For characters in roleplaying games, jeopardy is never in short supply. There is always a princess to rescue, gold to be stolen and experience points to be made, and it's never an easy task. But by and large, the player character's life is a relatively stable one - sure, you've got to deal with the odd marauding alien or venomous Old One, but the world around you generally doesn't change that much - that is, until the air raid sirens begin to blare...

If there is one force that can alter a person, city, nation, or planet overnight, it's war. Conflict is always said to be the best spur for character, so what better spur could there be than war itself? Apart from love, there is probably no other subject that has so obsessed civilization since we first crawled out of the ooze and started hitting each other with bones. A million stories have shown us that war provides an arena for adventure like no other.

The war epic contains all the elements vital to a dynamic game, with adversaries and allies, settings and motivations, rewards and penalties. Player characters and Gamemasters have a whole host of opportunities for excitement and danger, and a gameworld that's taken to war can gain a powerful narrative push. As a starting point and central theme for an ongoing campaign, it provides direction and impetus, while in an ongoing plotline, a war time mini-series can take a stale and familiar plot to new places.

As terrible as it might seem, war is rich seam of adventuring possibilities, and it can exist in almost any role-playing game environment. The war story in RPGs can form the main thrust of the gameworld, providing a purpose for characters. A war can also set the tone for violence and conflict like no other medium; Warhammer Fantasy is a world of constant strife where life is cheap, and the brutality of war has constant lingering effects. War can also be a background element that interposes itself on the larger world they live in. Consider the differences in the war between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars, the clan skirmishes of Legend Of The Five Rings and the conflicts in AD&D's Birthright campaign as examples of a war torn worlds.

of course you realize...this means war!

So where do you begin? Several RPGs come ready-packed with their own easy-to-start wars (just add players), but for the most part it's up to the GM to set the ball rolling. Historically, wars are most often fought over misunderstandings or resources, so we'll consider these two routes as our starting points. It's also important to consider who started it - which side was the initial aggressor?

Before designing the conflict, it's important the GM has an extensive knowledge of the gameworld's landscape, both in the physical and political sense, that is as least as good as the players. Knowing where the borders between nations and peoples lie means that conflict between them is more realistic. With a heavily-supported RPG, this is just a case of reading the right supplements; in less well-defined games it may fall to GMs to create the information themselves. While the latter grants you more control, it does mean more preparation and paperwork. Here's a tip if you're pressed for time: steal. We've conducted war on this planet quite well for quite a while, so you're bound to find a real historical conflict that you can pilfer and adapt for your own use.

Misunderstandings between peoples/races/species stem from differences, in culture, language, or appearance. The medieval Japanese attacked Westerners because they were alien outsiders - their size, the odd color of their skin, strange smell and language was enough for that culture to see them as a threat. As sad as it is, wars are started over such arbitrary differences as physical appearance, but more commonly they stem from cultural misunderstandings. Differences of religion and belief down to outright xenophobia can spark conflicts between nations, and these factors can have a strong bearing on the way the fight is seen by those involved in it.

If the PCs belong to a strongly religious race that sees all aliens as affronts to their god, they will view the war as a holy cause and fight accordingly - but if they are live-and-let-live types forced to kill an otherwise peaceful species, they might be less willing to take life indiscriminately.

Wars over resources transcend cultural concerns. A resource might be as simple as the next village's corn stores or as complex as Planet Q's cold fusion technologies, but the dynamic is the same. One side wants what the other side has, and it's just as simple to have the player's side with the ones doing the taking as opposed to their enemy. In order to find a suitable thing to fight over, the GM should examine the opposing sides in the conflict and consider what's most important to them. What resources does their foe have that they might covet or require? Extrapolate from there.

The next most important consideration is the face of the enemy; just who are they? It's easy to consider a giant, scary-looking eight-foot long spider-bug as an enemy; it might be harder if it's a someone from your locale on the other end of the rifle. The nature of the foe scales up and down in relation to their proximity to the soldier - and that proximity isn't just a case of physical distance, either. A soldier fighting on the streets of his home town will have different concerns from a soldier knee-deep in a foreign jungle. Those concerns will be changed again if she's up against people she went to college with as opposed to inhuman alien slime blobs.

join up now!

So once the fight is on and the recruiting posters are popping up all over town, how can you drag your player characters into) the rnnflicr? As mentioned in the inrrodncrion. A war-oriented campaign will fall into one of two types; one where it is the defining factor from the very start, and the other where it something dropped into an ongoing game; each has its' own pros and cons.

A dedicated war storyline will enable the GM to have a bit more control over things to begin with. Odds are, the PCs will start out already in the military, perhaps newly minted soldiers, or a squad of long-serving veterans facing off with an old enemy. The players might even be the ones responsible for the war in the first place - "How was I supposed to know that slime mold was their Emperor?" If players know they're heading out to fight, the inevitable problem is the tendency to overbalance PCs with combative skills and specialties tc the detriment of all else - this is fine if gun-play is all you want from a campaign, but this sort of character tailoring could prove fatal to your game if you want the players to do little more thinking and a lot less shooting. GMs should watch their players carefully during the character creatior stages or alternatively impose some limits on skill levels.

Or the other hand, a dedicated campaign has the advantage that it can be set in media res, sticking the PCs slap-bang in the center of the action in the very first game, and playing strong combat-oriented characters with a military-mindset from the beginning strongly colors the role-play that follows.

