D&D 5E World Building: Army building

Now we are in the age of the tablets, and the virtual tabletops. And there are rules about mass battles in Shadow of the Dragon Queen.

In a D&D world the farming production can be more thanks magic. And "alchemy" could allow the creation of products here they were only possible in the last centures. For example the aluminium wasn't possible to be refined until the age of the industrial revolution.


In a D&D spider silk could be used for clothing or armours.

 

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BECMI/RC had the War Machine rules for mass combat—it wasn't a miniatures-based system, but more abstract (which, IMO, works better for D&D).

A former poster did a Excel sheet for it for 5e.

There's a lot here to touch on and there's just no one right way for everyone. I haven't had an occasion to worry about armies fighting since I started running 5e, but if I were to do so in the future, I'd use BECMI's The War Machine rules updated for 5e. It assigns a force rating to an army (or divisions of an army) and abstracts things so you can roll an outcome rather than using miniatures or rolling out combat conventionally with large numbers of individuals.

Unfortunately, I can't find the converted rules on the web, but I do have the rules and an accompanying Excel sheet that I can up load.
this is a cool idea, and better then I think the board game for dragonlance
 

And yet, you and I are able to talk about it because we did see and, to one degree or another, understand it. Which was my point.

That "bay leaf" analogy really does a lot of work here. Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions put it quite well in her "Planet of Hats" video:

"Showing us a fantasy or sci-fi culture in terms of the big differences between it and the familiar culture we presumably started in can be an incredibly useful tool to put us into the head of the main character, who's going to be looking at this alien culture with a buttload of preconceived notions and received homogeneity. But, unfortunately, this only really works okay if the culture you write actually has more depth than just what the main character sees at first glance. You don't even have to elaborate it in-story if you don't want to or it wouldn't fit. You just have to world-build it behind the scenes to make sure it actually holds together."

Again, I am NOT saying that it is impossible to go overboard. It totally is. It's totally possible to do a whole bunch of truly pointless filigree just because the author finds it enjoyable to do so. What I am saying is that a lot of genuinely BAD writing comes from failing to do enough "behind the scenes" world-building for things to make sense. Exclusively making loose sketches and papering over inconsistencies every time they crop up leads to things that make no sense or have ridiculous, unbelievable "solutions." Problems creep in that could have been nipped in the bud with just a little bit of world-building first.

So don't go to either extreme. Don't treat world-building as a self-indulgent exercise that never produces anything worthwhile to anyone but the DM. And yet also, don't treat world-building as this absolute requirement down to the finest details because you really will be mostly doing it for yourself.

World-building is NOT "completely unnecessary for a game of D&D." But some of the things people do for worldbuilding are unnecessary. Find the right balance point between the extremes of deficiency and excess--a balance point which will vary from one game to the next. For example, part of the reason I've done as much sociocultural and economic world-building as I have in Jewel of the Desert is that I have a physical anthropologist player. They're constantly asking questions about things you're deriding as "completely unnecessary." Food, building materials, etiquette rules, linguistic quirks, ceremonies and beliefs, clothing (that's a big one, because the player's character comes from a family of tailors), you name it, sociocultural stuff gets discussed on the regular. Meanwhile, someone like the OP, whose expertise is business, would likely ask questions about economics, trade, financing, resources, etc. A player with a medical career will think about medical concerns. Etc.

World-building is, and always will be, in part a matter of taste. Find the right balance point between "how does this even make sense? It's the biggest city in the world with NO FOOD!" and "why did you write three whole novels about it if nothing in those novels is ever relevant to us?" That will depend on you, your players, and the nature of the game you're playing (a beer-and-pretzels West Marches game probably won't need as much world-building as, say, a game where the DM has sutured together D&D 4e and a politics-focused PbtA system.) It's neither utterly essential nor "completely unnecessary."

Edit: Additional response.

People travelled more than you give credit. Many, many relatively ordinary folk went off to the Crusades, remember, and pilgrimage was something many tried to do as much as they possibly could. Yes, travel the way we travel now was not really a thing. But to characterize it as the vast majority of people never going more than a few miles form their place of birth? Inaccurate at best and outright wrong at worst. It's not like Roman farmers didn't tend to stay tied to the land they farmed.

That said, I don't disagree with your approach--so long as it really well and truly is the case that there's absolutely nothing of interest beyond the nation's borders. The problem is, I don't think that's true!

Instead, I think it best to treat it like rings. The innermost ring is the main settlements of the local area, the proverbial "starting town" as it were, or any place the party sets up as "home base." Such places will be interacted with frequently and often to a pretty deep degree, so they require more flesh on the bones. The second ring is the surrounding environs of those places, the wilderness and trade routes that the party will travel through frequently but not necessarily spend too much time in. Those require attention too, but not as much detail. Third, for lack of a better term, the "local periphery": nearby cities they might visit now and then, neighboring countries or city-states, etc. Such areas are close enough that their influence is likely to be felt, there will be trade and contribution, but it doesn't need too much. Fourth, the distant lands, close enough that you know that they exist but leaving them shrouded in rumor and mystery. And then, finally, you have the Outer Reaches, which is both lands known only through myth and rumor (which may or may not be true), and the genuine Beyond The Horizon stuff that, whether it exists or not, is too far away to have any influence on the story yet.

