Let's brew a war fantasy setting. Not about war with random magical creatures thrown in...

Let's brew a war fantasy setting. Not about war with random magical creatures thrown in. About the myths and superstitions that came from the modern battlefield. Gremlins, Vietnam Apes, Pippo, UB-65, skinwalkers sightings in afghanistan... This kind of stuff, created in rumors spread around barracks. I find fascinating how regiments and divisions can create their own traditions and "culture". Unfortunately it seems there's very little in-depth information about this stuff.

What cool mythical figures would be born out of modern warfare? Most importantly, how to combine them into a setting that feels like modern war instead of just fantasy with machineguns?

Also, happy new year everyone. Be awesome to each other.

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Well one setting I work on is a WW1 setting, that the longer it goes on, the more reality is torn.

This includes ghost battalions that relive their battles besides living ones, smoke monsters made of poison gas, and one setpiece where an angel of war materializes in the battlefield with it being an open question whether it’s a real angel, or a mass hallucination made reality.

And how do they deal with these creatures? I suppose it quickly becomes known that strange things are happening in the battlefield. How does HQ reacts?

They ignore it. It doesn’t directly impact the war effort, and the solution to trench warfare is either throw more bodies at it, or build a bigger gun.

The problems do grow bigger and more frequent over time however, and the soldiers swap stories about how to deal with them.

scp-wiki.net/1914

>John Frum spontaneously manifests as a minor diety

>They ignore it
>soldiers swap stories on how to deal with them

>Just found out that cannibalism improves soldier performance

That's actually pretty close to what I wanted, thanks. I'm kinda tired of the old "In case of vampires, break out the holy water you received with your rifle and follow Infantry Drill nº13".

Thanks.

Though for me, it’s meant to be part of the theme of WW1 ‘war is inherently stupid and self-destructive, so of course the higher ups don’t care about magic goings ons’ So I don’t know how well it’d translate to other settings.

I imagine for instance WW2 Britain, or modern Israel, I imagine would take every threat, including magical, seriously.

>John Frum was a minor deity all along, very naive because of his isolation to a tiny island. When the americans came, he disguised himself as a marine and left with them
>thought it would be all about spear throwing knife fighting tribal adventure
>Blown to bits in Iwo Jima
>Natives are still waiting for their god to return

Yes. If you think in real world terms and the government takes supernatural threats seriously, it will always end up with some kind of supernatural division. And we have a thousand games about supernatural agencies.

The easiest way to avoid this cliche would be to make sure the government can't deal with the supernatural menaces - a post-apocalyptic scenario, basically. I'm having trouble putting flavour in this world, making it feel more like The Things They Carried and less like Fallout.

This is starting to sound an awful lot like "make my game for me", so I'll put down some ideas I had.


> The setting was never Earth. It is, however, based on the aftermatch of a decades-long war.
> Players are pilots in remote, high-altitude air bases turned into cities by the influx of refugees from the ravaged lowlands.
> Planes are rare and valuable. They know how they work and they know how to maintain them. But post-apocalypse logistics suck.
> They are still very powerful. Dropping bombs and strafing enemies is still very effective.
> This, together with the figure of the Ace, created a society where pilots are almost like knights, ruling over engineers, base guards and the rabble.

You ever talked with someone who had the same car for years? They will talk about it almost as if it was a person. WWII pilots in the real world were like this with their planes. In a world where they form a ruling class with its own traditions? Planes are fine mounts, with their likes, dislikes and personality. This isn't some Adeptus Mechanicus stuff, it's an exxageration of how real world pilots behave.

The weird part is, the planes seem to answer. Not by talking, of course. But through "acting up" in certain ways. A revered plane passed by generations will sometimes do extreme acts as flying without fuel or dogfighting without pilot imput, as if it had a life of its own. (1/2)

>Nose and wing painting became an art in itself. Paint jobs are family crests, base crests and sigils of power. And they somehow seem to work.

> The terror of every pilot are the Gremlins. Small, basically invisible creatures that sabotage planes in hangars or even attack them during flight, ripping through armor. Sometimes, large balls of fire also drift through the sky. They say these are carriages taking the worthy dead to a land of peace.

