Racing & Vehicular Combat

[Old Man Henerson]

Hi.

My latest game idea has the players being part of a vehicular combat and racing circuit where they race armed to the teeth through death courses and try to shoot down the other racers and win in first. The chase rules in the big golden book seem pretty nice, but I don't think they are quite up to the task when it comes to using weapon systems or simulating an actual race between competitors. So I was wondering what you guys would do in this situation. Would you just write up the cars as gadgets using the supper power section and "play" it as a character with the players using their piloting and weapon system skills? or something else?

Thanks in advance!

[g33k]

Honestly doesn't sound like a RPG, as such.

Is there a reason you don't just grab SJG Car Wars?

[clarence]

Extended Conflicts in M-SPACE are designed to handle situations like that. I run regular races (both in sci-fi and in the 1920s) with Drive as the main skill and DEX+POW as Conflict Pool. Depending on the vehicles, the Conflict Pools might be affected by the vehicle’s stats as well. 

If you want the vehicles to attack each other, I would run it as a regular vehicle fight (also in M-SPACE) in parallel with the Extended Conflict. For every round in the race, drivers get a chance to attack/evade as well. 

[Atgxtg]

19 hours ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Hi.

My latest game idea has the players being part of a vehicular combat and racing circuit where they race armed to the teeth through death courses and try to shoot down the other racers and win in first. The chase rules in the big golden book seem pretty nice, but I don't think they are quite up to the task when it comes to using weapon systems or simulating an actual race between competitors. So I was wondering what you guys would do in this situation. Would you just write up the cars as gadgets using the supper power section and "play" it as a character with the players using their piloting and weapon system skills? or something else?

Thanks in advance!

I've done a bit of work along those lines. Here are some of my suggestions:

1) Break up the track into a number of spaces that the vehicles can move through. You might want to have lanes with the inner lane having fewer spaces to get around the board, but be harder to drive on., and maybe an outer lane that has more spaces but is easier to drive on. Doing up some sort of drawn or printed track makes it easier to  note relative positions, where any traps or weapons are, and put in special condtions and turn that might modify the driving rolls, like a frozen patch of road.

2) Each turn a vehicle can move a number of spaces equal to it's rated speed (see below) modified by their driving roll (Critical: full value, Special -1 space, Success: -2 spaces, Failure: Half Rated Speed, Fumble: Quarter rated speed,). For instance a sports car with Speed 15 would move 15/14/13/8/3 spaces depending of the driving roll. If you rather have the average distance be the rated speed, just shift the success values up 2 points each.

3) You can and should scale the speeds up or down depending on the number of spaces on your track and how many rounds you want it to take to get around. For instance if you track has 30 spaces and you want it to take an a Speed 15 sports car to take  4 rounds to get around it, then divide the move rates by two. 

3) On a failed driving roll you can have the driver roll on the chase trouble table on page 217.

4) Since the progression for Rated Speed in the BGB isn't known, if you build any new vehicles,  I suggest going with Speed = 1/10th MOV (down) for vehicles with a MOV of 100 or less and Speed = the square root of MOV for faster vehicles; It seems to be close to the actual values of the existing vehicles and keeps the relative speeds nice for game play.  

5) If you don't want to play out the entire race in combat rounds, but would rather handle several laps at a time, then I suggest you have each racer roll, in order of last place to first. On a success they maintain their position, on a special success the move up one position, on a critical two. A failure means the drop back a position (and have to make a track trouble roll), and a fumble means the fall back 1D6 positions and have to make a track trouble roll.

6) For your vehicle designs, unless you are planning on making this a reoccurring thing, I suggest going with the sample vehicle stats in the BGB, then tack on weapons and armor. You might give each design a budget to spend on powers based on it's SIZ. The only thing is, once you open up super powers you wind up with super vehicles..You can give characters points to build vehicles use the super powers rules, but then you will end up with super vehicles. So you will probably have to restrict or ban certain powers, maybe tie some others to the vehicle's SIZ and so on. Without some limits it gets easy to make a semi truck go faster than a sportscar, because it has more points to work with. In real life a vehicle needs eight times the power to move twice as fast. If you want to make this a regular thing, then you will probably need a bit more to work with that what is presented in the BGB.  I got a couple of real world formulas converted into BRP terms such as working out MOV by (POW-SIZ)/3 but you probably don't want or need that. 

