So I ran a chase scene in 5th edition with my own homemade mechanic a few weeks back. To my surprise, it went really well and we all had a blast. This little feat has become my proudest flex as a GM. It seems to me like there’s enough games out there handling chase scenes poorly that large swaths of the rpg community just avoid running them outright. I know I have, that was my first time running a chase scene ever. I know the other GMs I’ve played with largely feel the same (…chris? back me up here). But as aristotle famously asked, ‘lol but like why tho?’

Well truthfully I’ve pondered for a good week or two and I don’t have a satisfying answer. Part of the answer is as I’ve said: there’s simply a good number of popular games that don’t do a great job with chase scenes, so if you play by the book you’re likely to have a dull experience. It’s just a less developed practice. This alone has no bearing on whether or not it is actually any harder to do in theory than anything else we do as GMs. It’s just less explored territory. 

I suspect however that there’s another element of difficulty which comes from a number of different traits that clash. Chase scenes don’t work well unless there is tension. It has to be close, or it feels kinda pointless and is over immediately. That would be fine on its own, but then there is only one variable being fought over: distance. That too would be fine on its own, because we can just make it about obstacles, but actually we have to involve all the players in a game of “roll for obstacle success to determine change in distance” and their decisions regarding it need to have meaningful consequence. On top of all that, we have to carry out the whole operation at high speed to keep the intensity up.

So it’s a lot to juggle. To be perfectly fair, it sounds like there are plenty of games out there that actually do a great job with chase scenes and should absolutely be recognized for it. The problem is that I haven’t played any of those games, and neither have a lot of other uncultured noobs. We don’t have any patience to learn them either, so what do we do? 

Make our own garbage pile mechanic wooooo!!!

Alright so now we’re finally on the same page hopefully. Here’s what I want to do: we’re gonna talk shop a little more about what makes a good chase scene, then we’re gonna look at the dogshit one I made a few weeks ago that happened to work out real well somehow. Then we’re gonna talk about why it worked and why it didn’t and how to do it better and then I’m going to eat a cookie. Good plan? Yes, of course it is, I thought of it.

So what makes a good chase scene in general?

-Dynamic environment

By definition the scene happens as everyone is traveling through a space. The space is part of the scene and should play a major role. If you think about it, a chase isn’t about who is faster at all. If it were then it would be a race scene instead. It’s about navigating through the given space skillfully and tactically. (Man is that a good segue or what?)

-Tactical decision making that matters

There are two points to this that I can see. Firstly we get to show off both personality and skills. Maneuvering in a difficult and changing environment can be a feat of speed, strength, acrobatics, whatever you like. It can also be a feat of tactical genius if we want it to be. “Look what this character saw and thought of, aren’t they clever?” Or even, “look how this character chose this path or style, it’s clearly because he’s feeling this or that”

-Clear spatial awareness/ communication

Absolutely mandatory. Even in the era of shaky cam action movie scenes, the space between the pursuer and quarry was very clearly communicated, as well as the space between each of them and the obstacles around them. Even if that spacing doesn’t always make sense or reflect reality, the point is that it is not blurred or handwaived or pushed into the background. All the tension of the scene is built around this factor, so it needs to be plain for all to see.

-Fast pacing and time pressure

Ever witnessed a calm relaxed chase scene in a story? Neither have I. There needs to be full emphasis on speed and the consequences for hesitation or fumbling

-Close calls

If the pursuer never gets close to the quarry, it’s not much of a chase scene. We need to have as many cases of “holy shit they almost got him there” as possible. I think in truth though there is a second and more subtle side to this coin. In order for those high octane moments to hit hard there also need to be moments of false success/failure, some point where the pacing of the story slows for a beat or two before ramping back up again. Like blowing air on a fire, you can’t just feed it constant pressure. Blow and then let it burn for a moment before repeating.

That second part is especially finicky to control for in a game that is intentionally left up to chance and improv, but we’ll keep it in mind if possible.

Now surely this list isn’t definitive or exhaustive, but I feel that’s a pretty agreeable place to start. So here comes the hard part. How in the hell are we going to translate all this into a reasonable ttrpg mechanic? Well let’s take a look at my lucky prototype and workshop from there.

(This is us rn)

Chase Scenes, James.0 E

Everyone involved in the chase is given a progress bar with 9 spaces. By default, characters begin in the middle (5th) space, but this may change with different scenarios. Reaching the first or ninth space terminates the chase for that character in either failure or success (respectively). 

A countdown is started at the beginning of the scene, 10 or 20 minutes maybe. If the timer runs out before the party wins, they lose instead.

All characters are assumed to be dashing.

The chase is made up of a series of skill challenges (I realize now that I simply meant ability checks. The affair as a whole mimics a skill challenge, but we are not running consecutive skill challenges, that would take forever) against which all involved party members must be tested. Obstacles, in other words. The GM should prepare a list of obstacles relevant to the setting beforehand. Maybe 10-15 of them?

Succeeding a skill challenge advances the character one space on the progress bar. Failing a challenge sets a character back by two spaces.

DC for the skill challenge is determined by the relevant attribute of the antagonist. If no such attribute applies, or the obstacle is unaffected by the enemy, the DC should be 9 plus the average proficiency bonus of the party.

When the GM describes the obstacle, each player says out loud how their character would go about overcoming it. Assuming GM approval, they may apply their relevant skill modifier. The GM may also grant plausibility bonus or penalty to the roll equal to + or – 3 (really the GM can do whatever they want, but I recommend for simplicity’s sake the GM consider only 5 options for the plausibility of a player’s idea: Automatic failure, -3 to the roll, no affect, +3 to the roll, or automatic success)

If a player’s movement speed is >5 feet greater than the opponent’s, they have advantage on all challenge rolls. If it is >5 feet slower than the opponent’s, they have disadvantage instead.

