Recalled to Action: Berserk, WWN
Introduction
So over on the OSR Discord Sahh came up with a super neat little writing challenge. She (along with Havoc) have done a scene from the first arc of Berserk. I'll be following in their footsteps in this regard (although I do plan to do at least one mass-combat scene from some sort of fantasy novel, because this is a fun idea!). System-wise, I tend to use some bastardized version of Worlds Without Number, with all the prickly bits edged off and polished to taste with wax from other OSR games.
I'll be doing two different recaps, though. On the one hand, I think John McGuts is a great example of a cool character with tons of foreground growth, but on the other hand I don't think his power level is representative of a typical character in many of my games. In the interest of creating a similar basis of reference, I'll be explaining my thought process if I were referring a character like Guts, but I'll also do the same for our villain, Lord Zondark, who is much closer to the power level I'm used to adjudicating in Worlds Without Number.
Guts's POV
In Media Res Beginning
Our protagonist in this case is being pursued by a hostile force through clustered city streets. There are a lot, but Guts is a pretty tough guy.
Any combat where I have to keep track of more than like 10 health pools is generally something I try to avoid, so during Guts's first few engagements with these guards in the panel above I'd probably ask his player to roll a d6 every round to represent the number of people he was eliminating with each round of combat until Lord Zondark arrives. I'd have a total number of guards among the force and subtract from that total number as they were killed off. Essentially, I've merged a bunch of disparate health pools into one.
There is one big reason why I feel empowered to do it this way: Firstly, shock damage in Worlds Without Number ensures that characters do damage to targets even on a miss. Every fighter that I've ran games for in my Worlds Without Number games has picked up on the fact that shock damage is the mechanic to go after to be effective in combat. Shock damage is both the damage you do on a miss and the minimum amount of damage you may do on a successful hit. Every weapon has a shock value that is increased by the attribute used to make the attack and the magical bonus from the weapon. There are a few foci (Worlds Without Number's version of 5e feats) that allow you to add other things to the shock damage, too, but the point is to show that even on a mechanical "miss" Guts is probably still demolishing these guys. Hit Dice in WWN are all d6s, too, so it's pretty easy to arrive at damage that would destroy all but the most hardy enemies of HD 2 or fewer. Add that onto a sick ass magic sword that is about 400lbs in weight and it makes sense mathematically to abstract this to big d6-men dead per sword swing style resolutions. If anyone could get close enough to touch him (unlikely, as I'd probably treat his AC as higher than your normal man because he's swinging around that sword fast enough to cut things instead of pulverize them) I'd probably just do a number of attacks equal to the number of enemies killed that round to roll less dice and keep combat flowing quickly.
Charging onto the Battlefield, Lord Zondark!
Lord Zondark enters and it's immediately clear that this guy is a cut above the rest. Not only is he wielding a massive weapon, he's also much taller (and thus stronger?) than our protagonist Guts and the regular soldiers. I'd probably stat this guy with a similar Armor Class to the rest, but a higher HD. Maybe 3 or 4? Enough such that the stakes of combat just got considerably higher for our protagonist. At this point, Guts has chopped up enough of the regular soldiers to trigger a morale roll and leave them frozen in place. I'd probably break out of combat for a second as Lord Zondark tries to talk to Guts, but Guts's Player is not interested in parley, so we go back into initiative. I usually just roll a single d6 per side and reroll ties. Lord Zondark Wins, so he goes for a few strikes here:
Remember, even on misses Guts would accrue some shock damage (in this case I imagine some shrapnel from the flagstones might hit him) but his health pool is high enough that this damage is pretty minimal. Shock damage can be quite impactful at early levels, but its effectiveness starts to wane as you get better armor and thus take shock damage less often.
Sahh's write-up (see Introduction) mentioned that Lord Zondark probably had multiple attacks, and I agree. This exchange seems like natural reactions from a PC ducking and dodging these big blows. The friendly fire looks like a detail I would describe and regret later when/if Guts had any backup in this fight more than any actual mechanical thing worth resolving or mentioning. This turn is nothing more than attack rolls and misses. And Shock Damage, although Guts isn't in a position where that bothers him much.