7) Optionally, you could base all the cars on one stock model and then given them some points or options to choose from. For instance they all could get a sportscar or standard sedan and get points to modfiy the speed, handling, armor or whatever.

8 ) Depending on on the course, you might want to track fuel in some way, and allow for pitstops.

 

BTW, Good timing! I've been working on some rules to let my players play through the Monaco Grand Prix, so I sort of had something to work with already. I had it a bit easier as the race cars are all Formula One cars, and the racers don't shoot at each other, at least not normally. 

 

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by Atgxtg

[Lloyd Dupont]

Keep the debate discussion going, races are a great cinematic moment...

Edited July 26, 2020 by Lloyd Dupont

[Atgxtg]

4 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Keep the debate going, races are a great cinematic moment...

What debate? It's just a GM trying to run a particular situation for their group, and several other GMs chiming in with different ways to do so. 

[Lloyd Dupont]

Well... discussion might be a better word then, and it's what I mean...
You only need 2 people, that might even totally agree, to start a discussion!

Edited July 26, 2020 by Lloyd Dupont

[Old Man Henerson]

17 hours ago, g33k said:

Honestly doesn't sound like a RPG, as such.

Is there a reason you don't just grab SJG Car Wars?

I think the setting could work, asside from raceing the setting involves the players being the product of a mutant super soldier program that was key to defeating an alien invasion. After the war, they were out of a job so the players and many other out of work mutants start up the vehicular combat and racing racing industry. They will have to deal with underworld crime syndicates infiltrating the races, corrupt mega corporations and government agencies seeking to regain controll their former assets, and even perhaps a resurgent alien threat.

Also, Car Wars sounds interesting, I will have to look into it some time. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Old Man Henerson]

16 hours ago, clarence said:

Extended Conflicts in M-SPACE are designed to handle situations like that. I run regular races (both in sci-fi and in the 1920s) with Drive as the main skill and DEX+POW as Conflict Pool. Depending on the vehicles, the Conflict Pools might be affected by the vehicle’s stats as well.

I have heard a lot about M-Space on these forums and it does sound pretty cool, like Traveler but more unique. (And less dying in character creation LOL) What are the pool things about? How much does it's rules differ from the one found in the Big Golden Book?

16 hours ago, clarence said:

If you want the vehicles to attack each other, I would run it as a regular vehicle fight (also in M-SPACE) in parallel with the Extended Conflict. For every round in the race, drivers get a chance to attack/evade as well. 

I like that idea a lot. If you add an option for moving forward to try and get ahead that would be about perfect. Thanks!  

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I've done a bit of work along those lines. Here are some of my suggestions:

1) Break up the track into a number of spaces that the vehicles can move through. You might want to have lanes with the inner lane having fewer spaces to get around the board, but be harder to drive on., and maybe an outer lane that has more spaces but is easier to drive on. Doing up some sort of drawn or printed track makes it easier to  note relative positions, where any traps or weapons are, and put in special condtions and turn that might modify the driving rolls, like a frozen patch of road.

2) Each turn a vehicle can move a number of spaces equal to it's rated speed (see below) modified by their driving roll (Critical: full value, Special -1 space, Success: -2 spaces, Failure: Half Rated Speed, Fumble: Quarter rated speed,). For instance a sports car with Speed 15 would move 15/14/13/8/3 spaces depending of the driving roll. If you rather have the average distance be the rated speed, just shift the success values up 2 points each.

3) You can and should scale the speeds up or down depending on the number of spaces on your track and how many rounds you want it to take to get around. For instance if you track has 30 spaces and you want it to take an a Speed 15 sports car to take  4 rounds to get around it, then divide the move rates by two. 

3) On a failed driving roll you can have the driver roll on the chase trouble table on page 217.

4) Since the progression for Rated Speed in the BGB isn't known, if you build any new vehicles,  I suggest going with Speed = 1/10th MOV (down) for vehicles with a MOV of 100 or less and Speed = the square root of MOV for faster vehicles; It seems to be close to the actual values of the existing vehicles and keeps the relative speeds nice for game play.  

5) If you don't want to play out the entire race in combat rounds, but would rather handle several laps at a time, then I suggest you have each racer roll, in order of last place to first. On a success they maintain their position, on a special success the move up one position, on a critical two. A failure means the drop back a position (and have to make a track trouble roll), and a fumble means the fall back 1D6 positions and have to make a track trouble roll.

