The following situation: the way my current campaign is going, the player chracters are going to track down a group of enemy soldiers hiding in the forest. The PCs have about a score of mercenaries under their command.
The enemy group will be a bit larger in size and have set up camp somewhere in the forest. The PCs know the approximate direction and size of the enemy force, but not much more, and will be tasked to track the soldiers down and neutralize them.

What kind of stuff can I throw at the players to make this more interesting than "party goes there and skirmish"? The setting is low magic-ish medieval fantasy.

My plans so far are to have the players track through the forest, maybe run into some enemy scouts or hunters they can torture/bribe for information, get into some trouble with the typical forest wildlife, and ultimately find and attack the enemy camp with their own men to kill and or capture the leader. But that seems a bit bare bones to me, I would like to spice it up somehow. Maybe give the enemies fortifications, but that wouldn't exactly fit the setting of soldiers hiding in a forest behind enemy lines.

How much of a swerve are you interested in throwing at them? Like you could just have the soldiers be unusually well prepared with competent guards who alert the whole camp to their approach immediately.

Or you could have the camp be attacked by giants/ogres/trolls/etc in the middle of combat, since guarding against the giants was why they were unusually alert and watchful. Or the camp happens to be directly above a slumbering tarrasque. Wacky hijinks ensue.

>>95999136 (OP)
Booby traps. Simple shit like snares, pits with sharpened sticks, crossbows linked to tripwires. Take inspiration from Vietnam and real world guerilla fighters in general.

>>95999136 (OP)
An army marches on its stomach. These men had to have been eating somehow, and hunting only gets you so much. Say they've raided some nearby settlements. From there it's reasonable to assume that they may also have hostages, and that adds a whole new dynamic to the situation (assuming the party gives a shit about trying to save any of them. Even if they don't though, it still serves a way to show these enemy soldiers as bastards.)

>>95999136 (OP)
What game?

>the camp was set up in ancient ruins, thus the soldiers have access to some magic artefact they found within that gives them advantage in combat
>the PC group has been spotted way in advance, and the soldiers have a reverse ambush prepared (some guys acting as bait to lure in overconfident PCs, only for them to get flanked from the underwood)
>give the players the option to pick off enemy soldiers in stealth, or by convincing them to switch sides when meeting them in the forest

>>95999337
>>95999218
>>95999181
>>95999179
Good ideas. Having the soldiers squat in ruins as makeshift forts prepared for an attack while the environment is boobytrapped is a good start. Taking hostages is also a neat idea. Not sure about a free for all fight with a third party, but maybe I will do that if things go down too easily.

>>95999263
The Dark Eye. Mass combat isn't really something the system is good at, so I will probably break up the big fight into smaller skirmishes.

>>95999136 (OP)
>What kind of stuff can I throw at the players to make this more interesting than "party goes there and skirmish"? The setting is low magic-ish medieval fantasy.
You eat the soup you cooked.
This is precisely what you get from doing mudcore: the sheer realisation there is fucking nothing going on and it's just local lords fighting wars for regional kings

>>95999870
Anon, please work on your reading comprehension. Thank you.

>>95999136 (OP)
>What kind of stuff can I throw at the players to make this more interesting than "party goes there and skirmish"?
That would depend on what they find more interesting than that.
If you care about making things interesting, you have to know what interests your group; it's stupid to ask a bunch of internet strangers about your group's interests, because they aren't going to know either.
You do know that interest depends on the individual person, and isn't a measurable state of being, don't you?
Either get a better grasp of what your group likes by getting to know them better, or ask a question that outside observers can actually answer.

>j-just an-answer wh-what p-personally in-interests y-you
What internet strangers find interesting may not interest your group, and aren't valid answers to the question you asked.

>wh-who a-are y-you qu-quoting
OP, and anyone stupid enough to actually post the responses I'm predicting.

>>95999948
I already told you what to do.
You disliking the answer doesn't make it any less valid. And it's not even about mudcore. You simply wrote yourself into a corner and now trying to reinvent the wheel.

>>95999136 (OP)
While you say "party goes there and skirmish" would be dull, the players were tasked to come up with a decisive victory, something a skirmish is unlikely to result in. Isn't "more than a skirmish" already built into the scenario? The heroes need to either rout them or get all of their supplies. That said, I'd go with interesting terrain. Hills, caves, rivers, natural fortifications, darkness, the cover of fog or snowstorm, heavy rain and the threat of a landslide. If you want to do something in the tracking part of the game, track resources and use animals, at least mules but ideally horses and dogs, too.

>>96000100
Spitballing ideas is fun, Anon.

If it's a magical forest, it may not like human intruders. This includes both the party and the enemy group. Animals, plants and nature itself (like the weather being harsh, the ground shifting, etc) harass the PCs, but in the final fight the party can exploit this by putting the enemy into positions where they can be snatched up by tree vines or attacked by those hornets that have been pestering the PCs for hours. Maybe the party runs into a deserter of the enemy who just wants to get out of the damn woods, who can tell stories of his fellow soldiers being attacked by the spirits of nature or some such. If you wanna go with a classic, the party can meet a personification of the forest, like a tree goddess/nymph/great fairy, or atleast someone who speaks for the forest, whom they can convince, after some bargaining that they are here not to intrude on nature but to get rud of the intruders.

shameless bump

>>96000190
I will probably throw some of that into the mix. Thanks.

>>96001523
Supernatural forests are fun but I don't really wanna do that again as of now. Having the wildlife be hostile towards the intruders makes sense though.

>>95999136 (OP)
>The entire enemy force is already dead
>A Fair Folk Huntsman holds reign in this forest
Cue the Predator reinactment.

>>96008245
>shameless bump
Kill yourself

>>96008780
Why?