So I mentioned in the previous post about my playtest adventure that I’ve learned several things, but was going to split it up into parts to avoid making the whole thing a massive wall of text. Well, good news and bad news:

The bad news is, scheduling issues have forced that adventure onto a now 3-week hiatus, which sucks. But the good news is, because of that, I’ve had more time to sit and think about what I’ve learned without too much piling up. And that brings us to Part 2 here, where I talk about the second main shortcoming I discovered so far thanks to this adventure: Chase sequences. Or rather, the complete and total lack of any rules for how to resolve them.

Now, chase sequences are a thing I’ve been made to think about before. Before I ever even considered making my own game, I happened upon this video by Lindybeige, who has a small series of interesting videos about RPGs to go along with his usual historical combat/weaponry videos. This video in particular points out that most RPGs have no mechanics for resolving a chase scene, despite those being extremely common in an action scenario.

I thought it was a good point, and then I forgot all about it by the time I started designing a game. Now it’s no secret that a big draw of RWBY as a series is kickass fight scenes, and I started RWBY D6 with that in mind and most of my attention has been put towards combat. But chase scenes are very important as well. (MINOR SPOILERS FOR RWBY VOLUME 1 AND 2) In Players and Pieces, RWBY and JNPR (at that point not officially named as teams, but still) decided to run away from a fight they didn’t want to risk against a Giant Nevermore and a Deathstalker. They failed, of course, and wound up giving us one of the coolest fight sequences in the show, but an attempt was made which they failed.

In Painting the Town, Blake and Sun had to make their escape from a White Fang rally while Torchwick chased them all across town in a giant mech. In the meantime, Ruby and Weiss moved ahead of them to set up an ambush while Yang and Neptune gave chase to Torchwick who was giving chase to their friends. Though that example also resulted in a fight, the chase scene was important as a way to build tension and force the team to think on their feet to bring their opponent to a place where they could take control of the fight. (END SPOILERS)

As an RPG mechanic, chase rules put some power into the players’ hands when it comes to deciding when and where a fight takes place. In a typical RPG, like D&D, the GM will spring an encounter on the party and they either fight it out or try to retreat – but the rules for retreating suck (or don’t exist at all) so typically they just fight on the GM’s terms. Adding rules to the game that govern a chase encourages mobility before, after, and during an encounter. The encounter in Players and Pieces, for example, was not just the fight itself, but also the scene at the forest temple where they chose to try and retreat.

In my most recent (relatively speaking) session, I had a villain who wanted very badly to escape without a fight. He had the tools necessary to make it happen, too. But the players wanted to give chase and wound up succeeding. That success, though, was a result of clever thinking and LOTS of GM bullshit. Seriously, I basically just saw that one of the players had a good plan to use his Semblance in a unique manner and catch him, so I rolled a dice for a high-low number to decide if they managed.

That shit sucks.

And it’s also what directly inspired this line of thought. Chase scenes in every tabletop game I’ve been a player in have always felt very slapdash, like the GM was just trying to use existing rules to throw SOMETHING together that gives us a chance at success or failure. That’s bad for two reasons. First, it means the GM has to work extra-hard to make the system work for them, and second, it encourages GMs to handwave chase scenes and discourage them from happening.

Which is a big shame. Chase scenes have the potential to be extremely tense and exciting, if they’re properly constructed. So, long story short, I’m gonna be working on some sort of chase mechanic for RWBY D6. Not entirely sure how I’ll go about it, really. I figure I’ll probably have to build something entirely divorced from the Interaction Stat and Combat Stat sections, which will again make my game a bit more complex but hey. Compromises. As long as I keep the rules themselves relatively simple, it’ll actually probably be less complex than trying to tie it into existing rules.

So between this, Momentum, revamping Interaction stats, and possibly adding in a rest/downtime mechanic, I’ve got a lot of changes to make for the next update. It should be a fun one.