Ongoing Development

Here's a review of the development work I've been doing lately on my games Neon Burn and PowerFrame.

Neon Burn

For the last couple of weeks, since the Neon Burn playtests, I haven't been doing much actual writing. Instead, I've been letting some ideas about Neon Burn percolate through my brain. They are just about at the point where I can consider putting together a revised framework for the game.

So to recap, the main issues I found during the playtests were:

• Awarding Sparks to players when they portrayed their characters' Passions felt like a cheap bribe, and led to some undesirable "button-mashing." Since Passions don't change much, I also get the feeling that this would lead to repetitive sessions since you can always be rewarded for the same things.
• Talents weren't enough to keep people engaged during the Event. They simply didn't take much mental effort, and from the amount of Sparks we had, there was no incentive not to spam them whenever they made sense - so, no tactical decision-making.

Taking out the Passions > Sparks > Talents pretty much guts the core of the Build-Up, and also leaves the character creation process a little bereft. Therefore, something else needs to take its place. Here's what I have so far:

• Characters
• Roles still exist.
• Talents may change into a single Special Ability for each Role, or maybe a choice from a limited list.
• Sparks have currently been removed; instead, Talents may have some other restriction on their use. They may be reintroduced somehow.
• Scenes
• The Lead can flexibly define their own mechanical goal for a scene by declaring what they hope to increase, and what they are willing to risk losing. The Gain and Loss elements will combine to determine the Difficulty and Width for the roll.
• The Lead will also need to frame the situation to explain how it makes sense. For example, trying to increase Performance at the risk of losing Sponsorship may be because the vehicle modification might require the team to remove parts supplied by a particular sponsor, or add parts supplied by a competitor.
• Gains on task rolls add to the Tension Pool, which replaces the old Challenge Pool.
• Tension
• If left unchecked, Tension will add to the Field, making the Event harder. Tension can be reduced in a number of ways:
• By introducing Complications that make rolls harder;
• By introducing Stakes that are resolved depending on the outcome of the Event;
• Possibly by introducing or resolving Drama between the player-characters. I've yet to figure out exactly how that would work, mechanically speaking.
• Perhaps Sparks will come out of resolved Tensions somehow.
• Motivations
• Instead of multiple Passions with their own Burn ratings, each character will start a session with 1 Burn, giving them 1 die to roll.
• When a potential Motivation comes up during a scene, players can claim it by writing it down.
• Each Motivation that's relevant to a situation grants 1 Burn, adding an extra die to their pool.
• Perhaps limit this to three Motivations of any kind, and up to an additional 3 that have Stakes attached?
• Perhaps the prize on offer will tend to count as a Motivation attached to a Stake?

That's most of the structure so far. It's a little looser than the previous version, but I like the freedom that gives player in defining what a scene's about, and what gets their characters fired up. I've realised that there's an advantage to leaving a "fruitful void" for the players to fill in.

At the moment, the role of Sparks is uncertain. Perhaps if they're only generated in small quantities through dealing with Tensions, they might still make a good power-source for talents. +Nathaniel also suggested using them to assert authorship over certain elements or to define outcomes; given the fairly loose control the Lead has over the narrative, and that anyone else can already suggest stuff, I'm not sure if it's necessary. Perhaps if Sparks were still flowing in large quantities, they could be used to "pay" for new fictional elements or narrative control or something.

As far as keeping people engaged during the Event, it looks like the best way to do that is to give everyone a dice pool to manage. The basic ones are of course the Team's Vehicle and the Field. In addition, any Rivals were introduced during the Build-Up make for obvious candidates. There are a couple of options for any "left-over" players:

• Introduce additional Rivals; perhaps not major ones like the story-defined Rivals, but a sort of baseline competitor, maybe with a custom Vehicle.
• The Field could be split into more than one pool. I'm not that fond of this approach, since the Field runs pretty much "blind" and sets the basic competitor difficulty.

The main issue with having players run Rivals is that controlling them while still wanting your own Team to win is a conflict of interest. Players could make poor tactical choices for the Rivals and leave them at a disadvantage. Because of that, I need to come up with some basic "programming" for them to ensure they behave like they are trying to actually win. The basics of NPC racer programming are:

• Start with their highest Gain, and assign it to the Width slot that has the highest other result in it that it will beat.
• Repeat this process until you run out of Gains or Width, or until none of your remaining Gains can win any slots.
• If you can place dice to create matches and eliminate someone else's Gain, do so by favouring matches to Vehicles with the best Position, or that will result in a Gain for a Vehicle in a worse Position than the one you're cancelling.
• If you still have Gains to assign but they can't win or cancel any slots, just put them wherever you want.

