How to Take Over the World

The Strategy: Phases of Domination

Phase 1: Establish a Secure Power Base

• Acquire Wealth: You need vast sums of gold. Dungeon delving, fulfilling high-paying quests, establishing trade routes, or even “acquiring” assets from defeated foes are necessary. Wealth funds everything else.
• Gain Reputation & Influence: Become famous (or infamous). Your names need to carry weight. This might mean becoming heroes of a region, feared mercenaries, influential members of guilds, or respected advisors.
• Secure a Stronghold: A defensible base of operations is non-negotiable. This could be a conquered fortress, a magically created tower, a hidden demiplane, or even a city you come to rule. This is your capital, treasury, barracks, and laboratory.
• Gather Loyal Followers: You can’t rule alone. Recruit trustworthy NPCs. Start small: a loyal cadre of guards, advisors, spies, and specialists (mages, engineers, priests). High Charisma and spells like Geas (use cautiously and ethically, depending on alignment) or simple loyalty built over time are key.
• Intelligence Network: Establish a network of spies and informants. Use mundane spies, animal messengers, and magical means (Scrying, Clairvoyance, Arcane Eye). Knowledge of rivals’ plans, strengths, and weaknesses is paramount.

Phase 2: Expansion and Consolidation

This phase involves leveraging your base to control more territory, resources, and people. Choose your methods based on party strengths and alignment:

• Method A: Military Conquest (Direct Approach)
  • Raise an Army: Use wealth and influence to hire mercenaries, recruit levies, or magically bind/summon creatures. Consider quality over quantity initially.
  • Target Weak Neighbors: Identify smaller, poorly defended kingdoms, city-states, or monster territories ripe for takeover.
  • Logistics and Magic: Use magic for troop movement (Teleportation Circle, Wind Walk), supplies (spells that create food/water), and battlefield advantage (area-of-effect damage, control spells, illusions).
  • Decapitation Strikes: Use the party’s elite skills to eliminate enemy leadership or key assets before major battles.
• Method B: Political & Economic Manipulation (Indirect Approach)
  • Infiltration: Place spies or party members in positions of power within target nations/organizations.
  • Destabilization: Sow dissent, frame rivals, support rebellions, use propaganda (magical or mundane).
  • Alliances & Vassalage: Forge alliances (through diplomacy, advantageous deals, or coercion). Offer protection to weaker states in exchange for loyalty and resources, slowly absorbing them.
  • Economic Strangulation: Control vital trade routes or resources (mines, magical nexuses) and leverage this control. Establish monopolies. Bribe influential figures.
• Method C: Magical Supremacy (High Magic Approach)
  • Acquire Artifacts: Seek out items of immense power that can project force, control minds, or alter reality on a large scale.
  • Create Magical Defenses/Weapons: Develop unique, powerful spells or magical constructs/wards that make your territory impregnable or give you an overwhelming offensive edge.
  • Control Magical Resources: Secure locations of magical power or knowledge (ancient libraries, planar portals, dragon hoards).
  • Intimidation: Demonstrate overwhelming magical power to cow potential rivals into submission without direct conflict (e.g., altering the weather, summoning epic creatures).
• Method D: Religious Influence (Divine Approach)
  • Found or Hijack a Faith: If a Cleric or Paladin is central, establish a popular religion with the PC(s) as prophets or chosen ones. Use miracles (spells) to gain followers.
  • Convert Populace: Spread the faith, promising salvation, power, or protection. A loyal religious base can be incredibly powerful and motivated.
  • Divine Mandate: Claim the gods support your rule. Use divine magic to support this claim and smite opposition.

Phase 3: Overcoming Major Opposition

As your power grows, you will attract the attention of established empires, powerful churches, ancient dragons, high-level adventuring parties, liches, or even extraplanar entities.

• Identify True Threats: Analyze who possesses the power to genuinely stop you.
• Divide and Conquer: Play major powers against each other. Use your intelligence network to feed misinformation or exacerbate existing tensions.
• Strategic Alliances: Ally temporarily with one major power to take down another, but be prepared for betrayal.
• Targeted Neutralization: Use the party’s high-level abilities for surgical strikes against key enemy leaders, artifacts, or sources of power. This might involve planar travel, epic spells, or combined arms assaults using your own forces and magic.
• Attrition: If direct confrontation is too costly, wage a campaign of attrition – raiding supply lines, assassinating minor leaders, sabotaging infrastructure, using magical plagues (evil).
• Ultimate Power Sources: Confronting god-like beings or entire empires might require tapping into dangerous sources: negotiating with fiends/celestials, harnessing volatile artifacts, achieving lichdom, or even attempting apotheosis (becoming a god).

Phase 4: Securing Dominance

Once major rivals are defeated or subjugated, consolidate your rule.

• Establish Order: Implement laws, bureaucracy, and infrastructure across your domain. Ensure efficient administration.
• Suppress Rebellion: Ruthlessly (evil/neutral) or justly (good/neutral) put down any remaining resistance. Maintain a strong internal security force/spy network.
• Legitimacy: Create a narrative for your rule – divine right, mandate of the people, bringer of order, necessary uniter. Use propaganda, monuments, and court historians.
• Maintain Power: World domination isn’t a one-time achievement. Constant vigilance, managing resources, dealing with succession (if applicable), and watching for new threats (internal and external) are required.

Key Considerations Throughout:

• Logistics: Ruling requires managing food, resources, troop movements, and communication across vast distances. Magic (especially teleportation and creation spells) is invaluable here.
• Information Warfare: Control the narrative. Use propaganda, illusions, and your spy network to shape perceptions.
• Flexibility: No plan survives contact with the enemy (or the players). Be prepared to adapt your strategy based on setbacks and opportunities.

This is a complex, long-term campaign goal requiring player dedication and significant DM support. Good luck, potential world ruler!

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