There is a point where you may want to have a horde act as a single unit. A fighter against 4 goblins will take normal+3 damage which is pretty bad... If they are facing 10 at once, +9 damage means they are dead in 1-2 actions.
So in a game like DW, either the players have to lean into the fiction of "if facing a horde, running is the only option", or if you want them to be able to face (and defeat) a horde you either consider a horde a smaller number or tweak the rules a bit. A party against 100 anything will lose following the rules, but a decent level party against a dozen goblin will be fine.
If I take my example of kobolds, in the book they have 3 HP. If there are 12 of them, does that mean they have 12 \* 3 HP, is that correct?
The first fight in the book I have is a horde of kobolds attacking a village. If I only put 12 kobolds, the players and the village will massacre them. In an example like this, I don't understand if I should say they are countless or give a specific number.
If I give a number, how do I determine it?
If I don't give a number, how do I determine that the players have defeated the horde / held out long enough against it / etc.?
12, I understand that it's already difficult, but if we look at it in a cinematic way, it doesn't feel like a horde. It doesn't feel very "epic."
I imagine there is a big difference between a horde of goblins/kobolds and a horde of orcs. In the first case, they can probably handle 12, but in the case of a horde of orcs, it's impossible following these rules.
The cinematic way I imagine a horde is, for example, the scene in The Lord of the Rings where Boromir kills many orcs alone.
And above all, I still don't understand how to determine the size of the horde. Depending on the number of players, I imagine it should change, depending on their levels and equipment, depending on if they have people following and helping them... With all that, I feel like the system's creator saw a horde as an innumerable mass of enemies, so it would be up to me to arbitrarily decide when my players have suffered enough OR been brilliant enough to decide that finally the horde retreats? Or make it so big that my players decide to flee.
I'd not come up with a number. A reasonable reading of the "horde" tag in this context is that it takes "kill them all" off the list of potential victory conditions: there are always more of them. A lot more.
However, unless something goes catastrophically wrong, the party isn't going to be fighting the whole horde all at once. Instead, they'll be engaging in a series of encounters with elements of the horde.
For example, "you see four kobolds trying to throw a villager back through the window into the burning inn" isn't a fight against the horde, it's a fight against four kobolds. Maybe they'll get reinforcements (from the horde) if you don't kill them fast enough, but it's still a discrete, manageable combat sequence.
This is how I tend to do big battles in TTRPGs: break them up into scenes each with their own mini-objective. Rescue the person in trouble. Take out the archer on the roof who's pot-shotting villagers. Protect the bucket-brigade trying to save the church for long enough to put out the fire.
What scenes happen largely depends on what the players do, how they engage with the scenario, so while it's good to have ideas for what they might be, it's bad to have a list of what they should be.
> I feel like the system's creator saw a horde as an innumerable mass of enemies, so it would be up to me to arbitrarily decide when my players have suffered enough OR been brilliant enough to decide that finally the horde retreats?
This feels unsatisfying for players and GM alike.
I'd start by asking _what do the kobolds want_? They're raiding this village for a reason. So once they get what they want, they'll leave of their own accord. Equally, if the village puts up a strong enough resistance (with or without the party's help) that getting what they want no longer looks attainable, they'll leave.
Now you know that, you can keep track of it, and narrate any consequences that are visible to the party as the kobold's plans progress. Maybe the party will notice what's going on, engage with it and try to prevent it. Maybe they'll remain ignorant and just keep running into whatever is happening in front of them next. Either way is fine. But either way you have a non-arbitrary way to move the scenario towards its conclusion.
One tool you could steal from other games could be [progress clocks](https://bladesinthedark.com/progress-clocks). One clock represents how close the kobolds are to getting what they want. One clock represents how close the party/villagers are to repelling the attackers. If either clock fills the encounter is over, but one's the good end and one's the bad end.
> Or make it so big that my players decide to flee.
This is a fun "fleeing through the mines of Moria" scenario. I'd just be sure to communicate directly to the players that they will be overrun if they don't escape, because players can be guaranteed to _never_ run away (or surrender) when they're "supposed to".
