Hello all,

First time posting, lurking for the past couple of months. Was wondering about the chase rules in SR4A.

Here's how I read them:

1. Each pilot makes a vehicle test, modified by Handling.
1a. The winning vehicle gets to set the engagement range that round.
2. Each pilot rolls initiative (alternatively, all the people in a given vehicle roll initiative).
3. Everyone carries out actions.
3a. Pilots roll vehicle tests, and the successes they achieve are added to next round's step 1.

What I'm wondering is:

1. Am I reading this correctly?
2. Are there useful house rules out there? It would seem that running a chase scene with multiple opponents might get cumbersome.
3. Are the rules completely borked, or are they useful?

Thanks!

Only maneuver action net hits are added to the next turns opening opposed vehicle test. And the winning driver of said opening test do not so much declare the range as gets the option to change it by one step (turning say medium range into either short or long).

As for the brokenness of the rules, all such inquires are likely to turn up a reply of "opinions differ".

We have used them and they work well as long as you remember a few things.

The chase rules are not tactical rules. It is not a 3 sec turn. They are used to abstract a dramatic resolution of a chase.
They are very simplified but do benefit from a little bit of set up generally in the picking of the terrain and the conditions. I like to have police pursuit statted out in general because as certainly as night follows day runners will be chased by cops. Nothing fancy just know the driving pools of the pilots and be familiar with the stats of the vehicles/drones will take you a long way down the road (no pun intended).

The rules are borked, simply because they can't really handle a chase between more than two vehicles. I use the opposed handling test for superior position, but range is determined by the speed of the vehicle and how well you do on the handling test, plus other factors (a helicopter will have an edge over a ground vehicle, for example). As written, it's entirely possible for a race car going top speed to be overtaken by a dwarf on a skateboard, simply because the skateboarder might do better on the opposed test.

True story: in SR4.0, we were in a sports car going at a top speed of 300. I had a Force 10 spirit use Movement on us, which accelerated us to a top speed of Mach 4.6. We were being chased by a go gang on choppers; good bikes, but not especially fast ones. The GM simply handwaved our getaway; but by the rules, we'd actually be doing worse, since we were going over our top speed and would suffer a penalty to the Handling test. Even if we won every time, it'd take us at least five minutes to be able to Break Off. The rules don't account for things like relative speed, positioning, or mobility (aerial vehicles vs ground again); they only allow for driver skill. It's not a bad idea, but it's totally unworkable in practice.

I know that the faster vehicle gets a +1 to the handling roll for every 5 points of speed it has over the slower vehicle. I used the chase rules for a motorbike race, and found the same problem: more than two vehicles messes things up. I do like the fact that speed is less important than driver skill, since the rules are abstracted, but maybe a +2 per every 5 point speed difference might be in order.

Also, wouldn't it be better to run chases as an opposed extended test? What I mean by that is that every chase turn is an interval in an extended test, but each interval is also an opposed roll. The net number of hits the winner has over everyone else can be applied as a sort of "reach" modifier, putting the winning vehicle further out of range, or in a better position, or something. I dunno...

This has always been my main disconnect with the chase rules. If it were just the one vehicle trying to catch another I could see how the Chase Turn would work, but there's always spirits, drones and runners all with multiple IP's who want to do things. Absent special circumstances (characters who are unable or unwilling to unleash all manner of hellfire on their pursuers or pursuees), how do you incorporate the chase rules with characters who should be acting in their normal combat turns?

We avoid the situation entirely by never using the chase rules, but that's not that helpful a contribution.

I've considered trying them out. I actually have a game in the works where we'd try the Chase rules. But yeah normally we just wing it. Not the answer you're looking for I am sure.

It would be if you also mentioned an alternative...

As is now, basically I do the same, but the consequence is that there are no chases. The PCs never get chased by the police, they simply get away. The only time something remotely similar happens is tailing someone or losing a tail, but that's an entirely different set of skills...

For another hilarious example of how the chase rules are fuxxored:

It is easier to escape from 10 cop cars being driven by 10 police working together, than it is to escape from 9 cop cars being driven by 9 police working together and also, chasing separately and not working with the police, 1 cop car being driven by 1 guy who has the same exact statline as the police.

Pretty much this.

We just stay in tactical combat, and use common sense to deal with pursuit situations. I know, still not helpful.

@3278 et al: That's what we've done as well, always kept it tactical. I've never figured out how to implement the chase rules at the table, but I was curious about other groups' experiences.

