I recently got myself into short forms RPG as a GM and I really love the potential! I tried a short game (3 hours) and it went OK, but I am not quite satisfied yet. I need more practice, that's for sure, but there are parts where I don't know how to improve, and that's where I need your help.
The system I'm using is a personal design by myself and my group, not an established system. It has quick rules, a d20 for actions (with a consistent but not fixed outcome), and a lot of improvisation and flexibility from the GM. World is realist, but not too much: quite like an action movie, so if jumping though a window adds to the scene, only a bit of damage will be done.
A specific problem: a fast paced pursuit (20-25 min)
In one of the scenes of my game the PCs met a enemy NPC with valuable information. The NPC managed to get away and fled into the city.
I wanted this scene to be as great as pursuit scenes from action movies—fast paced, intense, challenging, leaving them short on breath in real life.
My approach: 1 minute hourglass, 1d20 for actions
I give a brief description of the scene to the group, turn the hourglass, let them decide what they do, and when the minute is over I move game time forward (e.g., make the NPC run, or attack them while fleeing).
Outcome: The feeling of being in a hurry worked well at the beginning, but they adapted by giving really short actions ("I run", "I jump", "I attack").
Reaction: As it was boring I decided to let them describe their actions more ("How?")
Outcome #2: More creative answers, less boring, but we totally lost the rhythm and it became a turn-by-turn RPG scene, definitely not what I intended.
I feel the group can manage to be creative while being stressed but as a GM I wasn't able to obtain the scene I wanted. How can I get the best of both worlds: fast paced action scenes and creative actions from the group? Props (a clock, time-tokens?), techniques (words, tone?) or just more practice?
Best Answer
Lose the battleboard, abstract, shortcut and improvise
TLDR: This answer focuses on downplaying the importance of rules, making them a more abstract guide for capacities in order to speed things up.
Mechanics can really slow down a scene, if you've ever played a battleboard system (like D&D 3.5/4.0) then you know players can spend ages just working out where they're going to step, onto which square, what attack they're going to use with with feat and yawwwwwwn I'm already bored - this is meant to be exciting. Rules and feats and skills restrict what the players think they can do, restrict them.
I ran Rolemaster for many years (a pretty heavy rules system) and I kept the details down to a minimum and described everything I could; if I really had to I drew a rough sketch with a pencil on a piece of throwaway paper but everything else was description, the rolls were frequently abstract checks, but checks to keep things going.
Important: The players need to get on-board with this idea, that the rules are there to assist, but are not the be-all and end all - rules lawyer characters who start quoting pages are going to kill this sort of game flow and won't like this sort of game.
How do you do this?