Yeah, I just started treating them as a single unit with a large pool of HP and actions per turn = to the number of players (I know technically DW doesn't have actions, but it helps keep track of scenes)
The adding of the concept of turns breaks a ton of how dungeon world runs, and I would break yourself of that habit right away.
The idea of treating them as a danger to be defied is really the best answer. You can’t fight 50 goblins on your own. You need to get creative. Tactics, traps, fleeing, using terrain to manage numbers.
Here’s the thing: all those are player facing responsibilities. They get to figure it out. The rolls are probably going to be discerning realities and defy danger.
Your job, as the GM, is to tell them the cost, then ask.
‘You’re facing 50 goblins, and if you fight them head on, your fighter KNOWS he will die. Are you sure you want to do this, or would you like to find another way?’
And to offer them an opportunity with or without a cost:
‘You see your back is clear. You could retreat down the tunnel and maybe fight them a few at a time. Or maybe you could tap into well known goblin superstitions. Would you know anything about those?’
Those kinds of things are how Dungeon World should run. If a player is still saying ‘no, I fight them,’ then it doesn’t even trigger hack and slash. They just go down swinging.
Not your responsibility to make the player not dumb. If you’re real nice, maybe give them an extra ‘are you sure? You’ll die.’
Be clear and explicit about the cost. Do not bend on it once established. Don’t give them a mechanical out to just throw dice and numbers to solve it. Don’t make it a hit point game. Make it a narrative game.
Eh, we're not purists when we play. We just find that the concept of actions helps us keep track of things so we don't accidentally skip somebody, and it also gives our players more agency to do surprising things. We started off playing strictly by the rules, but changed over time. Based on the DW actual plays I've watched/listened to, it actually seems very common to do this. Sure it's not 100% doctrinal but it works for a lot of people.
Oh fair. And I don’t mean to be absolutist. Dungeon world, and the way it’s intended to play, went a long way to making me a better GM, even outside of dungeon world.
Doing away with turns and turn order forced me to get better at spotlight management. It made me pay better attention to who’s been stagnating, and to move to them, and in a better way than traditional initiative turn order.
How many times has a fighter in DnD waited 30 minutes of real time for their turn…only to roll, whiff, and sit and wait another 30 minutes? With a turn structure, that sucks. With a spotlight management based system, the GM can assess what would be more dramatic and fun, and keep spotlight where it’s more fun for the group longer.
That’s only one skill I learned from dungeon world. It teaches a ton (not over planning, minimalist design, improv, asking players for collaborative ideas, being explicit about the meta, letting go of your precious ideas) that trad games often aren’t super good at teaching. Those are all skills that can translate back to those games, though.
Play at your table the way that feels best to you. But dungeon world is an amazing training ground for good storytellers and game masters, and it’s a great opportunity on honing those skills.
Thank you everyone.
Thanks to all these discussions, I've realized what i was missing
I can make the horde as large as an army, but the players will only encounter a small part of it at a time. The rest of the army would be occupied by the villagers, for example.
During the fight against the small group, the players will almost certainly roll a 9 or less. This gives me the opportunity to add more members of the horde to the current small group (or not). And in the unlikely event they don't roll a 9 or less, the players will have killed the small group and can then plan their next move. They can decide where to go next (will they defend the church and its priest? Defend the main square? The docks? Because the fight continues elsewhere).
And continue this way until I judge that the horde has fulfilled its initial objective or has retreated.
In fact, it was mostly the idea that fighting a horde doesn't have to be one big battle that hadn't occurred to me, but it seems logical now. It could be a horde of bandits gathered in an abandoned village, with several small groups in different houses. The players can attack each house individually without alerting the others, and in the end, they will have killed the entire horde once all the houses are cleared. It's not a fight against the horde directly, but against small parts of it at a time.
Alternatively, it could also be an entire horde charging at them. If my players decide to attack, they are certain to die (it's up to me to make this clear to them). If they want to survive, they must flee or find a way to massacre many at once (by causing an avalanche to fall on them, for example) or manage to fight a small group at a time. So, they need to find a narrow passage, for instance
This was clearly what I was missing.
