Magical trench warfare: Asking for sugestions (ttrpg.network)

submitted 1 year ago by mesinski@ttrpg.network to c/askgamemasters@ttrpg.network

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So, I have this world that was perfectly at peace, until the party came around. Now, It's basically MWW (magical world war). And my players are looking foward to some trench warfare in dnd.

Why trench warfare? Because mold earth is a cantrip and it is always better to have cover. I have a couple of basic ideas.

The bullet points are:

Scrolls, rare magic items and more than lv5 npcs are hard to come by, because they are strategical game changers froom both sides.

There is gunpowder in the world and the spell detect traps actually detects traps (location of all in an area), so, landmines are a thing.

Someone as figured out ballista machine guns, so charging is unadvised.

I'm looking for tactics and general suggestions.

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[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Try a book called 'The Bloody Red Baron' by Kim Newman. It's the second book in the 'Anno Dracula' series. The premise is that Dracula killed Van Helsing et al and made Queen Victoria his bride [Book 1] It's now 1916 and WW1 is going on. Both sides of the battle have humans and vampires working together. Might spark some ideas. Also, I can't recall the exact title, but Harry Turtledove did a dragons in WW1 novel. Good luck shifting through that guy's booklist!

[-] mesinski@ttrpg.network 2 points 1 year ago

I've read this saga on the napoleonic wars, but with dragons called "Temeraire" by Naomi Novik. It depicts an amaicing array of ways in wich diferent cultures interact with dragons. India, Turkey, England and specially China have diferent ways to interact with the lizards and the book also goes into detaio regarding the tactics andadvantages that dragons bring to the table.

But vampires would be the kings of the night if dragons are the kings of the day. The relative implications of mass vampirism are much less concerning than winning the war after all. Also, you can make vampire-spawn by the docen and turn the promising ones into full fledged vampires, as vapire-spawn are under the absolute control of their master, they cant revolt or refuse to charge. This also opens the door to vamping any prisioners you get to extract information from them.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Another fun read is 'The Guns Above' by Robyn Bennis. No magic, except for the idea that people in the Napoleonic era have access to hydrogen and helium. She does a great job of designing and fighting airships.

this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023

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