Doing a big chase combat ala Mad Max Fury Road with GURPS

[lachimba]

I would love to have a huge set piece chase battle like Mad Max Fury Road with GURPS.

I have a feeling everyone's advice will be don't do it on a map, turn by turn and instead keep it abstract using chase rules.

Ideas and thoughts?

[(E)]

If it was like mm then you have a big map then you have a few smaller maps (called vehicals and obstacles). The the character tokens are the third layer. MM had the vehicals as environments. Driving rolls to determine position.

[lachimba]

Thats what I was thinking. Print the vehicles put them on big map. Then PCs can move within vehicle and vehicles can move on the map.

If I have a decent length for the map I can loop it and start again at the far side of the board, but its only necessary to move the vehicles when they are drifting apart or together, if they all travelling a X in a straight line then I only have to move the stationary objects.

[Varyon]

Chase rules probably would be ideal, and even if you decide to go turn by turn I'd suggest adapting them for that. One option would be to first get some idea of how long each "round" in a Chase is (I don't have the Action! series so can't really help there). Most vehicles will follow those rules, but you'll adjust position second by second - so if a Chase round is 10 seconds long, and you determine your truck is going from Long (~150 yards) to Medium (~30 yards) range over that time span, then it manages to move 120 yards in 10 seconds, or roughly 12 yards each second. If some of the vehicles are substantially faster/more agile than others, it may be appropriate to use the Chase rules for the slow ones, normal tactical combat rules for the fast ones. Characters will follow normal tactical combat rules.

[Donny Brook]

I tried to run a scene like that with a motorcycle gang chasing the PCs who were in an armoured truck. Incredibly, my PCs STOPPED to carry out the combat. It turned out okay for them in the end, to my surprise.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I tried to run a scene like that with a motorcycle gang chasing the PCs who were in an armoured truck. Incredibly, my PCs STOPPED to carry out the combat. It turned out okay for them in the end, to my surprise.

If the armored truck had gun ports, I wouldn't be surprised. Or if the riders were surprised and had to deal with their motorcycles while getting shot at.

[Skarg]

Turn-based non-simultaneous movement systems start to have realism issues the farther each unit can move each turn, because in reality everything moves at the same time unless stopped, and high-speed chases and combat tend to involve units that are constantly moving in reaction to each other. If units move many hexes each before the next one moves, that's just spatially a very different situation.

In situations like a Fury Road pursuit, or a highway chase, most of the movement of most of the vehicles is all high-speed in the same basic direction, and there usually isn't much difference in the ground being covered. In that case, it would make sense to have movement representing the difference from a straight component in the same direction. But each vehicle could also have its own direction and speed which could be different from the group base.

Essentially the whole map would be moving at a constant speed in one direction, that cancels out the movement component of every car moving in that direction.

The total movement relative to ground and wind would produce a net wind for everyone outside a windshield, which would cause penalties and effects for people trying to do physical things outside cars. The speed, stability, and terrain roughness being crossed would also jerk around passengers, causing more penalties.

I can see developing a rule system for it which I'd enjoy, but it would be a simulation spectacle. But I'm a simulationist maniac.

I'd probably end up mostly using GM discretion rather than designing complete rule systems, but I would want both a battle map of relative positions, and a map of the ground being covered. I could see actually using three scales - one with vehicle maps and passenger counters at 1-yard hex scale - one at a higher scale for car maneuvers at higher speed, and another for the map of the region so I know what happens if the chase goes on for many miles.

[tshiggins]

I'd agree with most of what everybody has said, thus far, and have given some thought to this, myself.

What matters in displaying this on a map is the relative velocities of the vehicles involved, and not how fast each of them moves across the landscape. So, when you show it on a battlemat, just figure out how relative velocities and relative distances change in relation to the PCs' vehicles.

Now, you do need to throw up some road hazards and obstacles and such, but those would move from one side of the map to the other, rapidly, as the vehicles remain more or less centered.

Also, bumping and jumping and rattling around would make combat of all sorts more difficult, and I'd require a DX roll with more or less penalities for an individual to move more than a single hex, inside or outside a vehicle.

(Crawling out onto the hood of a fast-moving vehicle while somebody is shooting at you, to spit fuel into a ram-scoop intake for a turbocharger, is completely insane and penalties to DX rolls should reflect that.)

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Car Wars.

Covers all this material & how to make it fast & simple.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

Car Wars.

Covers all this material & how to make it fast & simple.

I'd rather stick with GURPS rules