What's the most fun you've had in a chase in a ttrpg?

[Quickleaf]

What's the most fun you've had running or playing a chase in a tabletop RPG?

If you feel inclined, would you share a bit about that system and what made it so great when you played?

 

[payn]

Curse of the Crimson Throne AP in PF1. The chase rules are a little fiddly, but the adventure material made it pretty great in an urban setting.

 

[aramis erak]

One of the Firefly RPG adventues - Shooting Fish (By Andrew Peregrine). Dirty underhanded racing for a good cause...

 

[Richards]

An old Dungeon adventure, "The Mad God's Key" by Jason Bulmahn from issue #114, which starts off with the PCs chasing a half-orc through the docks of a city. The area was sprinkled with a lot of different potential obstacles, and the half-orc started on land and fled through a series of tethered boats, not all of whose owners appreciated the intrusion (and were too late to prevent the half-orc from moving on but had been alerted soon enough to be an obstacle for the PCs chasing him). I also recall a cage of captured animals getting loose at one point.

Johnathan

 

[aco175]

I ran a 5e chase encounter in the city where the PCs were in a coach traveling to a noble's ball. I tried to go for something like in one of the 3 Musketeers movies where the PCs coach was moving and 2 other wagons chased them through the countryside, and had several bandits jump to the PC's ride. It mostly worked as planned. A couple PCs stayed inside and shot out, while the fighter tried to help the driver who was shot at one time, but did not die and managed to keep the coach moving. The barbarian jumped to one of the other wagons to take the fight to them, but was separated for a while until I had the wagon reappear a few blocks later.

When the got to ball, they had several clues that something was up and investigated them while interacting with the others. There was another attack at the ball on one of the nobles whose coach the PCs had originally taken, so that tipped them off to the bigger adventure. One of the sticking points was that the PCs were down on gear going into the night since they left most of their armor and bigger weapons behind and wore something less adventuresome.

 

[pemerton]

What's the most fun you've had running or playing a chase in a tabletop RPG?

If you feel inclined, would you share a bit about that system and what made it so great when you played?

One of my favourites was in Classic Traveller: the PCs were in ATVs, trying to escape while a spotter in a small craft was calling down fire from a starship in orbit.

Book 1 of the 1977 edition has rules for small craft evasion, and I adapted those for the ATV chase (driver's skill as a bonus, spotter's Forward Observer skill as a penalty). During the chase, the PCs were trying to intercept and jam communications between the spotter and the vessel in orbit, and to call in their own air support. So there were Electronics and Communications checks being made as well as the evasion checks.

It was pretty exciting.

I've also enjoyed chases - typically on horseback - in Prince Valiant. These are resolved either as single opposed checks, or as pool vs pool, with winner's margin of success depleting the loser's pool each time until one is reduced to zero. (The different options produce different pacing at the table and a different feel in play.)

Here are some examples from the last session my group played (Andreas is a NPC; Sir Justin, Sir Gerren and Sir Morgath are PCs):

Andreas rode out with 2 of his house-knights, 3 sergeants and 6 men-at-arms, as well as Sir Justin, Sir Gerren, their scout Rhan, and their 12 men-at-arms. Sir Morgath's player insisted quite forcefully that his scout retain, Algol the Bloodthirsty, was remaining with him in the castle. It was only once the posse had ridden out, to the echoes of me the GM saying "no backsies!", that the players fully computed that their two commanders with Battle 6 each had left the castle under the command of the teenager Flora and Sir Morgath with his Battle 1.

Rhan's tracking was unsuccessful (failed Hunting + Presence), and so it took them several hours of falling false trails through the hills before they saw their quarry on the plain, over a mile away and riding with a lit torch. I made riding checks for the three important NPCs - Sir Satyrion and Wassel (a NPC from the previous session, who had carried news of the PCs' pending arrival to Cyprus) fleeing and Sir Andreas in pursuit; Sir Gerren and Sir Justin's players rolled theirs. Sir Justin was easily able to catch Wassel (4 successes vs 1) and I allowed him to wheel about and tackle Wassel, with Wassel's first round of defence not being able to inflict harm on Sir Justin. As it turned out, I rolled 2 successes on Wassel's 9 dice (Brawn 3, Arms 3, +3 for armour and weapon) and Justin's 14 dice yielded 10 successes, and so Wassel was reduced to 1 die in the first exchange. I described him being knocked from his horse and unable to meaningfully fight on; Justin trussed him up.

Satyrion, on the other hand, had rolled 6 successes against Sir Gerren's 5, and so Sir Gerren wasn't able to catch him, although was keeping pace. I called for another set of opposed checks and Satyrion won again. This was enough to settle that Sir Gerren couldn't catch him before he reached the castle he was riding to, with the boy Theo. Sir Gerren therefore turned around and rejoined the others.

<snip>

Morgath and friends were able to escape the fallen castle. Agol was successful (Hunting + Presence) in leading them to join up with the others on the plain between the two castles.