One might name them such:
1: Local
2: Regional
3: Peripheral
4: Far, Far Away
5: Terra Incognita

Apportion appropriate world-building to each. Local is your top priority, the details matter there. Regional, details might matter, so it's usually good to be prepared, and stay flexible. Peripheral will matter some of the time, but you probably don't need a ton of depth--just make sure it passes a smell test. Far, Far Away is distant enough that you can keep it vague and probably not have any problems. Anything further than that, don't bother--if it comes up, you'll have the freedom to do as you like and patch up any gaps later.
For examples of worldbuilding done badly, take a look at Comic Book movies and their need to explain why characters who've been around for decades or even centuries are only getting involved now.
 

If your world is a pseudo-medieval setting, remember that most people at that time rarely travelled more than a few miles from their place of birth*, and without mass communication and education knew little of the wider world.
in a game full of mundain people I assume that would be true, but one smart trained wizard later you most likely have someone that knows some of it. A few good wizards or bards later mass communication over distance is hard but not unheard of.
So, if you are designing a world for the purpose of playing D&D it's best to focus on a small location, no bigger than a county, and go into a high level of detail. Who are the important local personages? What crops are growing in the fields?
well I am starting on the boarder of 2 feudal lords that are in a cold war, and have enemies of the empire itself not far from that boarder either.
The rest of the map can say "here be dragons" until the PCs explore it.
I am actually having an issue with the map to be honest
*Historical note: people travelled further during the so called "dark ages". The development of feudalism tended to tie people down.
I assume that most people in my world fall into 1 of 2 categories. 1. never been more then 1 town over or 2. is part of the military and/or clergy and have been to a front and a training facility and maybe 1 town over from each of those. I just ALSO assume that by the time we have been playing for a few months maybe a year that the players will be in the upper 5% and have traveled more
 

In a D&D spider silk could be used for clothing or armours.

the current forever DM has house rules for drow spider silk that is harder then leather but lighter then most cloth, it can be made sheer or thicker it can be colored, and it can be mixed with a elven clothe he made up called thistledown to enchant easily. It is if sheer grants a 1pt off of piercing damage, if thicker (like normal clothes) grants resist piercing and is a base AC of 11.

The drow have a way of working mithril into thin strands of almost thread, and work it and the spider silk together to make a drow reinforced clothes that have a base AC 13 and resist piercing and bludgeoning damage.
 

in a game full of mundain people I assume that would be true, but one smart trained wizard later you most likely have someone that knows some of it. A few good wizards or bards later mass communication over distance is hard but not unheard of.
High magic settings are much harder to do, since you can't use historical models. Eberron is the best example of making this stuff work. It throws out any attempt at pseudo-medievalism though. Magic-as-technology has a massive impact on the shape of a society.
I am actually having an issue with the map to be honest
Taking a real world map and turning it upside down is a tried-and-true method.
 

High magic settings are much harder to do, since you can't use historical models. Eberron is the best example of making this stuff work. It throws out any attempt at pseudo-medievalism though. Magic-as-technology has a massive impact on the shape of a society.
I think I just found my next thread
Taking a real world map and turning it upside down is a tried-and-true method.
oh... oh that can be brilliant... to google I go
 

greg kaye

Explorer
...
You know who sold a lot more books than Tolkien? Agatha Christie. And you know how she worked? She started with the solution to the crime, then worked backwards, only creating characters and locations as the plot required them. If something wasn't needed she didn't spend time creating it.
Fair! Christie would have only created a Tom Bombadil if, at some stage, he'd done such as handling lead piping in the billiard room. (y)
 

Taking a real world map and turning it upside down is a tried-and-true method.
oh... oh that can be brilliant... to google I go

Along those lines, if you want a military campaign backdrop, pick one from history. You will be able to find maps routes, travel times, battle sites, information on tactics and probable outcomes.

Heck, you can lift NPCs. David Weber wrote 20-odd novels in the Honor-verse based on several historical events, in some cases without changing names (Rob S Pierre....).

Off the top of my head look at Hannibal, Belisarius, Atilla, Ghengis Khan, Alexander, Ceasar, Napolean, Shaka, Geronimo, Rommel and Patton.
 

Taking a real world map and turning it upside down is a tried-and-true method.
Along those lines, if you want a military campaign backdrop, pick one from history. You will be able to find maps routes, travel times, battle sites, information on tactics and probable outcomes.

Heck, you can lift NPCs. David Weber wrote 20-odd novels in the Honor-verse based on several historical events, in some cases without changing names (Rob S Pierre....).

Off the top of my head look at Hannibal, Belisarius, Atilla, Ghengis Khan, Alexander, Ceasar, Napolean, Shaka, Geronimo, Rommel and Patton.
As soon as I saw my first map I knew what to do.
Take Modern day Turkey, Lebanon, Iraque, Kawwate, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan
then take Greece and move it north and Brittan and move it like crazy and push them together where Germany is keeping them far away from the other land...

Maybe 1 more land mass... and that is my world. Something really different and farther then even the Greece/Brittan is from the main land

now to see if I can do that
 

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