That sounds like a great idea Per. I am a fan of motorsports and have done the odd bit of rally driving in my past, so would love to see a game based around it.

I like the idea of your emotional scenes feeding into your driving scenes. Kinda like if you have a bust-up with one of your team mates and punch him to the ground, you're both gonna be itching to pummel him on the track too.

I like the idea of lowest being best in terms of dice (you could even have the dice go 0-9 instead of 1-10, with 0 being the best) as it fits the idea of the shortest time, the quickest cornering and all that.

Conversely, I don't like the exception to the rule that is speed - I hate exceptions in games, as I find it makes it counter-intuitive. It makes me confused when I go "right, so 9, that's bad right? Oh, except if this is a speed test. Huh?" I like everything to work the same! But maybe that's just me.

I like the idea of emotional scenes impacting on the race very nice. I would love to do a top gun style thing with this idea, do you think that would fit?

Also I agree with Andrew that you should avoid exceptions to rules at all costs. They just make things more confusing and the game flow breaks down, and I think you want the game to flow as smoothly as possible to get that feel of speed and movement.

I will see if I can think of any evocative mechanics for car racing, I like toying with ideas!

Cheers

Iain

Lead Developer Mob Justice RPG

'The Giant Brain' has launched.

Could I suggest "lap time"? Lowest is best there.

Thanks, guys.

Yeah, I've been through the exception discussion with myself already, of course, and I am tempted to go back to the original. It just seemed when I was fiddling with it that the lowest number in a speed duel was a bit contrary to the whole thing, so I balked and changed it.

And 0-9? Definitely! Cheers :)

Per

darkplaces.squarespace.com

I like the idea of getting all 0s as being the perfect lap. You lost 0 tenths of a second on the whole oval. Just really, really thematically perfect.

...do you have an update on how this is going?

If you need some playtesting later in the year I'll be free in September (a long way away I know).

Thanks for asking - I worked full steam on the race mechanics over the weekend (and the implications from those on the rest of the game), and strange things did happen.

I ditched the dice. There were simply too many dice lying around during a race lap, because every player rolls control+speed and leaves the dice on the table for various reasons.

Cards do that better - Ace, lowest, up to 10, but the basic mechanic is the same.

I managed to incorporate race positions without making it too complicated (my wife strongly disagrees here, but what does she know). Positions are important because if a character gets a total Speed success compared to Control, it's a crash of some kind, and it might affect the car behind.

In short, I think the bare bones of the race works - still unsure how you can draw upon the character's other attributes to influence number of cards drawn and so on.

What I'm working on at the moment is the hard stuff: what the game is actually about and how to play it in between the races.

Per

darkplaces.squarespace.com

Oh, I see what you mean about the positioning of cars. Games that strike me as having "positioning" are Agon (which might be most like what you are doing?), Primitive (you put stones on a rabbit skin) and Spione (which has very specific meaning for the positioning of cards in Flashpoint).

I kinda like the idea of having model cars on the table/grid to show order. (Makes me think of Dark Future and Battlecars.)

Anyway, sounds good Per.

Gregor, stop looking into my brain ;P

So yes, I was also meddling with the option of some kind of simple car representation on the table. At the moment positions are represented by a die:
1: you're in the first position
2: you're second, right after the leader
4: Your're third, 2 "clicks" after number 2.

Position numbers, "clicks", are directly transferred from Speed successes of course.

Flashpoint card positions in Spione indicate who gets control over the shared fiction and in what order and to what degree. Mine's much more basic, and in the end, after the last lap, tells us who succeeded in their intent for the race: winning.

I must admit I don't know Agon or Primitive. Maybe I should.

Per

darkplaces.squarespace.com

Cthulu 500 is worth looking at for card game race mechanics.

+++
JoE
+++

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

Ooh, good call Joe. I'll second Cthulhu 500. The game itself gets boring after a few laps, but the basic card mechanic is pretty fun and very stealable.

I'm working on a more "standard" RPG called Racer. This came out of the idea there were not enough sports games out there.

I certainly think our efforts are going to be very different :)

The 23rd Letter - Zombi - SpaceNinjaCyberCrisis XDO - Testament - Creed and more...
http://www.lategaming.com/

Good stuff, Matt. I agree: there're too few sports games out there.

Do you have any more info about Racer, or is that too early yet?

Per
darkplaces.squarespace.com