Hitchcock is a cinematic genius, but one of my favorite Hitchcock moments is a little obscure.
In Torn Curtain Paul Newman plays actual honest-to-God rocket scientist Michael Armstrong, a man with a problem. He needs information that is trapped firmly in the head of another rocket scientist, a Russian, Gustav Lindt. In order to get that information Armstrong defects to the Soviets, and in a nail-biting confrontation with Lindt tries to lure the information out of the Russian in a race against the clock.
The powers that be are on to Armstrong’s little game and are looking for him. The confrontation takes place at a university and the Soviets are searching room by room for the wily American. Meanwhile Armstrong tries the only gambit he has left; he engages Lindt in a mathematical challenge, trying to get Lindt to solve the problem that’s been haunting Armstrong for months by playing on Lindt’s intellectual arrogance.
It’s pretty much the only time I’ve seen a thrilling Physics equation.
But it brings me to my topic today. Plenty of settings have Chase rules of one kind or another. Those rules assume both actors in the scene are, well, actors. Intelligent creatures with a definite goal in mind. What happens when the race isn’t against a person, but the clock?
Night’s Black Agents solves a lot of problems by turning the situation into a Thrilling [whatever-it-may-be]. Infiltration, Interrogation, Digital Intrusion, you name it, you can Thrill with it. 7E CoC takes the position that you can solve most problems with challenges and dice mechanics. Other systems handle the chase in different ways, but the fundamental problem remains the same: while in other chases there is a tortoise and a hare, both of whom have goals and means of achieving them, in this situation it’s just the hare against inevitable doom, and doom lacks intelligence and motivation. It’s just doom. With a great big D. You can draw a silly mustache on it if you like, but it’s difficult to give faceless, voiceless Doom personality and without personality it’s difficult to really get invested.
Puss In Boots: Last Wish. Doom with face & a voice.
Look at it this way.
In an ordinary chase scene the character is competing with something or someone, and the end result is in doubt. That something or someone has personality, individuality, characteristics. Even if the chase is actually a race against the elements (skiing down a mountainside barely ahead of an avalanche, eg) the elements take on a form of personality precisely because the end result is in doubt. Humans assign human characteristics to things that directly affect or interest humans, and doubt is the element that creates the direct affect.
In a race against time the end result is not in doubt. 12 noon will arrive at 12 noon whether we want it to or not. We cannot make time go faster nor can we save a single second in a jar for future use. The question is not what the result will be. It’s whether or not a thing can be achieved before the time runs out. It’s the thing to be achieved, not time, which has personality and individuality.
Let’s start with basic principles.
To make a race against the clock interesting you, as DM, need to establish stakes early on and they need to be pretty big stakes. Life or death. Victory or ruin. Salvation or damnation. No milksop middle ground for you, my friend: it’s time to get paid or die trying.
Example: your character needs to get to a doctor’s office and bring that doctor, or at least some medicine, back to the isolated little hut on the prairie where your sick daughter lies dying. If you get there before time runs out, your daughter lives. If not …
The example Hitchcock uses in Torn Curtain is much the same. Armstrong knows that time is running out and if he takes too long getting the information from Lindt then Armstrong will be arrested. It’s not in doubt whether Armstrong will get the information. What’s in doubt is whether or not he’ll do it before he gets arrested.
A similar problem arises later in the movie, when the heroes are escaping on what amounts to a fake bus. In Soviet Russia all transport is scrutinized and movement regulated, so the network the heroes use to escape has faked up an entire bus, complete with passengers, in order to transport people across country under the noses of the apparat. However, the fake bus’ progress is delayed by unforeseen circumstances which means – o dear! – the real bus, which is just behind the fake one, might catch up. The problem isn’t whether or not the bus will get to its destination. The problem is whether it will get there before its fakeness is exposed by the real bus. A chase scene, but without the chase.
As Director, it may be prudent to let the player set the stakes (or wager). That gives the player something to fight for, to bargain for. However, you should be wary of mismatched risk and reward. If the player’s willing to make that bet, they’d better be willing to put up some stakes for the reward they want.
You as Director need to set the challenges and I’d recommend limiting the number to three. Any more than that and you risk boring the group or, worse yet, winning by attrition. It’s one thing for luck to play a role, something else to call for die roll after die roll until someone finally rolls a 1, or exhausts their pools.
It may also be a good idea to determine a midway condition, something that is neither success nor failure. Say you arrive with the doctor an hour after midnight, when things are at their worst. Your daughter isn’t dead, yet, but is fading fast. While she lies in critical condition and the doctor is otherwise engaged, the Devil pops up from a fiddle contest in Georgia and says, ‘if you want this to have a successful outcome, boy, have I got a deal for you.’
Victory with a cost, in other words. The character lost the race but doesn’t have to lose their wager, so long as they’re willing to pay the price. It’s the equivalent of rolling a messy success (7-10); the player gets what they want but there’s conditions attached.
Let’s put this into an example.
Say this is a School of Night clock challenge. In School of Night the players are occult experimenters in the days of Queen Elizabeth, scholars using their esoteric knowledge for the good of the Crown. A magical challenge sounds interesting.
The scholar is deep in wild, forbidding territory and is there for a purpose. They are threatened by faerie powers but they have a ritual to complete, and they have to make sure it’s done by dawn. If cock-crow comes and it’s not finished, someone they care about will die of a faerie-inspired illness.
The characters set up a magic ward around their cauldron/ritual site to keep the bad spirits away and get to work. The ward will keep pretty much anything from attacking them directly but that doesn’t mean they can’t be spiritually attacked or frightened.
So the stakes are: get this done before dawn, or someone dies. After some discussion, a midway condition is reached: if the character doesn’t get it done by dawn the threatened person may yet live, but only if the threatened person accepts a changeling in place of their daughter. The threatened person won’t know about the switch, but the player will.
The director sets three challenges:
Fear. The faerie powers do their best to frighten the character into abandoning the ritual & leaving the protected space.
Desire. The faerie powers do their best to tempt the character into abandoning the ritual & leaving the protected space.
Exhaustion. After so many hours awake the character is using their last reserves to get the job done. Will it be enough?
The precise mechanics of those challenges will depend on the system used. This is Gumshoe which is a pool plus dice mechanic, probably Magic, probably Saturn, and if there are multiple casters then they can all add into the pool. Difficulty might increase from challenge to challenge.
There might be other ways of doing it. Say that, rather than a magical ritual, the character had to Carouse with faerie folk and keep everyone drinking and merry until dawn. There would still be three challenges. You might want to vary them a bit; Fear doesn’t fit too well with a drinking challenge. But the basics still stand.
Point being, for all it doesn’t look like a chase, it’s still a chase. The difference being, in a traditional chase scene it’s you against a foe.
Whereas in this chase it’s just the ticking clock against you.
Tick. Tick. Tick …
Enjoy!
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