Godzfirefly:
In reply to engine (msg # 46):
Thanks for the reply. They are all good comments, some of which I had considered myself.
Godzfirefly:
There would have to be enough enemies that the PCs know they couldn't just fight them all and win. Effectively infinite enemies (though not literally, in-story), so that the PCs can win fights against groups of them without reducing the threat of the whole.
Agreed. In the event that the micro-encounters involved actually NPCs, they could be agents ahead of the group who had been contacted by magical means or by particularly fast scouts. In the case of the PCs pursuing, they could be agents left behind.
Godzfirefly:
The PCs would need enough of a head start that they can conceivably hide, use stealth abilities, and make preparations. But, not so much of a pursuit that they feel someone catching up to them is unreasonable.
The ongoing threat might not necessarily need to be directly from the pursuit. There would be times when the PCs could reliably trust that they had a strong lead, or had shaken pursuit, but would still have to be wary of things that could interfere with their ability to flee (such as, say, pixies turning all their ritual components into cheap glitter, or their mounts being infected by local vermin or plagues). At higher levels, scrying attempts could become a constant concern.
The intent would be that they could linger in locations long enough to have some normal adventuring, especially if part of the reward would assist them in the chase. Or, sometimes they would
have to linger, perhaps to wait for a pass to thaw, or a ship to leave.
Godzfirefly:
While most of the pursuit should be trackers and scouts who the PCs can reasonably defeat, the PCs should know there are foes just behind those pursuers (who can't track, but can be alerted to the PCs' presence) that the PCs would probably be captured/killed by.
Yes, or some other failure mode. Maybe the PCs have something or someone that they don't dare leave behind (or just want to tweak someone off about), like River Tam in
Serenity. Ooh, extra good if the McGuffin in question either is somehow detectable, or causes problems of its own - again, like River.
That way, if they don't want to bother with defeating the pursuit, or they get some bad rolls and the failures snowball, the game doesn't simply grind to a halt with an impossible fight.
Godzfirefly:
Skill Challenges should not describe the entire pursuit, but instead overcoming particular obstacles of the pursuit. And, they should be designed so that failure doesn't get them "caught" but does give away their position to the trackers. And, success shouldn't get them "away" either...it should give them enough breathing room to get some rest, at most. (Unless you're ready for the PCs to get away...)
Definitely agreed. And it's clear you understand what I'm after: a long-term threat that can change in immediacy but won't resolve entirely for a little while.
Godzfirefly:
Terrain should be varied and meaningful, educating both skill challenges and combat maps.
And the individual mini-encounters, I think. A ship is delayed by an unexpected kraken migration (coincidence or enemy action?), a "shortcut" through the Feywild is beset by nymphs who can't take a hint, a mountain pass is thickly haunted.
Godzfirefly:
And, probably the #1 thing to remember is that the PCs need to always want to get away from whatever bad thing the enemies are threatening more than they want to surrender to stop dealing with the frustrating challenges of pursuit.
Definitely. I think the players would definitely need to be brought in on this, so we could find something that they were interested in pursuing/being pursued by over an extended time. I feel like fiction holds a lot of these, though of course the author isn't necessary beholden to the wills of the characters or to random number generators.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Are there easy ways to track things like relative distances and travel rates? How does one judge how long to let an advantage matter before the other side figures out how to counter it? Like, the party acquires new and better mounts, and changes the distance to their advantage; how do I judge when the other side notices this, and counteracts, and how much counteraction they are able to achieve? I'm worried that there's no way to do that impartially unless I have a highly detailed world and essentially play out the other side on my own - and even then it won't be that impartial.