A little over a year ago I felt inspired by the story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. Soon after, I watched Violet Evergarden. Then, I think I watched Dungeon Meshi for probably the fifth time, and Howl’s Moving Castle for probably the hundred and fifth time. From these influences, my campaign “War is Hell” was born. In my mind it’s a collaborative world-building project first and a campaign setting… not quite second, but like, first and a half. The world is vast and wildly multicultural. Generally, the tech level can be understood to be around the Belle Epoque, though material conditions and geography differ greatly from any IRL inspirations. Two-ish decades ago, a tiny country the size of Switzerland started their imperial project and now the Empire of Alius covers 1/3 of “Eurasia and Africa”. The war crossed the “Atlantic” about a year and a half prior to session 1. In response, almost all of the significant countries and territories in North and South Patria formed the Confederation of Patria, forming the largest, theoretically strongest, most haphazardly-stitched-together military this world has ever seen. The actual campaign follows a ragtag special forces unit, especially talented recruits fresh out of boot camp assigned to the same team based on synergy—at least, on paper. The first mission was a training mission meant to test how compatible this team actually was. Following the events of the first few sessions, the campaign has become a survival-crafting hexcrawl. The team deserted pretty much immediately due to -Plot- and is now bouncing from side quest to side quest, filling out the map of the countryside and learning more about the world and the war as they go. As for system, we use 5.5e as a base with some rule tweaks to make it just a touch grittier, we follow Helliana’s rules for crafting and gathering, and I have a pretty open-door policy on homebrew so long as its well made and fits the ~vibe~ I recently was gifted the Handbook for Collaborative Campaign Design by one of my players and its advice has been soooo useful as the campaign marches on!