More thoughts on speed stat

Well, with a minimum of changes, (some of it fixing grammar and clarity more than actually changing anything) I've made sure that my chase rules are sufficiently functional in print right now today.  The way that this works is this:

• I made sure that the monster section of the rulebook refers to using the monsters' HD for all skill stats required if any checks are made.  It does.  It did already, actually, but I had to double check that that was clearly integrated.
• Second, I slightly modified the description of the chase rules to say that +10 for being mounted was a point of reference based on a standard horse.
• Third, I added another sentence in the chase rules suggesting that GMs can use that point of reference to come up with other bonuses to the chase check as required to account for monster speed.

This is a stop-gap, though.  It works just fine, but realistically, if I think chase scenes are going to be a significant portion of the game, then monsters should have a chase bonus score, or speed stat, or something like that.  For a typical D&D-like game, chase scenes are relatively uncommon, so that's probably OK, and having the GM decide when one comes up if there's a bonus to one party, and what it is, is perfectly fine.  It can be done on the fly, without any significant workload or stress on the GM's part.

For Western Hack, and for any other game where being mounted, and running around chasing each other is likely to happen more frequently, a bonus for every monster is probably required.  And honestly; just because I don't need one for Fantasy Hack or Dark•Heritage 2 as it is, that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a nice addition to actually have a chase bonus score for every monster, actually.  It doesn't add any significant rules bloat, and if anything, maybe it encourages a different type of action scene to happen more often.  Sure, sure—everyone loves combat, but chases are just as common in action movies as fights for a reason; they're equally exciting!

But that means I need to go through both rules sets making sure that I add the same speed bonus or chase bonus (or speed category, or whatever it is that I end up settling on; probably an actual numeric score) is the same for all monsters which are in both sets, which is most of them.  Sigh.  That sounds a little bit tedious, so don't hold your breath that I'm going to hurry up and do it in the next day or two.