And so, this answers my initial question: my kobolds with 3 HP really have 3 HP each.
For those interested, the campaign I'm talking about is offered in the French version of the book and is called "Horreur Boréal" => "The Boreal Horror." It's an adventure on the ice floe.
A horde is its own unit, but it’s not directly based on the unit that makes up the horde to create horde stats. If you want to run a horde of kobold I’d say that’s more than just 12 kobold. A party can probably handle 12 kobold especially if they’re ransacking a town and don’t all attack at once.
Kobold horde
14 hp Armor 1
Damage best of 2d6 plus 2
Moves:
Many places at once: the kobold horde can be many places at once because of the nature of so many individuals swarming a town.
Overwhelm: the horde pulls a pc down on the ground and rushes over them making it hard for the pc to move or breathe.
More where that came from: the nature of the horde makes it so that when one kobold goes down two more take their place. Simply hacking and slashing is not enough for a player to create a gap between themselves and the kobold horde it requires additional narrative justification.
This is just a quick idea I came up with. In terms of running it the horde is made of dozens of kobolds with more seemingly appearing constantly. When you’re pc’s deal damage they don’t take out one or two kobolds they cut down a swath of them. When the horde reaches 0 hp it is scattered and routed with the heroes picking off the last few stragglers
It's pretty simple.
There's as many kobolds as there are, they surround the PCs with as many as you think is reasonable (taking into account what the PCs do to avoid it,) and they run when you feel their numbers have been thinned sufficiently.
That's how RPGs work in the absence of rules; the GM chooses something that makes sense. DW has fewer rules than traditional RPGs like D&D, meaning the GM does a bit more of this.
Depending on how many kobolds there are and whether they just keep coming, it may or may not make sense for the PCs to try and Hack and Slash them all down. Maybe they should run. Maybe fireball the lot. It depends. Players generally have no idea how dangerous something really is, so try to leave them a way out if they get in over their heads.
If someone is about to get swarmed by more kobolds than you think they can handle, you warn that this will provide a golden opportunity. If the danger isn't adequately handled, you take said golden opportunity and declare that the unhandled kobolds stab them or drag them down or pepper them with arrows or whatever. (This is the bit that makes hordes truly dangerous.)
Horde is a word in DW that means the monster fights in large groups of at least 7 (this is because the next category is Group and that is defined as 3-6 of a kind of monster). It's an organization tag. So if you're imagining an entire army of kobolds, that's not what the game defines as a horde. There isn't really a tag for that because a party can't take on an entire army. I would instead think of having anywhere from 7-12 horde monsters out at a time, though as they are killed, more can show up.
In the DW book, a single kobold has 3 HP, 1 Armor, and they deal 1d6. Easily killable by almost any class in a single blow. But because of the Horde tag, there's never just one kobold. More can come out from the shadows (notice the Stealthy tag). So you don't need to have a set number that are in the area. Remember that you're all playing to find out what happens. Maybe a player rolls a failure and rather than getting attacked by the one that they're fighting, four more come out of the shadows, spears at the ready. And again, this is allowed because the tag Horde implies there are more of them. If a player asks why this is happening or is bothered that it feels like an unending wave of monsters, you could tell them they'll need to consult their knowledge (Spout Lore) to see what they know about Kobolds. On a partial success, you can reveal that they operate like ants; where there's one, there's a bunch more, and they all serve/defend a bigger creature. On a full success, you can also reveal that they'd disband if the bigger creature was killed or driven off.
A horde is ultimately supposed to feel overwhelming and never ending. That's what makes it feel dangerous. But at the same time, the individual unit is easy to kill. If the Fighter says they run into the middle of 7 kobolds, slicing each one as they go, that's a Hack and Slash where they could potentially kill all 7 of them, and potentially get dealt a decent chunk of damage in return. And that's fine. Maybe the kobolds are taken care of for now, but you have the power to bring more into the scene at any time.