I REALLY like the spaces and track set up you suggested. I will have to save it for my material. the success rolls and speed rules are another great idea for the game.

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

6) For your vehicle designs, unless you are planning on making this a reoccurring thing, I suggest going with the sample vehicle stats in the BGB, then tack on weapons and armor. You might give each design a budget to spend on powers based on it's SIZ. The only thing is, once you open up super powers you wind up with super vehicles..You can give characters points to build vehicles use the super powers rules, but then you will end up with super vehicles. So you will probably have to restrict or ban certain powers, maybe tie some others to the vehicle's SIZ and so on. Without some limits it gets easy to make a semi truck go faster than a sportscar, because it has more points to work with. In real life a vehicle needs eight times the power to move twice as fast. If you want to make this a regular thing, then you will probably need a bit more to work with that what is presented in the BGB.  I got a couple of real world formulas converted into BRP terms such as working out MOV by (POW-SIZ)/3 but you probably don't want or need that. 

7) Optionally, you could base all the cars on one stock model and then given them some points or options to choose from. For instance they all could get a sportscar or standard sedan and get points to modfiy the speed, handling, armor or whatever.

8 ) Depending on on the course, you might want to track fuel in some way, and allow for pitstops.

Yeah, the super power thing in retrospect does not hold up as well as I had hoped. I was intending to limit usable super powers for the cars, (I actually got the idea for using super powers from The Big Golden Book where they used them to create a mecha suit and though I could do the same for battle cars. I was also planning on not allowing things like altering weather conditions/gravity, alternate forms or other inappropriate powers) like I said about the setting in my last post, however, the players would be genetically created super soldiers with some low to mid level powers and I was planing on a way for the players to use their super powers/mutations/psionic powers though special weapons ports on their cars to attack their opponents, so their cars would actually not require too many powers beyond a few gun emplacements and specialty weapons.

As for fuel and pit stops, if they run out or their cars are destroyed, the repair drones will helpfully take the safety pod they ride in to the pit stop for repairs and refueling at the cost of loosing a few rounds of racing.

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

BTW, Good timing! I've been working on some rules to let my players play through the Monaco Grand Prix, so I sort of had something to work with already. I had it a bit easier as the race cars are all Formula One cars, and the racers don't shoot at each other, at least not normally.

Indeed, how serendipitous! I would love to hear the story of how and why your players got into the Monaco Grand Prix. Has Nyarlathotep suddenly come down with racing fever?

Edited July 27, 2020 by Old Man Henerson

[Atgxtg]

 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I REALLY like the spaces and track set up you suggested. I will have to save it for my material. the success rolls and speed rules are another great idea for the game.

I did something like it before in another RRPG, and RQ3 did something similar with Monster Coliseum. The different number of spaces per lane with modifers forces the players to choose betten a shorter but more difficult path, or a longer but safer one. 

Design wise, you want the strait aways to have the same number of sections for each lane, but the turns to varry from inner to outer. You might want to have near successes just slide to the outer lane rather than roll on the chase trouble table. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Yeah, the super power thing in retrospect does not hold up as well as I had hoped. I was intending to limit usable super powers for the cars

If might help to know that if you treat POW as horsepower or kilowatts and put it on the same scale as STR or SIZ, it will take 24 points of POW to double a vehicles speed, or each +1 POW multiplies speed by about 1.03. If players have to buy POW instead of just snagging levels of superspeed, it might be manaagable.

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

(I actually got the idea for using super powers from The Big Golden Book where they used them to create a mecha suit and though I could do the same for battle cars.

You can, if you are the GM and want to do so. It's when the players have access to those powers and start thinking beyond the lines that the problems start. 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

I was also planning on not allowing things like altering weather conditions/gravity, alternate forms or other inappropriate powers) like I said about the setting in my last post, however, the players would be genetically created super soldiers with some low to mid level powers and I was planing on a way for the players to use their super powers/mutations/psionic powers though special weapons ports on their cars to attack their opponents, so their cars would actually not require too many powers beyond a few gun emplacements and specialty weapons.

That should be more feasible then. The BGB is a toolkit, that's good, except when someone decides to use a tool in a way the GM isn't prepared for.

