World War 1 in D&D

Find a copy of Twilight 2000. Only use the things from whatever era you want to play in.
We even added in an Alien Invasion campaign.

We are working on board games now for a change. If you like world wars try Axis and allies. And yes there is a WWI version.

I hope to run a game of Axis and Allies 1940 that covers the entire world at my LGS, and I have Twilight 2000.

I like TL2000. Its a pretty good game. Quite expandable. Find all the old adventure modules from version 1.

My one friend has every single form of Axis and Allies along with all the maps. We are now playing through convention games with a LOT of detail.

For a take on spinning 5E to incorporate modern (and in this case futuristic) technology, the Star Wars 5E system is a very comprehensive reskinning. WWI lies somewhere in between 5E and SW5E but there may be some things you can be inspired by and/or incorporate here. 

https://sw5e.com/

That sounds like a great idea. Heck, worldbuilding for worldbuilding's sake is always fun, even if it never sees the table. Some will argue that the magic of D&D and the technology of our modernizing world are incompatible. But we only developed those technologies because we didn't have magic to rely upon. So let's say the standard D&D trope setting is equivalent to the medieval era. Now let's fast forward a half dozen centuries. Given that magic exists, many of our technological advancements would have been pre-empted by magically-driven alternatives. We would still have developed rifles, but they might fire lightning charges instead of bullets. We would still have poisonous gas grenades, but instead of chemicals inside a metal cylinder they might be a crystal sphere enchanted with the Stinking Cloud spell.  And we could still fall back on some of the common tropes, like having dwarves building massive steel trains, but instead of being powered by a steam or diesel engine they're powered by elementals or something. 

It wouldn't be easy, that's for sure. This sounds like several years worth of work to imagine, design, and test. But I say it's well worth the effort and I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Quote from Davyd >>

 

Yes, because D&D is a system designed to play high fantasy roleplaying games. It's not a universal system, it's not meant to play any setting. It has a niche that it operates within.

 D&D has always been a universal system, it was based on Chainmail a Wargame, with fantasy bits added to it to fit more with Tolkien style story telling. At it's heart D&D is still a Dungeon crawler Wargame, the fantasy and magic is just a theming which can easily be skinned to any setting you can imagin. 5th edition is weak in one area because they removed some of the old rules for things that did't fit the dungeon crawler wargame. It's not good at political, mystery, roleplay heavy drama, yet those things still thrive in 5e and 5.5e. I personally DM a group of crazy roleplayers who do 2 sessions fun/funny roleplay and 4 sessions dungeon crawl murderhobo. Currently I am doing a Rogue Trader setting game, where one party member is the new Rogue Trader of an acient trade dynesty that goes back 10,000 years and the other party members are a rogue psyker and drukhari. I can easily add all the sci-fi elements, convert 5.5e monsters to be 40k monsters, give the party items and magic that fits the setting. And there in no friction to gameplay at all. In fact 5.5e is better at rogue trader gameplay than original 2009 TTRPG published by Fantasy Flight which I own. Ironically it was because they designed the systems to be overly complex, that unless everyone reads the book and understands it, you game master ends up doing all the work. With 5.5e the players can do all the work, and I as DM just need to throw things at the players to deal with. 

It's why rules light systems encorage more RP not less. D&D removed all the rules that bogged down RP and now RP thrives because players make it up with only a few prompts by the DM. I tell them they need to make a trade deal with a planet, they figure out what is needed, how to solve issues, I ask them to roll ... with no guidence, and they self impose win and failure events on those dice rolls. 

So yeah D&D 5.5e  is a great universal system, as long as you have dungeon crawl days. 

Quote from gothicshark >>

 D&D has always been a universal system

While certain core mechanics of D&D can be made universal, and trying to apply D&D-like rules to other genres goes back a very long time (Metamorphosis Alpha was probably first), D&D itself has never been generic -- the genre is literally in the name of the game.

