Chase Scenes

[LordEntropy]

This is a cross post of a thread over on RPG.NET but the OP and myself have not had any answers yet.

The OP has written up a chase sequence using the rules and we were wondering if we are understanding the rules right based on the example below. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks..

OK here's my 10-wow, 10!- point chase!

Quote:
Canadian hero Canuck Casey is being chased by Brigadier Evil. In Canadian canoes. In Canada.

Casey is being allowed by the GM to use his Survival of 3 –Good- complemented by his Might, 4 to give a 'Drive' (actually, 'paddle canoe') skill of 4.
His sturdy Canadian canoe, fashioned from maple (?!) , has 3 stress boxes.
OOO
In the canoe with him is Bear-in-the-Snow , a First Nation arrow-shootin' PC.


Brigadier Evilguy has 10 points. At the start of the chase he spends 6 of these to launch 3 enemy canoes, rated Fair, in pursuit.
OO OO OO
Their quality is Fair, but they get +1 at the moment cos of numbers, so their actual base score will be 3 each time they roll.

Round One: Casey decides to shake these guys straight off the bat. He plunges the canoe into a waterfall. Difficulty 7!

He rolls a -1, so he has only 3. 'Bear' thinks he can help out, using his Alertness of 4 and a roll of +1 to get 5. He tags his aspect 'stereotyped Mohawk' to geta +2=7, which the PCs use instead of Casey's crappy roll. They shoot the waterfall and take no damage.
The bad guys roll. They get a +1 to get a score of 4. 7-4 is 3 so 3 stress boxes are checked off, minion style.

XX XO OO

One of the bad guys' canoes disappears in the foam and a second is damaged

Round two: Evil decides to replace one of the canoes , and spends 3 points (2 points for the minion and one for the reinforcement move) to do that (he now only has 1 point left). So now they look like this :

(first guy gone) XO OO OO < -new guy

This time Casey, who's low on FPs, sets a difficulty of just 4, representing perhaps paddling under some low-hanging tree boughs. Casey again screws up, but Bear uses his Might, and rolls well, to fend off the branches.

The bad guys roll a +1, again, and with their bonus for numbers all make it through unscathed.


Round Three:
Some rapids. Difficulty 4 again. Opposed rolls. This time Casey and Bear do fine, but so do the baddies who roll a +2 for a total of 5. that's an overflow of 1, which is applied as stress to the PC's canoe (regardless, presumably, of how well they rolled).

Evil decides NOT to spend his penultimate point on a 'shotgun' move, increasing the stress from 1 to 2, as he needs one point left for a dramatic entrance.

Round Four
A moose in the water. Difficulty 5. Casey rolls +2 and easily steers clear. The minions roll a 0 and take 2 stress boxes damage.

XX XO OO

Another of the enemy canoes is taken out as he gets tangled in the irate moose's antlers, and a second takes one point damage (maybe knocking the tangled canoe).


Evil plays his last point. He makes a dramatic entrance , appearing just as the river the PCs are paddling on rushes into a larger one. Evil is on a huge raft made up of hundreds of logs (he chooses the +3 stress boxes option to represent this). The log raft counts itself as a hazard for this round, with Evil's Survival score of 4.

This time both Casey and Bear goof their rolls. Their canoe takes another 2 points of stress and they're in the water!

How does this check out? Any mistakes or issues?

It does seem to work well, but there are a couple of things that occured to me. The pursued PCs' rolls only seem to matter if they beat the difficulty of the 'manoeuvre' described at the start of the round. Even if they roll really well, or spend FPs to increase their result, they will still take the pursuers' (roll-difficulty) damage if the pursuers succeeed in their manoeuvre...

It's also a bit odd that the pursued PCs can't really influence how much damage the pursuers take at any stage (who can only be damaged when they fail their manoeuvre roll, and only by the number of points that they fail)...Mind you, the idea that the guys in front might be shooting back or some such is kind of abstracted into their ability to have their Guns (or whatever) roll replace the driver's .

[iago]

We're at GenCon right now, man -- ping this thread again in a week and we'll probably have a shockingly larger amount of time.

[LordEntropy]

We're at GenCon right now, man -- ping this thread again in a week and we'll probably have a shockingly larger amount of time.

Doh I completely forgot, will do Fred, have a great time.

[Mel White]

I'll throw my two cents in here while waiting for the Evilhat guys to get back from GenCon.  Let me preface my remarks by saying I don't think I've ever run a chase exactly by the book, so if you're happy with the chase mechanics you're using then that's all that matters. 

So here are a few points:

1) PCs assist other PCs by tagging aspects and modifying the skill roll.  By the rules, I don't think PC A can use his skills to modify PC B's skills.

2) Again, with the rules as written, the Driver of a vehicle can substitute another PC's skill roll for the Drive test, but the Driver cannot use the same PC as a substitute two rounds in a row.     

The fact that the PCs can only hurt their pursuers by setting the drive difficulty high and hoping the pursuers fail it gives the players an incentive to set high difficulties, so that may be a feature rather than a bug.  But I think it's perfectly ok for passengers in the pursued vehicle to directly attack the pursuers (and vice versa).  This gives everyone opportunities to do something in a chase:  the Driver drives, and others alternate between helping the driver, establishing aspects, or attacking the pursuit. 

I really liked your chase!  Was it from an actual game?  Let me plug a chase from one of my own games I talked about on my podcast Virtual Play, Episode 6
Mel

[LordEntropy]

I'll throw my two cents in here while waiting for the Evilhat guys to get back from GenCon.  Let me preface my remarks by saying I don't think I've ever run a chase exactly by the book, so if you're happy with the chase mechanics you're using then that's all that matters. 

So here are a few points:

1) PCs assist other PCs by tagging aspects and modifying the skill roll.  By the rules, I don't think PC A can use his skills to modify PC B's skills.

2) Again, with the rules as written, the Driver of a vehicle can substitute another PC's skill roll for the Drive test, but the Driver cannot use the same PC as a substitute two rounds in a row.     

The fact that the PCs can only hurt their pursuers by setting the drive difficulty high and hoping the pursuers fail it gives the players an incentive to set high difficulties, so that may be a feature rather than a bug.  But I think it's perfectly ok for passengers in the pursued vehicle to directly attack the pursuers (and vice versa).  This gives everyone opportunities to do something in a chase:  the Driver drives, and others alternate between helping the driver, establishing aspects, or attacking the pursuit. 

I really liked your chase!  Was it from an actual game?  Let me plug a chase from one of my own games I talked about on my podcast Virtual Play, Episode 6
Mel

Thanks for the advice.

The chase was written up by a guy called Desert Fox who is the OP of the thread over on RPG.NET. I think this was something he came up with on his own.

[LordEntropy]

Bumped as Fred suggested to see if the Evilhat guys have any views on this?