[FFG] Cityworks Questions

[Tuerny]

Hey, I picked this book up the other day, and have been skimming through it.

It looks pretty cool so far but I have noticed some things missing.

1) It mentions the bustling and fading cities both in the text and the tables but it fails to provide entries for them in the city archetypes section.

2) The chase rules fail to mention how the quarry can successfully escape by any means but magic. As far as I can tell the quarry doesn't gain any distance from the pursuer failing his chase check, thus making the pursuer's catching up with the quarry inevitable barring the pursuer deciding he has gotten bored with the chase.

Am I missing something?

Jesse Dean

 

[SkeletonKey Ed]

Regarding the chase, I would give the quarry a roll for their Chase Defense instead of them taking 10. If they beat the persuer's chase check by more than 5, the quarry moves ahead by a distance equal to his base speed.

These rules seem geared toward PCs chasing someone and not the PCs being chased. I'm sure Mike Mearls will chime in on this.

Cheers - Ed

 

[JoeGKushner]

Ed, that was an awesome map you did for the book.

Wish that there were more though. Book seemed real light on mechanical content this time around.

 

[SkeletonKey Ed]

Thanks, Joe. I would have liked to done more maps, but it isn't really up to me. I think a flood level and fire route map would have been cool in Cityworks.

I always think there should be more maps, so I may not be the best judge of that.

Next Saturday I am starting a new campaign centered around a large city (NG's Lost City of Barakus) and Cityworks will be getting a lot of use. Despite it's lack of maps, (I can always make my own, I guess) I will get more use from Cityworks than Dungeoncraft, I think.

Cheers - Ed

 

[mearls]

1) It mentions the bustling and fading cities both in the text and the tables but it fails to provide entries for them in the city archetypes section.

I'll have to wait until my comp copies arrive, but I'm not sure what happened with this. My digital copies are hard to look through for this sort of thing.

2) The chase rules fail to mention how the quarry can successfully escape by any means but magic. As far as I can tell the quarry doesn't gain any distance from the pursuer failing his chase check, thus making the pursuer's catching up with the quarry inevitable barring the pursuer deciding he has gotten bored with the chase.

I think I dropped a sentence in that section. Originally, both parties rolled and the higher result won, but I found that produced results that were a bit too random. If the pursuers fail their check, the quarry moves ahead of the pursuers a distance equal to its speed.

As for when the chase ends, that's pretty much up to the DM. There's no set rules for it. Until the pursuers lose track of the quarry, they can keep up the chase. I'd use that as a rule of thumb. If the quarry is so far ahead that the PCs can't see him, then they can't continue the chase.

Sorry about the confusing rules.

 

[Tuerny]

I understand. I just would have prefered if the rules were slightly more clear-cut, even with a base distance needed.

Otherwise the book is pretty cool. I wish I had had it when my campaign started, and I am almost considering moving my PCs to another city so I can make proper use of the material.

 

[SkeletonKey Ed]

I think the players in my campaign would not be happy if they were being chased and didn't get a roll. For simplicity's sake, I think I will houserule that PCs get the roll and NPCs take 10 regardless of who is the persuer and who is the quarry.

I hope to run a little chase next Saturday. I'll post how things go.

Cheers - Ed

 

[mearls]

I understand. I just would have prefered if the rules were slightly more clear-cut, even with a base distance needed.

Well, you could use a "cut off distance" based on the terrain. Once the quarry is ahead of the pursuer by the cut off distance or greater, the chase ends. It could be something like 1/2 mile in clear terrain to a single block in a city.

Ed - Having the PCs roll regardless of their status (pursuer/quarry) should work fine. Rolling for both sides might work, too.

Again, apologies for the unclear rules. I really should have spent more time on the base rules than all the add ons, and I complete messed up the quarry can't gain ground thing. The funny thing is that if you asked me how it worked, I would've explained it as I did a post up rather than how it showed up in the book. It looks like I messed up in revising the rules.

Does anyone know if Murphy's Rules are still around? A chase system that doesn't allow the quarry to ever escape sounds like a good candidate for them... =)

 

[Tuerny]

A half-mile?

What if you run out of city?



Jesse Dean

 

[d20Dwarf]

Then you wouldn't be in clear terrain.