The dungeon delving is the side show to the real game, which is the contention between factions vying for dominance over the land. It is a wargame first and an adventure game second.
Specifically, it is a faction-based wargame where Player-vs-Player conflict is core to the game. AD&D1e handles this without needing supplements. The actions of the factions shape the setting, and smaller adventuring bands can take advantage of the liminal spaces between them (literal and metaphorical alike) to seek out their own objectives (often as not found in a dungeon somewhere). [ibid.]
I'm not sure I see D&D as a wargame first, but I definitely see that the adventure game is informing a very different wargame going on behind the DM's screen: One of the most interesting ways in which Dungeons & Dragons retains its war game structure is in the way factions are played especially in old school games.
A well set-up community has several different factions vying for control and influence over the community. This can be the villains, but it can also be various peaceful groups within the town.
For example, let's take The Temple of Elemental Evil. Within the Temple, there are the three surviving Elemental Evil cults, all vying for influence and favour from the Greater Temple. And before you even encounter them there is also a sub-faction run by Lareth the Beautiful, who works as an agent for the temple manipulating humanoid clans and bandit groups, then initiating the cream of the crop into the mysteries of the temple where they can be recruited by The Elemental Evil cults.
And then there are the abyssal factions in the background. Zugtmoy's cult founded the temple, and she has influence over the greater Temple, but in many ways her power has been usurped by The cult of Iuz by way of the evil cleric Hedrack at the head of the Greater Temple, for a Lolth and her drow infiltrate the Temple by way of Lareth.
Meanwhile in the Village of Hommlet, Terjon and Jaroo Ashtaff vie for the faith of the local villagers; a conflicts that is beautifully exaggerated in the Atari / Troika video game version of the campaign and my own adaptation of the setting to D&D5e. The temple itself continues to prey on villagers through spies like Kobort, Rannos, and Gremag under the nose of Rufus and Burne, the local lords.
And there are the River Pirates in Nulb who have yet to join the Temple, although it might be only a matter of time before the villainous innkeeper and Temple agent Dick Rentsch starts persuading the pirates to lean that way.
Watching the Temple there is Canoness Y'dey, Murfles, Otis, and Elmo, who ae spying for the Archclerisy of Veluna to make sure that the Church does not rise again without overtly interfering in the affairs of Hommlet or Nulb.
- The moment the PCs begin to give one sect or organization more power through there actions, the whoke campaign can change in tone.
- Exposing Rannos & Gremag can get Rufus and Burne to both offer support to the PCs and use their influence to get help dealing with the Temple.
- Destroying Lareth the Beautiful cuts Lolth out of the Temple's hierarchy, and deprives the temple of easy new recruits.
- So long as Terjon and Calmert have influence in Hommlet, the eye of St. Cuthbert is on the Region, and both Iuz (and Hedrack) need to be more covert. This can play out in the showdown with Hedrack in the lower levels of the dungeon with avatars of both gods appearing and clashing.
- Helping one cult of Elemental Evil against the other two remaining Temples can cause a chain reaction, killing off dozens of monsters (even if they players aren' there) in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd levels of the dungeon, and moving a lower-level evil cleric into a position of power in the Greater Temple... who may owe the PCs a favour.
- Creating distrust between Rentsch and Tolub the pirate captain can leave the Temple with a much smaller pool of new recruits.
- Buying magic items and potions from Canoness Y'dey in her alter ego of Mother Screng pours money into Veluna's intelligence machine, and gives her resources to use to sabotage the temple in her own way.
And these just a few examples of how the delicate balance of factions allows the PCs to make a few small actions set in motion events within the campaign and have a bigger impact than just slaying a few monsters and adding a few thousand gold pieces to the economy.
In a sense, the individual adventuring foray into the dungeon is always the smallest move in the larger D&D kriegspiel:
When players go into the dungeon for treasure and glory, they often change the dynamics between the nearby factions. A dungeon crawl is much more than just slaying monsters and gathering loot once well-structured factions are in place; it changes the way the factions both in and out of the dungeon are positioned.
If the DM is paying attention and having the factions react to the PCs, either by making changes to the campaign world themselves or by handing over control of the factions to other players and letting them respond in the style of a game of Diplomacy, a Braunstein, or a Free Kriegspiel.
The PCs are an X-factor in that wargame, They come in and throw these factions out of balance, and start positioning them. Once the campaign is in full swing, every couple of sessions will see the PCs - witting or not - strengthen some factions and weaken others, eventually leading to a New Order. Ideally one in which the forces of Law (and/or Good) are in power, and the forces of Evil have less influence.
in the Temple of Elemental Evil game I ran in D&D5e in 2015:
The PCs started the campaign by avoiding Rufus and Burne and instead treating Terjon as the authority they are interested in, this led to them making gold donations and taking cues from Terjon and Calmert. This later led to several conversions to St. Cuthbert, and as the temple became more successful, guards on the road to Verbobonc.
They eliminated goblin spies in Hommlet and helped local ranger Black Jay discover that Rannos and Gremag were blackmailing local kids into distracting him by poisoning his sheep. They ran Ran Rannos and Gremag out of town.
