BladeRunner/rules/RUNDOWN.md

RUNDOWN

Cardless chase rules for the Blade Runner RPG. v1 draft — unofficial fan supplement. Requires the core rulebook.

Nobody in this city runs because they think they'll get away. They run because stopping means answering the question.

RUNDOWN replaces the chase subsystem in the core rulebook. It needs no cards, no tables to roll on, and no components beyond the dice already in front of you. Every player has a job in every round, and the whole chase fits in fifteen minutes.

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1. What you need

• The dice you already use: an attribute die and a skill die per roll.
• One number written where everyone can see it — the LEAD.
• Six obstacles, written before play. Take one from reference/obstacle-ladders.md or write your own (§7).

That is all. No deck, no board, no tokens.

Resolution is unchanged from the core rules. Roll your attribute die and your skill die. 6–9 is one success. 10+ is two successes. Advantage adds a d6; disadvantage drops your lowest die.

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2. LEAD

LEAD is how far ahead the prey is. One number, 0 to 8.

LEAD 0	ENGAGED. Chase over — hands on them.
LEAD 8	GHOST. Chase over — they broke away clean.

Set the starting LEAD when you call the chase:

Start	When
3	Close. A stumble away. They were nearly in reach when they bolted.
4	Standard. They got a jump on you. Use this when unsure.
5	Distant. You spotted them across the plaza, the lot, the traffic lane.

LEAD goes down when the pursuers gain and up when the prey does. It moves once per round, by one number, and that number is the only arithmetic in the system.

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3. Roles

At the top of the chase, every participant takes a role. Any number can share a role, and anyone may change role between rounds.

RUNNER is the default. A player who declares nothing is a Runner.

RUNNER — close the gap, or open it

Roll: Mobility (on foot) or Driving (vehicle, spinner) Successes move LEAD. Costs nothing. The safe, steady option.

PRESSURE — make them flinch

Roll: Firearms, Manipulation, or Connections You act on the prey without moving: a warning shot, a shouted order down an alley, a call ahead to someone who owes you, a traffic signal killed from a terminal.

Successes move LEAD — but every success generates 1 Collateral (§6).

SPOTTER — read the ground

Roll: Observation Spend each success on one of:

• Negate one Toll penalty suffered by anyone on your side this round.
• Remove 1 Collateral generated this round.
• Grant one advantage die to an ally's next roll.
• Reveal the next rung of the obstacle ladder before it is played.

CUTTER — take the other way round

Roll: Mobility (on foot) or Driving (vehicle, spinner) A parallel route — a fire escape, a service corridor, a side street, an overhead pass. Your successes are banked, not applied.

Banked successes may be spent all at once, in any later round, added to that round's side total. On a roll with no successes, you are out of the chase for one round and your bank is lost.

How the roles pay off

Role	Buys you	Costs you
RUNNER	Steady progress	Nothing
PRESSURE	Speed	Collateral
SPOTTER	Safety, and Collateral back	A round of progress
CUTTER	A decisive later round	Risk of losing everything

A table of pure Runners will win a chase slowly and cleanly. A table that leans on Pressure will win it fast and leave a mess behind. The quick way to catch someone in this city is the expensive way. That is the whole point.

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4. The round

Six rounds, maximum. Roughly fifteen minutes.

1. The GM reveals this round's obstacle. 2. The prey declares their role and rolls. 3. The pursuers declare in any order and roll. 4. Work out the net. Move the LEAD. 5. Stamp Collateral. Narrate. Next round.

The obstacle is revealed before anyone declares. Nothing is hidden and nothing is simultaneous — that is what removes the cards. Players choose their role knowing what the street just threw at them, so the choice is a decision instead of a guess.

Working out the net

Each side totals up:

the highest single RUNNER result on that side — not the sum + all PRESSURE successes + any banked CUTTER successes spent this round

Then:

NET = pursuer total − prey total Positive → LEAD goes down by that much. Negative → LEAD goes up by that much. Zero → LEAD is unchanged. The round still happened; Collateral still lands.

Extra Runners make a side more reliable, not more powerful. A second Runner is worth about half a success; a fourth is worth about a fifth of one. Four people running down the same alley is four chances at a good roll, not four times the speed.

Running the other side

An NPC makes one roll per round, in a role of the GM's choosing. Do not roll for a mob. If the opposition has a real advantage — a bike, local knowledge, a head start through a door that locks — give them one advantage die, not another roll.

This holds the GM's dice load at one roll per round whether there are two players or six.

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5. Gambits

Once per chase, each participant may declare a Gambit — a named, specific risk. "I go over the gap." "I take the spinner under the span."

A Gambit modifies your role roll for that round. It is not an extra roll.

Roll	At disadvantage — drop your lowest die.
Success	Double your successes this round.
Failure	You are out of the chase, with a consequence the terrain suggests, and you generate 1 Collateral.

A Gambit is the moment somebody talks about afterwards. It is capped at one each so it stays that.

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6. Collateral

Chases in this city cost the city. Collateral is a track from 0 to 6. It never touches a character sheet — not Health, not Resolve, not Humanity.

Generated by:

• each PRESSURE success — 1 each
• each failed Toll in crowded terrain — 1 each
• each failed Gambit — 1 each

Removed by: SPOTTER successes, one for one, in the round it is generated.

