Any tips for running an exciting race?

[scott2978]

Either a chase on foot, or a race in speeders?

[Jedi Skyler]

You've got to keep the action moving, and at a very fast pace.

If the characters are being chased, they have to have the feeling that ANY wrong step, ANY stumble, and their pursuers will catch them, and that the consequences of letting that happen will be QUITE severe. That helps keep their blood racing in their veins, and helps keep them involved.

If in speeders, continually describe the rapidly passing scenery, or the blurred scenery as they whip through town or the forest or whatever too quickly to make details out. Describe near misses, harrowing escapes, and just how close they constantly are to being either caught or crushed in a collision.

If on foot, describe the never-ending sounds emanating from their pursuit; the heavy breathing of the party members or their pursuers, the baying of nek battle dogs, the crashing of underbrush or of overturned crates, tables, anything the PCs might have been able to strew in their wake. Even though there's not going to be too much detail their characters could actually make out, since they're going so fast, you can make up for it by describing that fact, and describing the lack of visual details that's supplanted by the abundance of audio cues. That will actually have them straining to hear these sounds, and that will further pull them into the game.

Plus, if you can play some exciting background music (preferably from the SW soundtrack, of course! ) you can add an extra dimension to the scenery.

[vong]

hand gestures for races on speeders, and lots of close misses. and when they roll alot higher then the difficulty, add stuff on the terrain, so it ALWAYS looks like they barley beat the difficulty level
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[cheshire]

I had a speeder chase through a mid-rim world's major city once. That was great. It was full of Imperial forces and lots of innocent civilians were around. So, you had to defend yourself, but you really couldn't do anything that could hurt the non-combatants.

What was even better is that there weren't enough seats for all of the characters so one decided to stay behind and try to hitchhike from a rooftop. Now THAT was hillarious.