While reading the thread on magic and the implied D&D setting I came across this post:
Quote from: Blacky the Blackball;778373When it comes to the overlap of races, I've usually taken the assumption that the relationship between humans and orcs (for example) is like the relationship between Britons and Vikings.
In other words, I don't assume that humans treat the humanoid races as "kill on sight" enemies. The human towns will be aware of the various humanoid tribes that live in the hills and most of the time there will be an uneasy truce between them with a modicum of trade and communication.
There will even be cooperation in the face of an outside threat - although such cooperation can quickly lead to one side taking advantage of the other side.
Of course, raids from both sides against the other (human adventurers raiding the orc lands and orc warbands raiding humand lands) strain such a relationship, sometimes to breaking point, but in my campaigns the default relationship between the competing species is one of tense peace and distrust rather than that of all-genocide-all-the-time.
A bunch of goblins attacking a human town to steal food will be met with a lethal response, but a couple of goblins coming into town to sell some silks or gems of unknown provenance or to buy some barrels of ale will probably treated as suspicious but the odds are someone will be willing to trade with them and they won't be simply chased out of town or killed.
which led to the idea that a band of adventurers (say the PCs) could easily kick off a local war raiding a humanoid settlement, who would then retaliate against the local (demi)human communties.
So the question is, what incidents have you seen that involved the PCs inadvertently setting off a war, whether due to an "adventure" resulting in a punitive raid, or something else entirely?
Yep - I had a player who was a barbarian, son of the chief of his tribe among the various plains clansmen. Well he and his brothers would moonlight against their elder's permission, to take wealthy nobles from the bordering Duchy on hunting trips - into a rival kingdom's lands.
Long and short of it, they get the Duke's son killed... it becomes war against the Plains Clansmen who then seek help from the kingdom upon whose lands the PC and his "pals" were poaching... The Duke doesn't give a fuck, and it's war! peacock! No one trusts the barbarians tribes anymore. It's easy to spot them too - facial tattoos become a deathmark.
Genocide ensues... the player ends up being the Last of the Them. And in one series of bad decisions - the Duke becomes this implacable foe of the party.
Ironically the Duke is well loved by his people, who adored the dead prince. Those dirty savages!!!! They had it coming!
In my home setting, along one border, there is a powerful emerging faction that's pretty much anti-magic (they have good reasons).
A while back... one of the PCs (a magical construct) was already on thin ice with them... they'd had words but never come to blows, they'd even been out on a mission together to clear up some bandits.
Then, the witch-puppet PC is walking through town one night, sees a few of them spouting propaganda to some locals... and throws a rock... rock hits the wrong guy... anti-magic guys stoke the fire... rabble forms a torch-n-pitchfork mob... mob chases witch-puppet up to the (pro-magic) garrison... more rocks are thrown... other PCs step in despite warnings from garrison commander... magic is used... lots of corpses... important garrison guy's skull bashed in... witch-puppet is torn limb from limb... bunch of anti-magic faction guys burned to ashes... higher ups hear the news... bingo bango now there's a war.
Meanwhile the PCs are sneaking back home... hoping their names will somehow not be associated with the ensuing chaos (the soul-core of the dead witch-puppet got rescued but it's doubtful he's getting a new body anytime soon...).
I had a warlock with a really annoying tendency to start wars by accident, but it was just a phase he was going through. He finally grew out of it and learned how to start wars on purpose.
No, not accidentally. At least not conventional warfare.
:D
In a Traveller campaign my players accidentally set off a self-destruct on an alien ship the found earlier (and had gotten quite attached to, worse luck for them). Unfortunately they were near an Imperial squadron that was hanging out in the Sword Worlds at the time, looking intimidating. They got away before the alien vessel blew, but when it did it took out a couple of the Imperial escorts. The Imperium blamed it on the nearby Sword World fleet that was watching them. Mayhem ensured, and much profiteering by the player characters.
A PC accidentally started a cult, AND a war.
We were playing Isle of Dread, and the player wanders off alone. He manages to find this cursed statuette, saving throw or "Must serve the sphincter-faced thing on the level below" for six months or something (I don't feel like whipping out the module).
Dude makes his save, I don't tell him why. He pockets the "loot".
A month later, he sells it to an evil temple...the high priest fails his save, and buys the statuette. He shows it to his flock.
They all rent a ship to go back to the Isle, and form the Sphincter Cult.
They start up temples, and start taking over a country called Rombune...and cult spreads.
Two years later, the whole continent is wracked by The Sphincter Wars; the whole party disappears in a modified Temple of Elemental Evil Sphincters.
Good times.
I was running a D&D 3.0 campaign when one of my players started a war, the pc's are in the mountains trying to find out why the mountain giants are attacking all the trade caravans moving through the mountains. They find out that the issue is that someone is raiding the giant villages and mines etc and as the giants don't know who it is they are aggressively defending their borders.
Queue some investigation and the pc's find a partially burned banner at the site of the most recent attack, the can make out a symbol on it and the Cleric and the Paladin both put their heads together to try and figure out what the symbol is. They both roll a 1. So they figure out that the symbol is one of the lesser known holy symbols of Gruumsh, god of the orcs. They take this knowledge back to the giants who hold a grand conclave and go to war with the orcs.
That entire area of the campaign world descended into devastating war for the rest of the campaign. The cult doing the attacking (intending to cause chaos and distractions in this part of the world) looks at what's going on, decides their work is done and leaves. The players never did find out who was doing the actual provoking. :)
Not in "D& D"....
However...
There was a TRAVELLER game about 20 years ago where one of the other player characters accidentally set off a nuclear bomb on a continent.
My character was already in a starship headed for orbit (Long story, won't tell it now)
The group lost two player characters when he did that.
- Ed C.
Well, there was the time when a PC stabbed a diplomatic messenger in a church with a broadsword. He was new to Rolemaster and dumbfounded when the guy died.
I don't think we ever had that happen.
We did, however, actually stop a war on accident.
The campaign was in a borderlands mining setlement and our first hook was brewing trouble with the local orcs. So classical orc/adventurer skirmishing ensured. We took a prisoner, heard his side of the story, decided the tribes had a point and set up negotiatins.
To our great surprise we managed to make peace. Funnily, we then found that the DM was even more surprised and utterly dumbfounded. He had expected us to do our murderhobo routine and prepared all his material for the big miner/orc war, but he had to admit that thanks to our actions, there was no way in hell that could actually happen.
Once the initial confusion was overcome, it was high fives all around, if I remember correctly.
One of my favorite moments as a player.
I don't think I can recall my players ever starting a war per se; but they were set up as patsies in an FR campaign in a plot to cause a civil war in Cormyr that would spill over into Sembia.
They were accused of a crime they didn't commit and forced to flee with a price on their heads, surviving as soldiers of fortune...
I was playing a PC that almost started a war between dwarves and Empire in Warhammer, when we got tangled in a conspiracy to steal a shipment of mithril.
We stole it*, then got it stolen from us by Nuln mobster, then stole it again to clear our names (Well, or at least get out of hanging). We managed to bring it back in time just before dwarves declared war over Empire loosing their precious shipment and letting honourable guards die like dogs on their road.
*We were press - ganged by Hussite - style revolutionaries, to be fair.
Wow. I'm pretty sure this has never happened in all the long years of my campaign. Ended a war, that's happened twice. Started one? Unless you count being the messengers for "My king, we bring word, the Bloody Menaheem are invading!", not that I can recall.