There was some discussion. Wassel offered to tell all that he knows in return for being traded for Theo in a prisoner exchange. Sir Justin had visions of trading Wassel for Theo and two castles, but Sir Morgath thought that might be a little optimistic. Morgath decided that, in any event, to properly interrogate Wassel they should first return to the castle on the northern coast garrisoned by the PCs' main force. The other PCs agreed, and someone (I think Sir Gerren) persuaded Andreas to come with them, there being no other meaningful option. Unfortunately, the roll for Agol (guiding them through the hills to the north) vs the NPC army's hunter (trying to track them down, with a penalty for their larger size) was tied, and so the PC's group was spotted as Morgath helped Elizabeth scramble up one of the last of the ridges. So then it was a sheer contest of speed, Brawn 3 (the weaker value for the PCs' group) vs Brawn 3 (the weaker value for the pursuing group): and the PCs lost.

We ended the session on that cliff-hanger; the next session will begin with finding out what happens to them as their pursuers close on them just outside the walls of the castle where their own soldiers are the garrison.

 

[Dioltach]

I ran a chase scene in my D20 Modern planetary adventure game a while back. The PCs chasing some bad guys who'd kidnapped the beautiful princess (Mila of Venus, with a brother called Milo). I used a system of my own invention where the players rolled opposing Pilot checks to see whether they caught up/drew away, with extra complexity if they wanted to do any manoeuvres.

They also had to roll higher than I rolled on a die to represent interferences and obstructions: d4+10 across an open plain, d12+10 for a city, etc. If I rolled the maximum, it indicated an extra complication during the chase, for example being attacked by a monster or being separated and having to fly through a narrow tunnel.

 

[Voadam]

5e D&D running a converted Pathfinder 1e module (Iron Gods Lords of Rust) with adapted 4e skill challenge rules.

The setting is a fantasy world with an area noted for its Mad Max gangs, an ancient high tech space ship crash site, and some technomagery based on recovered tech. The party was in a Bartertown type scrap gang city.

The PCs assaulted a hobgoblin gang's headquarters kicking butt. Their Wile E. Coyote tunnel portal paint worked for getting the rescuee out but glitched for the rest of the party. They then hit the necrosurgeon leader's undead ghoul elites and herself, and the party was facing a wipe so they decided to go up the walls and out the cloth roof with levitate and spider climb and misty step and a climbing motorcycle figurine of carrion crawling to try to get the heck out of Dodge.

The ghasts climbed after them and the necrosurgeon got a good shot from below on the levitating PC artificer robot (rocket boots) and two PCs dropped. The kobold bard who got out first had used his song of creation to make a side car for his crawler and managed to grab the downed PCs and pick up the power armor ACME cleric on the way out.

Then the skill challenge chase began with howling ghouls and ghasts running on all fours and the alert going up through the gang's territory from a WWII air raid siren thing. The kobold was driving away making decisions on whether to street urchin shortcuts to ditch pursuers or go for all out speed and whether to go for straightaways or lots of sudden turns and whether to go for distance or towards safe territory. The cleric was reviving people and aiding navigation. The rocket boots robot was hanging on to a rope held by the revived hexblade and water skiing behind the crawler making decisions about pulling himself along the rope to get in the crawler, maneuver off of walls and such as the crawler turned corners at top speed to reduce the chances of being splatted off the tether, or try and mess with the chasing ghouls. The hexblade was mostly choosing between pulling in the robot and taking potshots to slow the pursuers.

Ultimate success would be escaping, failure would have been another fight with them hurt and lower on resources. Multiple rounds, great narrative descriptions, meaningful decisions that got everyone involved. A whole night's adventure with an Indiana Jones chase scene feel that fit the group's theme of fail forward. Everyone had a great time. It was fantastic.

 

[Richards]

When playtesting "Centaur of Attention" (Dungeon #60), my players' four PCs ended up chasing the centaur-driven wagon on horseback. One PC missed while trying to jump from the back of his horse onto the wagon, getting left behind in the dust (to be picked up afterwards, after the adventure had been completed). Another PC managed to successfully leap from his horse to the wagon, which culminated in a one-on-one fight on the wagon against the wizard who had feebleminded and charmed the centaur into becoming a draft animal in the first place, while the other two PCs took pot shots at the wizard from either side. it ended up being a very cinematic chase scene for such a short Side Trek.

Johnathan

 

[John Dallman]

It was a Discworld RPG session, set a generation or two after the stories, by which time Ankh-Morpork has become quite steampunk. A pursuit across the city by airship included this player quote:

"Do we want to land the airship on the opera house? I'm not asking that question! Of course we want to land the airship on the opera house."

A little later, in the basement of the opera house, it became clear that the villains were planning to escape by submarine down the river Ankh. Since I was wearing the steampunk battlesuit with the heavy weapons, it was clear that I needed to hole the submarine. Few have the courage to stay submerged in the Ankh when the river is coming in; it's an especially unpleasant way to die.

The thing that made this so much fun was the rich and detailed setting, full of exploitable details.