During a vehicle chase we use the handling and control tests with thresholds determined by the conditions, and use the Accel of the vehicle as the speed difference round to round. (Drivers can increase the Accel of the vehicle by making a control test, just as a character can increase their speed with a Running test.) A vehicle trying to force another vehicle off the road has to catch it and then it comes down to Opposed Control Tests. A lot of it we just make up as we go along. ("I saw this on Mythbusters," is a perfectly valid endorsement of a ruling during chase combat.)

I think this is a good idea. I would want to take a block of real city map, possibly just off google-maps or the like, and then keep it tactical just using an approximate scale. Maybe extend the combat turn length a little once the distances get longer.

The stupid thing is that the speed/accel rules in tactical combat also suck.

That's what we do. We have a large laminated paper map with a square grid for dry-erase block maps, and as distance and speed change, the map gets redrawn at new scales when necessary. We also use Google Earth a lot,* to provide photo-realistic location-appropriate block maps, both for vehicle combat and just for area mapping for recon or whatever.


That's my fault. I knew better, and had a chance to fix them, ten years ago, and I squandered it. Mea culpa on that one.

*We use it enough that I'd like to build a touchtable to use when we're gaming, and I've started gathering hardware, but came up against a hard stop at the expense of a short-throw projector. We have the IR cameras, and we have a projector, but it's not short-throw, so we can do multitouch, and we can do projection, just not on the same surface.

I rarely break them out anymore (but then, we rarely get a chance to play these days), but the way we tracked vehicles in combat was to use my boyhood collection of Micro Machines. I had planned to update that system using some business card-sized magnets and some vehicle counters from an old Cyberpunk boxed set I picked up on the cheap so we could do chase scenes on our magnetic dry erase board, but that plan fell by the wayside.

There's all sorts of campaign types that would benefit from a really good set of vehicle rules; DeathTrack/Car Wars trid shows, Mad Max-style running gun battles in a variety of 6th World hellholes, convoy raids and go-gang street wars. But alas.

I also use a board like that on the table, it's just usually completely covered in character sheets, pizza boxes and the like.


Tell me you're old enough to know the original DeathTrack computer game? that was so fucking awesome. It was even in 3D and had coloured boxes for cars. And on our computer at the time it ran about double the speed it was supposed to, because internal clocking was not yet invented... .

While i can't be bothered to work out the details of why, i suspect this is related to the teamwork rules and the basic odds of the dice rolls..

In the end i think the basic disconnect is that unlike tactical, the battlefield is constantly moving in one direction or other. Think of it like having a fight on top of a very large treadmill with random objects being dropped in from time to time. As such, the various people involved need to find windows of opportunity for their actions. Like when the street clears of traffic for a couple of seconds so that their weapons have a clear line of sight.

Seen this way we again see that IP is not so much about gross movement speed as it is about sensory processing speed. It allows people to make use of shorter openings that would pass a non-wired person by.

I am. They updated that game a few years ago with Deathtrack: Resurrection. I got it for $3 out of a discount bin, but there was a reason it was in the discount bin. The original is better.

Hah, hilarious. I was admittedly a kid when I played it, but at the time it was fucking awesome. There is also no other game quite like it to date. I mean there were others with machineguns, but I don't think any other game ever crammed that many weapons into a single car . (I may be wrong about this... I just don't KNOW any other games like that.)

From memory: You had machineguns, these were good, up close
Then lasers, I don't remember if they also ran out of ammor or not
Then Rockets, with pretty limited ammo,
And then these ground-hugging things that just followed the road

And weren't there Caltrops AND mines, too? And all sorts of spikes which I don't remember doing much.

And everything in three degrees of effectiveness... good times. And at that time at least you didn't need to do stunts and hit powerups and crap like that - just win money, buy upgrades, and blow shit up.

Those were called Terminators, if memory serves. They were skateboards with explosive charges attached.

The thing I liked about DeathTrack was it was a really good driving simulator. It reminded me of the old Hard Drivin' video game. And then it added to that mines, machine guns and ramming plates. Those were good times.

The original Carmageddon was also a favorite of mine. I wanted to combine this all into my Deathgame 2062 idea of a bloodsport reality show. The racing part would be a combination of those games plus movies like the Cannonball Run and Mad Max films, but if there is one thing that's true of all editions of SR, they've never had particularly easy to implement vehicle rules.

Nice, I might try this out on my table if a chase comes up.

Just to throw another spanner in the works, the open highway is fine, but anyone have a good way to resolve chases weaving through traffic without just increasing the number of manouvres/control tests?

Are you discussing the "Land Shark" missiles introduced in the Lone Star source book?

Maybe. Terminators were the explosive skateboard weapons from the old DeathTrack video game, but it wouldn't surprise me that something similar turned up in SR. This seems relevant. (This is maybe my second or third favorite car chase ever.)

