A Step Forward – Chase Mechanics Reviewed
Chase mechanics are some of the hardest things in an RPG to get right – so much so that a lot don’t even try (and sometimes go to considerable lengths to hide the fact). So I was very interested when Evil Genius Games offered me the chance to review the chase mechanics from their upcoming release, “Everyday Heroes”, especially since these were specifically designed to recreate the chase scenes from the modern remake of Casino Royale.
To facilitate this, Evil Genius provided a PDF excerpt from their rules and a partial mini-adventure that featured the chase mechanics.
A poor beginning
To start with, the chase rules were supposed to be self-contained, and clearly weren’t – in fact, the first substantive paragraph of the rules section consists of the sentence “Individual participants roll initiative to determine turn order as normal. (emphasis mine).
It soon became clear that the game mechanics were built around a modern-day interpretation of D&D 5e, and that without experience in that game session (and a copy of the rules) GMs could quickly flounder.
Fortunately, one of my players had such expertise, and I had at least participated in the playtesting, so I had a clear understanding of what ‘advantage’ meant, for example. But I wish all that was spelled out in the introduction, if nowhere else.
It did not help that the mechanics demand the tracking of three separate variables – Escape and Capture points, and a time limit known only to the GM. This is at least one more than necessary, and maybe two.
One two many players
The first sequence is supposed to be one player against the GM, who is running the bad guy. Problem: I had two players present. This was solved by giving one player the villain to run, and the other, the hero (If I had a player sitting around doing nothing while another engaged in a chase sequence within an RPG, I would at least consider doing the same thing).
Mechanical Flaws
Each player then copied down a copy of the characters, and I read the chase rules aloud. The ‘two stats and time limit’ came in for immediate criticism – at least half of it from me, it must be admitted.
The ‘two stats’ were immediately junked and replaced with a simplified mechanic, called Chase Points for lack of need for anything better. This was a simple number that initially reflected how many moves ahead one side was of the other. If the villain (trying to escape) swung the total X in his favor, he would escape; if the hero (trying to catch the villain) swung the total by X in his favor, he would make the capture, initiating combat.
The initial set-up from the mini adventure stated that the hero had just spotted the villain climbing over a fence into a construction lot. Count 1 for the hero to spot the villain, count a second 1 for the hero to move to beside the fence, and count a third 1 for the hero to climb the fence – it would take an abstracted three moves for the hero to get to where the villain already was, so I set the initial chase points at 3. The reason this matters is because it measures how long the villain has to do something before the hero catches up with where the villain started doing whatever it was.
As per the set-up narrative, three was also the X selected – so if the villain got the chase number up to 6, he would escape, and if the hero got it down to 0, the villain would not.

Image by Peter Dargatz from Pixabay
The Chase
The player operating the villain spent a round looking around for a construction shed on the construction site where he might find tools and a second round heading for it. Gaining entry, he spotted a screwdriver (what he was looking for) and a couple of sticks of dynamite – without fuses, which were obviously stored separately for safety (he had rolled a nat 20, but there were limits to how generous I was going to be, but this was a Bond chase, after all; it wouldn’t be complete without something going ‘Boom’).
He decided to spend an extra turn ferreting out the fuses. This was long enough that the hero had spotted the villain, reached the fence but looked for a gate instead of climbing over, giving him time to keep half-an-eye on the villain’s activities. Spotting him going into the shed, and noticing warning signs of explosives, he climbed aboard a bulldozer in the construction site, raising the blade to provide some shielding against a possible explosion, and drove straight at the shed. That’s a total of four moves, so he got his mechanical mount headed in the right direction just as the villain emerged from the hut.
Note that if the chase rules were being run exactly as written, it would all be over by now – the time limit suggested was three turns… This was clearly nowhere near enough. In the end, 12 turns were consumed, and by the 10th on, it was clear that it was approaching a climax. 15 would have been too long; twelve proved just about right for an epic bond-style chase.
The chase played out from there, involving an industrial crane (intended, from the source material) used as a bridge to a multistory car park across the street (improvised), a semi full of mattresses for the hero to jump onto, and a school-bus blown up to provide enough cover for the villain to escape.
But, by now, the flaws and benefits of the game mechanics were clear to us all; the rest of the chase was for fun, and to make sure that we hadn’t missed anything.
Verdict
The player operating the villain thinks a lot more quickly than the one who was operating the hero, by both players’ admissions. That meant that by the time the hero-player had come up with a counter-move, the villain-player had been gifted enough time to plan his next move. Only the character edge built into the hero character gave the hero-player a chance to keep up.
If participants are equally quick on their mental feet, and the chase scene is not too complex, and the GM brings the right flamboyant attitude to the table, the mechanics could work very well – with the modifications described earlier.