PowerFrame

Also this weekend, I realised that I don't have an awful lot left to do on my PowerFrame generic RPG. I've been filling in some of the details and scratching things off my to-do list. The main areas remaining are:

• I need to write the "How to run PowerFrame" chapter.
• I need to finalise the Magic chapter and decide whether I want to include as many Spells as I can, or strip back the list to the basics and put the more esoteric Spells in a PDF supplement.
• I need to create a whole lot of illustrations and diagrams.

Altogether it looks like it's coming along nicely, even though I've spent a lot of time questioning the way the game works on the most fundamental levels. But my friends and I have played and run it for over fifteen years in one form or another, and even though I've tired of it lately, it's still the closest it's ever been to a finished product.

I'll probably release a pretty comprehensive bestiary as a separate PDF, because the creature statblocks will take up a fair amount of space and I don't want the core-book to bloat too much. I'll be including several pages of example creatures to use as examples, but it's largely meant to be a toolbox game where you can develop your own content. 

I guess the Spells are an exception to the toolkit mentality, though, since the core of a Spell is an atomic exception-based mechanism that causes a specific effect. Each of these "Major Arcana" need to be spelled out, and the process of creating your own is not rigidly definable.

Rather, the Spells themselves are versatile because you can combine the Major Arcana (the "what" of a Spell) with various Parameters (the "where and when") and Minor Arcana (the "who") - as described in a previous post on the subject.

So, things are going reasonably smoothly at the moment. I'm going to be moving house at the end of the year, and I hope to have a few employment-free months of domestic bliss that I might be able to use to get these games into publishable shape.

Neon Burn Alpha Tests 2 & 3

In the last week I've held two Neon Burn playtest sessions online; one by audio-only over Skype, and one over G+ Hangouts. In both cases, we used a spreadsheet to track shared game information.

I'm not going to write up a full "actual play" of either session, as the point of the playtests is more to figure out where the rules function as intended and where they need work. Here, though, is a brief summary of the two games.


Pax Suprema

In a Roman Empire that never fell, lethal races are held between living brass steampunk flying machines powered by the hearts of fallen heroes, known as Bronze Lions. We established that this single-race event, the Pax Suprema, was a tournament in which only the winning team would emerge victorious - all of the losing teams would be executed on the sands of the arena. Our team was made of gladiator-slaves, racing for the glory of our Master and for our own lives.

• +Nathaniel Robinson played Vatiatus the Champion of Neo-Kapua, a proud gladiator-racer (Driver/Gunner)
• Luuk Mouton played Sellularius the Cheap and Lazy, a man enslaved to pay for his gambling debts (Mechanic/Dealer). 
• I played Trixus the Scar-Crossed, a grizzled ex-gladiator (Coach/Pit-Crew)

We started off with a vicious ram installed (Chain-Blades), but spent most of the session acquiring and installing a cannon that would fire gladii at our rivals (Autocannon). Our chariot was also heavily tweaked for speed above all else.

During the race we quickly pulled away from the pack, and only broadened our lead as the race went on. By the end, we achieved a clear victory, thus ensuring the glory of our Master and sparing our own lives.


Neo-Rio Invitational

In a bright and hopeful high-tech near future, the weaponised Formula Sigma league races sleek angular antigrav vehicles all around the world. The Neo-Rio Invitational is an exhibition race, held at night on a transparent neon-walled track that loops around Rio de Janeiro. The final stages of the course spiral up the Sugarloaf Mountain and launch a jump to the finish line off the shoulders of Christ the Redeemer.

• +Cavin DeJordy played Kael Sundar, reckless hotshot driver (Driver/Gunner).
• +Chris Stocker played Hans Gnuuden, a retired driver turned coach (Coach/Pit-Crew)
• +Lloyd Gyan played A.B.I.un, the A.I. installed in the vehicle (Mechanic/Copilot).
• I played Meryl M., an enthusiastic mascot/track girl but also an able bodyguard (Publicist/Security)

We started off with a Carcatcher ram and a Mine dispenser installed, but really wanted to acquire an Energy Shield. Kael identified an old rival, Inara, in a bar, and established an Afterburn of the desire to beat her in the race. Although none of us were Dealers, we managed to get hold of an Energy Shield for the standard price. In the second-to-last scene, A.B.I. managed to install it single-handedly despite the complexity of the task, boosted by the team's desire to win and some encouragement from the sidelines.