A player may choose to do something with their turn other than taking the dash action, This will result in automatically losing one square of progress. This does not exempt the player from having to make the skill challenge. 

A player may choose to help an ally overcome a particular challenge, if the narrative is sensible (and/or dope af). They will automatically fail the check and grant their ally an automatic success. 

One day I will be more skilled at communicating rules succinctly, but for now it takes me a page to explain one little thing.
 

Guess how this went over with my group?

Fantastic. They loved it. I used a 15 minute hourglass on the table and told them “At the end of this timer, something bad will happen”. Really my intent was that the guy they were chasing was going to make it to the city and the chase scene would just continue in a more difficult setting, and they would only truly lose if he made it to a certain place within the city. 

From their reviews, it sounded like they really enjoyed getting to come up with their own solutions to problems, having to do it quickly, and getting to see the immediate impact of their tactical choices displayed very simply. 

I had prepared I think 14 different obstacles for them? They caught up to the bad guy after 7, and did so EXACTLY as the timer ran out.

But it certainly was not perfect. Given the circumstances at the start of the scene I placed everyone except for one PC at one space behind the center line. One of them cast a spell to start (replacing the assumed dash action) moving back another space and then failed her first check, putting her back another two. She was out of the chase as soon as it began. Luckily she also had a bear familiar active and was still able to participate through it. 

The point remains however, this ruleset leaves tension entirely up to chance. There is no mechanical force driving the scene towards close calls or false endings. That means that even with well calibrated DCs, a player is still fairly likely to roll into immediate success or failure and end the scene for their own involvement or for everyone.

In addition, although the hourglass on the table was a great visual tool that elevated the tension, I think we can do much better. For one thing I ended up being the one taking the most time as the GM, which immediately felt unfair. So I resorted to flipping the hourglass sideways – pausing it – while I was explaining, deliberating, or checking my notes. Quite a bit of extra mental work. It became very unclear as to when exactly the hourglass was supposed to be running.

The last problem I saw has mostly to do with the obstacles themselves, which is a whole new can of worms. My players’ one complaint was that some of the obstacles felt like they left only one obvious choice, and so weren’t very interesting. Yeah, well… unfortunately creating interesting choice for your players is like a whole discipline unto itself, but I think we can at least set up our mechanics to optimize for this problem.
 

Solution time!

Let’s start with the easy ones. We need a rubber band effect, something that pulls players away from the edges of the board – the endings – and back towards the center. We don’t actually want them at the center, we just want to maximize the likelihood that they reach the very edge of the board and then are forced back. A near-ending. Almost catching the bad guy, almost getting away, or almost losing them for good before the chase begins again.

That’s easy peasy. Here are the new DCs for each space on the 9 space progress bar:

1: FAILURE! But wait! Roll again at the same DC as your last one for salvation by chaos!
2: 7 + Party’s average proficiency bonus

3: 8 + Party’s average proficiency bonus

4: 8 + Party’s average proficiency bonus

5: 9 + Party’s average proficiency bonus (default starting space)

6: 9 + Party’s average proficiency bonus

7: 10 + Party’s average proficiency bonus

8: 11 + Party’s average proficiency bonus
9: SUCCESS! But wait! Roll again at the same DC as your last one in order to seal the deal!

Okay cool, now what about the hourglass problem? Well here’s a wild idea. When I ran this, I had everyone shout out their solutions to the obstacle in question, all at once. This was fun and chaotic, but messy to keep track of. 

Instead, everyone gets some index cards or pieces of scrap paper, and a 3 minute timer on their own phone, displayed on the table where everyone can see. 

Players will have to write down their responses to each obstacle privately while their timer is running, pausing it only when they finish writing each time. Once everyone is finished scribbling down their action the GM reads each one, assigns an appropriate modifier as before, and calls for each player to roll in order starting from the player closest to success. Whenever a player’s timer runs out, they must stop writing and move their marker one space back before restarting the timer and continuing.

*Players are forbidden from touching their timer with the non-writing hand, and from touching the timer unless their writing implement is flat on the table.*

We’ve preserved and I think enhanced the time pressure with this. Now the players are interacting with their time restraint directly, but the risk is obvious: scribbling privately might subtract from the tension of the scene. This I think is counteracted nicely by that enhanced intimacy with the time pressure, and also the quickness of such quiet moments. It should only take a few seconds to jot down an action and move to the next step of the process. In practice it should look like successive bouts of quiet intense scribbling followed by theatric narration.

The second consequence of this new method is that there is no longer any time pressure on the GM. That could be a slight nuisance, as they’ll have to self-regulate to keep up the tempo of narration, but that shouldn’t be anything new.

Now here’s the neat part. That last problem of writing obstacles that give the players interesting tactical choices is tough business. If I could explain exactly how to do it well every time in just a paragraph or two I would be about a thousand times better a GM than I am. 

What I can say is that forcing players to write down their own answers to obstacles privately and while on the clock is a fantastic way to encourage interesting and diverse choices. First of all, we’ve forced them to more or less act on their first instincts. We’ve also taken away the possibility of one player’s idea to influence everyone else’s and produce clones. And quite sneakily, we’ve actually created the potential for a little bit of competitive creative problem solving. You don’t know what your friends are writing, but you definitely want to come up with the best solution possible… I know at least at my competitive ass table they’re going to be trying to outthink each other and cheese the obstacles with the most style points. 

By no means does that imbue our obstacles with a magically complete  interesting-choice-generating quality. The ball is still solidly in the GMs court for coming up with good obstacles, but this little tweak should help give the GM some leverage.

There you have it. All of the thoughts I can possibly muster on chase scenes and how to run them well. I’ll post again with an update whenever we run the next chase scene

For now though, it’s about damn time I had that cookie…