Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Drath'ri 07-07-06, 12:10 AM	heres what i need, and i thank you ahead of time for your participation because my brain died when it came to this. I'm in the middle of making a campaign setting and me and my co-producer decieded the first thing to challange this world would be a dragon war. A dragon war involving all of the dragons of the world that are capable of fighting and all of the humanoid races of the planet. we came up with this awesome idea where one of the gods of the world, who hates her creator (both of them are evil) deciedes to take advantage of the war that is consuming everyone, she creates an artifact using his power and his opposites power that shuts off all diety interference (besides spell granting) of all of the gods of the world except for her. While the other gods are shut out, she planned to kill the other worshippers, thus destroying the other gods and she becomes the ultimate diety. but anyway, it all seems like an extremely good idea, except for one part, we dont know the cause of the war. it could be anything, but it has to be something that would affect the dragons of the world as well as the people, otherwise not everyone would become invovled. it can be anything, from religious reasons, to the taking over of lands, to a stolen artifact, to an assasination. I need every idea you can possibly come up with, its all up in the air at the moment. So help me out here, throw some ideas at me. Thanks again.
Comus 07-07-06, 12:25 AM	Okay, my question is this - Is this a "All the Dragons vs All the Humanoids" war, or a "Dragons and humanoids following X vs Dragons and humanoids following Y" war? They can have very, very different causes.
Sean, THe Incompotent 07-07-06, 12:30 AM	You could try and use the creation of god slayers (see mmIV excerpt)t except you would just have to change how they were created, they could be the product of some dragon hating cult. The dragons take this as an act of aggression/war and proceed to destroy the cities, towns and villages where the cult is located, unfortunately in there rage they destroyed many innocent commoners and the outcry of fear from the peasants causes the leadership of the nations to retaliate with there own anti draconic strikes. Or alternatively their could be some sort of artifact compelling the dragons to fight that just recently went active at some long forgotten temple and the rampaging dragons must be dealt with by all of the other creatures on earth.
Drath'ri 07-07-06, 12:34 AM	Okay, my question is this - Is this a "All the Dragons vs All the Humanoids" war, or a "Dragons and humanoids following X vs Dragons and humanoids following Y" war? They can have very, very different causes. its good dragons and good humanoids vs evil dragons and evil humanoids though there are some people who fight for the good side, who go to the extremes and are actually evil. you know. like burning down an entire village just because they believed a spy was present type of good.
Comus 07-07-06, 12:56 AM	Okay, so a basic Good vs Evil war, with something specific to get the dragons drawn into it. And it has to be big, to that everyone will be involved. Before I go anywhere with this, I just want to mention that this sounds a heck of a lot like the War of the Lance and the War of Souls jammed together. My goal here is to try and come up with something that'll keep it as far away from Dragonlance as possible. Thus, my first suggestion is to divorce it all from being motivated by the goddess who is doing all this plotting. It should be a happy coincidence. It's tempting to go right to assassination or a land grab, so I'm going to stray away from this and go to something much bigger. There's a prophesy. It states that on a certain day, the bonds that hold a terrible beast will be loosened. It sleeps now, though only the gods know where (and they are, by blood pact between each other, forbidden to tell the location to any mortal). Even divinations do not reveal its location. Legend states that it is the creator of all dragons, a being of terrible, even divine power. Something like a nuclear weapon of the gods. Every dragon knows of the prophesy. The other races have passed it down, even if corrupted or broken. Now, as the time grows near, they organize into armies, searching for the legendary location. Lands are occupied - not to keep, but simply to search. Whichever side finds the beast first may well decide the fate of the world, and they know it. Dragons are even taking sides, using the humanoids, though the lesser races aren't aware of it yet. Even the gods become too focused on the fate of the world (though they are bound not to interfere) to notice what one goddess is doing, perhaps until it's too late. What do you think? It was the first thing I thought of, so I might be able to do better later.
