Running combined fights/chases?

[WadeL]

Here's another one for you folks...

Is there any good way, in this version of the DFRPG, to do combined fights/chases?

Like, it seems a ridiculously common scenario where someone will either flee midfight, or try and make a fighting retreat out of an ambush, and when a bunch of characters will all have actions like "I want to chase after him and hit him" or "I want to run to the car and fire a few shots at my pursuers". And DFRPG doesn't have a good system for multiple non-Supplemental actions.

So you end up with either
a) Everyone takes a Supplemental move each round. So everyone moves one zone. No one ever gains distance on the others.
b) Someone takes a Sprint action. They get no attack. Now anyone who wants to try and use a same-zone attack against him has to also take a Sprint action. Repeat every round, unless somehow the guy failing doesn't make at least a Fair on his Athletics.

Am I missing something? Should I just be moving things into a Cat & Mouse Chase as soon as one guy takes off running? (Presumably with a win by the cat in a Cat & Mouse meaning you've got the guy cornered and he can't easily flee again)

[Mr. Death]

What I've done when the fight is on the move is just assume that everyone's keeping up unless specific action is taken against that.

Once, I had a wizard and an emissary of the phoenix trying to get to a place on a motorcycle, being chased by demons and a warlock, and I mostly just played it as if they were all in one zone, and knocking one of the demons back far enough he couldn't keep up was a possible Taken Out result.

[Haru]

I would go either or or rather one after the other. That way you can focus on the important part of a scene and get the most out of it.

As always, I like to look at it through the lens of action movies. Often times, you've got a chase then the fight, or the fight turns into a chase. During a chase, people might shoot, but very rarely does the chase end because of a gunshot, they are either part of the background noises (albeit important for dramatic effect), or they are used to shoot windows, etc., also for dramatic effect.

So using the guns skill in a chase can easily be done, either by doing it as a maneuver for an attempt at a +2, or as the skill roll for one exchange, where you focus on intimidating the other by shooting at him.

On the other hand, if you have a fight even during a chase, the protagonists usually are fairly static towards each other. The fight often ends by them being forced apart, which can lead to a chase, given the right circumstances.

In this case, you can use the Drive skill for maneuvers or sometimes even to defend or to attack, as long as you can justify it by what's going on.


Setting the two scenes up can be done by having one be the outcome of the other. So if you chase someone, success would mean that you can now fight them and take them out. If you are chased, failure could mean you are forced to fight your pursuers. And so on.

[WadeL]

That does make sense - in action movies, you're right, no one swings a sword at someone mid-chase. They chase and then fight. Or they are mid-chase but fighting at the same time.

I think the takeaway for the future is once someone starts to flee, it becomes a chase.

Fighting retreats are a bit different, but I guess they're a lot more about fighting your way through opposition until you can get to the place where the chase begins.

[Haru]

Fighting retreats are a bit different, but I guess they're a lot more about fighting your way through opposition until you can get to the place where the chase begins.

Keep in mind that some things don't have to be anything in terms of conflict or contest at all. A fighting retreat could also be done by ending a regular fight in a concession. Again, going for the movie equivalent, I would say it's the time in the fight where things start to go in slow motion, the music gets louder and you only hear the occasional gunshot or swords clashing, but not much of the fighting noises that were there before. The fight is over, you lost but you got away, now lets wrap it up and put a bow on it.

[WadeL]

Keep in mind that some things don't have to be anything in terms of conflict or contest at all. A fighting retreat could also be done by ending a regular fight in a concession. Again, going for the movie equivalent, I would say it's the time in the fight where things start to go in slow motion, the music gets louder and you only hear the occasional gunshot or swords clashing, but not much of the fighting noises that were there before. The fight is over, you lost but you got away, now lets wrap it up and put a bow on it.

In the Dresden Files, it seems most often the fighting retreat is less the slow motion "we've already lost" type fight scene, and more the "And then I realized I had been double-crossed. So I blasted the nearest bad guy and ran for my car...which they obviously anticipated, since two goons with machine guns stepped out of the bushes..." type escape.