Been a while since the last post again, but I had a spark of motivation to put into text a procedure I've been testing out for running chase scenes so that I could share it with the world wide web.
The Chase Game
The core of the idea is that tracking movement meticulously to determine how two parties (usually PCs vs baddies) approach and move away from each other is both time consuming and not very exciting.
I somewhat recently played in a Feng Shui game and got inspired by the way the system handles car chases, so this is essentially a simplified version of that designed to be used when running away from things on or chasing after things.
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| The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane - John Quidor, 1858 |
The Chase "Ladder"
The first thing you need to set up the chase is to draw a ladder. This will create a series of boxes, or tiles, stacked on top of each other.
We will use those tiles to abstract where the caser and the chasees are in relation to each other, feel free to assign some rough distances that each tile covers. These could be anything from "roughly 10ft" when racing across a room to "different rooms in this house" when running from a killer inside a mansion
First, place the PCs and the baddie(s) either in the same tile, one tile apart, or at some other distance away from each other sutable to the circumstances under which the chase starts.
Secondly, roll initiative to see who acts first. Doing personal initiative rolls here could prove to be fun even if you usually do side-based initiative, as you then only need to outrun your slowest party member instead of the monster ;)
On your turn you can:
- Fight someone in melee if you started your turn in the same tile as them
- This makes it so that the chase doesn't simply become a fight that moves from one tile to another on the "chase ladder".
- Run away one tile
- If running away, it can be fun to allow taking actions that may hinder other PCs or the chasing baddie(s) in catching up to you
- Shoot into other tiles
- Anything else interesting that you may think of or that your system of choice allows you to do
Ending the Chase
There's few different way to handle ending chases
- Pre-Determined
- Chase length is set by the GM, if you exit out of the last tile of the "chase ladder" you've escaped
- Good for scenarios like "escape this specific building and you are safe" or "these monsters will not give chase into another dungeon faction's turf"
- Get Far Enough
- Simple enough, if you put certain number of tiles between you and the baddie(s) you've escaped
- Good for simulating out-running the baddie(s) or making them lose sight of you so you can hide
- Random Length
- Baddie(s) will only chase the PCs for 1d6 tiles etc.
- Good for baddies with short attention span like certain types of animals, or to simulate baddies getting winded and dropping the chase to get a breather
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| The notes I took of the chase system instead of writing an adventure centered around chases like I set out to do initially |