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

As for fuel and pit stops, if they run out or their cars are destroyed, the repair drones will helpfully take the safety pod they ride in to the pit stop for repairs and refueling at the cost of loosing a few rounds of racing.

Okay. Just wondering how many "laps" is a typical race? If you want to run round by round combat then you will need to decide how many melee rounds you want a race to last., and plan accordingly. For instance, in my Monaco Grand Prix situation, the drivers have to make 78 laps, and drive about 160 miles, with the race lasting close to two hours. I didn't want to play all out in melee rounds or else it would end up taking a full game session or even longer.  So I came up with the idea of rolling for every so many laps to see if the player improved his position. 

If you want to have the race last ore than a couple of laps then you might want to restrict the weapons allowed, or what areas they can be used in, or during what laps or some such, so you can squeeze in some racing. For instance, what if weapons could only be used in the turns but not in the straight ways, or what if different "zones"" on the track were color coded and every so often the active zones changed?

 

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Indeed, how serendipitous! I would love to hear the story of how and why your players got into the Monaco Grand Prix. Has Nyarlathotep suddenly come down with racing fever?

OH, that's rather straight forward. I'm running a game where the players are spies and I was thinking of trying to adapt the High Stakes Gamble Supplement from the Top Secret/S.I. game. The supplement is set in Monaco during the Grand Prix, and I though the idea of the players taking part in a famous race might be good for an adventure. Then I had to figure out a way to run the race without it taking forever to play out, and would (hopefully, I've still got my fingers crossed) be fun and exciting for the players to play out, with driving rolls, mishaps, and the other factors that go into racing.

I wondering if I should throw in a few "key laps" where the drivers have to go through sections of the track rather than doing whole laps at a time. Especially for the last lap or two, when players would be more likely to try something desperate to move up in position. It might give a more exciting finish that just one roll for the last 6 laps.

 

[g33k]

On 7/26/2020 at 12:45 PM, Old Man Henerson said:

... the setting involves the players being the product of a mutant super soldier program that was key to defeating an alien invasion. After the war, they were out of a job so the players and many other out of work mutants start up the vehicular combat and racing racing industry. They will have to deal with underworld crime syndicates infiltrating the races, corrupt mega corporations and government agencies seeking to regain controll their former assets, and even perhaps a resurgent alien threat ...

Well now, that sounds like an RPG premise!   😉  👍

 

Add in the twin premises that:

(a) the mutants / ex-soldiers are (in)famous for griping about "the good old days" when they had respect for fighting the aliens, and due to various "vet syndrome" issues (PTSD/etc, addiction, and so forth) occasional bouts of paranoia/hallucinations that "the aliens are ba-a-a-a-ck!"  😵

(b) actually, the aliens are back (never really left), this time waging a completely covert campaign of psych-ops & discrediting/undermining the mutants with both general public & various government forces, until they have weakened Earth enough to make it a pushover next time they come in force ...  👽

Edited July 27, 2020 by g33k

[Atgxtg]

how about 

(c) the mutants were really test tube babies reverse engineered from alien DNA.

[Ian Absentia]

On 7/25/2020 at 7:07 PM, g33k said:

Honestly doesn't sound like a RPG, as such.

Is there a reason you don't just grab SJG Car Wars?

During our Car Wars hey-day, we were looking for a roleplaying game to simulate the occasional scenarios when drivers and crew got out of their vehicles.  As I recall, we actually settled on a variant of Traveller because its skills scaled well with some published Car Wars rules, but I know that I toyed about with BRP, my usual go-to rules set, as our initial option.  Point being that there's just as much rationale to go from RPG to TT-minis just as from TT-minis to RPG like we did.

It's more than a little hazy to my mind, but recall that I was toying with something like standard deviations to translate BRP percentile skills to Car Wars skill bonuses, with the bulk of the percentile curve representing a +1, less of the curve granting a +2, less still giving a +3, etc., rather than a straight linear step up in skill level.  Okay, it's very hazy in my memory.

!i!

Edited July 28, 2020 by Ian Absentia
Damned autofill

[g33k]

2 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

...  Point being that there's just as much rationale to go from RPG to TT-minis just as from TT-minis to RPG like we did...

I understand there's a Gloranthan mini's wargame coming from (now in playtest) one of the mini's-makers.

I'm considering integrating it into RQG to handle battles of a dozen or a score or so per side...  But I haven't seen the rules yet, no idea how it plays, or how it "feels."