> Outside bases, the world is either a mess because of the war or a mess because of the breakdown of world economy decades ago. Peaceful villages, but also trench-riddled wastelands that spawn pale soldiers that don't breath and don't bleed. They bang on the doors of people at night, begging for simple things such as a cigarrette or a hot cup of tea.

>Submarine Spitfires flying through the air dog-fighting with Dragons

Don’t worry, I’m a friendly user who loves brainstorming.

I got nothing original to start with (I had some ideas for air warfare in my setting, but it’s more feelings and themes and hard to articulate).

But I have some suggestions to check out. Any Miyazaki film since he has a thing for funky fantasy aircraft. Particularly nausicaa and the valley of the wind for that post apocalyptic fantasy feel.

The Metro series which sounds like what you are doing but in metro tunnels. Paranormal stuff is a FACT in the metro. Unfortunately nobody can afford to study or verify everything, so people just accept there is paranormal stuff in the tunnels with no understanding of it, and pretty much no curiosity either. It’s usually just ignored whenever possible. Tunnels picks off groups of people but not individuals? Just send people one at a time through that tunnel and leave it at that. The only time people seem to react to the paranormal is when the Dark Ones show up and start killing off guards on the frontier stations with seemingly no trouble. Even then it’s only one group who takes it seriously, the Rangers, who try to help everyone in the metro, and even then they don’t give it much special weight and the solution is just ‘kill it with fire’.

Cont.

And there’s also brink. Crap game that squandered a fantastic setup. Just before global warming really kicked off the world creates a single completely self-sustaining city floating in the ocean, it achieves pretty much every pipe-dream possible, the Ark. unfortunately by the time it’s completed it’s too late and it’s waterworld soon after. A lot of refugees sale in search of the Ark. most don’t make it, but enough do. Unfortunately the Ark was only meant to sustain a population of 50,000, mostly composed of scientists and celebrities. With the Refugee population (termed Guests, which I love since to the native population it’s a kind hospitable moniker, and to the refugees it’s a derogatory term implying they don’t belong there and are meant to leave) its 5 million. The Guests live in slumtowns, form an underclass if workers etc., and become increasingly convinced that the natives are hoarding resources to continue living an ultra glamorous lifestyle, alongside a radio that reaches the mainland, and a civil war ensues threatening to destroy the city.

>Mash of AA cannon monster
>Mind confusing, forever going no man's land you get lost in between.
>constant mustard gas choking areas.
>sentient barbed\bladed wire forest that aims your entangleation.
>mystical mail delivering spirits that gifts weird old cookies, intelligible letters and pictures. Exploitable to actually transfer messages.

I think the Pale Battalions would need great black tanks with many turrets to warm themselves in, and somewhere there should be great crater lowlands where high-yield bombs were used to try to reach deep bunkers, and uncovered and breached some.

In general it sounds like you would do well to put a sort of miyazaki vibe into the setting, and also focus on local conflict to avoid having to fill out an entire continent or world of history.

...

Kilroy are small gnome-like creatures that like to scurry around war zones and take scrap and other trinkets from soldiers, dead or alive. That's why GI's put up warnings where the critters have been so they know there whereabouts. Never a good idea to make camp where kilroy are nearby.

>Black trucks roll into town
>Men in dress uniforms, with fully black eyes, way too many teeth and gills come out of the hatch
>Blaring patriotic music
>Anyone found on the street is "drafted" into the trucks and never seen again
>Trying to resist leads to kids in town being born with terrible defects for a year, or some other old-time curse

>It is pitch black. You are likely to be robbed by a Kilroy.

Oh I would definitely focus on a local level. I can't really imagine a conflict that would justify showing the whole world. If the lowlanders find out that it's only their region that suffers with pale battalions, that would reduce the impact of the whole thing.

Black tanks are a good ideia. Lumbering amalgamations of pieces of vehicles and discarded weapons, balancing precariously on threads. the largest among them seem to "eat" anything metallic around it over time, leading to huge spheres of scrap metal surrounded by rusty weaponry.

Weird War I, Weird War II, and the Vietnam one are in Da Curated Archive under Savage Worlds.