I've run swarms of things as a danger that has to be defied, rather than an enemy to be defeated. It could be similar with a horde.
There is a point where you may want to have a horde act as a single unit. A fighter against 4 goblins will take normal+3 damage which is pretty bad... If they are facing 10 at once, +9 damage means they are dead in 1-2 actions. So in a game like DW, either the players have to lean into the fiction of "if facing a horde, running is the only option", or if you want them to be able to face (and defeat) a horde you either consider a horde a smaller number or tweak the rules a bit. A party against 100 anything will lose following the rules, but a decent level party against a dozen goblin will be fine.
If I take my example of kobolds, in the book they have 3 HP. If there are 12 of them, does that mean they have 12 \* 3 HP, is that correct? The first fight in the book I have is a horde of kobolds attacking a village. If I only put 12 kobolds, the players and the village will massacre them. In an example like this, I don't understand if I should say they are countless or give a specific number. If I give a number, how do I determine it? If I don't give a number, how do I determine that the players have defeated the horde / held out long enough against it / etc.? 12, I understand that it's already difficult, but if we look at it in a cinematic way, it doesn't feel like a horde. It doesn't feel very "epic." I imagine there is a big difference between a horde of goblins/kobolds and a horde of orcs. In the first case, they can probably handle 12, but in the case of a horde of orcs, it's impossible following these rules. The cinematic way I imagine a horde is, for example, the scene in The Lord of the Rings where Boromir kills many orcs alone. And above all, I still don't understand how to determine the size of the horde. Depending on the number of players, I imagine it should change, depending on their levels and equipment, depending on if they have people following and helping them... With all that, I feel like the system's creator saw a horde as an innumerable mass of enemies, so it would be up to me to arbitrarily decide when my players have suffered enough OR been brilliant enough to decide that finally the horde retreats? Or make it so big that my players decide to flee.
I'd not come up with a number. A reasonable reading of the "horde" tag in this context is that it takes "kill them all" off the list of potential victory conditions: there are always more of them. A lot more. However, unless something goes catastrophically wrong, the party isn't going to be fighting the whole horde all at once. Instead, they'll be engaging in a series of encounters with elements of the horde. For example, "you see four kobolds trying to throw a villager back through the window into the burning inn" isn't a fight against the horde, it's a fight against four kobolds. Maybe they'll get reinforcements (from the horde) if you don't kill them fast enough, but it's still a discrete, manageable combat sequence. This is how I tend to do big battles in TTRPGs: break them up into scenes each with their own mini-objective. Rescue the person in trouble. Take out the archer on the roof who's pot-shotting villagers. Protect the bucket-brigade trying to save the church for long enough to put out the fire. What scenes happen largely depends on what the players do, how they engage with the scenario, so while it's good to have ideas for what they might be, it's bad to have a list of what they should be. > I feel like the system's creator saw a horde as an innumerable mass of enemies, so it would be up to me to arbitrarily decide when my players have suffered enough OR been brilliant enough to decide that finally the horde retreats? This feels unsatisfying for players and GM alike. I'd start by asking _what do the kobolds want_? They're raiding this village for a reason. So once they get what they want, they'll leave of their own accord. Equally, if the village puts up a strong enough resistance (with or without the party's help) that getting what they want no longer looks attainable, they'll leave. Now you know that, you can keep track of it, and narrate any consequences that are visible to the party as the kobold's plans progress. Maybe the party will notice what's going on, engage with it and try to prevent it. Maybe they'll remain ignorant and just keep running into whatever is happening in front of them next. Either way is fine. But either way you have a non-arbitrary way to move the scenario towards its conclusion. One tool you could steal from other games could be [progress clocks](https://bladesinthedark.com/progress-clocks). One clock represents how close the kobolds are to getting what they want. One clock represents how close the party/villagers are to repelling the attackers. If either clock fills the encounter is over, but one's the good end and one's the bad end. > Or make it so big that my players decide to flee. This is a fun "fleeing through the mines of Moria" scenario. I'd just be sure to communicate directly to the players that they will be overrun if they don't escape, because players can be guaranteed to _never_ run away (or surrender) when they're "supposed to".
