barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
Gunfights, mooks hitting the pavement and big crashes.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about! Nice story, dd.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about! Nice story, dd.
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Cut To The Chase
- Thread starter barsoomcore
- Start date
Qualidar
First Post
My best chase:
The asteroid base of Darkhold; the party chasing a spy through an evacuation riot, crossing paths with a simultaneous station security pursuit of a robot they accidentally smuggled aboard, dodging through looters on foot, a stolen hover-lark, and a hover-scooter.
Side note: I'm totally picking up this product!
~Qualidar~
p.s. a hover lark lies somewhere between a wheelchair and a golf cart. Without wheels, of course.
The asteroid base of Darkhold; the party chasing a spy through an evacuation riot, crossing paths with a simultaneous station security pursuit of a robot they accidentally smuggled aboard, dodging through looters on foot, a stolen hover-lark, and a hover-scooter.
Side note: I'm totally picking up this product!
~Qualidar~
p.s. a hover lark lies somewhere between a wheelchair and a golf cart. Without wheels, of course.
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
I think hover-anything is good. 
Barsoom:
How well does the book work with mixing chase types... As in, car vs helicopter, or foot vs vehicle. From what I've read, it seems most people are talking about foot vs foot persuit and car chasing car, but how well does the book relate to mixing the different kinds of transport available, and how well would it handle changing persuit type during the encounter (IE: starting out as foot vs helicopter, the guy on foot steals a car and speeds off)?
How well does the book work with mixing chase types... As in, car vs helicopter, or foot vs vehicle. From what I've read, it seems most people are talking about foot vs foot persuit and car chasing car, but how well does the book relate to mixing the different kinds of transport available, and how well would it handle changing persuit type during the encounter (IE: starting out as foot vs helicopter, the guy on foot steals a car and speeds off)?
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
There shouldn't be any problems whatsoever with that sort of thing, jezter6. As long as you have a participant speeds in equivalent units, the system will work just fine. And if folks jump into a car and zoom off, no problem.
Obviously there's going to be problems out at the far extremes -- if your foot chase suddenly gets aboard a couple of FTL spacecraft, yeah, you might want to house-rule that baby a little.
Essentially the system provides a set of Speed Categories (exactly like the ones in d20 Modern) and those determine things like Def bonuses and check penalties. Those categories make for reasonably useful distinctions for any terrestial chases, but a chase involving really fast vehicles might be better served by a different set of Categories (otherwise everyone's in the top category for the whole chase, which is not quite as much fun) -- so obviously if your participants ARE saddled with widely divergent speeds you'll have to decide which end of the scale your categories are weighted towards.
But you don't have to make any changes whatsoever, frankly.
I'm thinking of doing a couple of supplements -- one for foot chases and one for aerial vehicles (possibly including dogfight rules), as those have some pretty distinctive elements that would benefit from a more thorough treatment. But the rules as they stand WILL handle the situations you describe just fine.
Obviously there's going to be problems out at the far extremes -- if your foot chase suddenly gets aboard a couple of FTL spacecraft, yeah, you might want to house-rule that baby a little.
Essentially the system provides a set of Speed Categories (exactly like the ones in d20 Modern) and those determine things like Def bonuses and check penalties. Those categories make for reasonably useful distinctions for any terrestial chases, but a chase involving really fast vehicles might be better served by a different set of Categories (otherwise everyone's in the top category for the whole chase, which is not quite as much fun) -- so obviously if your participants ARE saddled with widely divergent speeds you'll have to decide which end of the scale your categories are weighted towards.
But you don't have to make any changes whatsoever, frankly.
I'm thinking of doing a couple of supplements -- one for foot chases and one for aerial vehicles (possibly including dogfight rules), as those have some pretty distinctive elements that would benefit from a more thorough treatment. But the rules as they stand WILL handle the situations you describe just fine.
I'd be interested in a smaller add-on for arial stuff. I'd like to see things like cover/concealment when hiding from arial surveillance (which is basically a chase once you've been spotted the first time).
I've been watching too much COPS and Wildest Police Videos, got chopper chases on the brain lately for no good reason.
I've been watching too much COPS and Wildest Police Videos, got chopper chases on the brain lately for no good reason.
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
Yeah, definitely -- and that's a great inspiration source I hadn't considered yet.
