brionl Posted March 20, 2011 Report Share Posted March 20, 2011 I've been considering racing in the Hero system, and there is sort of a dead spot between just "high roll wins the race" and laboriously plotting out the entire course with turn by turn movement of each vehicle. I've come up with this system for running races where several players can take different roles and all contribute to the team's success. This should work for auto-racing, boat racing, airplanes, blimps, dog-sleds, what have you. You may have to adjust some of the skills, but the basic framework should still work. I haven't put in anything about equipment variations, because most mature racing venues have pretty standard equipment. The rules put all the vehicles on the same footing, and generally only the skill of the participants matter. I've put in an extensive sample because; I'm not entirely sure I have opposed and complementary skills down 100%. And also to show how you can add some narration to spice up the bare rolling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brionl Posted March 20, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2011 Re: Drivers, start your engines! Here are the actual rules: Drivers, start your engines! Races are a series of contested complementary rolls using the skills of the key positions. Characters can fill one or more key positions if they have the proper skills. Key positions Driver: Presence, Combat Driving Crew Chief: PS: Auto Racing Head Mechanic: Mechanics (Automobile) Navigator: Land Navigation Spotter: Perception roll The results of the skill rolls give you your position number. The default position is 0, which puts you in the middle of the pack (Half of the field size), negative numbers are trailing the middle, positive numbers are ahead. You roll against "the field" which normally has a skill level of 12- in everything. This may be higher for championship races, or lower for entry level races. There are two types of races, closed circuit and open course. Both types of races are divided into four phases; Qualification, Start, Mid-Race, and Finish. Qualification uses the Head Mechanics skill at setting up for the course as the main skill, and the driver's driving skill as complementary. Starting uses the driver's skill as the main, with a presence roll as complementary (how good you are at bluffing the other drivers out of the hole shot). This gives you your starting field position, plus or minuses Mid-race is different depending on whether it is a closed circuit or open course. Closed circuit first roll against the field's mechanic roll to see if there is an accident, failure indicates an accident/hazard of some sort. If there is an accident, use the driver's skill with spotter's perception complementary against the field to avoid it. If you fail, you lose positions equal to the amount failed, if you pass, you gain positions. If there is an accident, you can pit under the yellow, and don't have to roll a pit stop. If there isn't an accident, make a pit stop roll against the field, using the Crew Chief's Auto Racing skill with the Head Mechanic's mechanic skill as complementary. Gain or lose Position. Mid-race for an open course is much more dependent upon the navigator's skill at hitting the check points on time, so it is a roll against the field using the Navigator's Land Navigation, with the Driver's skill as complementary. Finishing calls for a roll against the field using the Driver's skill with the Crew Chief's auto racing as complementary. If you want to play out the finish, you can use the "rolling road" technique of mapping where the vehicles stay stationary, and the scenery moves backward at the average speed of the field. Place the cars on the map and assume they all move forward simultaneously by the base speed, they can turn or side-slip as desired, but if they turn more than 60 degrees (one hex row) off of the base course at the start of the phase, they lose the free base movement and fall behind. One driver can make a presence attack against another driver to force them to maneuver out of their way. In the case of a collision, the damage is calculated according to the difference in speeds, but control roll difficulty is based on the base speed. Probably two or three turns of maneuvering would be good for the finale, but a race car could cover hundreds of meters or more during each turn. Example team: Viktori Family Motor Racing Team Driver: "Ace" Viktori, combat driving 13-, Presence 18 (13- 3 1/2 d6) Crew Chief, Spotter: "Pops" Viktori, PS: auto racing 14-, perception 13- Head Mechanic: "Wing-nut" Natchez, Mechanic (automotive) 14- Sample race, Henderson 500 (closed circuit) 2 mile oval, 250 laps. Field size 10. Even though there may be more than 10 cars in the race, only the top 10 really matter, we'll assume our heroes are part of those. Qualification: The field (12- in everything) gets a 9 on driving for +2 to the head mechanic's 8 for a total of -6 against out heroes. Ace gets a 12, only adding +1 to Wing-nut's roll of 13, which means they fail by 4, and start out 4 places below mid-field. Wing-nut picked the wrong tires and suspension set up for the trials, and barely sorts it out in time for the race. Off the starting line the field gets 13 on their presence roll, adding nothing and 15 on driving skill, failing by 3. Even though normally you don't need to make a contested roll against a failed skill, we will in this case to find out how many places Ace picks up. With an 11 for the presence roll, Ace adds +1 to his driving roll of 12, making it by 2 points, and moving up 2 places to 2 down from the mid-field. He fakes out some of the back markers and moves up in the field The