The alternative for those who don't want to stop an ongoing campaign is the miniseries version; here, you take your regular gameworld, mix in a war and serve. Character type; who are former soldiers or military reservists will find themselves served with call-up papers, while the rest of the players can get the draft. PCs, noted for their adventuring skills, may be specially recruited by local governments to fight as soldiers; or even as commanders. Consider how the King might send that brave Paladin chap and his associates off to fight after their swell performance in killing that nasty demon fellow. You can have all kinds of fun with this before you even get to the war itself - what if they don't want to go? what if they find themselves press-ganged? what if only some of them want to go? and so on...

Once they've been drafted, you can take a diversion to the boot camp. There's enough movies and books about military training to warrant a whole slew of scenarios. Players might be swayed by the idea of getting some healthy boosts and bonuses to skills and stats, but again the GM should keep a close eye on those superhero wannabes. In a set-up such as this, the PCs will have a different attitude than career military characters - as former civilians, they would have seen the war develop from the "home-front perspective" -- their thoughts about the validity of the cause might differ from those of regular soldiers.

This point also carries over in questions about discipline and ranks - the majority of RPG player groups are loose teams of about equal standing, usually with no set leader, whereas the military imposes a hierarchical structure from the start. Some PCs will find it hard to snap to attention and shout "How high, sir?" when told to jump - these are the guys who will no doubt soon get sick of KP duty and being locked in the glasshouse for disobeying orders. As the GM is already in a position of power, it is sometimes easiest to make the commanding officer an NPC and the players as similarly-ranked personnel serving under her.

Unless you like the idea of inter-player conflicts or you have a "r group who can carry it off, the best solution is to create a military group that mimics typical party structure - a fighter squadron, tank crew, special forces team, or a ship's bridge crew are all good examples.

The question of motivation rounds out the PCs' outlook on the fight. If the cause and the chance to play with big guns isn't enough to make your players fight the good'. fight, it's up to the GM to create a more personal motive. Revenge is always a good one, with the "you killed my canary and you must pay" thread spinning off a whole slew of scenario ideas alone. Some PCs might be in the war to stop it, or in the war because they caused it. You can also have soldiers forced to fight through fair or foul means - perhaps they are prisoners with a promise of a reduced sentence, or men fighting because someone they care for is being held hostage. These latter two might find , the PCs more concerned with going AWOL than fighting the enemy.

As for finding scenario ideas for war stories, it is as easy as a trip to the video or book store, and one of the great things is that you can pilfer and pirate plots by just changing the milieu; Sir Brent, I want you to take your team of Pegasus-riders and destroy the warlord Ort's sky-island. He has the Stone of Bellar, and he's using it to poison the crops of the South Hills...

This could be a fantasy rewrite of anything from The Guns Of Navarone to Star Wars.

war of the game worlds

The effects of an ongoing war carry across into the civilian world as well as that of the military. If you are considering having your war take place at a distance in your games, there are a lot of changes that will occur. Depending on the time period or technology level, availability of news about the war will vary. When the Gulf War was on, every home with CNN practically saw it unfolding live, but back in the Crusades, soldiers would go off to fight and not be seen again for a decade. Imagine not knowing if your side had won or lost until the enemy rode into the town square and tore down the flag. Even in an advanced world, news may be rationed or worse, altered, to provide a specific viewpoint.

Cultures will change when war threatens the way of life. Nations with strong economic bases will turn to making weapons and material for the war effort, so luxuries and even everyday goods will start to vanish from the marketplace. Rationing may come into effect, providing earning opportunities for black marketeers and resentment for the rich. Police forces might gain increased powers to deal with saboteurs or looters, and the military would become a much larger presence in everyday life. Paranoia and suspicion about enemy spies means that old rivalries might gain a new lease on life (I always knew you weren't to be trusted), and at the same time other rivalries might be put aside to further the cause of the war. Travel restrictions would make the usual town-to-town adventuring difficult, and locals suspicious of new faces would become even more so. One true life example was the number of innocent priests arrested in England during WWII because of rampant rumors that Nazi's were parachuting in... dressed as vicars. Indeed, able-bodied adventurers who were not out fighting might find themselves at the sharp end of ill-treatment for their cowardice. The war's popularity at home would have a strong effect on things as well - consider the differences between America's support for the War in the Pacific and the demonstrations against the conflict in Vietnam.

aftermath

Eventually, the thunder of the guns stops and peace returns. Thanks to attrition, no war can last forever and in the aftermath the players (if they survived) will begin to rebuild. The only consideration here is whether the PCs were on the winning side. If they returned home victorious, then cartloads of honor, gold, and experience points should be laid at their feet... or alternatively they can be stoned and derided as merciless killers by an ungrateful civilian population, should your fancy swing that way. If they lost, it's another story altogether - the enemy might raze their homes or enslave their peoples... or alternatively provide them with a life much better than the one they had before. PCs on the losing side might opt for a resistance-fighter approach and continue the war against the enemy, behind the lines.

Depending on the nature of the fight, there might not be much left to fight over, but RPGs like Aftermath, After The Bomb, Blood Dawn, The Morrow Project and Twilight 2000 are available for folks who like the idea of gaming in the ashes of war.

In the end, both the player characters, their lives and their entire world will have been fundamentally changed - whether for better or worse is up to you.

War Zones

War's Lasting Effects
War Party
Art of Wargames
Art of Wargames Options