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PiperThePaladin
2018-06-24, 12:49 PM
Hello! My players are going to be taking part in a city-wide battle. I'd like to give them a sense of the scope and duration of this fight without the enormous table time it would take to fight through 6 skirmishes. These would all be fights that there is no question the characters will win (seven 5e level 5 characters and whatever soldiers are nearby against, like, a couple zombies each fight), but I'd like to give them a sense of the cumulative wear and exhaustion this kind of fighting does when it goes on for 7 hours. There will be a boss battle at either the beginning or end of this siege, haven't decided which.

I'm thinking of some kind of snapshot fighting for each of these skirmishes. Like, I'd crunch some numbers based on average damage per round, roll a couple dice to mix it up, and tell them that they've taken X amount of damage so far and their foes are looking rough. Then have them actually roleplay out only the last few turns of the fight where they kill the zombies, so they get the satisfaction of the KO. Then onto the next skirmish.

Has anyone else done anything like this before? Did it work well? Any ideas?

Blymurkla
2018-06-25, 04:30 AM
Let the players narrate a bit.

Describe the scene - where they are in the city, what's happening, that the zombies are closing in.

Then you zoom in on the PCs of the player to your right. Narrate a scene where the PC caught up in some trouble. Perhaps the PC is fighting off a few zombies on the street, but up above in a house a father and child are caught on the balcony, desperately trying to prevent the zombie in the house from getting to them. Now, you hand over narration to the player in question, who narrates how their PC conquered the situation. If you want, you can include mechanical bits and/or choices: »You can probably fight of the zombies on the street easily, but if you want to save the civilians you're going to take a bit of damage or perhaps use up one of your spells. So, what do you do? And how?«

Then that player narrates the next scene, where the next player's PC is caught in something (but you're the one dishing out the mechanical bits). And you go around the table. Perhaps you want to steer the narration to longer-lasting scenes, have the players describe half an hour at a time (»the siege of The Bear-and-Bottle Inn«, where the party held of ways of zombies) to really push the length of the battle home.

You can probably have fun doing that three times during the session, especially if you move between the easy, montage battles and other scenes - tougher battles against elite enemies played out with the combat system, investigative scenes where the PCs learn about their enemies, social scenes where they discuss tactics with surviving city guards etc.

It's probably a good idea to try and secure by-in from the players at the start of the session - tell them that you have this awesome, 7 hour battle planed out for them but explain that to get it to work you'll have to dish out a bit of damage without an associated dice roll. Just keep this wear-and-tear damage low and fair and hopefully your players should go along with it.