While playing Resh Hour and Cruise Control, we adapted our three-roll Fight Night structure to use for chases. For chases, the three rolls represent the tactics being used, the actual movement itself, and how much the chase is wearing the participants out. The approach can work in other situations as well, and we sometimes refer to them as accelerated encounter rules. They can work for Genesys as easily as for SWRPG. Note: We have only used these chase rules with one or two PCs, so I’m not sure how well they would work if you had five or six characters in the mix.
Actual plays or serialized stories benefitting from these rules have the Chase tag.
Set the Conditions
Before your chase gets going, make sure everyone agrees on what the starting range is and what success looks like. Victory for a chaser could be closing to Short range and switching to combat. Or it could be closing to Engaged and narratively nabbing the fleer. Victory for the fleer might be getting to Long range or Extended range or maybe just surviving a certain number of rounds. Either side can win if the other side exceeds their Strain Threshold, so outlasting is a valid approach, too.
Tactics
Choose your approach for this round to make life harder for the opponent. The difficulty is usually opposed by the other side’s appropriate skill. Here are some examples, but the possibilities are limitless.
| Skill | Opposition | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Ranged | Vigilance/Resilience | warning shots or gas grenades |
| Athletics/Coordination | Vigilance | take a creative route (parkour!) |
| Deception | Vigilance | bluff about reinforcements |
| Streetwise/Perception | Stealth/Deception/Cool | analyze opponent’s strategies to counter them |
| Mechanics/Computers | set by equipment | secures doors/gates |
| Coercion | Discipline | intimidation/taunts/demands |
| Survival | Survival | use terrain/plants to your advantage |
| Stealth | Vigilance | hide |
| Cool | Vigilance | blend in with the crowd |
| Skulduggery | Vigilance/Coordination | set traps/knock items in the way |
| Leadership/Coercion | set by crowd size | get bystanders to hinder opponent |
| Vigilance | Cool | suss out where the fleer is headed |
The outcome affects the upcoming Chase roll. Advantages could still be used to recover strain, but here are some other things the roll results can do.
| Cost | Result Options |
|---|---|
| Success | upgrade difficulty of opponent’s Chase roll |
| 2 Advantages | add a boost die to your own Chase roll |
| Triumph | upgrade your ability on your own Chase roll |
| Failure | nothing |
| 2 Threats | add a setback die on your own Chase roll |
| Despair | upgrade the difficulty of your own Chase roll |
Chase
Each side makes a roll against Average (PP) difficulty. For foot chases, this is usually Athletics, though it could be Coordination on a skinny gantry or narrow ledge. Use Pilot/Drive/Operating for vehicles and Riding for mounts. Add setback dice based on conditions like darkness, swampy terrain, etc. Remember to apply the pool adjustments from the Tactics roll or last round’s Resilience roll.
Compare the (Success,Advantage) result of both participants to find out who won. The victor adjusts the range band one step in the direction favorable to them.
Note: We tried doing it where you needed to at least have success to adjust a range band at all, but that bogged things down when both sides failed and were therefore treading water. We also tried having the Chase be an opposed roll for both sides, but that felt like the better trained participant benefitting two-fold from their edge. Therefore, the above is what we ultimately settled on.
Resilience
This starts as a simple (no difficulty) check and ramps up one difficulty die each round. If the chase goes long enough to exceed 5 difficulty dice, start upgrading to challenge dice.
You cannot recover Strain from advantages on the Resilience roll. Here are some ideas for spends.
| Cost | Result Options |
|---|---|
| Success | nothing bad happens |
| 2 Advantages | add a boost die to your next Tactics or Chase roll |
| Triumph | upgrade your ability on your next Tactics or Chase roll or determine something advantageous to you about the next environment |
| Failure | suffer 2 strain (just like during social combat) |
| 2 Threats | add a setback die on your next Tactics or Chase roll |
| Despair | upgrade the difficulty of your next Tactics or Chase roll or suffer a Critical Injury (if this is a minion group, lose a minion) |
Our chases have primarily been on foot, so we use Resilience for how much the chase wears a participant out. An alternative for vehicle chases could be to use Cool and maybe have failure cause system strain to the vehicle instead of strain to the person.
After the Resilience roll, the next round of the chase begins. We often switch the chase to a new environment at that point, since we enjoy the variety. The only range our chase rules monitor is the distance between the participants, not how far they have physically traveled in an absolute sense, leaving us free to pick whatever new location makes sense for the next leg.