How to Gamemaster (The Art of the Chase Part I)

Learning to add chase scenes to your adventure is one way for how your become a great gamemaster. The Art of the Chase is in every good movie that I have ever seen.  Heroes are either trying to catch something or trying to escape from something.  They are exciting, exhilarating, terrifying, nerve-racking, roller-coaster, elating and stimulating events that will have your adventurers on the seat of their pants. Further, they can involve many skills and abilities that are not otherwise used in a game that is parlay and melee only. Yet, very few Gamemasters ever implement a chase scene or several such scenes into their adventures.

The point of the article is to give to the readers ideas on how to gamemaster by implementing chase scenes into their adventures.  Hopefully, these examples will inspire you.  If they do, please, please, please leave some of your ideas below as comments.  Others will benefit from your genius.

1) At the beginning of your module or adventure – Most adventures start with the adventures being called upon by a local ruler to perform a task.  However, the adventures have no real sense of connection with this ruler.  I say run your adventurers into the arms of the ruler.  Maybe they start the adventure with a magic item that they have just captured from some creatures den and have to return it to the local ruler in 1 day or the king’s daughter will die.  How will they get back in time?  Maybe the horses can only make it back in time with a certain series of ride checks and/or handle animal checks.  Maybe the adventures will have to make fatigue checks or survival checks to fight the desert heat or remember their way back.

2) At the end of your module or adventure – Hey, maybe this is really the end of your adventure.  You only wanted to go to 12^th level or whatever.  Maybe your party even knows that the adventures never go past 12^th level or that the module is about to end.  Well, there is no better time for a chase scene where life and death is on the line.  Maybe they just beat the evil witch in her underground dungeon and just as she is about to die she hits the self-destruct button.  You have seen this in movies.  Getting out will require speed, acrobatics, flight, feather fall, reflex saves, etc…  Maybe dimensional spells don’t work in the witch’s cove.  It makes sense to stop enemies from just appearing unannounced.  It also makes for a great chase scene.

3) In the middle of the module or adventure – When placed in the middle of an adventure you will need to make sure that the characters know that they are suppose to run (avalanche, high level dragon or dragons, army, volcano).  You don’t want them to die in the middle of the adventure so don’t put their life in danger is my suggestion.  Instead, put someone else’s life in jeopardy.  Say they have to save someone from a burning building before they escape.  Maybe as they make their way into a safe house the dragon gives them one last breath of fire, but not enough to kill them.

Well, there you go.  You are one step closer to knowing how to Gamemaster like a GAME MASTER.