Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Also 10-07 Mysteries under Moonlight 2: the Howling Dance, 7-11 Ancients' Anguish and 7-18 Faithless and Forgotten III: the Infernal Inheritance, all have "modern" and cool chase scenes. They also give an idea of how you need to escalate the sort of challenges at high tier.
Actually 10-07 had a bit of an unfortunate hitch in that regard:
At some point during the chase you come across a patch of quicksand, and the group has to make skill checks to cross it safely. One in our group though had Water Walk, which would have let the whole group just walk across it with no trouble. However, the chase rules strictly dictated that a spell can only be an automatic aid another, never auto-succeed the whole check.
It's an example of a chase obstacle that's just on the edge of "at this level characters aren't stopped by X anymore". Not many groups would have Water Walk so it's not something you'd think about right away. I think Ancient's Anguish did a better job of saying "if the group can really teleport this many people, then this is what it profits them".
So my advice is, build a bit of slack in your rules for that sort of thing. A spell that's useful could be an auto-aid; a spell that truly solves the problem could be an automatic success. If you've picked your challenges well, those spells should't be cheap. A niche level 3 spell in the 3-7 tier is quite an expenditure by the PCs.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
#8-19 Treacherous Waves has an updated chase.
One of my absolute favorites! The updated chase mechanic means no one gets left behind. But the best part is the fun and sometimes hilarious narratives at each of the chase locations. Even if the PCs conclude the chase early, I read them the rest of the locations just so they get to hear them. In game justified as things they saw anyway.
|
|
I want chase scenes to be cinematic and (dramatic and/or comedic) but I've felt most of them don't get to that point. Often the skill checks the scene calls for aren't obvious enough (in terms of tied in to the descirption of the scene) which means I'm stuck telling people what the options are, rather than trying to adjudicate what they describe themselves doing. (In home games I can roll with it much better than society games). While I wasn't a big fan of FATE when I played it with some friends, theier system (probably horribly remembered) of abstract movement and adding 'tags' to the board for others to leverage/combo off of feels like it would fit very well for further modernized chase rules. I want people able to help each other; I want people able to do shenanigans. I don't want players stuck trying to squeeze their characters options into the ~two choices allowed to them.
|
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
|
@NielsenE, I can see where you're coming from, but I haven't experienced it as such a big issue.
I think the main point of modern chase scenes is that they're FAST. When we run them, we actually run them very fast. Describe the obstacle, outline the two options for players, then get them to decide as a group within 30 seconds which choice to make, roll dice, get results. Each step in the chase should take at most two minutes or so. You get people immersed not because the verisimilitude is perfect, but because you're scaring them with a big monster and hurrying them along so they don't have time to pick at the seams.
The sort of freeform shenanigans you describe are also fun, but I wouldn't use them for a chase, I think they're a bit too elaborate for that, you'd have to teach people a lot of new things before you got started and that would kill the urgency. If I say "a pack of velociraptors comes after you" and then I spend 20 minutes explaining a new rule system, that kills the moment.
Instead I'd use those sort of freeform rules for a Heist kind of adventure, kinda like they come up with in Ultimate Intrigue. That's more about planning, taking the time to see how the PCs can combine their abilities.
|
|
#5–21: The Merchant's Wake had a good one.
I'm in the same boat, mixing the chase rules from #5–21 and #8-19 Treacherous Waves together to make a chase scene for the AP I'm running. Half the obstacles will require one high roll to pass, half will require that most the group pass a lower DC with adjustments to suit the flavor of the obstacles. The group moves together and every failure makes the fight at the end harder + more bad plot occurs.