During the race Kael quickly shot to the head of the pack. Our energy shield was invaluable, absorbing multiple attacks over the course of the race and allowing us to concentrate on gaining position. A.B.I.'s copiloting skills also helped evade any attacks that got past the shield, with Hans' pit-crew supervision standing by in case of serious need. By the time Kael hit the finish line, we had a comfortable lead over Inara (who was nursing a beat-up vehicle around the track) and the field was well behind.

Analysis

+Cavin wrote his own blog review of the Neo-Rio playtest session if you'd like to see an outsider's first opinion of the game's current draft. Below are my thoughts and musings, mostly identifying areas that worked well and those that could use improvement.

So far I've had mostly positive feedback from the players, and everyone's said they enjoyed playing, so that's encouraging me to press on and fix the problems so it can become the game I want it to be.

Session Time

I'm a little concerned about fitting the game into a three hour slot. For both playtests we basically had an hour each of Approach, Build-Up, and Event.

The Pax Romana game was really rushed at the end because we had to wait multiple "scenes" before our purchase was delivered. That led to us trying to cycle through scenes as fast as we could so we actually had time to install the weapon, which meant characterisation suffered. That was also a problem in my initial playtest, so I've removed the delivery time altogether; Add-Ons are now available at the end of the purchasing scene.

There were things we didn't get anywhere near doing in either test, such as Qualifying. Both tests also only ended up with two Afterburn out of three. However, since we spent about an hour on making the world, the characters, and the vehicle, I suspect this problem would largely go away after the first session since you'd get 1.5 to 2 hours for scenes instead of a cramped 1. Therefore it's probably simply a matter of attempting to streamline the Approach (League, Team, Vehicle) as much as possible, and adjusting expectations about what's achievable during the Build-Up. The Event is still going to need an hour the first time, even using a shorter course, because people will be getting to grips with the racing rules.

I really need to do a full-session test with multiple players face to face, and also try a two or three session League. I think the the race in particular will be much easier when you're sitting around the same table and can physically pick up and move the dice. Entering the values into a shared spreadsheet was functional but slow.

Referee

In the Pax Romana game, we assigned a Lead and a Referee to each scene. However, figuring out who was who took a little while, and by the end of the session it had become apparent that the Referee position was probably unnecessary. While they were charged with assigning NPCs for people to play, introducing Complications, and awarding Sparks, in practice we ended up distributing those responsibilities among ourselves. Luuk even framed a scene for his character which included a complication right off the bat, which I thought was cool.

For the Neo-Rio playtest, I'd written the Referee out of the rules. I didn't miss the position; we still managed to introduce Complications and set one-another up to play NPCs, and with everyone on the lookout for other players using Passions the distribution of Sparks worked well too.

Lead

With the position of Referee gone, the Lead pretty much became the GM of their own scenes. Lead choice was based on the player with the fewest Sparks, since that would give them more opportunities to generate more Sparks and catch up.

In practice +Chris came out of the first scene with a large number of Sparks, and since he gained some by being in other players' scenes while some of us were spending Sparks for off-track performance, he never ended up framing a scene of his own.

I'm considering some alternatives to make sure everyone gets a chance to have creative input and decide what's important enough to frame a scene around. I could just go with a simple turn-taking order where we go around the table, which definitely makes sure everyone gets a fair go. However, with the way some scenes are required before others (such as getting the Dealer to make a purchase before the Mechanic can install a new Add-On), I think a more flexible system is warranted.

• One possibility would be to have the current Lead choose the new Lead at the end of their scene, from among those who have an idea what they want to do next. This may or may not also use tokens to make sure everyone has had a turn before going through the group again.
• Another possibility would be to ask which players have an idea for a scene, and then vote on which will become the new Lead. I think that might take a little too long, though.
• A third idea would be to have the responsibility for scene-framing go around the table, but when it's your turn you can nominate anyone as the Lead (including yourself) and frame a scene for them. This would make sure everyone gets to offer some creative input, but is also flexible enough that you can make sure important things get done even if they don't involve you. It might result in awkwardness though, if you have a scene framed around you that you don't really want.

