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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

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Battlecry! / Genres of War

On the Front Lines

Source Battlecry! pg. 198
Sometimes, though, there’s no substitute for the real thing. In these campaigns, the player characters are part of a large and reasonably organized army, marching across the land from battle to battle. Perhaps the heroes are mere grunts, footsloggers just trying to get through one more day. Perhaps they’re kings and generals, scheming and creating strategies and worrying about the big picture. Most likely they’re somewhere in the middle. This is the “real” war campaign.

One can tell stories about war in a lot of ways, but a few stand out. The following are some of the main frameworks for telling war stories, though it should be noted that they aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive— while one tone usually dominates, others can appear strategically (to keep the story from getting stale if nothing else).

War Is Hell: A popular framework for telling stories about war is to emphasize the absolute horror and misery of it. In these sorts of stories, much is made of the constant death, the fear, the helplessness. You could die in war, and it doesn’t matter how brave or smart or strong you are; there won’t be a thing you can do about it. Your superiors are fools and madmen, your orders are nonsense, your strategic goals are a mystery, and your enemies are sadistically inventive in their efforts to kill you. The people on the home front have no conception of how bad things get, and your comrades in arms, the only people who do understand, are slowly whittled away by enemy fire or else lose themselves to the stress and trauma. War crimes are committed on all sides.

Despite this narrative’s popularity, it’s an awkward fit for a Pathfinder campaign. This genre draws a lot of its grim horror from the helplessness of the typical soldier in the face of forces greater than them, but most player characters have far more options and far more agency than the doomed protagonists of those stories. It can also be draining and not terribly fun to play in for an extended period of time. Still, this can be used sparingly to good effect, reminding the protagonists that actions have consequences.

War Is Glorious: Sometimes, it’s about fighting the good fight. In this kind of campaign, war can be ugly and brutal and messy, but there’s a point to it. Usually, there’s some kind of moral or ideological goal, something that the characters can point to when asked “was it all worth it?” That is not to say that there aren’t any doubts or setbacks, but there is a cause, and people can and will give their lives for that cause.

This is the default framing for a Pathfinder war story, which allows the protagonists to focus more on the practical challenges of victory rather than on moral quandaries. Often, these stories will further simplify matters by having all or most of the enemy force be composed of undead, demons, or similar entities. Because, really, it’s always fun to kill zombies.

War Is Farcical: More often seen in older media, this approach focuses less on the fighting and more on the military itself. An army is an instrument of policy and a tool of violence, but it’s also a large, bureaucratic organization in a constant state of chaos. The opportunities for rather dark comedy are limitless. Orders are contradictory, the high command is out of touch, no one knows what they’re doing (including the enemy), and everyone is just trying to get through one more day. In practice, the differences between tragedy and comedy are mostly a matter of tone and perspective, the day-to-day fumbles of any large organization played for drama in the first case and humor in the second.