Traveling the road home, the party crests a ridge and stops cold. Below them, in a wide clearing at the edge of the forest, sixty hobgoblins are making camp. They’re organized, well-armed, and moving with purpose toward the very village the party calls home. Worse, the horde is camped squarely across the only viable route through. The terrain on either side is a tangle of steep ravines and dense forest that would take days to navigate. There’s no way around, and no time to find one.
Fighting sixty hobgoblins head-on is suicide at any level. The party’s only real option is to whittle the horde down before it reaches the village. They can raid the supply cache at the edge of camp, collapse the narrow ravine the column has to pass through, pick off sentries in the dark, spook the warg handlers, or find the hobgoblin commander and take him out quietly. Every hobgoblin they put down before the assault begins improves the odds for the people waiting at the other end of the road.
How far the party gets and how creative they’re willing to be determines how the battle for the village goes. The DM should track the attrition honestly. A party that plays it smart and cuts the force to thirty or fewer gives the village militia a fighting chance. A party that takes too long or makes too much noise may find the horde moving out before they’re ready, and the villagers facing long odds on their own.
Party Level: 2-5. Direct combat against the full horde isn’t survivable, which is the point. OSR players will recognize the setup immediately and know what it demands.
World: Any, but well-suited to both Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms
Rules-set: Originally designed for OSR
Notes: I ran this with a group of four players running 2nd-level characters using Old-School Essentials. It lasted two sessions, and the party used stealth to great advantage. Some lucky dice rolls really made a big impact. – SW
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