On 9/14/2019 at 7:41 AM, Stethemessiah said:

I'm yet to run this, in fact yet to run my first session, but here is what I came up with for a chase between 2 skiffs. Bad guys had a 2 range band lead at the start.

The skiffs will start the encounter at Long range. Each turn the 2 pilots take a competitive Piloting test, followed by a difficulty 3 piloting test to manoeuvre through the Jungle Canopy.
Competitive:
Result Effect
2 net success Close/Extend range by 1
1 advantage 1 crewman or Mob can fire
1 Triumph Can Sideswipe or ram if Engaged:
Causing 1 upgraded die on next test vs Jungle Canopy, and +1 to target vehicle Strain.
2 Triumph 1 Crewman or mob can attempt to board if engaged.

Vs Jungle Canopy:
Result Effect
2 net success +1 Blue die on next Competitive
1 advantage +1 Blue die on next Vs Jungle Canopy
2 advantage Regain 1 Vehicle Strain
1 Triumph Close/Extend range by 1
1 Triumph 1 crew can fire
1 net failure Lose 1 Vehicle SS
x Threats All Crew take difficulty x Coordination check or fall off. Pilot and Gunner gain 1 blue die for test.
1 Despair Opponent may extend or close range, or all opponent’s crew can shoot.

Falling Off: Base damage of 10 wounds, and 10 Strain. Difficulty 2 Athletics or Coordination check. Each success reduces the damage suffered by one, while each Advantage reduces the strain suffered by one.

Apologies for the dodgy formatting, tables don't copy well into forum posts.

I used this as a guide for a chase this past weekend and it worked well. The players had fun as did I. There were two near misses with trees doing 4 and 5 vehicle strain. I also had one jedi fail his coordination check when using Force Leap to jump on another bike but he recovered quickly and leapt on the next one coming buy and did a great land and kick the driver off the bike move.

Thanks for the post, it worked well for my game.

4 hours ago, Varlie said:

I used this as a guide for a chase this past weekend and it worked well. The players had fun as did I. There were two near misses with trees doing 4 and 5 vehicle strain. I also had one jedi fail his coordination check when using Force Leap to jump on another bike but he recovered quickly and leapt on the next one coming buy and did a great land and kick the driver off the bike move.

Thanks for the post, it worked well for my game.

Awesome! Glad to know it worked.

I'll be running it tomorrow night for my group.

On 7/12/2019 at 10:05 PM, whafrog said:

Been pondering how to respond, but the problem is at the mechanical level I don't generally plan these things out, nor do I make notes afterwards. My plans and post-notes are just story-based. I might toss in a note like "don't forget to add a Coordination check if possible, because that's PC-A's thing...", but otherwise I tend to wing it.

...

Very cool. What did you use as the analog of range bands in this "chase"?

1 hour ago, DaverWattra said:

Very cool. What did you use as the analog of range bands in this "chase"?

Still used range bands where it mattered, just to know if they are engaged (and can go into dogfight mode) or whether any ground is being gained or lost. It's easier to lose pursuit in canyon-lands than in slightly overcast skies, so if the TIEs hadn't self-destructed trying to keep up, the PC wasn't going to have to get very far ahead to have a chance at hiding.

2 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Still used range bands where it mattered, just to know if they are engaged (and can go into dogfight mode) or whether any ground is being gained or lost. It's easier to lose pursuit in canyon-lands than in slightly overcast skies, so if the TIEs hadn't self-destructed trying to keep up, the PC wasn't going to have to get very far ahead to have a chance at hiding.

And did winning a "chase" check let you move range bands like in a regular chase, or did winning have some other mechanical effect?

16 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

And did winning a "chase" check let you move range bands like in a regular chase, or did winning have some other mechanical effect?

Mostly the former. I'm happy to let the players provide input on alternatives. With Never Tell Me the Odds, if the challenge is suitably risky I usually treat it as the "make or break" moment.

