barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
Hoofs beat, tires screech, dragons and engines roar... 
Have you ever run a really memorable chase scene? Your PCs in pursuit of a fleeing bad guy, or vice versa?
Barsoom Season Four started up last fall with a fun sequence: the PCs were in a parade, riding atop a gigantic triceratops in a canopied howdah, when suddenly the triceratops ahead of them went berserk and assassins leapt aboard. They had to take charge of their dinosaur and get it going after the berserk one, careening madly through the narrow streets of Petrahegna while trying to leap across to the other and do battle with fanatical assassins aboard an unstable, fast-moving platform.
It was pretty fun. And starting a campaign that's been on hiatus for nearly a year with "You're riding a dinosaur in a parade, roll for initiative," is always fun.
I also ran a really fun chase in my Dead Man's Chest campaign where the PCs were trying to escape from a haunted castle with a artifact, pursued by the evil sorcerer also seeking the thing. Two wagons rattling along a cliffside road, grenades, leaping to cut the traces of the horses, magic spells going off and eventually the bad guy plunges to apparent doom.
PHEW.
I do find, however, that chase scenes are much less common in RPGs than combat scenes. In part that's because (cough, cough) there haven't been really thorough rules to cover them, but also most games are very much focussed on combat and thus other activities are just never as easy to get your party into. But I find there's always a way.
But anyways, who else has run chases (or had chases spontaneously erupt on them)? How did they work out?
My motive here is entirely mercenary, I admit; I have a new book coming out from Adamant Entertainment called HOT PURSUIT that is in fact a comprehensive set of chase rules for d20 that will apply to pretty much ANY d20 system. I love chases and have always tried to figure out ways of running them that would be fun and exciting, because darn it, chases ARE fun and exciting.
So spill your stories if you got 'em! Follow That Fire-Breathing Reptile! And who knows? If I get sufficiently inspired I might have do an expansion book.
Have you ever run a really memorable chase scene? Your PCs in pursuit of a fleeing bad guy, or vice versa?
Barsoom Season Four started up last fall with a fun sequence: the PCs were in a parade, riding atop a gigantic triceratops in a canopied howdah, when suddenly the triceratops ahead of them went berserk and assassins leapt aboard. They had to take charge of their dinosaur and get it going after the berserk one, careening madly through the narrow streets of Petrahegna while trying to leap across to the other and do battle with fanatical assassins aboard an unstable, fast-moving platform.
It was pretty fun. And starting a campaign that's been on hiatus for nearly a year with "You're riding a dinosaur in a parade, roll for initiative," is always fun.
I also ran a really fun chase in my Dead Man's Chest campaign where the PCs were trying to escape from a haunted castle with a artifact, pursued by the evil sorcerer also seeking the thing. Two wagons rattling along a cliffside road, grenades, leaping to cut the traces of the horses, magic spells going off and eventually the bad guy plunges to apparent doom.
PHEW.
I do find, however, that chase scenes are much less common in RPGs than combat scenes. In part that's because (cough, cough) there haven't been really thorough rules to cover them, but also most games are very much focussed on combat and thus other activities are just never as easy to get your party into. But I find there's always a way.
But anyways, who else has run chases (or had chases spontaneously erupt on them)? How did they work out?
My motive here is entirely mercenary, I admit; I have a new book coming out from Adamant Entertainment called HOT PURSUIT that is in fact a comprehensive set of chase rules for d20 that will apply to pretty much ANY d20 system. I love chases and have always tried to figure out ways of running them that would be fun and exciting, because darn it, chases ARE fun and exciting.
So spill your stories if you got 'em! Follow That Fire-Breathing Reptile! And who knows? If I get sufficiently inspired I might have do an expansion book.