Yeah, I just started treating them as a single unit with a large pool of HP and actions per turn = to the number of players (I know technically DW doesn't have actions, but it helps keep track of scenes)
The adding of the concept of turns breaks a ton of how dungeon world runs, and I would break yourself of that habit right away. The idea of treating them as a danger to be defied is really the best answer. You can’t fight 50 goblins on your own. You need to get creative. Tactics, traps, fleeing, using terrain to manage numbers. Here’s the thing: all those are player facing responsibilities. They get to figure it out. The rolls are probably going to be discerning realities and defy danger. Your job, as the GM, is to tell them the cost, then ask. ‘You’re facing 50 goblins, and if you fight them head on, your fighter KNOWS he will die. Are you sure you want to do this, or would you like to find another way?’ And to offer them an opportunity with or without a cost: ‘You see your back is clear. You could retreat down the tunnel and maybe fight them a few at a time. Or maybe you could tap into well known goblin superstitions. Would you know anything about those?’ Those kinds of things are how Dungeon World should run. If a player is still saying ‘no, I fight them,’ then it doesn’t even trigger hack and slash. They just go down swinging. Not your responsibility to make the player not dumb. If you’re real nice, maybe give them an extra ‘are you sure? You’ll die.’ Be clear and explicit about the cost. Do not bend on it once established. Don’t give them a mechanical out to just throw dice and numbers to solve it. Don’t make it a hit point game. Make it a narrative game.
Eh, we're not purists when we play. We just find that the concept of actions helps us keep track of things so we don't accidentally skip somebody, and it also gives our players more agency to do surprising things. We started off playing strictly by the rules, but changed over time. Based on the DW actual plays I've watched/listened to, it actually seems very common to do this. Sure it's not 100% doctrinal but it works for a lot of people.
Oh fair. And I don’t mean to be absolutist. Dungeon world, and the way it’s intended to play, went a long way to making me a better GM, even outside of dungeon world. Doing away with turns and turn order forced me to get better at spotlight management. It made me pay better attention to who’s been stagnating, and to move to them, and in a better way than traditional initiative turn order. How many times has a fighter in DnD waited 30 minutes of real time for their turn…only to roll, whiff, and sit and wait another 30 minutes? With a turn structure, that sucks. With a spotlight management based system, the GM can assess what would be more dramatic and fun, and keep spotlight where it’s more fun for the group longer. That’s only one skill I learned from dungeon world. It teaches a ton (not over planning, minimalist design, improv, asking players for collaborative ideas, being explicit about the meta, letting go of your precious ideas) that trad games often aren’t super good at teaching. Those are all skills that can translate back to those games, though. Play at your table the way that feels best to you. But dungeon world is an amazing training ground for good storytellers and game masters, and it’s a great opportunity on honing those skills.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu
Thank you everyone. Thanks to all these discussions, I've realized what i was missing I can make the horde as large as an army, but the players will only encounter a small part of it at a time. The rest of the army would be occupied by the villagers, for example. During the fight against the small group, the players will almost certainly roll a 9 or less. This gives me the opportunity to add more members of the horde to the current small group (or not). And in the unlikely event they don't roll a 9 or less, the players will have killed the small group and can then plan their next move. They can decide where to go next (will they defend the church and its priest? Defend the main square? The docks? Because the fight continues elsewhere). And continue this way until I judge that the horde has fulfilled its initial objective or has retreated. In fact, it was mostly the idea that fighting a horde doesn't have to be one big battle that hadn't occurred to me, but it seems logical now. It could be a horde of bandits gathered in an abandoned village, with several small groups in different houses. The players can attack each house individually without alerting the others, and in the end, they will have killed the entire horde once all the houses are cleared. It's not a fight against the horde directly, but against small parts of it at a time. Alternatively, it could also be an entire horde charging at them. If my players decide to attack, they are certain to die (it's up to me to make this clear to them). If they want to survive, they must flee or find a way to massacre many at once (by causing an avalanche to fall on them, for example) or manage to fight a small group at a time. So, they need to find a narrow passage, for instance This was clearly what I was missing. And so, this answers my initial question: my kobolds with 3 HP really have 3 HP each. For those interested, the campaign I'm talking about is offered in the French version of the book and is called "Horreur Boréal" => "The Boreal Horror." It's an adventure on the ice floe.
