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Yora
2014-04-06, 06:17 PM
I was just watching an episode of Serei no Moribito, when I had another RPG revelation:

Exploring dungeons room by room is not thrilling.

Sure, fighting a powerful monster or mighty sorcerer can be exciting, as is trying to sneak up to a guard or approaching a surely trapped pedestal. But that mostly is still dealing with one room at a time when the players are ready to open the next door. It may be tense, but still mostly controlled.
Many of the really exiting scenes from movies and books are when things are happening fast and changing quickly, and the characters don't have to luxury of approaching one problem at a time.

So pardon the pun: How do you run good chase scenes?

It can be either the PCs pursuing a fleeing villain, or the PCs being on the run themselves. Indiana Jones is chasing someone or getting chased all the time. Pirates of the Carribean is full of people running ("the oldest and noblest of pirate traditions")
Just consider these scenarios:
The PCs successfully sneaked into an enemy stronghold and got their hands on an artifact or killed the chief villain in his chamber, but are spoted by a guard just as they are about to leave and an alarm is raised. Unlikely to survive against all the guards of the stronghold in a fight, they have to race back to the exit. But, oh no: The secret passage has been discovered and is now guarded by a dozen elite soldiers. How else could the PCs get back out?
The PCs escaped from their captors and make it to the open street. But their enemies don't care about being seen in public and still chase after them in overwhelming numbers. What are the PCs to do?
The PCs track down and corner a minor villain. As he is starting to talk, he is hit by a poisoned arrow, with the assassin just jumping off the balcony as the PCs turn to him. The assassin is now the only trail they have left.
The PCs are hired as bodyguards, but suddenly their group gets attacked by a whole dozen assassins at once. Since the assassins not only outnumber them 3 to 1, but also have ranged weapons, making a stand around their charge isn't going to work.
The PCs try to get into the city in disguise, but one of the villains henchmen runs straight into them and recognizes them. They can't allow him to run back and inform his master.
The PCs assault an enemy stronghold with a small army of allies. They make it to the villains chamber and slay him, but now they are getting surrounded by his minions. And somebody has set the whole castle on fire!

In most game systems, you could simply roll some dice to see who is faster and who gets exhausted first to see if the pursuers catch up or their target gets away. But that would be boring. Any idea how to approach chases of any kind to make them exciting?

TheStranger
2014-04-06, 06:27 PM
The Angry DM did an article (http://angrydm.com/2013/07/how-to-build-awesome-encounters/) on this a while ago. Well, on encounter design generally, but he used a chase scene as an example.

Altair_the_Vexed
2014-04-07, 12:45 AM
I made a couple of tables for car chases on d20 modern - full of things like short cuts and obstacles.
I'll see if I can dig them out.

Airk
2014-04-07, 08:29 AM
The Conflict system in Mouse Guard works really well for chases, but you have to have a loose view of "what's there"; IMHO you pretty much always want to do this though, because the alternative - having a full map and carefully tracking movement rates - makes a chase scene about as exciting as Parcheesi.

Basically, what the Mouse Guard system does is abstract all actions to one of four types - An "Attack", A "defense", a "Feint" or a "Maneuver".

In a chase, an attack probably equal just running away as fast as you can - moving towards your "goal" of getting away in the most direct fashion.
A defense, on the other hand, would be something that obstructs your opponents - throwing obstacles in their path, that sort of thing.
A feint would be misdirection - hiding behind something while the goons run past, then heading off the other way.
A maneuver would be changing course in some way - "Screw running through the streets, I'm going to take the rooftops!"

Each side in the conflict 'scripts' three actions, blind. (i.e. the players choose without knowing which 3 actions the GM has chosen, and vice versa.) Then actions are revealed one at a time for each side (i.e. "Players and GM reveal their first action") and rolls are made based on what actions are attempted, and actions are resolved based on the action the other side took - so if one side reveals an attack and the other side reveals a defense, the rolls are opposed and whoever won gains some ground, essentially.

This is a quick explanation - it's a little more complex than this, but it's super fun and full of mindgames, and works well for a large number of different conflicts (You roll different skills, for different types, obviously. You would roll "Fight" for attacking in...well, a fight, but probably Pathfinder for attacking in a Chase, and Persuade for attacking in an argument.)

It's basically a complicated "skill challenge", but D&D doesn't really have a good set of skills for chases, so trying to do it that way there is just fail.

Anyway, Mouse Guard is awesome, you should buy it.

Yora
2014-04-07, 09:17 AM
I remember that. Have to reread that part of Mouse Guard again.
I think Fate also works by a similar approach.

Maybe to phrase it simpler, the character who are trying to escape have to create a certain amount of obstacles to slow down pursuers or pull off other maneuvers to gain a boost. If they make blunders, the pursuers get closer. Once they have gained enough "lead", they escaped successfully. When the lead reaches 0, they are cought and cornered, forced to surrender or fight. The GM should decide how much lead they will need to escape, but the players wouldn't know how closw to escape they are. The amount probably shouldn't be too long, though. Getting a total of 3 more advantages than disadvantages should probably be enough.

