Have you ever done a chase scene? On foot?

What would be the best way to do this?

With movement it seems like there wouldn't be a whole lot going on mechanically and might not end up being as exciting as it should be.

Would you go turn by turn having the PCs and the NPC expend maneuvers? This would likely keep them at the same distance the whole time?

Do athletics checks to see if they close the gap at all?

How do you do an exciting chase scene?

Page 241 has a great summary, at least for ship-against-ship chases. The Pilot skill is the base skill, and the text describes each party making a Simple check (no difficulty dice) and comparing the results. More successes are better of course, but Triumphs and Advantages could be spent to upgrade subsequent dice rolls.

For person to person I've used Athletics. You can use it in the same way, where the person with the most successes gains on the other until they escape or hit Engaged range.

Another way I've used (and sometimes prefer) is to make those checks contested, because then the parties can also use Threats and Despairs against each other, and use those narrative effects in a more consistent way. Advantage might be "I find a moving sidewalk and that lets me get a boost die next time"; Threat might be "I tip over a garbage can, giving the other guy a setback on his next roll".

I think the important thing is to make the chase finite whenever possible, to prevent it going on forever. In theory you could have an infinite chase in Coruscant, so you need some mechanic to track progress, or some form of intervention. For example, you might set a success target, and the first to reach the success target catches the other or escapes in some way; or if one hasn't clearly won by a certain time the police suddenly show up, perhaps interfering with the PC's plans.

The main thing to remember for choosing what skills to use where and how to represent "a thing" or "an event" or whatever is that a "dice roll" is not for 1 second in time. It can be for 5 minutes, or 30, or 2 minutes.

So you could represent a chase as an Athletics vs Athletics roll. Then the threat/advantage/etc tell the story of the chase.

• If it is just an un-cancelled success, they get away and nothing too exciting or dramatic happens, it is just through sheer choice of the right spots to put their feet they got away.
• Un-cancelled failure would be the chaser was faster and caught them.
• Threat can be tripping and falling,
• Advantage could be someone gets in the way of the chaser to give you more distance between you.
• Despair can represent as 1 person being caught, or someone running into something... hard.
• Triumph could be they knock something over and a chaser gets hurt.

Just visualize what you want to happen and what CAN happen and translate that to dice symbols.

For reference of some wonderful chases:

• The first scene in Casino Royale (with Daniel Craig)
• Any of the Bourne movies
• Firefly

Edit: added chase references.

Would you go turn by turn having the PCs and the NPC expend maneuvers? This would likely keep them at the same distance the whole time?

If you're players are like mine then they'll just be chasing to get in firing range. Be sure to give throw in plenty of innocent bystanders and twisting alley ways.

Also, I believe there is an item under the compiled resource list that contains different environments and suggestions on spending threat and despairs with them, one of which is a hovercar both inside and out.

Don't forget adding Boost and Setback dice a plenty during chases. They help add to the haphazardness of the chase. If an important NPC is attempting to get away, always upgrade the difficulty dice with a Destiny Point for flavour.