Building a Chase

When building a chase, first build your obstacles, and then decide how far ahead the pursued character or characters begin and at what pace the NPCs will move. Having the NPCs clear one obstacle per round is a good rule of thumb, but it could vary depending on the situation and should especially be slower against obstacles that require more than the typical number of Chase Points to overcome. Select or build obstacles highlighting a variety of different skills and other options so everyone in the party has a moment to shine. When choosing what skills can bypass a given obstacle, ensure a variety of approaches can work. If you've already decided that an obstacle uses Stealth, selecting Thievery as the other option doesn't really offer opportunities for different types of characters since those who are good at Thievery are very likely the same ones who are good at Stealth. On the other hand, offering Athletics as an alternative gives a soldier who's terrible at Stealth a way to help. The group can help cover for a character who's less capable at a particular obstacle, but it's more fun for players when you present substantially different options for each obstacle. Use the following guidelines to determine how many obstacles you need for your chase. These numbers assume that the pursued party can reach a certain location to end the chase (as described in Ending Chases). If there's no such escape, you might need more obstacles. Short: 6 obstacles, about 10–20 minutes of game time Medium: 8 obstacles, about 15–25 minutes of game time Long: 10 obstacles, about 20–30 minutes of game time Solo Chases Sometimes circumstances might require you to run a chase where the PCs are each progressing individually, rather than as a group, such as if they get split up. The danger therein is that a player can easily become frustrated if their character is stuck at an obstacle where it's extremely difficult to succeed at either choice, and no allies can help them. In these chases, it's best to allow even a single success to be enough for a character to progress to the next obstacle, and have a critical success give the character a +2 circumstance bonus on their first check against the next obstacle.