Look to the skies!
Look to the skies!
ledded
Herder of monkies
Man, have I been out of the loop.
I've been waiting for this to come out for a while, having seen (and used) some previous incarnations of it that Corey was nice enough to send me, but work etc have kept me away from the boards for a while.
I just want to say that I'm gonna pick this one up soon and try to give it a good read over the weekend, but if it's improved any on the earlier versions then it should very well suit the gap between too abstract and overly-concrete systems, which is what I've been looking for for quite a while.
My chase anecdote:
So we were in our d20 Modern game, a Medallions episode that I quest wrote and directed, and these private paramilitary security types were leaving the scene of a big bang-up at a local small airport and we weren't even sure who were the bad guys after the dust settled. They decided that they should follow the caravan of Black Suburbans to see where they parked their rides, so a couple of the PC's jump in their car and give chase.
One of the characters, not satisfied with that, got overly excited because I had placed part of the game at an airport and then had the nerve, the GALL, to leave unattended aircraft lying around.
So, his few-ranks-in-pilot-and-no-aircraft-feats-or-plausible-training-whatsover butt decides to steal a helicopter. To chase the Suburbans with. Nothing I say as GM to dissuade him gets through the haze of helicopter-lust he has driven himself to.
So with the inordinate dice-luck this player has coupled with his boundless single-minded enthusiasm for this "plan", I somehow end up letting him cruise around in a stolen helicopter, even though his self-professed training wholly consists of about 60 hours on an X-Box playing shoot-em-up flight sims (he figured that was good enough for about 3 ranks in pilot ).
He loses control of the helicopter about one out of every three rounds, erratically spinning, zig-zagging, juking, soaring, dropping, and skipping tensely across the Birmingham sky, nearly killing himself several times until he spots the Suburbans, with the two other character lazily following them in their car, pulling into the parking garage of the very place the owners of the Suburbans said they were going.
Then he is contacted for the 5th time by the local airport who informs him that not only is he violating a controlled airspace without a flight-plan, but violating the flight ceiling and several laws by refusing to answer their calls. Since he was obviously in control of the aircraft, they were gonna scramble a couple Phantoms from the local Marine reserve unit to have a look, because he was probably a nutso terrorist so "just stay right there while the nice jets come to give you an, ahem, escort sir".
The guy gets spooked by the air traffic controller, takes the helicopter low, weaving and bobbing like a maniac through downtown buildings looking for a safe place to land (not much flat space for someone who doesnt know how to land a helicopter). I remind him several times about his chances of arriving at imminent doom, and the player is now running quite scared but too stubborn to back away from his "plan". He clips trees, makes crash checks for skimming power lines, takes out a few windows with his rotor blades on taller buildings, each time just barely, BARELY making the checks of the increasingly insane DC's I'm setting, blowing action points left and right, taking really low damage rolls to the aircraft when they are called for.
He spots Legion field, the open air football stadium near downtown, and makes a beeline for it about 60 feet off the ground *as fast as he can* (I said, "are you sure you wanna do that?" and he said "yeah yeah, zoom go fast", so I said "um, ok").
Then, just as he is about to "hop" the helicopter over the side of the stadium to land on the big open grass field, he rolls a 1 on his pilot check for the manuver, and then another 1 on a crash check and loses control. The helicopter yaws crazily, the stabilizer raking across the top of the stadium and then the rotor-tips tearing through the sign/jumbotron as it spins, smoking and trailing parts, nearly flipping/rolling end over end, instruments going nuts, lights blinking, alarms screeching as the character screams like a 7 year old girl. Minimum damage allows him to remain alive, and he barely regains control by hitting the DC right on the nose ("so, um, you sure you don't want to roll an action point for that?") but then miserably fails the pilot check to reduce speed for a safe, normal landing. He rolls for the final crash check that will certainly mean life or death, knowing that even if he makes it, he will have one, just one pilot check against all odds to even land it safely, no pulling up or taking your time.
Crash check? Natural 20, hits the DC on the nose.
Pilot check to land? Another Natural 20. Helicopter spins crazily, he closes his eyes and, screaming, yanks/kicks/scratches at the controls until everything stops moving, then opens his eyes to see he is hovering with a slow spin 2 feet off the ground on the fifty yard line. The player (and others) cheer at this unexpected turn of luck as the PC plops the copter down and hits the kill switch.