[Ian Absentia]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

I'm considering integrating it into RQG to handle battles of a dozen or a score or so per side... 

Ooh, squee!  Warhammer Skirmish...ish. Pretty much every game of RQ3 turned tac-sim on us eventually, so this scratches a deep itch.

But it's not automotive chase and combat!  Back on topic.

!i!

Edited July 28, 2020 by Ian Absentia

[Old Man Henerson]

On 7/26/2020 at 10:01 PM, Atgxtg said:

I did something like it before in another RRPG, and RQ3 did something similar with Monster Coliseum. The different number of spaces per lane with modifers forces the players to choose betten a shorter but more difficult path, or a longer but safer one. 

Design wise, you want the strait aways to have the same number of sections for each lane, but the turns to varry from inner to outer. You might want to have near successes just slide to the outer lane rather than roll on the chase trouble table. 

Did you draw and or print out the courses and give the players a miniature or hotwheels car for the races? I am not sure how to do it otherwise so that is what I am thinking of doing for this game.

On 7/26/2020 at 10:01 PM, Atgxtg said:

If might help to know that if you treat POW as horsepower or kilowatts and put it on the same scale as STR or SIZ, it will take 24 points of POW to double a vehicles speed, or each +1 POW multiplies speed by about 1.03. If players have to buy POW instead of just snagging levels of superspeed, it might be manaagable.

This sounds good as well. I think if I take this and replace many of the superpowers with weapons from the artillery section of the big golden book, and or BRP-Mecha it would make an interesting way for the players to have a point-buy system to customize their cars using the sportscar, sedan or one of the other vehicles as a base to build on.

On 7/26/2020 at 10:01 PM, Atgxtg said:

Okay. Just wondering how many "laps" is a typical race? If you want to run round by round combat then you will need to decide how many melee rounds you want a race to last., and plan accordingly. For instance, in my Monaco Grand Prix situation, the drivers have to make 78 laps, and drive about 160 miles, with the race lasting close to two hours. I didn't want to play all out in melee rounds or else it would end up taking a full game session or even longer.  So I came up with the idea of rolling for every so many laps to see if the player improved his position. 

If you want to have the race last ore than a couple of laps then you might want to restrict the weapons allowed, or what areas they can be used in, or during what laps or some such, so you can squeeze in some racing. For instance, what if weapons could only be used in the turns but not in the straight ways, or what if different "zones"" on the track were color coded and every so often the active zones changed?

My original idea was to have a standard 3 laps for the racers to go through, though I am thinking 5 might be more optimal to allow for pit stops  and repairs. Still, you are right that it could take a while for the race to finish if all the players had to play through every part of the track. So perhaps only 3 of the laps should be playable. (Granted, this is time that the players would normally spend traveling in a standard game so it might not actually matter in the long run.)

As for changinging active zones and only allowing weapons in certain places, that could easily work too. The racing would be a lot like Mario kart with different parts of the track constantly changing and most of the weapons being discharged right after going through a space with item boxes. You could even have it so that only certain weapons could be used in certain track zones, like all weapons are useable on straightaways while things like homeing missiles/mines (red shells and green shells) would be the only accurate weapons on turns. Then you could have zones where no weapons are useable like you were saying, except for wildcard specialty weapons or personal mutations or superpowers (blue shells).

Something cool you could also to is have a "shortcut zone" that only activates on certain laps.

[Old Man Henerson]

On 7/26/2020 at 10:01 PM, Atgxtg said:

OH, that's rather straight forward. I'm running a game where the players are spies and I was thinking of trying to adapt the High Stakes Gamble Supplement from the Top Secret/S.I. game. The supplement is set in Monaco during the Grand Prix, and I though the idea of the players taking part in a famous race might be good for an adventure. Then I had to figure out a way to run the race without it taking forever to play out, and would (hopefully, I've still got my fingers crossed) be fun and exciting for the players to play out, with driving rolls, mishaps, and the other factors that go into racing.

I wondering if I should throw in a few "key laps" where the drivers have to go through sections of the track rather than doing whole laps at a time. Especially for the last lap or two, when players would be more likely to try something desperate to move up in position. It might give a more exciting finish that just one roll for the last 6 laps.

 

Oh, sounds fun, do they get to have their martini's shaken or stired while being chances by a guy with metal teeth?