The only thing I have as a counter point to all of this "treat it as a chase" is the viewpoint. Yes, space combat is a big thing to manage, but you don't need to stat out and roll every single fighter or wing of ships. Use Mass Combat rules, and provide multiple objectives. If the PCs are all on a single freighter, give them their options to help their group.

"The Rebellion needs to escape this ambush! Those Star Destroyers are sending waves of fighters and we need help screening them, but the capital ships are also blocking our escape. One of our ship's captains is saying we should stay and fight, we need to convince him otherwise, or convince the whole group to stay and duke it out. The hyperdrive of one of our support ships is failing, and the chief mechanic is dead, we need help! The squadron leader, good friends with our PCs, is under attack and needs to get that enemy ace off his back! Look out, they're a wing of bombers heading for the bridge, someone come and intercept!"

All of this doesn't need to occur simultaneously, but various things can interact with each other. For instance, one of the SDs gets crippled, it either helps or hinders the efforts to convince that rogue captain to jump, same thing for that wing of bombers you weren't able to intercept in time hitting the bridge of the command ship, knocking it out of contact. Making it a chase makes it more and more linear, which isn't the point of the system. Yes, you can spam the same actions and rolls, but its the modifiers that make it more interactive. "Ok, you're helping the flight leader, those fighters are focused on him and don't see you swooping in, here is your extra dice. Oh no, the support ship is down, the rogue captain has a renewed vigor to fight and your checks are now upgraded in difficulty. The Star Destroyers just got more cruiser reinforcements, toss in another setback die for your astrogation check. One of the SDs has someone trying to scan your trajectories so they can follow, have someone spoof them ASAP, and your pilot's erratic maneuvers give your a boost die."

Give and flow are key to big set pieces like this. Treat it more like the space battle of RotJ or RotS rather than the first Death Star or droid control ship, because those are dedicated dogfights with a specific objective and should be treated with more the chase scene rules rather than big narrative settings.

52 minutes ago, GameboyAK said:

Making it a chase makes it more and more linear, which isn't the point of the system.

I'm not sure what you mean. The example was a single pilot getting away from TIEs (with a non-chase dogfight in the middle), but there were other PCs I didn't describe each doing there own thing not related to the chase (that was spelled out at the beginning of the wall of text, and hinted at within). So of course not everything is a chase, even with several PCs on the same ship. There's possibly a semantics issue: I was talking about using the "chase rules" (noun) as a core mechanic, vs an actual chase (verb) between two parties. The "chase rules" work well whenever there is a clock ticking, it's more about how to structure the challenges, and it doesn't have to be limited to scenes where two people are chasing each other.

so, upfront ... my main group I GM for is comprised entirely of natural-born Old Man Hendersons (not vindictive, just naturally unorthodox in a way that consistently derails my plans). My second group that I GM for still has a natural-born Old Man Henderson in it. So this heavily affects my viewpoint on the topic. Being said ...

Spacecraft and vehicular combat has a very distinct disadvantage against land combat due to the inherent capability of bonkers-creative thought that can happen with each on a group basis.

For example, the main group played through the starter game to get used to the system. Through a lot of creativity and good rolls (as well as baiting my curiosiity until I'd been had) ... their grand plan involved "renting" the dewbacks from the kennels inside the city (and figuring out how to best my stonewall attempt to prevent that), freeing all of the dewbacks at once, and stampeding them through the streets, bypassing/trampling all of the guards ... and also blowing up the water tower for additional collateral damage to cover their escape. = (I only railroaded from them away from actions that would 100% get them killed, everything else I added obstacles and they bested it)

... then they got into the spaceship.

While I love how characters can move about in the spaceship for different positions ... but there's something of a gameplay-mechanics wall that sorta prevented the same level of reckless creative chaos.These Old Man Hendersons weren't able to Old Man Henderson as strong as they wanted to.

So yeah, I like the rules in the PDF linked on the first page of this topic a lot more than the retail version ... but I'm still at a lost with regards to providing my agents-of-chaos players the chance to do things I can't prevent. lol

2 hours ago, thinkbomb said:

Old Man Hendersons

Thank you so much!

