Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Chase Rules Ranges Fix



Last night a ran a game for friends and a chase came up. This is the first time I've ever had to run a chase using the new SWDEX rules. Before I just did narration and a few die rolls.

Well the common complaint came up: "Why, in the same round, am I shooting at long range and my target is shooting back at short?" It's a valid concern and it does break some verisimilitude in game.

My fix? Why it is Trappings, of course.

In this instance it was a car chase through crowded city streets. The odds of a fire fight at long range were very unlikely given the cluttered terrain, so I kept all combat in Short Range. I didn't change the modifiers from the cards at all. Instead of using them as range modifiers, I described them as circumstance modifiers; "You don't have a clean shot from your vantage point", "The car is too unstable for accuracy", "Your line of sight is obscured by the vegetable cart your driver ran through".

This worked fine for my players, Just be mindful of the type of environment where the chase takes place. Open space makes for a boring chase and really just boils down to who has the faster ship. I wouldn't use the chase rules for that (I would for a dogfight), but a Chase through an asteroid belt or mine field...

Before running a chase, make some notes of the type of obstacles that would interfere with a character's aim.

Edit: I should mention that according to the rules a vehicles can only attack lower cards, but I treat passengers with guns as turrets, meaning that they can always shoot with the unstable platform modifier and having a lower card already imposes a larger penalty on them.