Racing RPG?

[Belgian Problem]

I was considering trying to create a type of RPG Racing Roleplay in the same vein as D&D, however I'm concerned if such an idea can even work.

Races would be rolled for and calculated based off driver skills and the car's ability, with players being able to race eachother in a semi-realistic way.

Thoughts on such an idea? Working out the systems might be pain, and if anyone has any ideas i'm all ears.

[8ullfrog]

Well he stole the broomstick and this weird cloaking device that's literally a cloak off an annoying kid on a trade planet. His limit is really his space suit's oxygen supply, and the detach into the garbage field plan... might work better without a YT-1300 involved?

I don't much care for D&D, but that dinosaur race was pretty electric.

I'm imagining the starter car being a wooden cart with a lawnmower engine strapped to it. Peasant style. But you have a rake you can use to smack the other peasant cart racers.
first race plays like that 3xtreme video game on the PlayStation, before you get smacked by "The Rules" and they take your rake away. Civlilized racing has no rake combat!

[Belgian Problem]

İlk olarak Crac tarafından gönderildi:

The turn based nature, simply isn’t an issue because the game remains one of incomplete information, exploration, communication and role-playing. It makes zero difference if the vehicle-mechanic has to jury-rig a repair job in the next 10 seconds or over the next 10 hours, what matters is what happens when the next check is called for the dodgy or wounded or broken system and that the clock is already ticking so there is no time to fix everything!!!

The point of tabletop games is to include as many people in the madness as possible. You don’t get to watch a fight in my games, equally there would be no spectators in my racing games!



A racing mini game within a pen and paper RPG can be done, there are two examples.

1. Acquisition Incorporated raced dinosaurs in Chult during “PAX West 2017”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EjmO4cN3-U
Starts around 53 mins, runs to 1h:24, but watch the whole thing.

2. I also remember “Star Wars Living Force - Among The Stars - LFA105 - The Price of Business”
A Star wars D20 stand alone adventure. An ~18 page ‘book’. If anything I would say it’s a better example of fantastic story telling.

3. A number of games also have some kind of predator-prey chase mechanic. Star wars D20 has this: In original concept, the prey starts with one or two points of lead. If the prey earns 5 points of lead they escape. If the lead becomes 0 the prey is caught. Points of lead are won or lost via contested rolls or rolls vs a static DC which represents obstacles. This idea could also be used for a light sabre duel by using a start of 3 points and requiring a lead of 6 to win. Or used as a mass combat rule while the heroes are running a covert operation against both that distraction and the ticking clock which might erode the advantage of this distraction.


Asking a player to roll a D20, sticking a modifier on it and calling the positions of the pack isn’t going to make a great game and I doubt it’s going to be that exciting after about 6 or 8 times, so it’s not a turn by turn play. Rather is it a story or action sequence with a number of discrete scenes. It might be possible to make a mobile game by simply automating 6 rounds in rapid succession, through enough lights and sounds about and calling a winning 30 seconds later. ( I am available for consultancy and as a race engineer. )


But for tabletop, the preparation, organisation, exploration and communication are what makes the above adventures work! And why watching the full video of PAX West 2017 should be strongly encouraged.

The science fiction setting involving a spaceship with half a dozen quirks plus half dozen life threatening hazards is a masterpiece of writing and creates an exciting and memorable game.

Having A LOT of other crazy and nefarious deeds going requiring the whole team to chat, think, cheat and tinker behind the scenes also provides much excitement. So again full circle watch the full video of PAX West 2017. The anticipation of well laid plans is amazing.




Trying to go down the simulation route with role play seems like a really really bad idea... But too interesting a challenge to completely ignore.

Here is my concept: Rate each car out of “100 points” based on subsystems. If you like, you can think of this as the average speed the car goes through a section. We can play with the detail later, depending on the setting.

I would propose a typical car would be around 40 points out of 100. While a good starting car for the players would be 40 + 3d10 ( 56 points ). A minimum for the system would be around 30 points, and there is no limit for what the maximum could be.


Optional: “Inception Rule” We could roll for the components using the same 40 + 3d10 idea, then divide by ERM ERM “6” now then round if needed and sum all the parts?

