How could you recreate the Vietnam War in a medieval fantasy setting?

How could you recreate the Vietnam War in a medieval fantasy setting?

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Have humans invade Kobold swamplands.

Please no frogposting on Veeky Forums.

Dumb frogposter.

Goblin hunting

Sorry, it was my only 'nam related pic on my computer

You're gonna need the technology/magic and mass production to make regular people into soldiers, a large and technologically superior force from another land to fight them, and anpolitical and ideological backstory for why all these locals would go guerrilla and keep fighting even though they keep losing every battle.

>how could you recreate a war concerning industrial revolution-inspired politics into a pre industrial setting

The Vietnam War (American phase) is a fucking complex mess but to try and boil it down to something that's not just a straight racial swap-out for a very skin-deep approach it needs the key factors.

First is that it's a long, slow war where a formerly united faction is divided under different leadership, with one side wanting to take over entirely, the other mostly just hanging on. Both factions are relatively weak, though the aggressor side is stronger in motivation and leadership, their material support is weaker.

Strong outsider factions that are in conflict (though not openly) are propping up weak ones via massive amounts of aid both civilian and military, with the defender faction effectively being an occupied vassal state out of necessity. (Dunno if you want nations as they're understood in the modern sense or actual medieval kingdoms)

continued

So you need at least four key players involved in a divided realm. This could be something as simple as a split in inheritance with the outsiders backing their preferred inheritor. From there it's a mix of terrain unsuitable for conventional warfare, and terrain that could be used but isn't because the defender side's backer faction is too strong to face in the open field, so it's almost entirely in the form of raids of various sides, from single assassins to sieges of distant outposts. The defender's patron faction being clearly military superior contrasts with long supply-lines and the situation with the aggressor side's backer meaning that they can't simply just invade and crush them and have to simply hold out and strike back without occupying territory, which is bad for morale/funding.

The defender faction will actively work to protect themselves, but are clearly much worse at it than their patron faction (and have to resort to fairly extreme measures to purge supporters and agents of the aggressor faction). The aggressor faction will use everything in their limited means (but propped up with outside support) to keep from losing outright, and is banking on simply keeping the war going until they're in a position to win.

From there, drop in wizards, goblins and orcs and whatever.

So I'd take Felucia from battlefront II, tone down the tech, keep the magical mushroom forest with all that horrible wildlife and toss in Vietnam movies. Davinci's tank wagon things with a ballista on top and Giant thrall spiders instead of AT-TEs and spider droids. Pikes, Crossbows, Plate armor. Foreign language speaking peasants and magic constructs who use ambushes, trap making, and extensive supply tunnels, fighting foreign men at arms that have sailed a long way from a republic that's trying to keep this region clear of the influence of the fae cult to the north that's building those magic constructs. Ally locals who tend to crumple or flee in a fight and who are depending on the republic for all of their supplies.

The specifics of the politics and strategic details don't matter to me. I'd give the players opportunities to do drugs to get their mind off things or get them through a fight, war priests who are actually fighting with them (whether they should be or not) and holding the men together, encounters with secretly hostile peasants that are hiding their weapons in their food and some that are not hostile or hiding anything, cities with brothels with wenches who get "friendly" to steal secrets, and heralds that are gathering material to preach doom back home. A soldier who went home and got spat on by druids, so he came back. Racial tension, maybe between half orc and human soldiers that gets resolved with a "we're all niggas out here" type deal. A soldier who's just ruthless to the natives in pursuit of victory, and a soldier whose disillusioned with the whole thing who's kinda on the druid side of things who keep butting heads. An encounter with a stealth archer who purposefully shoots to maim to draw out the other sides healers and everyone else who'd come save them, only for it to turn out it's just a girl who's been tormenting them. Friendly fire from mages above while they're trying to take a trap covered hill. A secret quest to stop a rogue officer turned native warlord in the west. A base that's been mostly cut off from command that is basically a mad circus with no officers at this point, complete with a mage who can blow up foes in the dark from a good ways off just by the sound of their voice, whose otherwise out of it and stoned off his ass. Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane all day.

The most obvious would be a war between humans and elves.

Human empire B and human empire C are two powerful rivaling factions. Both hate each other (different religion, straight swords vs. curves swords, etc.).

Human kingdom A borders Sacred Forest where the elves live. Demographic pressure pushes the humans settlements closer and closer to the sacred forest. Tensions build up between elves and humans.

Human empire B signs a treaty of military alliance with kingdom A, should a war start between Kingdom A and elves. In the mean time human Empire C signs an economic and military treaty with the elves.