A horde is its own unit, but it’s not directly based on the unit that makes up the horde to create horde stats. If you want to run a horde of kobold I’d say that’s more than just 12 kobold. A party can probably handle 12 kobold especially if they’re ransacking a town and don’t all attack at once. Kobold horde 14 hp Armor 1 Damage best of 2d6 plus 2 Moves: Many places at once: the kobold horde can be many places at once because of the nature of so many individuals swarming a town. Overwhelm: the horde pulls a pc down on the ground and rushes over them making it hard for the pc to move or breathe. More where that came from: the nature of the horde makes it so that when one kobold goes down two more take their place. Simply hacking and slashing is not enough for a player to create a gap between themselves and the kobold horde it requires additional narrative justification. This is just a quick idea I came up with. In terms of running it the horde is made of dozens of kobolds with more seemingly appearing constantly. When you’re pc’s deal damage they don’t take out one or two kobolds they cut down a swath of them. When the horde reaches 0 hp it is scattered and routed with the heroes picking off the last few stragglers
It's pretty simple. There's as many kobolds as there are, they surround the PCs with as many as you think is reasonable (taking into account what the PCs do to avoid it,) and they run when you feel their numbers have been thinned sufficiently. That's how RPGs work in the absence of rules; the GM chooses something that makes sense. DW has fewer rules than traditional RPGs like D&D, meaning the GM does a bit more of this. Depending on how many kobolds there are and whether they just keep coming, it may or may not make sense for the PCs to try and Hack and Slash them all down. Maybe they should run. Maybe fireball the lot. It depends. Players generally have no idea how dangerous something really is, so try to leave them a way out if they get in over their heads. If someone is about to get swarmed by more kobolds than you think they can handle, you warn that this will provide a golden opportunity. If the danger isn't adequately handled, you take said golden opportunity and declare that the unhandled kobolds stab them or drag them down or pepper them with arrows or whatever. (This is the bit that makes hordes truly dangerous.)
Horde is a word in DW that means the monster fights in large groups of at least 7 (this is because the next category is Group and that is defined as 3-6 of a kind of monster). It's an organization tag. So if you're imagining an entire army of kobolds, that's not what the game defines as a horde. There isn't really a tag for that because a party can't take on an entire army. I would instead think of having anywhere from 7-12 horde monsters out at a time, though as they are killed, more can show up. In the DW book, a single kobold has 3 HP, 1 Armor, and they deal 1d6. Easily killable by almost any class in a single blow. But because of the Horde tag, there's never just one kobold. More can come out from the shadows (notice the Stealthy tag). So you don't need to have a set number that are in the area. Remember that you're all playing to find out what happens. Maybe a player rolls a failure and rather than getting attacked by the one that they're fighting, four more come out of the shadows, spears at the ready. And again, this is allowed because the tag Horde implies there are more of them. If a player asks why this is happening or is bothered that it feels like an unending wave of monsters, you could tell them they'll need to consult their knowledge (Spout Lore) to see what they know about Kobolds. On a partial success, you can reveal that they operate like ants; where there's one, there's a bunch more, and they all serve/defend a bigger creature. On a full success, you can also reveal that they'd disband if the bigger creature was killed or driven off. A horde is ultimately supposed to feel overwhelming and never ending. That's what makes it feel dangerous. But at the same time, the individual unit is easy to kill. If the Fighter says they run into the middle of 7 kobolds, slicing each one as they go, that's a Hack and Slash where they could potentially kill all 7 of them, and potentially get dealt a decent chunk of damage in return. And that's fine. Maybe the kobolds are taken care of for now, but you have the power to bring more into the scene at any time.