In any case, trying to use D&D for a 20th century game, while technically possible, will basically involve discarding 95% of the rules and coming up with a large number of new rules, so I'd recommend a game where someone has already done that work.

The "DND is a universal system" phrase comes from "DnD' as internet-only slang for TTRPGs as a whole, and doesn't distinguish between the attempted generification in "DND" vs the more correct "Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition"

Universal system..... No i wouldn't say it is, but it can be pretty flexible.

Then there is GURPS that tries to be universal.....

Yeah, if you want a Universal system, GURPS or Savage Worlds are doing to get you a lot farther than D&D ever will.

"can be" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in "D&D can be a universal game".

If you want to shout "For Frodo!" while playing D&D and call it LotR, and that's your jam, crack on. Any game can be universal in that sense. 

If you want the game to convey the right tone, confer the right effects for the inputs, have the right atmosphere etc, then you'll have to do a lot of ripping out, alterations etc, and it will still never be as good as a well made game made expressly to bring LotR to life. What would likely survive that surgery is the d20 system and maybe the grid system. Everything else is getting major surgery.

We see that in this thread. The OP recognised that D&D's PC scaling system is a substantial issue - it doesn't convey the danger that was omnipresent in WW1. The proposal? Keep them very low level. Yes, very low level PCs are in danger, a lot. That does help convey that omnipresent danger of WW1. But, as Xalthu points out, the enemies in D&D scale too, so simply reskinning them will just result in pointless meat grinder - great for bringing some of the feelings of WW1, yes, but not that fun for a game. Low level monsters also tend to be boring. That's all fixable, but the more fixes we bring in, the less you're playing D&D and the more it's just... something else. 

And if you're just going to play something else, it's probably better to start with something closer to that. Or just build it from the ground up, if you have the skills. Either, in 90% of cases, is going to give a better result than starting with a game designed to give very different tones, feels and experiences to what you want.

D&D is very versatile. Out of the games I play, it's probably the easiest system to make different settings function, except probably Vaesen (but I think the D&D engine is better than YZE that runs Vaesen anyway). However, it's not going to do the job as well as a well designed game purposely built to run that setting (unless that setting is D&D).

It seems like this belongs here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wraith:_The_Great_War

I had an amazing experience at GenCon a few years back playing a WW2-era Call of Cthulhu session. The GM really knocked it out of the park. If you are looking for something new, and more of a modern era thing, you might look into Call of Cthulhu. It is already designed for around the era you are looking at, and could easily fit into a WW1 setting.

Quote from Elgate >>

 

 

 

Ooh, I think I might respectfully disagree on this one, with nuance. 
D&D was indeed born from a wargame, and had a lot of wargame and chainmail DNA in it at the start, which is reflected in settings like Greyhawk were you can easily see how they were set up as fantasy nations to continue 'war of the roses' type style medieval wargames. You can see in in AD&D's followers/henchmen mechanics, and how a lot of the game play circulated around dungeon delving and base building/defense.

But it was also intentionally a move away from wargames to focus on the individual heroes and their stories. The fantasy and roleplay aspect being simulated in the fact the classes were based on tropes and archetypes from fantasy media from Vance, to Howard, to Leiber, and yes to Tolkien. The classes and fantasy tropes are intrinsic to D&D's DNA. 

And we've also moved more and more away from the wargame genre to the high fantasy and heroic narrative focus. Mass combat is actually not that great in 5e. They tried to allow for it in UA, but the rules just weren't that great. Even in 3.5 the leadership rules got clunky. 

So perhaps returning to Chainmail or the 3e based Chainmail Miniatures Game,  or 1e AD&D could simulate it more within a D&D related context (And Chainmail is not D&D), but it'd be much harder to pull off in 5e in my opinion.

Also as a little anecdote, the way this forum tries to define D&D for the purposes of advertising a game here is 'Can you make a character using official options from the official D&D books (any edition) and play by those rules?' and if you use none of the classes, no magic, no fantasy- then the answer is typically 'No, this is a game based on the d20 system, but is not D&D'

Nuance: Your post was not, as you did not understand what I said. 