Unfortunately, this is often not the case. The result is that the slower player begins to grow frustrated, the quicker player begins to grow bored, and the GM starts to struggle to keep the action flowing, and the game, interesting.
In addition, some GMs are not good at extemporizing and improvising, and there’s a LOT of that needed with this system.
IF you have the right ingredients, then this system can be fast-paced, high-energy, action, with minimal scope for mechanics to get in the way – exactly what you want for a chase sequence. But that will only be true of a few groups out there.

Image by analogicus from Pixabay
The News Gets Worse
Like most game mechanics for chases, the rules would clearly struggle to cope with anything more complex than simple one-on-one.
Many on One
One car is being driven by a baddie, and the chasing car is full of PCs, only one of whom can operate the vehicle at a time. Despite being one-vehcile-vs-one-vehicle, the PCs can clearly take multiple actions at effectively the same time. Or it could be aircraft, or jet-skis, or starships. I’ve never yet found a set of chase mechanics that handle this extremely common situation well.
Then change it up, and put each of the pursuers in their own, independent, vehicle, and everything gets more complicated.
To give the efforts of Evil Genius their due, simply adding the number of enemies in excess of one to the target X would probably handle these problems as well as any other rules that I’ve seen, if not better.
So it might be, starting from, say 2, that the villain needs +3 to escape, while the heroes need -8 to capture (in the first instance) and vice-versa in the second. This creates more room for the side with multiple participants to cause problems for the escaping villain, or to overcome problems that the villain creates for the chasing pack, without letting the combat last too long or come to a conclusion too quickly.
One on Many – one is enough
Many targets, one pursuer, but any one of the targets will be enough. Maybe the PC just needs to grab someone to tell him what the hooting alarms and flashing lights mean in the villain’s lair (he knows it’s probably not good). But they are panicking and running everywhere in response to those same alarms…
The PC is now operating in a target-rich environment, and he only needs one of those targets to pay off. This scene would be run fairly easily using the modified chase rules. Now, the fact that there are multiple characters on one side of the chase works to the benefit of the pursuer.
If I were running this sequence in an adventure, I would set things up so that if the PC stops, he can grab one of the panicked flunkies in a single round, and start interrogating him the round after, regardless of die rolls, or the PC can head for a particular position and attempt to grab a flunkie in passing (which would be far less likely to succeed). In fact, as time ticked away, it would become that much harder to succeed, as the flunkies escape, one by one.
To be honest, I would probably run these events ‘at the speed of plot’ – if I wanted the PC to know what the alarms meant, then after a round or two, I would throw a flunkie his way; if not, then after a round or two attempting to overrule me with a great die roll, the flunkies are all elsewhere and unavailable for interviews. The player will have to use his character’s own expertise to work out why the alarm is going off.
Who the character is, makes a big difference. A technology-oriented character might ‘get’ the answer right away, possibly even without a roll; a character less adept in technology might have to make a roll, even though most warnings are fairly explicit (if sometimes cryptic to a non-specialist). “Coolant contamination” might mean everything to a nuclear engineer, but most laymen will have no idea why it’s bad; all they know is that the alarms and reactions tell them that it is bad.

I couldn’t find what I wanted, so I made my own.
One on Many – all are needed
In this variation, it’s one vs many again, but all of the many have to be caught.
Our hero accidentally knocks over the drum containing the radioactive Gummy Bunnies, who immediately bounce their way in all directions, looking for a path to freedom (these examples are indicative and not to be taken all that seriously). The chase is to capture all the escapees before it is too late and one (or more) escape into the city beyond.
Again, this can be handled with some simple additional rules – that’s the good news. Set an overall target for all the Gummy Bunnies – any that aren’t caught before the hero’s advantage reaches Y are out and loose, and free to mutate into something nastier.
To determine Y, use a Fibonacci Sequence. Let’s be generous and let the chaser grab one of the bunnies right away – that means that the first number will be a 0. If the hero can spot his next target at the same time (reasonable under the circumstances), then the second number would be one more.
A Fibonacci sequence works by adding together the two previous numbers to get the next number in the sequence. They turn up in all sorts of odd places in nature.
We want as many entries as there are Bunnies – let’s say eight of them.
0 and 1 are the first two. 0+1=1 is the third. 1+1=2 is the fourth. 1+2=3 is the fourth. 2+3=5 is the fifth. 3+5=8 is the sixth. 5+8=13 is the seventh. and 8+13=21 is the eighth. It looks a lot clearer without the verbiage: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21.
So 22 is our Y – or 20, if we want to make it harder for the PC.
Round 0 – he catches one.
