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General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Has anyone actually done "chase scale" vehicle combat?
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<blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 2802250" data-attributes="member: 812"><p>Well, fair enough. I haven't reviewed those rules in a long time, so I apologise for the inaccuracies in my comments.</p><p></p><p>You still almost NEVER have characters in combat simply <em>moving</em> 15 squares per round. And every vehicle in a chase is going to move as much as its driver wants it to every round. And 15 squares is still going to get you to the edge of the map if you move two rounds in a straight line (assuming a 30-square map).</p><p></p><p>And heck, assuming you have a pretty decent Drive skill, there's very little reason to keep your speed under the posted limit -- so 30 squares per round is perfectly reasonable. I mean, if you're willing to accept the -4 penalty for being above 16 squares per round, there's no reason to stay below your absolute top speed (other than turning radius). Which for most vehicles is in the 30 squares range.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Sorry, I oversimplified. Obviously turns are not silly per se. But a combination of turns that always keeps you within the same 1500' zone is going to get very contrived-feeling if it goes on for any length of time.</p><p></p><p>And in a city, roads almost never FORCE a turn within a 1000' foot span. Most downtown areas, for example, are composed of straight roads on a grid -- there are intersections every 3-500' or so, but the roads are most often straight for distances in excess of a mile or more.</p><p></p><p>If I'm getting pursued by bad guys, I find the nearest straightaway and floor it. This is by far going to be the most common pattern in ANY chase. Of course you can generate scenarios where folks are blocked into a small area full of twisty streets, but if all your chases take place in the medina of Marrakech (with the exits blocked by construction), your game's reality is going to take a nosedive.</p><p></p><p></p><p>But stunts don't allow you to do that. Not explicitly. They allow you to move faster or slower, which is different. You can't, for example, travel along at a constant distance from your opponent (which seems to happen all the time in chase scenes) -- instead, the chase system in Modern uses the "you move, I move" pattern where the target pulls away, the pursuer catches up, the target pulls away, the pursuer catches up... and so on.</p><p></p><p>Which doesn't very well capture the way in which chases are displayed in movies.</p><p></p><p></p><p>You don't have to CONSTANTLY move at your top speed. If you can do it for ONE ROUND, that's sufficient to blow away a 30-square map. And again, any 30-square map of a standard urban area is going to include perfectly straight roads all the way across the map where a character has no reason to not to exactly that.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, get making maps then. I mean if it'll work for you, knock yourself out. I tried it and it didn't work AT ALL on the standard-sized combat maps I'd been using for character scale.</p><p></p><p>In any event, I certainly wouldn't consider publishing maps for a resolution system that even WotC has admitted is largely unworkable.</p><p></p><p>And I have to take exception to a consistent misapprehension you've been positing:</p><p></p><p>Abstract != Simple. Please don't think that <em>Hot Pursuit</em> lacks detail. It allows for all sorts of detail. What it DOESN'T use is absolute positioning, which fits very well with the model I'm going after -- the movie chase scene. Very few movie chases take place within a single well-defined environment. The example I use in the book is the classic chase from <em>Raiders</em>. Watch that chase sometime and tell me if it looks remotely realistic from an environmental perspective. I mean, where the heck are they? One shot they're passing through a construction site, next they're plowing through a forest, and then dry hills, and suddenly they're in the middle of the world's deepest canyon, and then back to forest and then dry hills and then they're in the middle of Cairo.</p><p></p><p>Is it exciting? Heck yeah. Is it detailed? You betcha, right down to the style of radiator on the truck. Is it abstract? Yes -- or at least in exactly the same way that <em>Hot Pursuit</em> is abstract -- it trades absolute positioning (the world is well-defined and the participants move about within it) for relative positioning (the world is undefined and the participants move relative to one another). What really matters in a chase is how far away the bad guys are and how hard it is to jump into their car so you can wrestle with the driver and save the day.</p><p></p><p>I reckon.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="barsoomcore, post: 2802250, member: 812"] Well, fair enough. I haven't reviewed those rules in a long time, so I apologise for the inaccuracies in my comments. You still almost NEVER have characters in combat simply [i]moving[/i] 15 squares per round. And every vehicle in a chase is going to move as much as its driver wants it to every round. And 15 squares is still going to get you to the edge of the map if you move two rounds in a straight line (assuming a 30-square map). And heck, assuming you have a pretty decent Drive skill, there's very little reason to keep your speed under the posted limit -- so 30 squares per round is perfectly reasonable. I mean, if you're willing to accept the -4 penalty for being above 16 squares per round, there's no reason to stay below your absolute top speed (other than turning radius). Which for most vehicles is in the 30 squares range. Sorry, I oversimplified. Obviously turns are not silly per se. But a combination of turns that always keeps you within the same 1500' zone is going to get very contrived-feeling if it goes on for any length of time. And in a city, roads almost never FORCE a turn within a 1000' foot span. Most downtown areas, for example, are composed of straight roads on a grid -- there are intersections every 3-500' or so, but the roads are most often straight for distances in excess of a mile or more. If I'm getting pursued by bad guys, I find the nearest straightaway and floor it. This is by far going to be the most common pattern in ANY chase. Of course you can generate scenarios where folks are blocked into a small area full of twisty streets, but if all your chases take place in the medina of Marrakech (with the exits blocked by construction), your game's reality is going to take a nosedive. But stunts don't allow you to do that. Not explicitly. They allow you to move faster or slower, which is different. You can't, for example, travel along at a constant distance from your opponent (which seems to happen all the time in chase scenes) -- instead, the chase system in Modern uses the "you move, I move" pattern where the target pulls away, the pursuer catches up, the target pulls away, the pursuer catches up... and so on. Which doesn't very well capture the way in which chases are displayed in movies. You don't have to CONSTANTLY move at your top speed. If you can do it for ONE ROUND, that's sufficient to blow away a 30-square map. And again, any 30-square map of a standard urban area is going to include perfectly straight roads all the way across the map where a character has no reason to not to exactly that. Well, get making maps then. I mean if it'll work for you, knock yourself out. I tried it and it didn't work AT ALL on the standard-sized combat maps I'd been using for character scale. In any event, I certainly wouldn't consider publishing maps for a resolution system that even WotC has admitted is largely unworkable. And I have to take exception to a consistent misapprehension you've been positing: Abstract != Simple. Please don't think that [i]Hot Pursuit[/i] lacks detail. It allows for all sorts of detail. What it DOESN'T use is absolute positioning, which fits very well with the model I'm going after -- the movie chase scene. Very few movie chases take place within a single well-defined environment. The example I use in the book is the classic chase from [i]Raiders[/i]. Watch that chase sometime and tell me if it looks remotely realistic from an environmental perspective. I mean, where the heck are they? One shot they're passing through a construction site, next they're plowing through a forest, and then dry hills, and suddenly they're in the middle of the world's deepest canyon, and then back to forest and then dry hills and then they're in the middle of Cairo. Is it exciting? Heck yeah. Is it detailed? You betcha, right down to the style of radiator on the truck. Is it abstract? Yes -- or at least in exactly the same way that [i]Hot Pursuit[/i] is abstract -- it trades absolute positioning (the world is well-defined and the participants move about within it) for relative positioning (the world is undefined and the participants move relative to one another). What really matters in a chase is how far away the bad guys are and how hard it is to jump into their car so you can wrestle with the driver and save the day. I reckon. [/QUOTE]
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Has anyone actually done "chase scale" vehicle combat?
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