Need Help With a Scenario

[the-golem]

Hmmm. I'm not really familiar with GURPS mechanics, but I'd have the goblins coming in steady waves, each increasing in difficulty. To be clear, not seperate encounters.

For example: The first wave is, say, 10 goblins. After 4 "rounds", send in 15 goblins. Another 3 rounds, 20 goblins. You get the point. This would at least alleviate some perceived stress on the PCs part. "We have to fight 200 goblins? At once? I surrender!"

Of course, if GURPS opperates completely out of the scheme of "rounds" then totally ignore everything I said

 

[ffy]

BTW, the wave idea is very good, because no matter how crappy your players perform, they'll always think they beat the Goblin army. Make sure your players don't notice that your determining your forces on their performance.

or they will THINK they defeated the goblin army, which actually broke off to do something much more scary than attacking the castle

 

[Herobizkit]

I'd just like to chime in and say, "Don't save the PC's."

As a player, I really dislike having a valiant effort go bad, then having some stronger NPC's come in and do the job that our team couldn't. If the team wasn't able to do the job by DM design, it's kinda unfair.

Now, being GURPS, I'd try and bargain for/assist the goblins with the removal of the humans... mostly because GURPS is dang lethal.

 

[wolfpunk]

If it were me, I'd tell my players that there could be options to defend the castle and that normal fighting isn't the only option. The players will start coming up with tricks and traps. If these are somewhat plausible, then I let them. Of course they'll need time to set traps and such. Maybe a half hour break between the Goblin scouts and the main army?

Don't try to quantify the inventory of the castle beforehand, just wing it when a players comes up with something. Prepare some traps you think they will use, and go from there/see how it goes.

BTW, the wave idea is very good, because no matter how crappy your players perform, they'll always think they beat the Goblin army. Make sure your players don't notice that your determining your forces on their performance.

This!!! We used to play defend the castle missions when we were kids. We would have an hour of real time to come up with all of the defenses we could think of, some the DM said we could do, some we couldn't, then we had a Grand Melee afterwards.

Ahhh those were the days.

Have fun storming the castle boys.