Round 1 – he catches a second. If he makes a good enough roll, he might also capture the third. If he doesn’t, the bunnies get one step further ahead of him.
Round 2 – he’s supposed to be looking around for the fourth target, but he might be spending the turn capturing the third.
Round 3 – in the worst case scenario, he’s now looking around for the fourth, and can attempt to capture it in round 4. In the best case scenario, he’s captured the third and is starting to look for the fourth.
…and so on.
If the PC does something to improve his success, like throwing down some of the rabbit’s food to attract them, or finding a way to capture two at once early on (when they are all close together), he can get ahead of the curve and will make the target; if he makes a mistake (a bad roll to catch one), then one or more might escape.
Many on Many – the ultimate nightmare
Five PCs vs 5 Villains resulting in 5 simultaneous chases. It doesn’t matter what mechanics you use for this, it’s going to be a nightmare.
This is where those simplifications made to the Evil Genius rules really pay off. One number per chase for a total of 4 – that’s a lot better than a total of 8 to track. Run turns of each chase consecutively, sharing the spotlight around. Be alert for collateral ‘damage’ from one chase sequence impacting another chase, either to the for the better or the worse (that sort of thing helps unify and tie the whole thing together). If the villains look like giving the PCs the slip, the PCs can always exchange targets (a well-known trope and tactic). Do it right (using some kind of counter to track the four chase numbers) and the results would be a gripping game session.
The Ultimate Verdict
So the chase mechanics provided by Evil Genius are (1) not perfect, but (2) flexible and adaptable enough to be better than anything else in situations where there really isn’t anything adequate — IF you have the players to take advantage of the system’s strengths.
The larger the group, the less impact one player being a slower thinker than the rest will have, because focusing attention elsewhere gives them longer to make a decision. If it’s a recognized problem, you can always designate one or more players as being able to offer ‘suggestions’ to the slower player. There have been past games in which a successful skill roll earned this as an advantage – the better the roll, the more people were allowed to make suggestions (usually, a limit of one suggestion per contributor).
Yes, this is metagaming – but I don’t consider all metagaming to be bad, as I have pointed out many times before.
Would I buy a copy of the game system (when it’s available? This is the real bottom-line question. As always, it would depend in part on the price, and it would depend in part on whether or not I had a copy of the D&D 5e rules already, because what has been offered is not self-contained.
Assuming that the 5e rules are not a question – which would be the case for a lot of people out there – then the answer becomes a more solid “maybe”. At maybe US$20 – very likely, because the genre is one of value to me. At half that, then yes, even if the genre was not so beneficial. At more than that? At more than double the $20, I would start to hesitate – a lot. I would be very unsure whether or not I would get my money’s worth at that sort of price point.
Others might disagree, and that’s fine – what value one gets out of any given game product is an individual thing. But at the very least, it’s worth putting onto your radar.
Update 27 April, 2022
A reply from Evil Genius
Chris Ramsley was kind enough to send me a response, reproduced below in full.
Dear Editor,
Thanks for taking the time to try this system out! It looks like you’ve highlighted a lot of the things we wanted to do with this system; mainly the flexibility of the concept.
I think a lot of the trouble you’ve run into has more to do with the presentation of the demo than the system itself. It’s really only meant to be “played” exactly as written. Your inclination to start improvising and giving players more agency is, I think, the correct way to handle a chase scene in a real game session. It’s just that the demo is saying “play out this chase exactly as in the movie so you can see how the dice get rolled,” while I think what you’d like is a taste of the full system.
I’d like to send you the full playtest rules as well as the playtest scenarios we gave to playtesters to try out chases – one for foot chases and one for vehicle chases. These should allow for the real flexibility you’re looking for that the demo just doesn’t provide.
Here are a few more specific notes:
A poor beginning.
A playtest version of the rest of the system is necessary to play the demo and should have been sent along with it. The basics of 5e should be enough to understand it, so I think you were okay on that front with a player that knew those rules, but the playtest material will include everything you need this time around.
The demo is also set up so that player choice is very limited. It’s not a real session of an RPG, but rather a quick little thing to play through to see how the rules function. It’s presented so that you can get a taste of each of the major mechanics and see how they play out. It’s very clear in your article that you didn’t play it out as written, and as a tiny demo, it has no guidance for what to do if you go “off script.” The full chase rules, on the other hand, heavily encourage creativity, so I think you’ll enjoy them a lot more.
One two many players.
The example is a simple demo that recreates the movie chase, meant to be playable even if you don’t have a big group to play it with. I think having two players play Bond and the villain is a great idea though. The full rules will allow you to run with more player characters, which is more fun because some rules only apply to players and not NPCs.