As for vehicle chases in various conditions, I use the Threshold Table and Terrain modifiers from the book. There was a house rule we used in previous editions that gave a +2 penalty to Control Actions past the first, and I'd probably do something similar in SR4. The idea is that the driver has to use one of his IP's for a control test for whatever action he wants the vehicle to perform that round (go straight, make a turn, pull a Rockford), and if he wants to change that with a subsequent IP within the same round he'd have a -2 penalty on that second maneuver (and -4 for the 3rd, and so on). Crash tests don't incur the -2 penalty, but they do suffer from it. (If the driver has used two IP's to control the vehicle, all subsequent crash tests that round have the -2 penalty.)

The driver's control test covers whatever movement the vehicle makes in the combat turn, and so it may cover making several maneuvers. If a vehicle is traveling at a speed of 90mpt, the driver may wish to make a right turn at an intersection followed by a hard left into an alley, all within the 90m the car will travel that round. Rather than treat each turn as a separate test I'd set the threshold based on the difficulty and conditions of the whole round's movement.

I thought that was what the terrain modifier was for...

Edit: note to self. Read thread first, then comment perhaps...

I am getting the feel that the problem people are having with the chase rules are that they do not mesh with making highly detailed action movie descriptions of events happening.

While the GM and rigger player would love to describe every last pedestrian, vehicle and whats not dodged, this is handled by the terrain modifier to the pr turn vehicle test as well as having the driving character spend a single complex action just driving.

Similarly, the maneuver roll is for when the character attempts to do anything that will give him a edge vs the opposition, be it taking sharp turns down alleys, forcing a some other car to swerve into the path of the opposition or anything else that may fit.

Basically, the chase rules have abstracted away from the itty bitty details of the chase. But this may well get in the way of the GM trying to get a white knuckled description of events. And this is where i wonder if the real conflict lies, not in the details of the rules themselves.

I think that you have nailed it on the head.
We have used the Chase rules extensively, and have had some very detailed and very entertaining scenes using the rules out of the book. We do not use the tactical rules in vehicles, because they so quickly become a chase scene that it is really a waste of time. Chase scenes are where it is at.

Anyways...

Like that, consider it yoinked!

Alright, so abstraction is good, sometimes. I agree, but it should be a GOOD kind. This deal of 10 grannies on wheelchairs catching a rigger in a ferrari just because there's 10 of them... (alright, I MAY be oversimplifying the issue.)

So some detail here is lacking. There was this driving test thing taken from another game here, by one James McMurray.
http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/generators/...&pageType=1
Detailed explanation here:
http://shadowrun.colugo.org/chase.html

This actually seems quite nice, I haven't tried it, though. Been meaning to... maybe next session.

I would say that you ARE oversimplifying the bigger picture. If the Person chasing is of no consequence, then they do not get to participate. Granny in a wheel chair with a top speed of 5-10 ain't ever going to catch a Ferrarri, no matter how many of them you use.

As for 10 Cops chasing your rigger, from 4 different coompanies (Assuming they cooperate), well, you cannot outrun a Police Radio. This is where your Rigger can shine. Maneuvers make the difference here. Weed out the less competent chasers with maneuvers. Eventually, assuming you have not been turned into swiss cheese by weapons fire, you can eventually escape. It will just take some time.

A good example of this would be the final chase scene from "The Blues Brothers" every cop in the state was after them plus a small group of Neo-Nazis but Jake and Elwood where still able to out run them.

Indeed...

"The use of excessive force in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers has been approved."

Well the problem remains that teamwork can allow you to do things that are physically impossible.

And realistically.... you're still not getting way, unless you do any of the following:
- ditch the ride
- hide the ride so well it won't be found
- change the ride so drastically, while ideally out of sight of both pursuers, aircraft, and traffic cams, so that it can enter flowing traffic somewhere else inconspicuously
- cross jurisdiction borders

Just driving fast and doing maneuvers won't matter, since once the cops are REALLY on to you, they'll just be coming from all sides, including the air. And eventually they'll chase you into roadstrips - or worse.

Indeed...

Extra-territoriality is your friend in this case. Anytime we actually got into it with multiple bogies chasing us from different origins, we either ditched the vehicle eventually (that is what they are for right? You did not use your own on the run I would hope), ditched the groups by going places where they were either reluctant or unable to pursue, or caused pileups of pursuers to block pursuit (and extend leads) before the big guns could arrive. It behooves a team to do their homework ahead of time, and know the city and the places to go dependant upon who is after you. In every instance, it was extremely exciting and full of tension.