Archangel_James 07-07-06, 01:00 AM	Wizards has been pumping out a whole bunch of material lately about how Tiamat started creating dragonspawn to turn the tides of her war with Bahamut. Why not take advantage of that?
stargate525 07-07-06, 01:06 AM	Perhaps all the dragon hordes suddenly go missing, and each side blames the other?
Shaggy_Shaggs 07-07-06, 01:41 AM	Some forgotten, dormant, planet-wide morality-related effect (possibly artifact-generated) has recently become active again. Every good and evil creature now has an aura, not just clerics, and the auras are significantly more powerful than anything clerics ever came up with before. For any opposite alignment detection, a ping comes up as overwhelming, but that's not the problem. The problem is these auras are extending beyond their sources, they're destructive, and their power is directly related to the overall power of the source. An evil 1 HD creature and a good 1 HD creature, say a couple peasants, get uneasy feelings within 5' of one another, but beyond that it's a nonissue. Bring a 20th level paladin into town, though, and all the villainous scum in the town starts to become fatigued, get sick, and various other maladies. Dragons have it worst off: they're so powerful their auras project for many miles around them, and even within their own territories, are feeling effects of their opposites. A great gold wyrm and a great red wyrm gradually destroy each other just by being within 200 miles of each other - scales are falling out, lesions are rent open by unseen forces, claws (and in some cases bones) are cracking, immunities are intermittently failing (in some cases causing a younger dragon to die to the power of its own breath weapon mechanism, within range of a older opposed dragon). This dangerous, ultimately lethal, long-distance forced clash of good and evil has forced the dragons into open conflict, each side trying to eradicate the intolerable other. The dragons engaging in open war is what drew the humanoids and other sentient races into fighting, once their sages determined the problem. If the good dragons win, the other evil creatures fear they'll be wiped out right after the evil dragons; and the good creatures would rather die than be forced to live in conditions worse than death (or so they've heard) under the tyrant claws of the evil dragons. Both sides are waging global warfare, in abject terror of the dragons that share their own moral outlook losing the fight and being exterminated. Balancekeepers, as you can likely imagine, are split up between grim determination to prevent either side from exterminating the other (some likely resorting to covert assistance or open mercenary work on the weaker side in their region); blind panic; and in some very faithful or foolish cases, eerily calm certainty that neither side can win, and nothing will ultimately change as the Balance wins out as it inevitably must.
Questing GM 07-07-06, 02:27 AM	Wizards has been pumping out a whole bunch of material lately about how Tiamat started creating dragonspawn to turn the tides of her war with Bahamut. Why not take advantage of that? Where ?? When ?? The only time i saw something equally sinister is a relation between the spellweavers and Tiamat in Races of the Dragon... :devil:
Comus 07-07-06, 02:34 AM	Where ?? When ?? The only time i saw something equally sinister is a relation between the spellweavers and Tiamat in Races of the Dragon... :devil: Monster Manual IV previews. Anyway, I'd just like to point one thing out with the good/evil alignment aura idea - there's a problem with that, and that is that it's basically giving every character in the game detect opposing alignment at will. Think of how hard it'd be for a thief, for example, to sneak up to anyone if they felt his approach as a sickening feeling - a feeling that would, oddly, get stronger and easier to feel as the thief went up in level and his aura (presumably) became more powerful. It'd also make spies and simple 'rotten apples' impossible to use.
Malchi 07-07-06, 05:51 PM	Try to think of causes to real wars and then adapt them to your scenario. Things like: Imperialism - Dragons fighting over domains perhaps Religion - Dragons and/or humanoids fighting and dying for their gods Militarism - Some militarist state is allied with dragons (or perhaps blackmailing/controlling them) and seeks to conquer Ideological Differences - More democratic states against more authoritarian states. Maybe dragons count as WMDs? Lust/greed - One king goes to war for an item, object or wife Dynastic Claims - Perhaps a half dragon gains claim to some human throne and then dragons get involved Racism - different races side with different dragons in a war of anhiliation Just some thoughts