After the End, except it never stopped ending...

[Kax]

For a long duration war, it could be a deliberate conspiracy to maintain authoritarianism.

"We have always been at war eith Eastasia."

Which leads a grimdark war setting to discovery of the conspiracy and then an attempt to break it. Nice long campaign arc.

[DocRailgun]

In the same vein but not exactly what you're looking for - Phillip K Dick had a story called "The Defenders" that was about WWX between the Yellow Hordes and the West (in the radio version I heard, but vs the Soviets in the story) that became bad enough that everyone went to live and fight underground. It's been 16 years and the war continues, run by the loyal robots on each side... or does it?

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Kax

For a long duration war, it could be a deliberate conspiracy to maintain authoritarianism.

"We have always been at war eith Eastasia."

The flaw there is our information about the world of 1984 comes from questionable sources. Space filling empires such Oceania simply cannot exist for long in the real world due to social, economic, and political factors.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by maximara

Unless it is a variation of the Cold War, I doubt that a WW II tech war could go on for more then 40 years and even that would be pushing it.

Even with people underground you still need the means to transport fuel and material to the factories and odds are that is going to out in the open where the enemy can blow the crap out of it.

Eh, a few improvements to radar sensitivity with no improvements in stealth, and you can have some pretty good anti-air defenses to prevent such an issue. Actually, radar improving before anybody got completely flattened is probably the entire reason the war just won't end.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Eh, a few improvements to radar sensitivity with no improvements in stealth, and you can have some pretty good anti-air defenses to prevent such an issue. Actually, radar improving before anybody got completely flattened is probably the entire reason the war just won't end.

"When doing battle, seek a quick victory. A long battle will blunt weapons and diminish ferocity." Sun Tzu [02.03]

"Therefore, I have heard of military campaigns that were clumsy but swift, but I have never seen military campaigns that were skilled but protracted. No nation has ever benefited from protracted warfare." - Sun Tzu [02.08]

Even in the preindustrial era it just wasn't practical to have an unending war. Even the so called Hundred Years war was actually a series of wars broken up by the occasional peace.

Long term direct war is simply not viable once you hit TL6. The US found that out in a place called Vietnam and the USSR found out the same thing in Afghanistan.

[Culture20]

“Nims qarlo clobregnny prite arem aean teaan deao!”
“Dogizdog!”
(Twilight Zone: Soldier)

[Kax]

Originally Posted by maximara

The flaw there is our information about the world of 1984 comes from questionable sources. Space filling empires such Oceania simply cannot exist for long in the real world due to social, economic, and political factors.

Do remember that was 'war' not war. A conspiracy to maintain a war footing and the associated authoritatian control.

Hard to do on more than one planet, of course.

But find out why the situation exists is a campaign goal, and how to fix it (or maintain it) another.

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by maximara

"When doing battle, seek a quick victory. A long battle will blunt weapons and diminish ferocity." Sun Tzu [02.03]

"Therefore, I have heard of military campaigns that were clumsy but swift, but I have never seen military campaigns that were skilled but protracted. No nation has ever benefited from protracted warfare." - Sun Tzu [02.08]

Even in the preindustrial era it just wasn't practical to have an unending war. Even the so called Hundred Years war was actually a series of wars broken up by the occasional peace.

Long term direct war is simply not viable once you hit TL6. The US found that out in a place called Vietnam and the USSR found out the same thing in Afghanistan.

Your Vietnam example refutes your point. The US army kept pushing for a swift decisive victory and were stymied by the slow, patient tactics of the North Vietnamese. The Vietnamese won against the world's strongest military when really they should have been soundly beaten.

[Daigoro]

Likewise, the current US involvement in Afghanistan is about to run twice as long at the USSR's did.

[Anthony]

The basic issue for long duration wars is that high intensity conflicts can't keep going for very long (they're too destructive), but low intensity or intermittent conflicts, particularly if they receive external support, can keep grinding on for ages.

If you want a nasty but subtle ongoing AtE, have alien/demonic/extradimensional/whatever arms merchants that don't directly do anything -- they just sell weapons in a way that makes things worse (either they're directly trying to make things worse, or there are two groups engaged in a proxy war). This has the interesting side benefit that challenges will actually tend to scale somewhat with the progress of the PCs, as the arms merchants are likely to tune their sales with an eye towards maintaining conflict.