Mechanical Flaws.
Tracking one score for each side is ultimately a lot less to keep track of than something like combat, where everyone is tracking hit points for instance. The two numbers could theoretically be combined into one, but the chase system also works for multiple different groups, not just two. You could have two teams each trying to catch a third, five different people in a race, or any other weird combination you can imagine, without having to modify the system in any way.
The points represent a narrative force, and not an actual distance, which can vary throughout the chase, so there’s no need to choose a starting number; everyone just starts at 0. Actions are then played out in a highly abstracted way. Chases are meant to be extremely fast paced, much like a chase in a movie is. Running a chase for 12 rounds is going to be boring no matter what, which is why the round limit is set to 3 in the demo. You can choose any round limit you like in the full rules, but a regular chase will be 3 or 4 rounds, and even a very long chase probably won’t be more than 6 or 7.
Each round begins with a complication, which it seems like you didn’t use; or at least used only sparingly. These are key to making the chase work. They provide context for the chase and inform player action, and give a way for players to score points or give points to the enemy. The full rules have a lot to say about them and include a lot of advice for the GM.
Verdict.
Being able to plan ahead very well shouldn’t matter very much in a chase. Ultimately whatever your plan is, you’re making an opposed roll against one of your opponents, or in some rare cases against the scenario. If you can come up with a way to use a skill you’re good at against a skill they’re bad at, that’s going to be helpful, but the way you’ve described the way your demo chase went suggests you played it very differently from how the system works, so I think getting the full write-up that explain everything more carefully should help a lot.
The news gets worse.
The system is designed to allow for any number of participants and functions well with vehicles. It looks like you’ve done a lot of math here, and I’m glad to tell you it’s much easier to run these kinds of chases than all that.
I think if you take a look at the playtest material and see how they play out in a “real” game, you’ll get a better feel for how it all works. There are examples of a few different kinds of chases, and all of them are made for a group of players, not just one Bond.
Sincerely,
Chris “Goober” Ramsley.
Co-designer of Everyday Heroes™
Evil Genius Productions LLC
Mike’s Response
Hi Chris,
Call me Mike!
You’re absolutely right about the inclination to go full-game rather than follow-your-nose. How the system responds to player agency is a critical element, and where a number of past game systems have fallen down. You touch on this point a number of times in your response. It definitely sounds like the full rules are a lot closer to what I was hoping for!
Regarding coalesced tracks, I get your point about needing to be able to handle several different independent factions. But I tend to think 2-party chases will be more common, and anything else an exception. And coalescing the tracking means that there are only two tracks needed with 3-4 factions.
I specifically want to mention that reducing everything to die rolls (even opposed rolls) as suggested makes game-play super-boring. It’s no wonder that chases are over so quickly if that’s the approach. Whereas, despite taking time to discuss the mechanics and our impressions, our chase lasted about 12 rounds and despite the problems described, was fun. And that’s the number one target for any game mechanics ticked.
Finally, since it has come up, the standard structure of a round that evolved in the course of the test ran as follows:
- Decide whether or not a complication is needed to liven things up or throw a spanner in the works – in other words, these were treated as plot twists within the case.
- If so, announce it.
- Player attempting to escape announces what he wants to do next.
- GM evaluates proposal. Is it too big for a single turn? What die rolls might be needed to achieve what the player wants to do? etc.
- Player makes the rolls required, GM evaluates results, describes the action and effects.
- Player attempting to capture announces what he wants to do next, given what the prey has just done.
- GM evaluates proposal. Is it too big for a single turn? What die rolls might be needed to achieve what the player wants to do? etc.
- Player makes the rolls required, GM evaluates results, describes the action and effects.
- GM determines whether the pursued has extended his lead, or the pursuer has closed the gap, or the status has remained quo.
- Count another turn complete and Repeat.
Mike
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April 27th, 2022 at 10:19 pm
I can’t help but be reminded of the chase rules from Spycraft (a d20 Espionage game) which released twenty years ago! The single track between two parties (defined as lead and measured in lengths, which had a quantifiable size dependant on the type of chase and terrain if people wanted to shoot while they chased), the choice of maneuvers (in your version a narrative choice, in theirs a list of maneuvers with a matrix of opposing bonuses/maluses forming a sort of blind betting game) and the structure of the turn sequence all seem very familiar. It’s funny how there’s nothing new under the sun sometimes.
April 28th, 2022 at 2:55 am
You’re right, that does all sound familiar, at least at a high-order level, though in part that’s because it’s a fairly logical way to structure such a thing, and in part because there are a lot analogies to hands in a card game that can be drawn to the abstract concept of a chase. Thanks for the comment, Alex :)