Engine: 55 ( 55/6 = 9 )
Aerodynamics: 57 ( 57/6 = 10 )
Weight savings: 61 ( 61/6 = 10 )
Handling: 52 ( 52/6 = 9 )
Tyres: 64 ( 64/6 = 11 )
Staff: 66 ( 66/6 = 11 )

Total: 60 ( 60 = 9+10+10+9+11+11)

So above average, since: 40 + 3d10 has an average of 56.5.


Inception… Part 2: Some detail.

Aerodynamics affects acceleration, centre of pressure, cooling, lift, top speed

Let’s defines these in game terms.
Acceleration: Engine +1, Tyres +1
Centre of pressure: Handling +1, Tyres +1
Cooling for engine, transmission, brakes and dampers: Engine +1, Handling +1
Lift: Handling +1, Tyres +1
Top Speed: Engine +1

And tally the totals:
Engine: III
Handling: III
Tyres: III

^ hehehe, too good to be true. Moving on.


Weight Saving/Engineering: Is the car competitive or too heavy. Weight affects EVERYTHING and it REALLY significant… It wouldn’t be a stretch just to copy the perks above.

Engine: III
Handling: III
Tyres: III

*cough* “it’s like magic I tell you.”


Staff: There are just as many parts in a production, lowest tiered and highest tier motor sports machines. Having the right engine builder, the right mechanics and the right race engineer is crucial to success.

Engine: III
Handling: III
Tyres: III

( I don’t really want a third layer of inception that interacts with the second layer… )



Revision 2:

Engine: 9+10+10+11 => 40 => (40/2 = 20)
Handling: 9+10+10+11 => 40 => (40/2 = 20)
Tyres: 11+10+10+11 = 42 => (42/2 = 21)

Total: 61 ( 61 = 20 + 20 +21 )


Based on the revision 2, and revision 3… I would keep tweaking things and changing the rules like the 40 + 3d10… Because I might just use the above stats for Strength (engine), Dexterity (handling), Mind (tyres)… So 12 + 1d10 for each??



I started with: Car + D20 + player’s modifier. ( I don’t know what you want for that last part. )

-Crucially: I don’t want Han Solo outrunning an imperial star destroyer on a broomstick!

The second thing, I want to keep the D20 system as a binary system. You roll and BOOM you know if you’ve made it or failed. With this in the back of my mind, here is another suggestion.


Execution: Fearing crunchy maths, I would provide a lookup table and roll percentiles.
I’ve added a sample at the bottom via link.

I would use a standard curve for example “14d3-28”. While obviously there should be a range of results from -14 to +14, I truncated these to only -7 to +7 given there is only ~1%?? chance of a “7” and rarer results are; both less than 0.5% which doesn’t round, plus a waste of the game master’s time!

:)

Note how average of the dice is zero. So basically turning the game into: 14d3-28 + combined modifier. Dropping the D20, means I/we gain a lot more wiggle room good for a narrative system.

I’m not sure how I want to balance the pool mechanic say in terms of average speed vs how much of a narrative mechanic of interpreting the pluses and minuses. But I think both are better than D20 in this case.


If all the players and NPC where with ~15% of each other *cough* it should work really well. But having too much competition means the winner would need to have an extreme bias.


For a pure racing game ( one player per car ) I would give hand outs to players and have them rolling the percentiles for an NPC. Assigning players would also allow cars to become wounded, which I wouldn’t need to track. This damage mechanic could allow the PC to easily past all the limping carnage, with only a few easy skill checks and less risk of damage.



Here is a sample:
https://docdro.id/5MqY5Yd
https://www.docdroid.net/5MqY5Yd/sample.ods

First, thank you for dedicating the time to go into so much depth.

I should once again clarify that such an RP would be implemented in the same way that nation RP's on steam do, if you're aware of how they work. A turn can represent 6 months and take an entire day to complete, with nations being free to announce their actions whenever they wish.

The racing RPG would work in a similar, open ended way, likely on discord or steam. Players merely have to announce their intentions, such as buying a new car or challenging someone to a race, which the admin team would handle.

If you're interested in how nation RP's roll on steam, here's one that I ran quite a while ago, however it shows that RPG's don't have to be limited to when everyone is online, or even avaliable.