Capped at 6. Beyond that, narrate it and stop counting.

Spending it — after the chase, never during

Collateral	What it costs you
1–2	Noise. Someone remembers your face. A witness who will talk to the wrong person.
3–4	A report gets filed. LAPD attention, a supervisor's question, or a fresh complication in the case.
5–6	A body, or a burned asset. Something you were going to need is gone.

Collateral never modifies a roll and is never spent in the moment. It is a budget the GM draws on in the scenes that follow — which is exactly what makes players argue about whether to reach for Pressure.

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7. The Obstacle Ladder

Six obstacles, written in advance, played in fixed order, one per round. This replaces both the obstacle deck and any table you would otherwise roll on.

Rung 1 is a nuisance. Rung 6 is a wall.

Each rung is one line carrying a Toll and a Tilt:

• Toll — a roll to avoid a penalty. Anyone the obstacle touches makes it.
• Tilt — which side the terrain favours, usually one advantage die.

[3] TRANSIT PLATFORM — Toll: Mobility or lose your roll this round.
    Tilt: prey (+1 die). A crowd is the runner's friend.

Rung 6 is always a Terminator

The last rung is a feature that forces resolution: a dead end, a rail line, a roof edge, a checkpoint, a canal. The chase has to break one way or the other against it. Write it that way.

Why authored, not random

• Pacing is built in — the scene has a written shape and a written ending.
• The obstacles are about this market, this rooftop, this freight yard.
• No lookup, no randomiser, no shuffling.
• The GM knows what round four looks like before round one starts.

Writing one takes about five minutes. Pick a location, list six things in it that would interrupt a person running flat out, order them from annoying to impassable, and give each a Toll. Eight finished ladders are in reference/obstacle-ladders.md.

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8. Ending it

The chase ends at LEAD 0, at LEAD 8, or at the end of round 6 — whichever comes first.

LEAD	Outcome
0	ENGAGED	Hands on them. Combat, restraint, or a conversation at contact range.
1–2	CORNERED	Trapped, not held. A standoff, a negotiation, or a jump nobody should survive.
3–4	LOST, BUT	Gone from sight — and you have a direction, a dropped thing, a plate, a witness.
5–7	GONE	Clean. The street still remembers, and so do you.
8	GHOST	You never had them. They were better than you, or they were never alone.

No outcome is a dead end. LOST, BUT is the ordinary failure and it still hands you the next scene. GONE and GHOST still leave you the Collateral, and they leave you what the prey gave away by how they ran — the route they knew, the door that was unlocked for them, the fact that they never once looked back.

Overtime

If round 6 ends with the chase unresolved and the table is leaning in, the GM may call Overtime — at most three more rounds.

• No new obstacles. The Terminator stands and applies every round.
• LEAD drops by 1 at the start of each Overtime round, before any rolls. The pursuit closes. The city closes in.
• Collateral generation is doubled.

Overtime always ends: nine rounds is the hard ceiling, and the automatic drift drags any close chase to ground. At the end of it, read the outcome table whatever the number says.

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9. Terrain

One engine, three skins. The procedure never changes — only this table.

	RUNNER / CUTTER	SPOTTER	Start LEAD	Collateral
Foot	Mobility	Observation	3–4	Standard
Ground vehicle	Driving	Observation	4	Doubled — a car in a crowd
Spinner / aerial	Driving	Observation (plotting vectors)	5	Halved, but every point is severe

Mixed chases — a spinner over a runner on foot, a car chasing a pedestrian through an arcade — use each side's own layer for its own rolls, and the higher of the two Collateral rates.

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10. If the PCs are the ones running

Nothing changes. The roles, the ladder, the net, and the outcome table are all symmetric. Swap which side wants LEAD to go up.

The only thing to watch: the outcome table reads from the pursuers' side. When the PCs are prey, invert it — LEAD 0 means they caught you, LEAD 8 means you are a ghost, and LOST, BUT means you got away but left something behind that they will follow.

Collateral still accrues to whoever generates it. A PC who shoots their way out of a crowded transit hall owns that, even running.

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11. Quick reference

LEAD 0–8. Start 3 close / 4 standard / 5 distant. 0 = caught, 8 = gone.

Round: obstacle → prey declares and rolls → pursuers declare and roll → net → move LEAD → Collateral → narrate.

Side total = highest single Runner + all Pressure + banked Cutter spent. Net = pursuers − prey.

Role	Roll	Does
RUNNER	Mobility / Driving	Moves LEAD. Free.
PRESSURE	Firearms / Manipulation / Connections	Moves LEAD. 1 Collateral per success.
SPOTTER	Observation	Negate Toll / remove Collateral / grant advantage die / reveal next rung.
CUTTER	Mobility / Driving	Banks successes; spend all at once later. No successes = out a round, bank lost.

Gambit: once each. Disadvantage. Win = double successes. Lose = out, +1 Collateral.

Six rounds. Six rungs. Rung 6 forces the end. Overtime = 3 more, −1 LEAD a round, double Collateral.

Outcomes: 0 ENGAGED · 1–2 CORNERED · 3–4 LOST, BUT · 5–7 GONE · 8 GHOST.

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Unofficial fan supplement. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Free League Publishing or the rights holders of Blade Runner. Requires the Blade Runner RPG core rulebook to play. Not for sale.