Cut To The Chase

[Piratecat]

Kevin, you're good with chases.

Thanks, James -- misspent youth.

 

[barsoomcore]

Thanks, James -- misspent youth.

*reads this, looks up at PC's title: "Toaster-Stealing Admin"*

Good thing you left those days behind you, huh?

And how is it that I already know that TB story? It must have gotten spread about in the wake of GenCon that year.

Turanil: I await your potential forgiveness with hope. I pretty much wrote these rules because I couldn't find what you're looking for, either.

Ber: I think you'll like it. It's much more Grim Tales than Spycraft, though -- no cross-referencing of maneuvers. Works just fine with either system, though!

Hand: My system actually works in a similar fashion, and DOES allow a variety of skills to be used. You can use it for foot chases or vehicle chases, and your players don't have to learn a bunch of new rules.


Another great chase scene from RPGs I'm going to nominate is the one from jonrog1's Drunk Southern Girls story hour, where the PCs are getting pursued by Men In Black, UFOs and then the Zombie Toddler goes for Jo.

We love Jo.

 

[The_Universe]

I ran a great session that was all chase about 2 months ago using the chase rules in Grim Tales - 5 characters on horses running after a careening carriage, with the party rogue already on it (she hid in a crate as it was being loaded).

It had all the highlights of this kind of setpiece battle - arrows/crossbow bolts/bullets flying, leaping from mount to mount, dead/unconscious drivers, out of control teams of horses...it was a very satisfying session to run, if only because being forced to move constantly really had an effect on how and what the characters could do.

I recommend the Grim Tales system, though I might give Barsoomcore's a looky-loo!

 

[GMSkarka]

Just a quick note: I'm finishing up the layout on Hot Pursuit as we speak, and expect to have it uploaded and available by this weekend.

I'll drop a note here when it goes live.

 

[Arnwyn]

But anyways, who else has run chases (or had chases spontaneously erupt on them)? How did they work out?

We have chases disturbingly often.

Our favorite was the classic "mountain road" chase scene - in the Forgotten Realms, with a mountain wall on the right, and a cliff on the left.

The bad guys in a wagon up ahead, shooting crossbows at the PCs chasing them in their own wagon behind - and the PC ranger taking a lot of hits as he desperately tries to spur the horses on...

Everything was going great and the PCs were almost beside the vilains until the PC wizard puts up a wall of ice in front of... everyone.

Screeching, crashing, dead horses, and the PCs' wagon gets up-ended and the ranger goes over the 100' cliff - and barely survives. Combat ensues along the road with the survivors, and the ranger climbs up the cliff, and kills the last villain.

Indeed, fun was had by all.

 

[DragonLancer]

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?

In my last campaign I ran a Githyanki invasion SL, and we had a great evening's game that ended with a chase.

The party were on horseback fleeing across the plains, escaping a enemy held city, whilst pursued by Githyanki knights on Wyverns. Arrows flying, fancy riding, and cunning use of spells.

I got a big thanx from the group that night.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Something to note: Descriptive Adjectives, you see it in the posts above, in the sounds of gun fire, the crashing of cars, the people in the street, the pounding of feet, the sharp pain in the side, the curve in the road, the grunt, curse and woof as someone trips. Think about words to describe the heart beating chase not just the mechanics.

 

[azmodean]

This might be my very first pdf purchase, I mostly stick with core, but d... er, man I want a good chase system for d20.

It'll be interesting to try to work my party into a chase... two nightmares, a gargantuan scorpion...skeleton, a skeletal dragon, and a weretiger/monk.

 

[barsoomcore]

I recommend the Grim Tales system, though I might give Barsoomcore's a looky-loo!

I recommend EVERYTHING to do with Grim Tales. It's a heckuva book and one of the best RPG purchases I've ever made. I actually wrote these rules because of Benjamin's work in his book -- his chase rules were really really good, but I felt there were a couple of significant changes that I could make that would really turbo-charge them. It was a lot of thinking and puzzling out just what all the components were to a good chase and then coming up with mechanics to easily model those.

The end result is certainly not a massive departure from the Grim Tales system -- opposed maneuvers is the basis (which I thought was the really brilliant part of GT's rules), but I revamped a lot of the conditions and most especially the speed mechanics and obstacle rules to give more of what I felt a great chase scene had to it. It's not an expansion on GT, it's a distinctive transformation of those rules, dovetailing them with d20 Modern and 3.5 SRD and providing tools to bring in material from any d20 system. You can use any creature, any vehicle with these rules. Run chases on foot, in airplanes, speedboats, horseback, whatever.

If you like the Grim Tales system, I'm very sure you'll like these. They're more like GT than Spycraft, to be sure.

None of this is any sort of a swipe at those rules. Spycraft chase rules are HUGE fun for Spycraft games, and the GT rules are great for one chapter in a larger book. But I really felt that I wasn't the only person looking for a comprehensive, broad-ranging set of rules that expanded the d20 ruleset and would work with any d20 game system.

 

[Corinth]

I use the Chase rules from Spycraft.