With 72 lapsto go through. key playable laps sounds like a good idea. The last few laps should be the most important ones while the others could be rolled through. Good luck on your game!

[Old Man Henerson]

23 hours ago, g33k said:

Well now, that sounds like an RPG premise!   😉  👍

 

Add in the twin premises that:

(a) the mutants / ex-soldiers are (in)famous for griping about "the good old days" when they had respect for fighting the aliens, and due to various "vet syndrome" issues (PTSD/etc, addiction, and so forth) occasional bouts of paranoia/hallucinations that "the aliens are ba-a-a-a-ck!"  😵

(b) actually, the aliens are back (never really left), this time waging a completely covert campaign of psych-ops & discrediting/undermining the mutants with both general public & various government forces, until they have weakened Earth enough to make it a pushover next time they come in force ...  👽

21 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

how about 

(c) the mutants were really test tube babies reverse engineered from alien DNA.

 

I can't speak for my players, but these ideas sound great! They will have to deal with all the grumpy mutants while uncovering the alien conspiracy and their own terrible origins. On top of keeping up in the races!

The climax and a few other points will probably involve the players having to take their vehicles out of the track to fight their enemies head on or even on foot! Though their cars and weapons might not be the best against real war machines, to say nothing of their own armor against actual ordnance.

[Atgxtg]

11 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Oh, sounds fun, do they get to have their martini's shaken or stired while being chances by a guy with metal teeth?

 

That's a lot close to the truth than you know. I'm currently taking a break from Pendragon after a two year run, and am running the old James Bond 007 RPG. While techincally not BRP, it is a distant cousin, coming from the DragonQuest side of the family, and the Quality Rating system is very similar to the success levels used in CoC 7. As the literary Bond spent so much time in the Caribbean, CoC's Bermuda Triangle supplement for CoC is one of my "go to" books, and I recommend it highly as a sourcebook on the area. It's a bit out of date, and Gms not running a horror RPG have to screen out some of the Mythos stuff, but even so it's probably the best RPG sorcebook on the Caribbean. Admittedly it doesn't have much competition, but that doesn't diminish my praise of the book.

11 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

With 72 lapsto go through. key playable laps sounds like a good idea. The last few laps should be the most important ones while the others could be rolled through. Good luck on your game!

Yeah, pretty much. my current thinking is:

1) Qualifying Lap: Players make a series of a dozen or so driving rolls get points for each success level. Their lap time will be determined by the total number of points earned, as will their starting position in the race. I have most, if not all of the NPCs go first so the players will know what sort of score they need to get pole position.

2) The Race: Probably handled in 5 lap increments,in reverse order of position (so the driver in first place goes last). Players can adjust their posting up on down based on the success level of their roll. In Standard BRP terms this would mean keeping their position of a success , moving up a spot on a special,  2 or three spots of a critical, and dropping back on a failure.In BRP, I'd consider letting someone push to move up, making their driving roll difficult but allowing them to move up an additional  1D3 positions if successful. 

3) The End: This would be the last two or three laps, played out, as the major named sections of the track, stuff like the first turn, the tunnel, etc. There are something like a dozen spots that are noted on the track, and I'd use some or all of those. These sections might have modifiers to rolls, and certain cars might be able to take advance of them.

But...for any of that to be worth playing out, I need to get the player characters vested in the outcome of the race. If they are spies on a mission to stop WWIII or some such, they probably don't care about winning the Grand Prix. So I'll need to tie that into the mission somehow. 

 

Anyway, that's why I was working on it, and how and why it's set up the way it is, and how it might be useful for anyone running a racing adventure in BRP. Take from it what you will. Happy Motoring!

 

 

[Atgxtg]

59 minutes ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Did you draw and or print out the courses and give the players a miniature or hotwheels car for the races? I am not sure how to do it otherwise so that is what I am thinking of doing for this game.

Yeah, I did up a track with multiple lanes. The inner lanes had fewer sections to get around a corner , but were more difficult. The outer lanes were easier to ride through, but were a couple of sections longer. Player then had to decide being playing it safe in the outer lane or take a chance in the inner lane. 

 

Quote

This sounds good as well. I think if I take this and replace many of the superpowers with weapons from the artillery section of the big golden book, and or BRP-Mecha it would make an interesting way for the players to have a point-buy system to customize their cars using the sportscar, sedan or one of the other vehicles as a base to build on.