I googled Old Man Henderson, as I had never come across the tail before.

I have been laughing my *** off all the way to work this morning reading it, and I'm only about half way through.

Seriously, this has mad my week. Someone needs to adept these tails into a TV show.

To give you an idea of another way to make the system fun, here's a rough summary of the most successful space combat encounter I've ever run.

Background: The Separatist fleet is attacking the PCs' home planet. The planet has unusual radiation belts that conduct ion energy, so General Grievous has parked his fleet in the radiation belts to protect them from Republic ion cannon attacks. But this opens him up to the PCs' master plan: Fly a high-powered ion accelerator on board the PCs' space transport into the belts and discharge it at maximum power, ionizing all the Separatist ships within the belts.

PCs' ship begins at the head of a squadron of Republic fighters, in the midst of a small fleet of Republic cruisers, at Extreme range from the Separatist ships and the belt. Goal is to get to the belt and set off the accelerator without dying. A mass combat roll each turn determines how many Separatist droid fighters break off from the main fleet to attack the PCs' squadron. (If the PCs fly out ahead of the Republic fleet, they will be attacked by more droid fighters.)

PC ship destroys several droid fighters on the way to the belt. Grievous joins the enemy force in his fighter, at the head of a droid fighter squadron.

PC ship enters the radiation belt and they activate the ion accelarator. Easy victory? No! Something is wrong--the accelerator controls say it discharged, but the Separatist ships are still moving. Grievous figures out the PCs' plan and orders all droid fighters to attack their ship, while hitting his afterburners to fly out of the belt.

PC scientist rolls to see if he can figure out what's wrong. After succeeding, he realizes that the ion energy got caught up in the ship's shields. By firing their ship's ion cannon with just the right timing, they can discharge the energy into the belts and finish the process. After a tough gunnery roll, they succeed and the entire Separatist fleet is deactivated. Victory!

14 hours ago, thinkbomb said:

so, upfront ... my main group I GM for is comprised entirely of natural-born Old Man Hendersons (not vindictive, just naturally unorthodox in a way that consistently derails my plans). My second group that I GM for still has a natural-born Old Man Henderson in it. So this heavily affects my viewpoint on the topic. Being said ...

Spacecraft and vehicular combat has a very distinct disadvantage against land combat due to the inherent capability of bonkers-creative thought that can happen with each on a group basis.

For example, the main group played through the starter game to get used to the system. Through a lot of creativity and good rolls (as well as baiting my curiosiity until I'd been had) ... their grand plan involved "renting" the dewbacks from the kennels inside the city (and figuring out how to best my stonewall attempt to prevent that), freeing all of the dewbacks at once, and stampeding them through the streets, bypassing/trampling all of the guards ... and also blowing up the water tower for additional collateral damage to cover their escape. = (I only railroaded from them away from actions that would 100% get them killed, everything else I added obstacles and they bested it)

... then they got into the spaceship.

While I love how characters can move about in the spaceship for different positions ... but there's something of a gameplay-mechanics wall that sorta prevented the same level of reckless creative chaos.These Old Man Hendersons weren't able to Old Man Henderson as strong as they wanted to.

So yeah, I like the rules in the PDF linked on the first page of this topic a lot more than the retail version ... but I'm still at a lost with regards to providing my agents-of-chaos players the chance to do things I can't prevent. lol

12 hours ago, Stethemessiah said:

Thank you so much!

I googled Old Man Henderson, as I had never come across the tail before.

I have been laughing my *** off all the way to work this morning reading it, and I'm only about half way through.

Seriously, this has mad my week. Someone needs to adept these tails into a TV show.

I too had to look up "Old Man Henderson", and it had me rolling. 🤣 🤣 🤣 ROFLMAO!!!!! 🤣 🤣 🤣

It reminds me of an old friend of mine from my Army days. He had a D&D character, a Kender named Weebee. Weebee had a Disrupt Dungeon Master spell. It was called Weebee Bored . "nuff said.