Re: How to run a chase in HQ2

From: L C <lightcastle_at_...>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:53:31 -0500

Matthew Cole wrote:
>
> Hi all
>
> Please can you help me? I'm trying to prepare for our story's heroes to be
> in a chase scene that might last more than one session; it's in a
> flashback
> episode (already in play) from before the current campaign started.
>

Sounds like fun.

>
> We already know: the heroes will catch their target; there are two
> groups of
> heroes that don't interact knowingly until the end of the chase; it's a
> group of kidnappers fleeing the scene of the crime.
>
> The aim for the whole flashback episode is to find out about the heroes
> early lives, what exactly happened in this famous episode of their
> past and
> give a good way to introduce a new player hero to the existing campaign.
>
> I will be starting the chase in earnest this Thursday, so any help will be
> greatly appreciated.
>
>

>
>

It sounds to me like you need to make the chase contest about something OTHER than catching the target. In other words, a failure should be about losing something else, or not getting the glory properly, or what have you. (I assume HQ2 still allows you to frame contests in this manner.)

I suppose one way to do it would be to have a number of set pieces for the PCs that let them illustrate neat things they did in the chase. (Getting down a cliff to gain time, swinging across chasms, swimming the raging river, a clash with the Kidnappers before the final clash.) Chaining these could be entertaining, and allow each group some good stories showing how they did these great things in their legendary chase.

The new Extended Contest rules (from what I can gather in snippets) seem far too short to use for an epic chase that spans across more than one session. (It seems to me the maximum number of rolls you cna have in the new EC is 5, assuming a marginal victory each round. Oh, maybe that means it could be 9.) But really, I'd do it as a series of set pieces that roll over one to the other. Losing at various early ones means they have to come up with ways to make up the time or possibly sustaining injuries or losses that haunt them to this day. (In fact, I would encourage any losses they suffer along the way to be significant for current events, as flashbacks are great tools for introducing things that the characters have known all along but the players are just finding out about in the story.)

LC