -have- to be internally consistent. I think that's one reason that Veeky Forums is so autistic about muh realism.
Jackson Harris
I've never argued against internal consistancy. As a matter of fact I'd dare say it's the key aspect to any setting regardless of the genre. It kind of goes off the rails I feel when personal preference comes into play but then it could be to what you said that all the autistic ass blasting gets in the way. As long as the setting abides by it's own rules I don't really give a shit about it correlating to real life realism.
Jace Williams
not considering mages, you gotta look at why war changed
weapons got crazy during the 19th century
railroads and cars = super fast logistics
machine guns ended cavalry and large scale melee combat for good
infantry formations against explosive artillery were suicide
accurate snipers perform legendary kill shots on your generals, if they were to find them in battle
can magic stop any of that from happening?
what do fantasy elements add to the table?
Christian Collins
Dwarfs tunnelling under no mans land into enemy trenches wearing light-but-sturdy ballistics vests wielding pic related.
James Morris
I read a good post from Reddit historians on how modern warfare changed after the Napoleonic Wars and how combat evolved into modern skirmisher tactics. However if magic could prevent some of the advantages technology brought (defensive spells like Protection From Missles and the various Wall of Wood/Stone/Iron spells) I'm sure the battlefield would be quite different.
Aiden Nguyen
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This with elves and dwarfs.
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>The Gashadokuro, commonly reffered to as Odokuro by the Japanese, are preternatural entities that appear as skeletons approximately fifteen times the size of a normal human. Gashadokuro were first widely summoned in Japan's campaign in China late into the Second World War. They are formed from the bones of people who have starved to death, of which the Japanese had plenty in labor camps and besieged Chinese cities. The Gashadokuro, once formed, was given a sacrifice of one live prisoner's head in addition to the gastplasm necessary to power it, as per ancient tradition.
Joseph Allen
Yeah, maybe it could be great setting for a skirmish wargame even.
In fact, I think even how nations were formed things would be different. If magic could cause so much effect on how war are waged, there is a bigger chance of Magic users being part of elite castes.
I would at least like the idea of a group of regular WW1 soldiers fighting alongside this Knight from UK wielding a sword as he protects them with his magic shields.
Jose Rodriguez
Literally this
Arrowsmith g.co
Colton Russell
The comic book Saga has some inspiration for this. Proxy wars; one side has tech, the other magic; millions dying in bloody-soaked mud because government officials care more about political positions and dividing up the colonies than actual lives lost. It's probably the best scifi/fantasy version of WWI
Justin Martin
>wielding pic related
you couldn't use that in tunnel warfare unless you're wasting your time and resources building a large enough tunnel in order to swing that thing around, never mind the ungodly noise that would make underground.