Great Epic Pursuit - Wild West Style

[Cikomyr]

In my current Wild West game (I am the GM), the players just did a prisoner exchange of a Pinkerton fellow agent for Confederate Agent Nathan Bedford Forrest. Thing is, the Confederate agents tried to double-cross the players and started shooting at them as soon as the prisoner exchange was done.

The players decided to high-tail, have a group of 40 men on their tail, and the game finished it after they noticed that a possee of 10 men on horses are starting to cut them off since they came from the nearby city.


Now, I don't want them to be captured (not "necessarily" anyway) nor do I want them to die. I will let my players escape this round.. but I want to make next session exciting! Do anyone here have suggestions as to how I could playact the daring horseback escape across the Plains?

[Khedrac]

Without knowing the geography the only thing I can suggest is exactly that - geography.
Basically if their pursuers are faster and can see them they are not going to lose them without terrain broken enough that they can not only break line of sight, but do so in a place that when the pursuers get there, there will not simply be only one way they could have gone.

OK - I do have one other suggestion - being on the other side of a cattle drive/buffalo stampede.

[Elvenoutrider]

Pathfinder has a system of chase rules to deal with similar situations. You should look them up and consider modifying those rules to your system.

Note i havnt actually used them yet but I'm going to give them a shot within the next 2 weeks