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/DisunitedStatesTheWorld#

[Arvaos]

İlk olarak Hannah Montana tarafından gönderildi:

The Crew and The Crew 2. That's what I think of for racing RPG.

I would say the first is more of an RPG.

[Arvaos]

Mad Max has races and car upgrades.

[Crac]

In an interview for D6 magazine: … with the original Star Wars RPG system, a character's skill was just added to the vehicle's speed code...so, to paraphrase another designer's notes, "Han Solo on a broomstick can outfly any Imperial starfighter."

BILL SMITH, Author of the Star Wars 2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded, Published by West End Games, Inc.


I hoped to avoid that trap by defining the movement rate in terms of squares or whichever suitable unit elsewhere. With the dinosaur racing example, all the dinosaurs had the same movement rate. The purpose of a race is to jossel for position so that you can use all your movement. You can’t lose your turn, not move and fall 6 or 10 seconds behind everyone else.

When I grouped all the modifiers together and called it average speed… this might be a mistake. I call on the community to help correct this error.



My weighting for the balance would be a massive amount of points for the vehicle… Say “40”, plus something smaller for the pilot say “5”? i.e. no skill insane bonus, then a +/-10 or something due to the dice. Given the car is sitting at around 60 points, I’d say don’t add more weighting to pilot skill. However nothing is pinned down, and I’m happy to note a few ideas and answer the odd question.


== == == == ==
@Sam

Q1. How much grit and science did you want?


The problem I see can be illustrated with a very simple challenge:
Can you predict stopping distance, what about in the wet, what happens when the brakes get hot... and a dozen questions in similar vein. If we could predict the stopping distance and lap times over race distance, we could quantify the system.

I think the concept shown in my first post might be closer to the solution. The difficult part can be skipped and the system can be written from the result backwards ( Ah the joy of maths ). Then all that is left is the turn and currency mechanics for buying pips or the modifier plus the re-rolling dice or buying new dice / new dice sets. Returning to the brakes again, the only thing that matters both in real racing and in the game is that your car performs better than the others; something a simple number suffices in describing.



One idea would be so have a competition via: Bosch Lapsim

http://www.bosch-motorsport.de/content/downloads/Raceparts/en-GB/55386123119410699.html#/Tabs=55402507/

I’ve had a 5 min look at the demo linked above, just a little look over to count the number of pages.
My spin off idea would be to use the sections and headings from Bosch Lapsim and carry on making an abstract game, much like above where the brakes can just be a number. I roughly counted like 22 ideas.

You could take a second leap away from reality by simple adding more detail by ‘duplicating’ subsystems: so straight line braking is different from left turn braking, different from right turn braking, high speed is different from low speed. Ditto for acceleration and cornering. This might be highly abstracted list of definitions for a series of skill checks.

The racing circuits would also need to become a little more fantastical with chains of hair pins on a steep downwards slope, spiral ramps leading to new sections, dedicated chances for overtaking and thrilling straights for that all important photo finish.


It would interesting to play with a “speed” dice, “damage” dice and a “heat” dice to add extra modifiers into the mix. This would work if the system could be automated slightly… It would be silly for the Game Master to make player rolls, but painfully slow to relay information back and forth in a live game.

To go a little further, the dice could be d6. Both the ability part say 6d6 ( average: 21) and the situation modifier ( speed, damage, heat… ) to be determined ‘later’ or related to the class of racing?

The base, previously the “40” part from the first example of 40 + 3d10. I would reduce that part, so that the dice are more dominant. So around 10 to 20 now? ( Which again could be split between subsystems ).


The interesting part of D6 pool mechanics is that you only need three cases ( case: 1, Even and Odd ). Also means we can start to throw around the odd d6 to disadvantage our neighbours and make for a more interactive game. Two tables with odd on top and even on the bottom should net around 80 levels or 80d6 as a single page or pocket mod. As this would be a percentile table, so we are only rolling two dice rather than 80...

The observant will have noted that quick turn based play ( like a mini game ) is better suited to the binary mechanics of D20 ( or D100 if used with suitable tables ), while slower more strategic meta-game results from using dice pools.