The PC then quickly leaps out of the helicopter that he is now accusing of trying to murder him and declares that he is going to take a whizz. As he begins doing so, I remind him that helicopters don't turn off immediately, that the rotor blades are still spinning above him.
He says "I. Don't. Care." as he sprays himself and the area around him with a fine mist of urine.
An elderly janitor, cleaning up after the previous night's event, builds the temerity to approach the PC while the helicopter is still whining and spinning (and smoking) and the PC is peeing in every direction at once and, incredulous shock obvious on his face, says:
"'S-scuse me thar, boy, you... you... can't park dat thang there!"
The PC zips up, turns, and walking briskly by the old man without slowing or even making eye contact, twirls his right finger up by his head in a whirly-bird type motion and says:
"Can't hear ya. Helicopter."
He proceeds to walk straight out of the stadium, cross the street as police cars come screeching into the parking lot, and then strolls right up to the windows on a drive through Church's Chicken stand, orders 2 buckets of extra-crispy spicy, a piece of bread, and a big gulp coke, pays with a $100 bill without waiting for change, and then proceeds to consume it all while sitting on the curb of the street waiting for us to come pick him up.
So not so much exciting, as just desperately stupid and suicidal chase story.
Of course there was the one where we were ambushed by Ducati-riding pseudo-goverment agents with shotguns and flamethrowers in an underground tunnel downtown and one PC tries to arrive to the rescue with another PC standing up out of the sun roof of his Escalade, hitting the tunnel at over 95 mph and then clipping one of the concrete supports, spinning into the flaming wreckage of the other PC's truck and the bad guys, scattering them like 10-pins, nearly killing himself and the idiot hanging out of the sunroof...
I've been waiting for this to come out for a while, having seen (and used) some previous incarnations of it that Corey was nice enough to send me, but work etc have kept me away from the boards for a while.
I just want to say that I'm gonna pick this one up soon and try to give it a good read over the weekend, but if it's improved any on the earlier versions then it should very well suit the gap between too abstract and overly-concrete systems, which is what I've been looking for for quite a while.
My chase anecdote:
So we were in our d20 Modern game, a Medallions episode that I quest wrote and directed, and these private paramilitary security types were leaving the scene of a big bang-up at a local small airport and we weren't even sure who were the bad guys after the dust settled. They decided that they should follow the caravan of Black Suburbans to see where they parked their rides, so a couple of the PC's jump in their car and give chase.
One of the characters, not satisfied with that, got overly excited because I had placed part of the game at an airport and then had the nerve, the GALL, to leave unattended aircraft lying around.
So, his few-ranks-in-pilot-and-no-aircraft-feats-or-plausible-training-whatsover butt decides to steal a helicopter. To chase the Suburbans with. Nothing I say as GM to dissuade him gets through the haze of helicopter-lust he has driven himself to.
So with the inordinate dice-luck this player has coupled with his boundless single-minded enthusiasm for this "plan", I somehow end up letting him cruise around in a stolen helicopter, even though his self-professed training wholly consists of about 60 hours on an X-Box playing shoot-em-up flight sims (he figured that was good enough for about 3 ranks in pilot
).He loses control of the helicopter about one out of every three rounds, erratically spinning, zig-zagging, juking, soaring, dropping, and skipping tensely across the Birmingham sky, nearly killing himself several times until he spots the Suburbans, with the two other character lazily following them in their car, pulling into the parking garage of the very place the owners of the Suburbans said they were going.
Then he is contacted for the 5th time by the local airport who informs him that not only is he violating a controlled airspace without a flight-plan, but violating the flight ceiling and several laws by refusing to answer their calls. Since he was obviously in control of the aircraft, they were gonna scramble a couple Phantoms from the local Marine reserve unit to have a look, because he was probably a nutso terrorist so "just stay right there while the nice jets come to give you an, ahem, escort sir".
