For the second of the three tasks the sorceress set them, they had to defend the titular cradle. As of tonight, they're locked in battle with Lunars, water snakes and wyverns while the Watchdog of Corflu holds the Cradle fast in its fangs.
The battle pits the assorted defenders of the Cradle against dozens if not hundreds of Lunar troops. The player-characters form only a small portion of the defenders as the fight rages on the Cradle's deck (and potentially in the air and water too).
Now, resolving the combat involving the players is easy enough. But what about the battle all around?
What I've been doing is just using the combat factors from the marvellous fantasy wargame Hordes of the Things to resolve each of the various group fights with a single opposed die roll. When massed Lunar hoplites are fighting assorted Orlanthi, Storm Bull and Zola Fel cultists, I treat the Lunars as spears (with rear-rank support bonus) and the defenders as warband. So the roll is D6+5 for the Lunars vs D6+3 for the defenders. If the Lunars double the defenders' total, they destroy that block of defenders. If they merely beat them, they push them back. As warband, the defenders are weaker, but they do have the advantage (from the HOTT rules) of destroying spears if they beat them at all.
Obviously, all of the troop types from HOTT (or its parent game DBA) can be used as the situation demands. The water snakes count as behemoths, and when the wyvern riders attack, they'll be aerial heroes (+5!). The dark trolls, who have just emerged from the lower decks of the cradle, will fight as blades (+5).
So how does this interact with the PCs and their RuneQuest combat? Well, I resolve those fights individually first and then factor their outcomes into the surrounding battle. For example, the Lunars, coming down the Watchdog's head and shoulders onto the deck, have formed up three HOTT elements wide (in my head - we aren't using miniatures for this). Each element is supported by another, giving them the +1 for rear support. I'm assuming that each element consists of six hoplites (as in the scenario). If the PCs have taken out foes in their combat round, I give the defenders in that point of the line a +1 bonus.
Tonight, it worked like this. Our dwarves each laid low a Lunar hoplite in the middle of the line. So for that combat, I gave the defending warband element +4 rather than +3. They rolled 6 against the Lunars' 4, giving 10 against 9, so the defenders destroyed the front Lunar spear element and were now pushing up through to the rear rank.
Unlike in HOTT, I didn't have the supporting element destroyed too; I want the battle to last longer, and for the players to feel the advantage as they thin the Lunar ranks. And by swiftly resolving the combats to left and right of the engaged members of the party, I was able to describe what was happening on the deck without having to either make it up or resolve it through long periods of dice-rolling that didn't involve the players.
Earlier in the campaign, we did something similar using HOTT miniatures to simulate an attack on a caravan. The players cast their spells and rolled their attacks, and these influenced the HOTT game around them. It wasn't quite a full game of HOTT (for one thing, I had to stream it over Zoom via a document camera for those not in the room), but I think a full-on game of HOTT with RPG mechanics providing bonuses for the relevant combats would work perfectly. So, in a round in which the players killed all their foes, I'd give a +2 bonus to the element with which they're associated (or perhaps a -2 penalty to their foes, which makes the latter easier to double). That way, the players get to make all their usual combat rolls but still get to have an influence on the more abstracted battle taking place on the tabletop.
Epic!
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