One day, human hunters get killed by elven rangers as they were trespassing in elvish lands. War breaks out.

Empire B rushes to the help of Kingdom A. Thanks to the sheer number of their troops, they penetrate deeply in the Sacred Forest, but they get finally stopped (demarcation line). In Empire B, druids and the courtesans' guild start protesting the invasion.

Elvish military units that were overrun and elvish civilians, start waging a brutal guerrilla war against the human invaders. The elvish kingdom and the elvish guerrilla build a supply route through kappa and lizardmen territory. Human empire C delivers massively magical aid to the elves. The violence of the guerrilla war forces Empire B to increase its military presence in the conflict zone. Mandatory military draft is introduced. The church start to protest the war, too.

After years of bloody stalemate, Empire B invades kappa and lizardmen territory to cut off the elvish guerrilla's supply route. Morale in the human army reaches a new low.

Google next time.

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>recreate vietnam war in a medieval fantasy setting
>players don't enjoy the faithful recreation of a horrible experience
>it ain't me starts to play

Dragons are fed up with the bullshit of demihumans in Generic Fantasy Realm and, after perhaps a change in regime, decide to take the matter into their hands: colonies (well, allies) need to behave. With their minions, seem to have an unwinnable advantage, in matters of magic, airborne power and wealth.
Are you a bad enough party to stand with the force of the revolution and free the land fighting from the shadows?

>think about that for a second, it was the vietcongs that matched more closely the adventurers' life with asymmetric fighting

Yeah well, you're not wrong, but not really right either.

Basically just Battle of Agincourt on a grander scale

The Roman invasion of Britain springs instantly to mind.

Would basically be the sort of situation the British and Scots enjoyed during their long border wars, only with the US putting the natives to the sword and their cities to the torch in order to create a nice, broad strip of land that's too wide for armies to pass through.

Play ADnD 1e. It's called "Fantasy Fucking Vietnam" for a reason.

Play "it ain't me" on a lute. Drop your soldiers into jungle battles via gryphon/airship. Make wizards spray jets of flame spells everywhere. Have the peasants revolt at home and picket the castle with bards playing protest songs.

druid gorilla warfare.

> it was the vietcongs that matched more closely the adventurers' life with asymmetric fighting

This

Also being the superior force in a fight against enemies who have zero interest in dying and will gladly melt into the shadows/retreat into the tunnels at the first sign of things going pear shaped is a uniquely frustrating experience for a lot of gamers. I had a game with a GM who loved the idea and ran an incredibly effective kobold insurgency against us. Very memorable expeditions into trap filled tunnels where squeezing/crawling and movement penalties became very real issues to my plate-clad dwarf.

Btw, vietcong is already pluralized

Possibly recruit a necromancer who doesnt care about the lingering effects of his defoliant plague.

this
>DE (Dark Elves) in the bushes!
>Fuck me, man, the Cleric just ate it!
>Give me the com crystal! Command this is Manticore 7-3 requesting Fire Drake support at our location! Drow close! I repete, Drow close!

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Two factions fighting a proxy war over ideology in a backwater former colony? Easy just have not!Imperial Russia and not!Revolutionary Deutscherbund get involved 8n a civil war in not!Poland where you have Republicans on one side and Royalists on the other.

one rich king sends its poor farmers to fight another countries poor farmers but those other poor farmers kinda have support from another rich king that the other rich king

Literally have a campaign planned like this

>Pretense: Its a setting where the elves are a poor agricultural 2nd and 3rd world race
1) There is an Elven civil war.
2) The Human empire supports the southern faction, lets call them ELVRN
3) The ELVRN are getting their ass kicked by the ELVC - the northern faction. The Northern faction are seen as evil because they are supported by the Orcs - the Humans bitter rivals.
4) Humans start sending in more and more troops to support the ELVRN - eventually they are doing all the fighting themselve
5) While superior in every way to the ELVC, the Humans aren't able to force the ELVC into pitched battles and can never wipe them all out
6) Many humans are killed by booby traps, hit and run attacks, ambushes, etc.
7) Humans take it out with revenge killings of elven civilians - destroy or relocate entire villages near ELVC operating areas
8) Most elves start to really fucking hate the humans for all their shit
9) ELVRN still like the humans because without them they would have been overrun by ELVC long ago
10) After 10 years of war, getting nowhere and losing hundreds and hundreds of men, the king of the humans decides enough is enough and begins pulling out Human soldiers from the Elven lands. The war is incredibly unpopular with the human population and protests are rife.
11) ELVC immediately begin pushing on the ELVRN capital
12) There is mass panic and humans living in the southern Elven lands are evacuated on large ships, some ELVRN refugees are also evacuated
13)The ELVC completely shatter the ELVRN defense and army - the Humans aren't there to help them any more and the ELVRN have waned in capability after 10 years of having the humans fight for them
14) ELVC now completely runs the Elven lands, and its not as bad as everyone thinks it would have been.
15) The humans move on and try to forget about the war, no-one talks about it for 10 years and there are no celebrations for returning soldiers - worse, they are spat at and derided.

