I have this idea for a quicker and more abstract method of a group fighting a large horde of enemies, or battle between armies with the PCs being key figures:
A horde has two stats, Danger and Morale. Danger is how dangerous they are to you. The higher the Danger, the more the PCs have to work to avoid harm. A relatively simple enemy has Danger equal to the number of players. For a harder fight, increase Danger by one or more; for an easier fight, lower it by one.
Morale is how long the horde is willing to stay in the fight. A horde with high Morale can withstand a larger number of losses and continue pressing the attack. Think of Morale as the horde’s collective hit points.
2 Morale: Weak, easily chased off or defeated
4 Morale: Going to last more than one round
6 Morale: A long and difficult fight
8 Morale: A marathon battle
When you face a horde of monsters, describe how you deal with them and roll+ whatever stat the GM deems appropriate. *On a 10+, hold 2. *On a 7-9, hold 1. Spend your hold, 1-for-1, and describe how you:
Reduce Threat by 1.
Reduce Morale by 1.
Accomplish a side goal during the fight, or preventing the horde from accomplishing a side goal. (claiming a rallying point, taking out a specific person, controlling the magical battle overhead, etc.)
After all of the players have rolled and spent their hold, the GM gives makes a move for each point of Danger left. If the enemy is at zero Morale, they are defeated. Otherwise, both sides must decide if they are going to continue the fight. If they do, the situation must change somehow. One side may choose a different tactic, take the fight to a different location, or set a different objective.
The horde’s Danger is refreshed to the normal stating value at the end of each round, but Morale isn’t.
I think Sage and Adam were working on a mass combat system at one point, but not sure if that’s still happening.
I might explode “taking out a specific person” into the main list of things to spend hold on, like “put yourself face-to-face with a specific person.” So you can engage a specific monster, but not bypass a cool fight.
Could give certain monsters a “leader” tag that says, “when this monster dies, any horde its a part of loses one point of morale.” Or a “destroyer” tag that says, “when this monster dies, any horde its a part of loses one point of threat.”
We use a “mob fight buff” that is something ranging from -1 to +3 and represent the PCs and their gangs chances to win. Once every pc has had a few cinematic in-focus battles with mooks or boss monsters during the battle, tactical goals have been reached or missed etc, I assign the buff and one player rolls.
-On 10+ the pcs win with few casualties, the opposition take heavy casualties and rout.
– On 7-9 the pcs win with about 40% casualties.
– On 6- the pcs lose with about 60% casualties. The GM may make other hard moves like killing important allied npcs, capturing the pcs etc.
Pcs can never die because of the mob fight move, (they have to be killed in in-focus combat) but everybody else can.
I like this concept.
We had two big battles in two of our campaigns. In the first one we just used Apocalypse World harm system – every player had a unit, a gang, some large and some small and these caused harm to other units instead of HP. That was wonderful and we had a lot of fun, but in the end there was some rule-based chaos (switching from harm to HP in epic boss fight).
Second time around it was an engagement of larger proportions and there was siege elements to it. It all boiled down to forming a strategy with a number of goals to choose from – Goals missed were 0 and the roll started at 0 too – an attempt to reach a goal almost always had some risk involved (death of an important NPC or losing a siege weapon etc) so these could go ok (+1) or bad (+0) or horribly wrong (-1). We played out the battle focusing on these small missions, but since the overall batlle was much larger then the PCs, we also rolled for that using the result of their goals (four players attempted at 5 goals, failed one, completed three, it was +2 and they rolled a 14 anyway 🙂
All in all I like that move of yours very much, but I’d change the trigger and/or fail in some way, like maybe:
When a group of allies you lead meets an opposing group, the DM will you their Threat and Morale. When you begin an engagement, roll 2D6. On a 10+ hold 2, on a 7-9 hold 1. You can then spend hold 1 to 1 by choosing from the list below:
– You diminish their Threat by 1 when you eliminate a leader, raid their flank or surround and slaughter
– You lower their Morale by 1 by defacing a symbol, showing off or pushing them back
On a 6- you raise their Morale or Threat by 1, the DM will tell you how.
This requires more work, but I like it already:) Thanks Peter J 🙂
I think a 6- should be able to advance the story somewhat, but it should still be a failure. How about “On a 6- hold 1 anyway, but there will be a cost to pay when you spend it.”
Well, to be honest to me ‘On a 6- you raise their Morale or Threat by 1, the DM will tell you how.’ means that I get to tell them what a horrible turn the story takes (so, how the Orcs slaughter your iconic NPC and toss his body around laughing). I does advance the story. But sure, you’re kinda right:
On a 6- you the DM will tell give you a choice between casualties, losing ground or mutiny.