The horsepower thing is real life, and explains why an old VW Beetle wouldn't pass a Ferrari even if you could somehow give it the same engine.  I'd suggest you go over the powers and decide what's okay for a car and what isn't. Also, race cars are usually limited by drag, not weight, so lightening a car won't help a lot. 

If you got the old SIZ table,  you can read the mass give as a speed (in MOV, mph, kmh, m/s whatever)  you can start off with (POW-SIZ)/3 plus a fudge factor to get the values up to where you want to start. 

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My original idea was to have a standard 3 laps for the racers to go through, though I am thinking 5 might be more optimal to allow for pit stops  and repairs. Still, you are right that it could take a while for the race to finish if all the players had to play through every part of the track. So perhaps only 3 of the laps should be playable. (Granted, this is time that the players would normally spend traveling in a standard game so it might not actually matter in the long run.)

You could swipe my idea of letting them roll for several "low incident" laps at once and let them move forward or back a few sections on the track based on thier driving rolls. For the most part a race on a track is about relative position rather than absolute position. Or you could do what they do in racing and put out a cuation flag and racers can do anything when they have a wreck to pull off the track. 

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As for changinging active zones and only allowing weapons in certain places, that could easily work too. The racing would be a lot like Mario kart with different parts of the track constantly changing and most of the weapons being discharged right after going through a space with item boxes. You could even have it so that only certain weapons could be used in certain track zones, like all weapons are useable on straightaways while things like homeing missiles/mines (red shells and green shells) would be the only accurate weapons on turns. Then you could have zones where no weapons are useable like you were saying, except for wildcard specialty weapons or personal mutations or superpowers (blue shells).

Yeah. What if the active zones changed with each lap, or if there was a way for the drivers to shoot a target or something to pick the color to be active or inactive? MAybre mutiple targets. SHoot a color and it turns on, shoot it again and it turns off.  Or maybe there are key spots of the track they can drive over to activate certain sections or features and they can be placed in ways to make things trickier for the drivers? The players could  plan strategies around what color they want active when. 

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Something cool you could also to is have a "shortcut zone" that only activates on certain laps.

Yup, or it might need to be activated somehow. Or how about a shortcut that bypasses one end of the track, but has land mines, only some of which are active at any one time. This could be tied to the color coded zone thing, and could make it challenging for players to change lands along with the zones. Any maybe the mines aren't everywhere so a driver might still be able to go over a "live" section with a bit of luck? There could be guns, flame throwers,  and other dangers there too. You could name it "Death Alley".or the "Gauntlet" or some such. I'm sure it would see tickets. And it would kinda nasty if the "switch" to raise the barrier across the shortcut was on the outermost lane. 👹

 

Edited July 28, 2020 by Atgxtg

[Ian Absentia]

1 hour ago, Old Man Henerson said:

Did you draw and or print out the courses and give the players a miniature or hotwheels car for the races? I am not sure how to do it otherwise so that is what I am thinking of doing for this game.

Oh, holy cats, this just reminded me...of Games Workshop's Battlecars!  Not that it's going to prove especially helpful for you now, but it took the 2D TT-mini of Car Wars up to full 3D using Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars for scaled mods.  Like all Games Workshop products, it cost way too much to play.  But it's out there on eBay.

!i! 

[Edit:  Nope.  I was remembering Dark Future, which came along later in the '80s.  It's still out there on eBay, too.]

Edited July 28, 2020 by Ian Absentia

[Atgxtg]

3 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

  Like all Games Workshop products, it cost way too much to play. 

LOL!!!. Now I got Coca-Cola up my nose again.

To be fair to GW, that was only true after they started making their own miniatures. 

Edited July 28, 2020 by Atgxtg

[Ian Absentia]

2 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

To be fair to GW, that was only true after they started making their own miniatures. 

True, true.  If one was an accomplished kit-basher and Sculpey-huffer, the price of entry could be brought down a little.  On several occasions, I waited out the shop owners to buy the boxed sets when they finally went on clearance.  But I digress...again!

!i!

[Atgxtg]

3 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:

True, true.  If one was an accomplished kit-basher and Sculpey-huffer, the price of entry could be brought down a little.  On several occasions, I waited out the shop owners to buy the boxed sets when they finally went on clearance.  But I digress...again!

!i!

Now I miss White Dwarf. 😞