OP, if you're still around I second this user's post. This series is (imho) one of the best depictions of fantasy warfare in literature.

>14) ELVC now completely runs the Elven lands, and its not as bad as everyone thinks it would have been.

ELVC shows no respect for the many southerners who fought in their name to overthrow their Human occupiers.
ELVC initiates moderate purges with much of the best and brightest of the kingdom fleeing to any neighbouring country that will take them, the economy collapses as much of the kingdom is devastated by prolonged war and the ELVRN were propped up by Human support and catering to them.
ELVC soon after completing their conquest of the South invades a neighbouring similarly aligned but even worse kingdom that took the Orc's sentiment too much to heart (moreso even than the Orcs) and were busy obliterating their own population in a barbarian rampage.

Almost 50 years since the war, the elven lands are a pleasant place where many humans visit. While still ruled by the same type of government as the ELVC, and still following Orc ideas, the place is peaceful.

The humans went on to invade many many other lands, waging war across the world. They used their technological might to bully and pressure the rest of the world into conforming to their wishes.

The Humans, while strong, did not have a happy society - their veterans were discarded and forgotten, while the elven veterans (at least the ELVC... not the ELVRN) were lauded and honored for their service.
The last world census showed the Human empire had almost twice the suicide rate of the Elven one.

To counter the morale decline following the war, so that they may continue their imperial ambitions, the human empire's culture changed in the generation following through heavy control and saturation of all available media (books, bards, theatre productions, town criers and so on), emphasising service in the military as a laudable and soldiers as heroic defenders of the people, even if citizens did not feel their leader was upstanding. By deflecting attention away from the soldiers, the Human empire continued to maintain a very high military capability, and used it frequently, if not always successfully achieving their long-term (by human standards) goals.


p.s. This is why just doing a copy-paste of stuff and throwing a fantasy skin over it is lazy. Way better to go back to the core parts of the historical event and re-theme them to create something similar but more interesting. For a Vietnam analogue, the hardest part in a medieval fantasy is creating the conditions for a limited war so that the big empire equivalent doesn't just pull a Rome and send in the legions to trash the place, murder/enslave everyone and plant the flag as the new guys in charge. The rest of it can be covered by a typical if otherwise overly long war of succession and other factions sticking their dicks in the hot mess to try and leverage it.

Read The Chronicles of the Black Company, by Glenn Cook

The politics are a huge part of it though, at least as far as rationalizing the war goes. Vietnam was basically a proxy war between the US and the USSR. without the rivalry between those two powers, it never would have blown up like it did. Another example would be the Spanish war of succession, where what should have been a minor Civil War turned into an international clusterfuck because all of the European powers had a stake in who won.

It's not a rule those guys are just triggered tumblrinas.

Yeah but that part wasn't necessary for Felecia to become space Vietnam to people. It's the nature of the conflict to men on the ground that does that, and it's the people's experiences that made the war what we know it, so it practically doesn't matter what ideologies are in conflict, just that both sides be warring with the other and the conflict proving taxing on the larger's spirit.

A machine gun emplacement opening up (or an archer volley) on your platoon from the jungle brush is just the same whether the guy firing it is a fanatic communist, a disillusioned monarchist, or a droid with no strong opinions. A punji trap or a landmine (explosive rune) aren't different because the guy planting them was a cultist instead of a communist. Your side can rationalize it differently and not change the undercurrents. You don't even have to set it in the Jungle. Thus the soviet's in Afghanistan can be said to have faced their own Vietnam in the desert fighting radical Islam. It's the common elements there which I think are most important, not strategic or even ideological details.

that doesn't make sense, if someone was from tumblr they would love frogposting.

Except, that while everyone does get tired of war, the mindsets of contemporary man isnt at all like those of Iron Age man.
>Hey, did you hear? A squad of knights put an enemy village to the torch and killed everyone!
No one would care.

When do you play a game where people actually take a mindset like that? It's easy to do without.

it doesn't matter which ass it came out of, it's still a pile of shit

Just look up what the Low Countries did to the Habsurgs.

youtube.com/watch?v=u3VTKvdAuIY

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