World War 1 in D&D

Quote from AnzioFaro >>

"Unless you are working with a world rife with magic..."   Have you read the D&D core rulebooks? The D&D setting is rife with magic, unless you're using some extra-eeemely homebrewed low-magic version of D&D.  Yes, the <insert word for muggles> would build technologies to compete with magic. But it would always be at a disadvantage because they're facing off against people who can LITERALLY turn invisible, fly, read your mind, control your mind, and hurl Fireballs! And they would be building upon existing tech, in this case . . . magic. 

I mean, even "high magic" is a relative term. It can mean there's a wizard for every town, or just that the relative handful of wizards in existence compared to the population at large advertise their existence and can do some impressive stuff. Magic being well-known as a part of life doesn't mean it's actually super accessible.

Quote from AnzioFaro >>

"Unless you are working with a world rife with magic..."   Have you read the D&D core rulebooks? The D&D setting is rife with magic, unless you're using some extra-eeemely homebrewed low-magic version of D&D.  Yes, the <insert word for muggles> would build technologies to compete with magic. But it would always be at a disadvantage because they're facing off against people who can LITERALLY turn invisible, fly, read your mind, control your mind, and hurl Fireballs! And they would be building upon existing tech, in this case . . . magic. 

The basis for discussion IS a low-magic world (btw as I started "reading the rulebooks" in 1978 I think I understand them as well as most).  Even in a "standard" D&D world spell casters need long rests, material components...wizards can be killed by nonmagical means.  It would depend heavily on how many spell casters there were compared to the general population.  You are free to disagree, there are multiple sources of fiction that support any version of this discussion.

Specifically, if 1 in 100 is some kind of spell caster it's like you propose.  At 1 in 1000 it would be much different, at 1 in 10000 spell casters would have to watch their step very carefully in my opinion anyway.  

You might try to temper your snark when replying, it's unseemly.

DND was started by some guys who were wargaming large scale battles and asked "what if i could play a single combatant?" The game they created shifts the focus on a single person, and rebalances reality so that battles are no longer a meat grinder. One character can reasonably expect a good chance to live to see the end of the war.

WW1 was a meat grinder that peaked at six thousand combatants killed each day.  The Battle of Sommes had some units suffer 90% casualty rates in minutes.   Thats not a "game" by any definition. You are talking about outcomes that are basically "roll initiative. On your turn, roll d20, if you roll a 10 or lower, youre dead"

Artillery is the 9th level spell Meteor Swarm, but cast hundreds of times. Chemical and biological weapons is Stinking Cloud, but homebrewed to do more damage when upcast to level 9, also cast hundreds of times.  Machine guns lay down a cone shaped aoe that does 8d6 every turn, and can go for a ful minute. The ranges on all these is miles for artillery and 500 yards for machine gun fire. That wont fit on the 4 foot combat map where 1inch is 5ft

If you want to play that scenario as something resembling a game, you will want to wargame it, with large units of soldiers, not an individual adventurer.

If you want to play an individual adventurer during the great war, you have to get away from the front lines. DND does that by moving pcs from the battle of helms deep and putting them into a dungeon where the tactics is small scale, room to room, and the ranges fit on a 3 foot map.

Call of Duty might be a better option