I’m starting to investigate a bit of rules drift when it comes to large groups of weak enemies that are only a threat because of their organization, or something they can do together. It started when I was playing The Regiment, and had trouble figuring out how to deal with a machinegun nest. I started wondering if maybe the entire machinegun nest could be treated as a DW monster.
Then I started thinking whether I could treat an group of DW monsters as a single DW monster. Now, I understand this might violate some of the premises of DW, that a blow is a single blow, but if, for example, I want the adventurers to fight a group of bees, I don’t want to stat up each bee individual. That would be asinine. I want monster called “Swarm of Bees.”
http://codex.dungeon-world.com/search?q=Golden+Wasp+Swarm
And if you can do that for bees, why can’t you do that for groups of larger monsters too? I know that this will probably be handled in the war supplement, but I think this could be a useful hack for now.
“I understand this might violate some of the premises of DW, that a blow is a single blow”.
Wait, that’s one of Dungeon World’s premises?
I’m not sure if that’s a premise or not. Honestly, I think it’s much more exciting if the player kills a monster in a single hack and slash – especially on a 7-9 – it’s perfectly ok to have some back and forth with multiple blows.
The move is called Hack _and_Slash, after all.
Squad of Goblins could be treated as a single monster, have them all be well trained elite gobbos, working as a team to take bigger, stronger foes down. Perhaps they’re the goblin king’s elite guard, special tactics, or a trollslayer squad. Basically they’re the badassinest troops the goblin horde has got, veterans that give even the hardiest of adventurers pause.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking. But more focusing on weaker monsters that combine to make a greater whole. I wouldn’t even require a move to crush a single wasp, but dealing with an entire hive is a different situation
And no, I shouldn’t have said premise. It’s not a premise. But from what I understood from reading other threads, a single attack is usually a single attack. And I haven’t seen any monsters depicted as monster groups before. HP would probably be more narrative than representing actual injuries. When they run out of HP, they’re defeated, scattered, not necessarily all dead.
I think this is a good idea. Apocalypse world treats bands and groups as single individuals.