mid-race finds that we barely avoid an accident when the field gets 12 for their mechanics roll. A bit of excitement just before turn 3 in the 100th lap, but everybody avoids it. Barely. The field starts pulling in for pit stops after the near miss, with an 11 mechanic roll adding +1 to the 14 rolled for their Auto Racing skill, only missing it by 1. Pops calls for a pit stop on the 130th lap, and Wing-nut's crew puts in a good performance by rolling 10 for a +2 to Pops roll of 12 against his 14- for +4. With the -1 from the field's poor performances Ace moves up 5 places to +3 (first place is +4, so this puts them at 2nd overall). For the finish Ace is in second, dogging the leader. The field's Crew Chiefs roll 11, adding +1 to the Drivers' 10 for a total of +4 against Ace. Pops coaches Ace with an 11 against his 14- auto racing for +2 to Ace's roll 6 giving them +9, beating the field by +5. Ace catches up with the leader and blows past him on the last lap, winning by half a lap for a stunning victory for Team Viktori! Positions +4 - 1st +3 - 2nd +2 - 3rd +1 - 4th 0 - 5th -1 - 6th -2 - 7th -3 - 8th -4 - 9th -5 - 10th With multiple players, each makes rolls for their own team, and the GM still rolls for the field as the baseline the players have to beat to determine their position. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manic Typist Posted March 20, 2011 Report Share Posted March 20, 2011 Re: Drivers, start your engines! Seems cool. Have some rep, if it'll let me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xavier Onassiss Posted March 20, 2011 Report Share Posted March 20, 2011 Re: Drivers, start your engines! Read it, repped it, stole it. This is good stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brionl Posted March 20, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2011 Re: Drivers, start your engines! I've been trying to think of dirty tricks. But of course only so our Heroes can defend against them, they would never do that themselves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Utech Posted March 20, 2011 Report Share Posted March 20, 2011 Re: Drivers, start your engines! You might consider Tactics, various flavors of Analyze, some sort of Gadeteering or the like for improvising some sort of equipment change in the pit stop..? Before the race, you could use Acting, Seduction, various flavors of Analyze, Gambling, Streetwise, Contacts, or (of course!) roll playing some encounters among the various drivers and crew members. All this could add to or subtract from the starting rolls. Teamwork might allow something like dirty tricks if you've got more than one car on the course for each team... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brionl Posted March 20, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2011 Re: Drivers, start your engines! Well, for the campaign I'm considering, the game will mostly be the "between races" stuff, with a few races thrown in now and then. Ninja attacks, EVIL Corp trying to do a hostile takeover of Viktori Family Motor Corp, "The race track is built on an ancient Indian Burial Mound!", that kind of stuff. So lots of room for non-racing skills. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xavier Onassiss Posted March 20, 2011 Report Share Posted March 20, 2011 Re: Drivers, start your engines! You might consider Tactics, various flavors of Analyze, some sort of Gadeteering or the like for improvising some sort of equipment change in the pit stop..? Before the race, you could use Acting, Seduction, various flavors of Analyze, Gambling, Streetwise, Contacts, or (of course!) roll playing some encounters among the various drivers and crew members. All this could add to or subtract from the starting rolls. Teamwork might allow something like dirty tricks if you've got more than one car on the course for each team... Don't forget Weaponsmith. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greywind Posted March 20, 2011 Report Share Posted March 20, 2011 Re: Drivers, start your engines! Well' date=' for the campaign I'm considering, the game will mostly be the "between races" stuff, with a few races thrown in now and then. Ninja attacks, EVIL Corp trying to do a hostile takeover of Viktori Family Motor Corp, "The race track is built on an ancient Indian Burial Mound!", that kind of stuff. So lots of room for non-racing skills.[/quote'] Like when Ivan Vanko starts cutting cars apart as they drive by? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Democracy Posted March 20, 2011 Report Share Posted March 20, 2011 Re: Drivers, start your engines! looks good, I like judging performance against the field as a whole. In the example, the performance showed that the hero gets to move up five places. I would be inclined to say that the performance was good enough to warrant moving up five places. I would then have a driver to driver contest to see if he could perform an overtake manouevre. If a manouevre is successful then the hero moves one place up. If not, he gets another attempt (if he has any left - the example would allow for five overtaking manouvres). This would allow for some individual contests and for the drivers to have a bit more individuality. Of course it works both ways, if if the hero team drives badly the driver would have to defend overtaking attempts. Depending on the level of detail you want to go into, you could decide where attempts would occur and give drivers bonuses or penalties depending on what they were good at. This is a much better way to do chases & races than the map it out. More cinematic. Doc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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