Hunting Big Game in D&D

[Deleted]

Hey,

So, because of #selfisolate, I've recently watched "Princess Mononoke", and the scenes featuring the boar got me pretty D&D-ishly inspired. In 2e AD&D, there's even a similar character, stat'ed out for the Birthright campaign setting:

www.birthright.net/forums/showwiki.php?title=The_Boar


Regardless of what I myself might ponder to do with it, how would you structure an adventure about hunting "big game" like this?

I have done similar scenarios a couple of times, the most "relevant" example within our context here perhaps being the one that was based around the "Dragon's Lair" map from "Adventures in Fantasy". ...And I would also love to run a "Moby Dick"-style scenario one day, even though I'm not sure whether D&D, in general, is the best suited system for something like that. (As opposed to, say, Ars Magica, or the Storyteller System for WoD, or other systems that are relying less on "skirmish"-style combat setups.)

What do you think about this? How would you do it? Have you done it?

Thank you,

Rafe

[hamurai]

Some 25ish years ago I played in a scenario like it. Our group (we played AD&D 2e back then) was hunting for a legendary beast because we needed some part of it (I can't remember what it was, the heart or the eyes or something) for a spell to save a very important NPC in the campaign.

The adventure started out with some players going over the equipment lists and getting an overview of the costs. The other players were meeting some scholars for information about the whereabouts of said beast. Of coourse it wasn't just outside of town, we then played a series of adventures traveling the world to a faraway land (iirc our DM made some sort of High Elven Forest/Samurai Japan mix). Along the road we had some other smaller adventures and when we finally arrived in the faraway land, we changed play to have more of a sandbox adventure in the jungles and caves of the land, where we had found out the beast lived. It was classic wilderness adventure, some part tracking, some part survival. At some point we had tracked the beast down and started the actual hunt. I remember the beast got away with some injuries several times but in the end we killed it and retrieved the item we had come for.

It was a small campaign in itself.

[Starbeard]

I've had "boss monsters" roaming the wilderness a few times. The method I typically employ is to roll random encounters in the wilderness, but whenever that particular creature type or category is encountered, that specific monster is encountered instead.

For example: say a dragon is known to live in the region. Whenever you roll "dragon" as a wilderness encounter, then the party spots the dragon. A simple table can tell you whether they encounter tracks or other evidence, spy the dragon in flight, or resting on the ground. If the dragon is in flight and doesn't spot them, a simple roll will determine whether they see it moving away from its lair hex, or directly toward its lair hex. Eventually, assuming they are out to handle this dragon, they will either encounter it in a showdown, or follow it back to its hidden lair.

Edit: for a game where nasty monster hunting was the main focus, I would probably key a specific monster or herd for just about every wilderness encounter. "Winning" could be eliminating the threat of wacky giant monsters from the land. On the other hand, if you hunt out the whole mastodon herd, then there are no mastodons left.