What Does your (Fantasy) World War Mean to Me?

Quite often, adventuring parties wind up saving the world from major threats.  They might stop a demon army invasion or close a portal trying to suck the entire world into some hellish dimension.  Quite often, these heroic efforts go without ever being noticed by the commoners of the lands that were just saved, but the lack of “fame” goes beyond that.

Let’s assume that a major war is raging in your world.  Four countries have formed two sides, and they are all mixed up in a massive war.  To the people of those regions, everything is horrible and topsy-turvy.  They don’t know if they will survive the war and if they do survive the war will there still be enough food and farmland left to sustain themselves?  It’s bad!

But go a couple of countries over.  They don’t care.  They aren’t noticing the war, because they’ve never been more than 20 miles away from home, and there are no battles within 20 miles of their house.  Maybe after the war, they will learn that food is scarce in that region and they might be able to make a few extra coins taking advantage of the shortage and selling their wares to the right merchants.  But they still won’t really “notice” the war.

Not until bedraggled soldiers begin marching past their homes and villages will they fully realize that something really is or more likely did go on.  So what might cause this?  Well, one side probably lost and one side won.  Were the losers able to retain their lands?  Not likely.  So the soldiers now need to find somewhere to live.  This was the common theme throughout the later parts of the Roman Empire.  Some barbarian horde would attack its neighbors and defeat them.  Those neighbors then needed to go somewhere in order to live, and being battle veterans (at least now they are) they attacked their neighbors in hopes of taking their lands.  And the dominoes fall.  So maybe they aren’t bedraggled soldiers, but instead raiding and war parties.

Now, the local commoners need to know about the war, because now they’re in it.  Those raiders aren’t just orcs out for a stroll, they are a people terrified of starving to death and willing to take what they need from others.  To the newly attacked, they are an evil horde of barbarians, but more truthful they are battle ready refugees.

The point is that no matter how big and important the war may seem to the people in it, it likely doesn’t matter to the average farmer who isn’t in it.  But it should, because there are always consequences.  The bigger the action, and war is a pretty big action, the bigger the consequences.  The ripples will spread out from the center of contact until they’ve touched a lot more people. 

If as a world builder and game master, you are assuming that a defeated army “vanishes” because it was defeated, you are missing major opportunities, and being unrealistic.  That defeated army may be vastly smaller than it was before, but some pockets of it still exist.  Do they become raiders as we’ve laid out?  Do they become mercenaries?  Do they form into a tiny rebel alliance looking to overthrow their oppressors and regain their homeland?  Well, that’s up to you, but they really don’t vanish.

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