To gain advantages, players would need to use their environment, which means the GM must describe interesting locations with sufficient detail. Coming up with these on the spot might be quite difficult, so it would probably be best to have a short list of setpieces that the PCs can run into.

Airk
2014-04-07, 10:12 AM
I remember that. Have to reread that part of Mouse Guard again.
I think Fate also works by a similar approach.

Maybe to phrase it simpler, the character who are trying to escape have to create a certain amount of obstacles to slow down pursuers or pull off other maneuvers to gain a boost. If they make blunders, the pursuers get closer. Once they have gained enough "lead", they escaped successfully. When the lead reaches 0, they are cought and cornered, forced to surrender or fight. The GM should decide how much lead they will need to escape, but the players wouldn't know how closw to escape they are. The amount probably shouldn't be too long, though. Getting a total of 3 more advantages than disadvantages should probably be enough.

You could do this, but IMHO it's not as interesting as the Mouse Guard system as written. Of course, if you're playing Another Game, it's about as good as you can do. Of course, if the other game doesn't even have good skills for this...



To gain advantages, players would need to use their environment, which means the GM must describe interesting locations with sufficient detail. Coming up with these on the spot might be quite difficult, so it would probably be best to have a short list of setpieces that the PCs can run into.

I disagree. Make your players think. If you say "Okay, now there's a fruit cart coming down the street." there's pretty much only one right answer. If you're doing setpieces, it's REALLY hard to come up with ones that aren't just "here's the right thing to do in this situation" IMHO, and that sucks all the creativity out of it. If the players can't think of interesting things to do in a marketplace or something, they need to flex their creativity a little harder.

Slipperychicken
2014-04-07, 10:42 AM
Exploring dungeons room by room is not thrilling.


To be fair to the players, it's a relatively safe way to secure a building if you have the luxury of time but lack the luxury of heavy artillery.

Airk
2014-04-07, 11:33 AM
To be fair to the players, it's a relatively safe way to secure a building if you have the luxury of time but lack the luxury of heavy artillery.

And yeah, we get it, some people find tapping the ground ahead of them with their ten foot pole exciting. But "relatively safe" and "exciting" seldom go together in games.

Slipperychicken
2014-04-07, 12:33 PM
And yeah, we get it, some people find tapping the ground ahead of them with their ten foot pole exciting. But "relatively safe" and "exciting" seldom go together in games.

Never said it was fun or exciting. Just safe. Doing the safe thing is usually good roleplaying: Most people aren't willing to sacrifice themselves for the lulz.

Airk
2014-04-07, 12:42 PM
Never said it was fun or exciting. Just safe. Doing the safe thing is usually good roleplaying: Most people aren't willing to sacrifice themselves for the lulz.

Only if you are roleplaying a 'realistic' game. Action heroes do not generally select the "safe" choice.

Also, if your game is not fun, all the "good roleplaying" in the world won't keep it from sucking.

Yora
2014-04-07, 12:49 PM
To be fair to the players, it's a relatively safe way to secure a building if you have the luxury of time but lack the luxury of heavy artillery.

Not saying it can't be fun. Or not exciting.

But in many adventure genres fast paced, out of control action is an important part, one that exploring dungeons can not provide. Depending on the theme of a campaign or adventure, that might not be a problem. But for certain styles it's quite important and limiting yourself to dungeons (or in this case, I specifically limiting myself to dungeons) only leads to disappointing results.


The Angry DM did an article (http://angrydm.com/2013/07/how-to-build-awesome-encounters/) on this a while ago. Well, on encounter design generally, but he used a chase scene as an example.
I only now got around to reading it and haven't even reached that part of that loose series yet, but this one (http://angrydm.com/2013/05/four-things-youve-never-heard-of-that-make-encounters-not-suck/2/) goes right to the heart of the subject. An encounter starts with a dramatic question and ends with an answer. And if the only question is "will some or all of the PCs die in this room", then the encounter was pretty muvh pointless. Becaus with the exception of hardcore old school killer dungeons, the answer is almost always a plain "No". In more modern adventures, this is pretty much a given and not even a question.

Altair_the_Vexed
2014-04-07, 03:23 PM
I made a couple of tables for car chases on d20 modern - full of things like short cuts and obstacles.
I'll see if I can dig them out.
Now that I've found them, it turns out it was bit more than " a couple" - more like three pages of tables.
Also, they're very d20 modern - not much use elsewhere...

The general idea was that I had a table for alternate routes (so the heroes could head off the bad guys by doing dangerous driving through short cut), a table for obstacles (including crowds / people, wrong way down a one-way street, road works, that sort of thing) , and a load of tables about direction selection and hard turns.

Very vehicular, as you can see. PM me if you want a copy after all.