Running and Gunning

I don't have much to post today. I've been a bit busy the past few days, but I have made some interesting progress on Van Gogh. I put together a "chases and races" subsystem for chase scenes. It isn't really a new system, so much as a detailed example of how to use the core resolution system for interesting chases. One of the biggest complaints that I've heard about combat systems is how they tend to devolve into "I swing, I hit, I dodge, I swing again." I haven't heard any complaints about chase rules. I suspect that that's because chase scenes aren't as common as combat in games. The chases I've seen tend to be very similar to the boring combat: "I move, he moves, I move again". I'm hoping the chase system will encourage more interesting tactics in chases than just "I try to go faster".

While I was doing the chase rules, it occurred to me that dog-fighting is also a cool kind of scene that never seemed to come up in my games as often as I'd have liked. I remember playing D6 Star Wars and feeling like we were missing out on a lot by not having a lot of cool starfighter engagements. So I started putting together a "dog-fighting" interpretation of the core resolution system. I started that because of fond memories of starfighters but while I was working on it, I mostly thought about SPADs versus Fokkers, aviation adventure from the time when radio was king (like "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"), and knights mounted on dragons.

While I was working on these rules for aerial duels, I realized that I should also include some commentary on other more formalized duels. I love samurai movies and westerns with their quick draw duels. Many types of duels could be played out as ordinary one-on-one combats, but those are kind of special. I also thought of some other unique duels that I'd love to play in a game, such as the duel between Nameless and Long Sky in "Hero" where they play out most of the battle in their heads while planning their strategy before actually moving. Or the battle between Nameless and Broken Sword, where Nameless studied Broken Sword's calligraphy in order to gain insight into his sword techniques. Since I have some chanbara and wuxia setting ideas in mind for Van Gogh in the future, I want to be sure that these things can be done by the rules now.