Goodman Games

So this past week I ran DCC off the cuff as I had a bunch of players unable to attend our regularly scheduled session. Since I was pretty much making it up as we went I used a few resources that really helped (Dungeon Alphabet was great). As the characters pulled out of the "barn" were 1st level. They were enslaved the last time we saw them so not only did they have a few level 0 slaves to join the motley crew, but there was a chase scene coming for the imminent escape and I had to come up with some rules on the fly. Here is what I came up with and I think it turned out to be pretty tense for the players.

Basically, the players knew that they were about 12 rounds of running from the small tunnel that would allow for their escape.

They also knew that those in pursuit were about 6 rounds of distance behind them.

So what I did was I assigned a d12 timer to represent their escape and a d6 to represent the jump they had on the slavers. Each round the d12 would increase a step, then players with stamina equal to or less than the current value on the d12 would roll a fortitude save to represent getting tired and being forced to slow the party for a round. So each round a player failed a save I would reduce the value of the d6. If the value of the d6 decreased to zero before the party reached the 12 spot the slavers would be upon them and likely cast them back into chains. They were encouraged to come up with clever actions to improve their chances along the way .

Based on the varied stamina scores and rolls they ended up at turn 11 and 1 space between the party and the slavers. One zero level schleff failed the majority of the saves and the other party members essentially decided that thinning the herd in order to ensure their own safety was the way to go! So, they essentially threw an improvised Molotov cocktail onto the poor guy and sent him a blazing down the tunnel back toward the quickly approaching adversaries...truly heroic? maybe not, but they lived to find out who was buying slaves at this particular waystation at least.

If you use this example or a modified version for a chase scene in one of your games, let me know about it!

Cool idea.

Was there an opportunity to increase their lead? Or was that stated as part of the set-up? "These dudes are all buffed and look like they could eat iron chains for breakfast -- good luck outrunning them!"

Yeah that was part of the setup, no chance to increase their lead without coming up with something creative. Basically the slavers are dark dwarves fashioned after those found in Moorcock's fiction and these ones are particularly mean.

I like it. Simple, but it works very well.

Skars wrote:If you use this example or a modified version for a chase scene in one of your games, let me know about it!

That sounds like a lot of fun. You should consider writing it up and submitting it to reverenddak for inclusion in Crawl. Sounds like a great subsystem for the fanzine.

smathis wrote:That sounds like a lot of fun. You should consider writing it up and submitting it to reverenddak for inclusion in Crawl. Sounds like a great subsystem for the fanzine.

It does, and you should! crawl AT straycouches DOT com. Let's chat!

Cool idea, I like it. Sounds like a fun way to handle an action scene.

If you were to propose a general rule originating from this one, I would suggest that you consider something to allow the PCs to increase their lead. I assume in this case the dwarves had very high stamina, but what if the opponents are creatures of the same race or of comparable stamina? Should they not also get tired? To me the rule begs the question, and as a player I would certainly wonder why only my PC gets tired, and not the pursuers.

Thanks for the comments! "How is it these guys are able to keep up with us?!" cry the players...this is DCC RPG and some things should really be left to the abstract and mysterious. How and why is a simple answer, because it adds tension and excitement! But, I definitely hear your concerns on this so here are some mitigating factors to that risk:

1. The characters are encouraged to come up with a creative action to increase their lead and it will be up to the Judge's Discretion and applicable rolls to determine whether or not it works.
2. If you want to add more granular detail to your chase and would like to represent the stamina of the pursuers for each pip on the timer die decreased, roll a d7. On a roll of a 1 the distance die is incremented to show that the party is getting away from their pursuers. For more tension, don't roll this until one player character is forced to make a fortitude save.

I chose the 1 in 7 of a d7 because it offers about half the chance of failure as an average stamina character making a fortitude save of DC10.

Please give these rules a shot and let me know how they work out for you. Again, thanks for the feedback!