You forgot:
- sell the ride to a crooked scrap yard where it's immediately cubed and shipped off to China to make lawn furniture.
- blow it up real good. Like, really good. Include thermite for that pretty, pretty glow!

I tend to think the 'disengage' in this case is a temporary thing if everyone is after you. You've got breathing space to do something if you want and/or can. Maybe it's trigger the chameleon/morph plate/spoof chip so you're apparently a different vehicle. Maybe it's ditch the car.

If you just keep going you will be re-engaged. It's what you do with your moments of local superiority that determine if you can break the cycle.

Ah, OK.

Just make sure you're in a Static/Spam zone when you do so, otherwise the system will note easily that you just changed form.

Hackers are your friend there

And again i say that maneuver is a wide enough action that it can be anything from a hair pin turn to causing a pileup that will hopefully slow down the pursuers enough for the range to be turned into long or extreme, and break off can be attempted.

And lets not forget that damage to the vehicle or driver do have an effect of tests, so hackers, mages and samurai are all welcome to add dice mods during it all.

No offense, but that's involving a ton of house rules and GM fiat. And the problem here is, you can't use your Maneuvers unless you beat all of the opponents at the Handling test. Also, even if you have a significant advantage, it takes a minimum of five minutes to escape. For example, if you're in a helicopter and they're in ground cars, you've pretty much got a clean getaway no matter what they get on their Handling tests.

Not really... I am not sure where you are seeing a ton of houserules.

As for the minimum time to escape. So what...
If you drive into a covered area, or a Mall, or any number of other areas where air assets cannot follow without landing, well, you SHOULD escape from the Helicopter. Not seeing a problem here.

Saying "You should escape" is a houserule and GM fiat.

And try reversing your logic. The runners are in a helicopter, the enemy only has ground assets. Yes, you "should" get away; but by the RAW, it takes at least five minutes and you get no advantage for being in the air. This despite the fact you have a huge speed and maneuverability advantage. To get sillier, try a racecar going after a low-flying fighter jet. The can can't even keep up with the jet for five minutes, so why does it take that long for the fighter jet to Break Off?

Saying "You should escape" is a houserule and GM fiat.

And try reversing your logic. The runners are in a helicopter, the enemy only has ground assets. Yes, you "should" get away; but by the RAW, it takes at least five minutes and you get no advantage for being in the air. This despite the fact you have a huge speed and maneuverability advantage. To get sillier, try a racecar going after a low-flying fighter jet. The can can't even keep up with the jet for five minutes, so why does it take that long for the fighter jet to Break Off?

"You Should Escape" is nothing more than a comment. It Has absolutely nothing to do with Fiat or Houserules. You really should learn to tell the difference there Cain. You cannot take a helicopter into a building or parking structure. If they ditch in such a location, well, your Helicopter will never know, now will they. Thus, YOU SHOULD ESCAPE.

As for reversing. I would expect the Hostiles to get away if the runners are in the helicopter. They are at the disadvantage because they are in the air; after all, they cannot just fly through everyone's airspace. Extraterritoriality and all that. Who cares HOW LONG it takes to escape, The time increment is an abstraction. If you don't like it, change it.

As for the Jetfighter, I would never allow the racecar to pursue it in the first place, so your example is irrelevant. You need the right vehicle for the right job. In this case, a car is an inappropriate choice for chasing a Jet fighter.

Have a nice day...

"You should escape" is GM fiat, pure and simple. The RAW doesn't make any allowances for that sort of speed difference, nor does it make allowances for terrain advantages like helicopter vs. ground. Your house rules might work, but don't pretend they're anything short of house rules.

They are not houserules, Never have been houserules, nor will ever be houserules. Quit being so ignorant, or are you just baiting me?

"You should escape" is a statement. Over the years, Dice rolls have proven this statement. "SHOULD" not WILL. I have yet to even include "Speed Calculations" into anything that I have said. If you are allowing a scenario to take place that has absolutely no bearing on outcome, you are even more lenient than I think you are. If something has no bearing on the scenario, it should not get mecahnical consideration either. Your Racecar and Jetfighter example are a prime indicator of this. Since you already know that the Car cannot pursue the Plane, why whould you ever let there be any mechanical consideration?

AS for my Example of Helicopter vs. Car. AS long as the car stays to the roads and never breaks LOS, then yes, the Helicopter will be able to maintain visual contact barring anything catastrophic. However, the second they lose sight of the vehicle, the potential for them (those in the car) to escape rises with every second. Park in an underground structure and disperse into the adjoining mall, and they should escape. Why? Because the helicopter CANNOT FOLLOW THEM. A Helicopter cannot apprehend anything. You need groundpounders for that. So, barring Groundpounder presence, They should escape from the Helicopter. Any other result is "Railroading," and I now how much you say that you avoid that.