They also killed Turuko and Kobort after those two spies failed to kill them on their way home from the Moathouse. These actions, plus rooting out a saboteur in the work crews building the keep effectively destroyed all ability of the Temple to interfere with Hommlet.
When the PCs later shared what they knew with Canoness Y'dey, and she passed it along, the faith of St. Cuthbert and the Viscounty of Verbobonc as well as the intelligence core of Veluna. Verbobonc moved more clerics into Hommlet, turning the temple of St. Cuthbert into a secondary stronghold, and clearing local humanoids that might have allowed the Temple Dungeon to be restocked.
When the PCs got hold of the Yellow Skull by killing of Falrinth, they turned it over to the Archclerisy of Veluna, which made them aware of the Temple's Intentions. Veluna also came to the table alongside Verbobonc about the threat of the table and the defense of Hommlet.
The PCs hammered the upper level of the Temple itself hard, wiping out the bandits in the watchtower with such extreme prejudice that the unaffiliated monsters on level 1 surrendered, this made striking at the Earth Temple much easier and left the upper floors of the Temple so poorly guarded that Paladins from Verbobonc were able to create a beachhead.
The party in its raids managed to destroy the Juggernaut, leaving the temple of Water vulnerable. As the Earth Temple was destroyed, the Fire Temple no longer had to watch its back, and stuck, clearing out the weakened Water Temple... but losing a few of their Salamanders in the process. The PCs took advantage of that weakness to crush the Fire Temple, too.
Rescuing Tilahi of Celene under these circumstances meant that the Viscounty of Verbobonc was in a powerful position to negotiate a treaty with the elves of Celene for aid. While the Elves were slow to act, it meant that there would be elven rangers watching the fringes of the local marshes.
When the party found Prince Thrommel and set him free, they managed to get the strong support of Furyondy and Veluna, thanks to his gratitude. This meant that they brought all the nations on the border to the Kron hills to the table to discuss securing the region against further Temple threats.Ultimately with Verbobonc in such a powerful position within the town, Rufus and Burne were forced to place Hommlet in Alleigance to the Viscount of Verbobonc.
The PCs did a side adventure that caused them to run afoul of a Sea Hag in the northern end of Imredys Run; killing her weakened the grip of evil in the region and cut the River Pirates off of potions and dark magic from the hag.
With the death of Falrinth, and the PCs hanging about Nulb, Dick Rentsch became too afraid to contact the temple, meaning that the river pirates were not recruited to the temple's aid, and eventually left Nulb because of the increased presence of Verbobonc and Celene in the area, as well as the loss of the Hag's support.
Nulb's economy began to crumble, forcing much of the local scum to move on, and leaving the Temple starved for support and intelligence, forcing the Greater Temple to close ranks in the lower floors of the dungeon.
The PCs ran into Scropp, the disaffected hill giant on the third level of the dungeon. They negotiated with him, and eventually shared the secret of Falrinth's exit to the dungeon. Scropp and many of the hill giants with him abandoned the Temple, leaving the Greater Temple a ghost of its former self and rendering Hedrack and his cronies immobilized on the lowest floor of the Dungeon.
For the PCs, they were experiencing a series of raids on a dungeon. The political alliances of Rufus and Burne, the way they brought Furyondy, Clene, Veluna, and Verbobonc to the table to secure the Kron Hills, and the way it vastly increased the land and prestige of Verbobonc was not part of their goal.
Likewise, they didn't predict when they destroyed the juggernaut that it would lead to monsters on the second floor of the dungeon attacking each other. Their goal was treasure and slaying dangerous monsters; the larger implications are played out on the Wargame level of D&D play that isn't really covered in the manuals, was opaque to them at first. once the ranks of the temple of St. Cuthbert swelled and the road to Verbobonc became patrolled by the Chapeaux of St. Cuthbert (an order of witch hunters), and low-level cleric hirelings flooded the hiring pool at the innof the Welcome Wench they started to see the impact.
In some ways the wargame between factions seems incidental to the campaign, but if you play it well as a GM, not only to the PCs get to enjoy seeing that they have an impact on their world, but they might eventually learn to use it to their advantage. For example:
My players understood that if they handed the Yellow Skull to Verbobonc, one neighbouring nation (the smallest) would have the greatest investment in Hommlet. By handing the demonic relic over to Veluna they could win more support for Hommlet, which informed their decision.
Likewise when they saw that Verbobonc was sending a lot of clerics of St. Cuthbert into the town, they were able to use the reputation they had with Terjon to build a posse of faithful to hammer the monsters on the 1st floor and secure the Temple entrance. they understood a big victory would solidify their reputation with the Cuthbertites and create a permanent outpost in the temple.
Factions are at the heart of the higher levels of the game that the PCs are constantly indirectly and sometimes directly reshaping in a living campaign world. Designing factions that are meant to collide as they do in The Temple of Elemental Evil sets you, as a GM, up for success in making that higher-order game successful.
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