Wargame is a game where combat mechanics and conflict are the important factors. D&D at it's heart is a skirmish wargame, Games-Workshop  has over the years has been the mainstay of the Wargame community in europe and more recently around the world. Originally they were the UK publisher for TSR matierial, they wrote the Fiend foilio gave us the Githyanki and other classics. After they split from TSR and made Warhammer, then Rogue Trader:Warhammer 40000 they made their name as the leader of large scale wargames. However even now they publish skirmish games. Which are basically D&D with less roleplay and more 2 players facing their small squads against each other.  These games still have a lot of RPG in the DNA though. 

D&D is a Skirmish Wargame which leans on RPG mechanics. Way back in 1st & 2nd edition they tried to do a lot of world building mechanics, and crazy policial mechanics, and basically all the stuff a RPG that is not focused on combat can do well. Those things have all been removed, focusing on the skirmish combat with a very light set of RPG mechanics for everything else. 

Yes other game systems do other things better than D&D, GRUPS and Savage Worlds have in depth ways to make a full policial game, a fear based horror game, and even a gun slinger with magic poker game. However why these other systems are not the king of RPG is because those games don't do Wargaming Skirmishes well, unlike D&D or Warhammer. If you want solid easy to learn combat systems with Role Play potential and skill checks D&D 5e/5.5e is the best current system, if you want army vs army Warhammer/WH40k is the best. If you want a murder mystery with fear and puzzles other games do that better. 

The thing is D&D 5e is universal if you want a small party of 3~5 players and a DM who then face off against monsters and bad guys, aka small scale multiplayer skirmish war game with light RP. If you want in depth RP and anything outside the narrow design of D&D there are better systems. However the "High Fantasy" part of D&D is the one thing that is not required for a game of 5e/5.5e you can use the system for any setting with magic and monsters, the magic also can be Sci-Fi and not "The weave" It can be Star Wars, Star Trek, Wahammer 40k, really easily, it can be Modern but with magic, it can be an alt history WW1 with magic and demons. The system is setting agnositic, not gameplay agnostic. You can have any setting, as long as the gameplay is the small group doing combat with a small amount of monsters or NPCs in a confinded space like a dungeon or no mans land on the fields of France. You just need a way for a Warlock to cast EB, a Wizard to cast Fireball, a Cleric to have Spiritual weapon, a Fighter with a big two hander, and another fighter with a ranged weapon. (Sorry Rangers, but the best ranger is still a fighter/rogue)  

Basically as long as you can make a dungeon out of the Deathstar, an inn out of Mos Eisley you can run a normal D&D game with all the normal classes using just the PHB, DMG, and MM. If you want to get clever there is a fan site that gives more. 

My current D&D game is set to 40k, I am using 5.5 rules only, and only the rules for 5.5 on DnDB, with foundry as the VTT. Xill make for great genestealers, Orcs are Orks, Elves are Eldar, and basically everything works the same. The setting of a game is in the wordsa and descriptions of the scene, not the mechanics of the gameplay. You can take almost any film with combat and run a D&D game based on it, you can take the Protaganist and antagonist of any such film and use a D&D character unchanged. 

Riddick is a Fighter/Rogue, I would say his species is not human but probably Assamar, or Khoravar, but an argument coult be made for Goliath. 

D&D really hasn't always been a universal system. As has been pointed out already, the high fantasy element is in the name of the game. Can you remove magic, monsters, convert archaic weapons into (relatively speaking) modern weapons and change what are very clearly fantasy archetypes? Sure, but if you hammer hard enough on any system you can force it to some degree. Altering the game to be a 40K setting is impressive, but even that is still a long way from WWI. You'd probably be better off getting a copy of Boot Hill and updating it to a WWI setting than massively overhauling the rules of D&D.