Is that CLEAR ENOUGH for you Cain?

Dictating to us what should or should not happen in your games, while stating you have no houserules, is dishonest debating.

Here's the problem. You're stuck on one scenario of helicopter vs ground, and one that strictly favors the ground. What about shadowrunners trying to escape in a chopper? Or trying to get away on the ground with an aerial drone after you? Or shadowrunners trying to chase after a helicopter? Or any one of the hundreds of situations the Chase Rules simply cannot model adequately? What happens when one tries to fire at the other? How can a ground vehicle with only forward-mounted weaponry even shoot at a helicopter behind it? Or better yet, how can a car close to Short Range with a helicopter, when short range is defined as "Close enough to jump from one vehicle to another" and the helicopter is five stories up?

Whatever, Cain.

And I am Glad to see that you finally Admitted that Ground Evasion is more favorable against air assets when the Air assets are chasing. It will be reversed if the positions are changed, and the Air assets are the ones trying to escape, and all you have is ground pursuit. Or do you not agree with that either?

Lets look at your above examples, shall we. And remember, We use the CHASE rules, not the Tactical Rules, which we have seen absolutely no use for as of yet. Now, Speed will make a difference in Chase scenes. The faster vehicle will likely outpace the slower very quickly, given the right circumstances.

PC's escaping in a Helicopter. Are they being pursued by air assets? Are they capable of matching the maneuvers of the helicopter. If so, then it will take some time to escape. If not, they will likely escape with ease.

PC's On the ground with an Aerial Drone Chasing. Same Questions. Can the drone match maneuvers? Are the PC's on Foot? Can the Drone get into Building/structures on its own? Some can, and some cannot. If it can, then the chase may take some time. If it cannot, then all the runners need to do is enter a structure that the drone cannot follow them into.

Shadowrunners chasing a Helicopter. If they do not have air assets, the Helicopter will get away. There is really no other option here.

Now, If you try to fire at someone, you take an "action" to do so. As for your example of car with forward mounted weapons shooting a helicopter behind it, It can't. Why wouldyou think that it could? Now, a Runner sticking his head out a window (or through the sunroof) with an Anit-Air weapon could indeed take a shot (or with a ballistic weapon if the range is close enough; obviously a GM call). By the same token, An Air Vehicle vs. Air vehicle chase may involve a lot of weapons fire. Dependant upon how the vehicles are configured.

AS for closing to "Short Range" on a Helicoppter in a car... You CAN'T, unless the Helicopter is cooperating. Why would you even allow something as stupid as that in the first place?

I think I have identified your problem. You are trying to Make everything fit into the strictest interpretation of the rules, rather than using your innate common sense to say "NO, YOU CANNOT DO THAT." Maybe you should try that sometime. If the action defies common sense, Just say No. Now, that being said. If the PC is trying to get from Helicopter to Car, that is a possibility. If he is trying to go from Car to Helicopter, well, BOTH Vehicles MUST be cooperating to do so, otherwise the PC is road pizza.

The chase rules have worked flawlessly for us. I am sorry that you have less than good results with them. Fortunately, that is not my concern. *Shrug*

Cain knows that's what you're doing. [It's probably what he does, too.] He's just calling "application of common sense when a rule doesn't cover a situation" something else: he's calling it "GM fiat" and "houseruling,*" because the implicit content of those words is insulting, and will make you debate him, despite the explicit content being factually correct, if inflammatory. Don't feed the troll.

*I don't know how those words became profanity, but when the rules in the books run out, that's when GM fiat takes over; when such a situation arises frequently, a group agrees to a rule to cover that eventuality, and that's houseruling. Big deal. But being accused of that stuff here is like being accused of eating babies, for some reason.

I been reading over the chase rules and have a question, how do you account for traffic and other hazards? The rules seem OK for a chase down a empty street but what about a busy one,other cars should be a factor even if they aren't involved in the chase.

My understanding is that the other traffic effects the Narrow/Dangerous road modifiers. Also know as the reason that none of the given NPCs can ever drive effectively in a chase. An example: in DOTA1 there's a chase scene down the crowded streets of Lagos. The suggested penalties mean that the NPC driving away has a dicepool that is positively horrible, and will crash in some truly terrible manner immediately upon the commencement of the chase. If not for the PC wheelman having absurd dicepool, everybody would've died in the first couple rounds. The penalties are just absurd.