Hi Guys. I’m hoping to get some constructive criticism and feedback on an adventure idea I’m working on and some tips on big monster battles/boss fights.
The premise for the mini campaign goes a little like this. An old king decides to throw a competition he calls The Great Hunt in which he sends invitations out to select warriors across the realm to compete in what is essentially a four round monster hunt. The PCs gather, are assembled into a group based on their particular talents, and are pitted against four other groups to see who can slay their monsters the quickest and return back to the castle before each deadline. I’ve got a bunch of flavor details I can share if anyone’s interested, but that’s the gist of it.
The intention of this sort of a campaign is to give my players a chance to roll up some different characters and a little downtime break from our main campaign by essentially fighting a series of boss battles in a dangerous land. The main campaign we’ve been running is going great, but the pacing is slow and we’re dealing with intrigue and cities and social stuff at the moment, and we’ve got an opportunity to do this side thing while one of the players is out for a while.
Anyhow, I’m struggling to come up with some good rules for The Great Hunt that will make it feel like an actual competition against other teams and not just a series of Boss Fights that they’re either going to win or die trying.
Being that this is Dungeon World, I intend to put my players on the spot and have them describe the monsters they’ve been assigned (each team pics a representative who steps forward and chooses a scroll from a table. This repeats each round with a different representative). I figure that way each player gets a chance to fight a monster they’ve always wanted to go up against. I’m a little concerned about how wide open this is going to make things and whether I’m ready to throw together a hunt for some crazy monster on the fly, but that’s part of the fun.
That brings me to my other concern. I’m a little worried about making a bunch of crazy boss fights interesting and making them different from one another without being able to prep ahead of time. Any suggestions on how to handle that? Maybe some non-specific approaches to big monster fights that I can drop in regardless of what they choose?
Sorry for the wall of text, thanks guys!
Im not too familiat with DW (funny, right?), but heres my advice.
Have them pick the monster at the end of the session and give them choices between a selection of monsters. That way you can prepare and there’s no ‘anylazation paralyzation.’
Giving each monster 2 or 3 specific pluses and minuses, strong versus magic and weak versus physical attacks (think pokemon). They don’t all have to be varied either, 3 pluses on one creature means it may be worth more or because it was passed up by the players another team snatches it up and gets credit for being brave or risky. Same for 3 minuses, chooser is looked at as cowardly or playing it safe.
Oo, what about 5 monsters each round, best team chooses first?
You might try this mechanic:
Mark Tygart Pretty great idea there! Thanks for the share.
rich fraser I had considered putting together a list for them to choose from, but I’m undecided at the moment. I’m definitely concerned with them hitting a creativity wall and slowing the game down, but I also don’t want to take away the fun in making something up. I may put a list together and only present it after they show some signs of indecision. The idea about the giving the different monsters +’s and -‘s is a great idea as well. Thanks!
Brandon Fincher the problem with giving them a + or – is that monsters don’t have stats that get bonuses. They have HP, armor, instincts, damage, special qualities, tags and moves. All of those can be generated through the monster making questions or through the Monster Maker, which is here…
dwtools.mileszs.com – Dungeon World Tools
You could answer those questions with each player to generate the monster’s stats and make up moves for it. Doing so at the end of a session is a good idea as well, so you have time between games to polish it.
My other bit of advice is a custom move I made a while back for giant monster combat. If one of your players dreams of fighting something huge (ridiculously so) this could help out with that.
Giant Monster Combat
When your group takes a course of action against a monster far larger than reason, tell the GM what your party’s plan is. If the GM agrees your plan could work, then you may roll+STAT and describe what you do to make that plan happen. On a 10+, choose 2. On a 7-9, choose 1:
– You hinder the monster in some way, temporarily disable one of its moves, slow it down, distract it, etc.
– You set a piece of the plan into motion to bring the creature down, gain 1 hold.
– You avoid causing any collateral damage.
– You are not severely injured in your attempt.
On a 6- lose one hold in addition to whatever the GM says. Hold that you gain is communal. Anytime another player gains hold they are combined together. You can spend spend 1 hold at any time to injure one of its body parts, preventing it from using that body part to perform any of its moves, as well as anything else it would be prevented from doing by the fiction. You can use 3 hold at any time to cause your grand plan to come to a close, bringing about your initial desired outcome.
Scott Selvidge I may have misunderstood Rich’s recommendation for a plus or minus and I was thinking more about giving the various monsters values. The deadlier the monster, the higher the value. Each team picks a monster each round (I’d roll for the opposing teams or something) and depending on their success they’d earn the points for that monster. It’s not perfect, but it’s something.
I like that move, Scott. Thanks for sharing it!
Have you got Grimworld Brandon Fincher? It has a Slayer class and a Hunter Compendium class (all with AWESOME moves) that are all about this monster hunting lark you are describing 🙂
Nathan Roberts I do have Grim World and have presented it to my players as available classes for this and three of my four chose classes from the book, but strangely enough none of the ones they chose were the Slayer or Hunter.