Normally when my players try and do called shots like these, I allow them to do so and assign Shock Damage from whatever they want to do, provided they hit the attack in the first place (usually modified by some number based on the difficulty of the attempted action). This encourages players to try and interact with the fiction more, since they're not "wasting" a turn if they still do shock damage on a miss. Guts's player probably rolled pretty well, so I'd rule that the weapon he was trying to disable completely destroyed. The Dragonslayer (the sword) is very magic and super big, so even the shock damage is a pretty big swing and would trigger some morale roll for Lord Zondark (or at least I feel like I would be suitably flustered if one swing from a guy a foot shorter than me was enough to shatter my weapon and my armor). He fails miserably and, in keeping with being bunted with a big sword, is knocked over. Combat with this guy is effectively over (I don't see him fomenting any resistance with shards of metal in his face), so Guts's PC narrates a sick face kick too, which, combined with more reinforcements, is enough to eventually cause the frozen guards to come to life and subdue our protagonist.
Zondark's POV
Lord Zondark has painstakingly crawled his way into nobility, from adventuring amongst the every day rabble, to making strange deals with mysterious forces and eventually claiming lordship and power. His command extends over the guardsmen in the city, who are pursuing a Black-clad swordsman for [reasons not relevant to this write-up]. Knowing the legends of the swordsman's strength, He dons his weapons and armor and goes to assist his mercenaries.
Guts is not a force mortal men can hope to slay. The great danger to a Referee in this instance is under-communicating the danger of an encounter with Guts. If I were running a Guts-encounter like this, I'd have our Lord Zondark come across horribly dismembered piles of guards and describe long streaks into the stone and splatters of blood on the wall.
Even still, Lord Zondark undoubtedly knows that his guardsmen are still pursuing, so he gives chase. What Lord Zondark didn't know is that by choosing to don his armor (a big, bulky set of plate) I rolled a morale roll for the guardsmen pursuing Guts. Had Lord Zondark pursued the swordsman without armor, I doubt the morale roll would be necessary since Lord Zondark would arrive before the bodies started piling up.
So Lord Zondark arrives to the scene, black swordsman backed into a corner and quickly building himself a flesh-metal fortress from the bodies of bisected guardsmen. Lord Zondark's Player is pretty smart! He knows a straight out fight won't be too easy given Guts's reputation, and it's visibly apparent his guards have at least neglected to help him regain control of the situation. He tries taunting the black swordsman as he approaches.
Taunts are a strange beast. Sometimes, if a taunt is particularly clever or utilizes some cool knowledge, I'll let it have the desired effect naturally; I want to reward engaging with the world on that level, even if it is literally just spouting targeted insults. Other times, if the insult is particularly uncreative or doesn't leverage any world knowledge, I'll use a reaction roll, with low rolls meaning the NPC is upset by the taunts and high rolls meaning the NPC is unaffected by them.
Either way I'd decide to run this in the moment, I think it fails. Lord Zondark tries to attack both Guts's height and his disproportionately large sword, neither of which he is insecure about, so the taunt is ultimately unsuccessful. If only he had said something about his hair…
Knowing that it'll be a tough fight regardless, Zondark wants to get the initative, deciding for a charging maneuver to (hopefully) get some blows in before initative is rolled. Generally, I tend to give my players some advantage for being particularly decisive starting combat, so I let Zondark get a free hit in. He rolls and misses. How unlucky. He does get a little Shock Damage, though, so not a total waste!
Initative gets rolled, Zondark wins! Another swing, another miss. Unlucky rolls.
Guts's turn happens. Zondark gets clowned. Not dead, because I use a Death & Dismemberment table, but definitely left with some scars from this encounter. Guts is apprehended, however, and Zondark lives to fight another day. Perhaps round two will do him a bit better…
Closing Thoughts
This was a fun exercise! I think running through this kind of thing in my head can be good practice for the fair-weather referee and a good resource for people looking to run similar games. One thing I noticed is that I definitely wanted to treat Lord Zondark and Guts differently depending on who was being controlled by a player character. Im not particularly surprised by this, but I am also curious as to why that was my first instinct. I’ve got some thinking to do.