The guy gets spooked by the air traffic controller, takes the helicopter low, weaving and bobbing like a maniac through downtown buildings looking for a safe place to land (not much flat space for someone who doesnt know how to land a helicopter). I remind him several times about his chances of arriving at imminent doom, and the player is now running quite scared but too stubborn to back away from his "plan". He clips trees, makes crash checks for skimming power lines, takes out a few windows with his rotor blades on taller buildings, each time just barely, BARELY making the checks of the increasingly insane DC's I'm setting, blowing action points left and right, taking really low damage rolls to the aircraft when they are called for.
He spots Legion field, the open air football stadium near downtown, and makes a beeline for it about 60 feet off the ground *as fast as he can* (I said, "are you sure you wanna do that?" and he said "yeah yeah, zoom go fast", so I said "um, ok").
Then, just as he is about to "hop" the helicopter over the side of the stadium to land on the big open grass field, he rolls a 1 on his pilot check for the manuver, and then another 1 on a crash check and loses control. The helicopter yaws crazily, the stabilizer raking across the top of the stadium and then the rotor-tips tearing through the sign/jumbotron as it spins, smoking and trailing parts, nearly flipping/rolling end over end, instruments going nuts, lights blinking, alarms screeching as the character screams like a 7 year old girl. Minimum damage allows him to remain alive, and he barely regains control by hitting the DC right on the nose ("so, um, you sure you don't want to roll an action point for that?") but then miserably fails the pilot check to reduce speed for a safe, normal landing. He rolls for the final crash check that will certainly mean life or death, knowing that even if he makes it, he will have one, just one pilot check against all odds to even land it safely, no pulling up or taking your time.
Crash check? Natural 20, hits the DC on the nose.
Pilot check to land? Another Natural 20. Helicopter spins crazily, he closes his eyes and, screaming, yanks/kicks/scratches at the controls until everything stops moving, then opens his eyes to see he is hovering with a slow spin 2 feet off the ground on the fifty yard line. The player (and others) cheer at this unexpected turn of luck as the PC plops the copter down and hits the kill switch.
The PC then quickly leaps out of the helicopter that he is now accusing of trying to murder him and declares that he is going to take a whizz. As he begins doing so, I remind him that helicopters don't turn off immediately, that the rotor blades are still spinning above him.
He says "I. Don't. Care." as he sprays himself and the area around him with a fine mist of urine.
An elderly janitor, cleaning up after the previous night's event, builds the temerity to approach the PC while the helicopter is still whining and spinning (and smoking) and the PC is peeing in every direction at once and, incredulous shock obvious on his face, says:
"'S-scuse me thar, boy, you... you... can't park dat thang there!"
The PC zips up, turns, and walking briskly by the old man without slowing or even making eye contact, twirls his right finger up by his head in a whirly-bird type motion and says:
"Can't hear ya. Helicopter."
He proceeds to walk straight out of the stadium, cross the street as police cars come screeching into the parking lot, and then strolls right up to the windows on a drive through Church's Chicken stand, orders 2 buckets of extra-crispy spicy, a piece of bread, and a big gulp coke, pays with a $100 bill without waiting for change, and then proceeds to consume it all while sitting on the curb of the street waiting for us to come pick him up.
So not so much exciting, as just desperately stupid and suicidal chase story
.Of course there was the one where we were ambushed by Ducati-riding pseudo-goverment agents with shotguns and flamethrowers in an underground tunnel downtown and one PC tries to arrive to the rescue with another PC standing up out of the sun roof of his Escalade, hitting the tunnel at over 95 mph and then clipping one of the concrete supports, spinning into the flaming wreckage of the other PC's truck and the bad guys, scattering them like 10-pins, nearly killing himself and the idiot hanging out of the sunroof...
Last edited:
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
Man, and I thought last night's game where the PCs, armed with white phosphorous grenades, got pursued across the great plains of Yshaka by velociraptor-riding savages was fun...
barsoom:
just before you replied the first time, I went out and bought the damn thing anways.
well worth my money. if only for the good read and potential plot ideas (now that you have good chase rules, you HAVE to include a chase...right???).
So good job..at least from my first look at it.
I'll write a review @ rpgnow since I don't think it has one, but it may take a few days.
just before you replied the first time, I went out and bought the damn thing anways.
well worth my money. if only for the good read and potential plot ideas (now that you have good chase rules, you HAVE to include a chase...right???).
So good job..at least from my first look at it.
I'll write a review @ rpgnow since I don't think it has one, but it may take a few days.
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