Passions and Sparks

I'm not sure if I'm entirely happy with the use of Passions to earn Sparks. It's based on Tenra Bansho Zero's Aiki awards, but it occasionally feels a little "dance for your reward, player!" It's also a little awkward to award online, and might work more smoothly around an actual table.

The Passions themselves worked okay, once I realised the divide between "Passions used to give me dice on rolls" and "Passions used to provide Sparks."

The number of Sparks is currently also an issue. Until I ran a couple of tests, I had no real idea how many might be available for the race. As it turns out, 5 to 7 per player seems about average. With each use of a Talent requiring one Spark, at the moment there is no challenge. Any problem can be overcome by spending heaps of Sparks on it, and players still usually have several Sparks left over. 

The effect is compounded by the fact that multiple players have their own supply of Sparks, and they are all being spent on the same Vehicle to achieve victory. I'd rather there was some threat of scarcity, so you had to consider whether now is the right time to use your Talent, rather than just how many Sparks you need to spend to make the problem go away.

I've had a couple of ideas for reining in Sparks:

• Limit the number of Sparks a player can hold at once, or limit the number that the team as a whole has access to (drawing from a central pool of 10 or 12, for example). The second option would scale nicely for different group sizes, too.
• Increase the number of Sparks it takes to activate Talents. This could simply be a linear cost (2 or 3 per Talent instead of 1 or 2), or each Talent might have its own unique Spark cost between 1 and 3, or maybe the Spark cost during the race increases: the first use of a Talent costs 1, but the next costs 2, then 3, and so on. That wouldn't line up with the costs before the event, but it would result in escalating tension and discussion about what's really important.

Engagement During the Event
This is one area where the current draft isn't delivering. I originally wrote Talents with the idea that they would give all of the players something to do during the Event. The Driver would drive, someone would roll for the Field, someone else might roll for a Rival, and anyone else would offer input from the sidelines and look for opportunities to use their Talents.

Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work out like that in play. In the Neo-Rio race, three of us had the Vehicle, the Rival, and the Field, but the last guy didn't have much to do - and even worse, most of his applicable Talents were overshadowed by better ones from elsewhere. The huge quantities of Sparks didn't limit usage, so we never had to go for a choice of "use this one or that one?"

Talents don't require constant engagement, they just need you to stay alert for any triggering conditions.

In the post-game discussion, the idea was floated of having all of the players roll dice for something during the Event. This could be achieved by creating more Rivals, or perhaps having a sort of lesser rival which might be upgraded if you choose to pick a specific Rivalry Afterburn with them. It might also be possible to subdivide the Field into multiple pools.

However, in a cooperative game, all of the Rival and Field pools would need to place their results by some sort of formula to make sure the players controlling them don't make poor choices to help "their" Team win. I have a few ideas for automated Rival behaviour, so I'll run some tests and see how it functions.

Competitive Play

Another option was the possibility of redesigning the game for competitive play. In this approach, each player would basically represent a Team of their own. They may have friendly or not-so-friendly rivalries, relationships, and history with the other teams; they may form alliances, or be implacable enemies.

Unlike the cooperative game, players would not have a conflict of interest in playing their best and trying to win. The competition would be fierce and intense because you're playing against other human minds, and each has the same mechanical potential to bring to bear. Sorting out the results of multiple dice pools would add more depth of strategy as well. With everyone running their own vehicle, everybody would be fully engaged during the Event.

Turning it into a competitive game also removes the need to have a Challenge Pool that artificially inflates the Field if you don't cause trouble amongst yourselves. People would already have motivation to interfere with each other.

The only reason I shy away from a competitive angle is because it sets up winners and losers within the group. People who can't play the racing mini-game as well may feel dejected if they keep losing. However, over a League I could introduce different progress tracks for winners and losers. Those who lose might get a mechanical boost next time, or deepen the strength of their rivalries or something. Winning makes you soft; losing makes you hungry.

A competitive approach would require a complete rewrite of the front-end, although the racing system could remain largely as-is. Even if I don't decide to adopt this approach officially, I'm strongly considering writing it up in parallel to the collaborative game just to see how it works and what its problems are.

Neon Burn: Alpha Test One

I've been getting a bit behind on my session reports lately, mostly because I've been spending all of my spare time working on the alpha draft of Neon Burn. I just about have enough of it together to start playtesting, so tonight John and I had a bit of a go to see if there were any obvious issues. The following is a bit of a rambling analysis of that initial playtest, most of which probably assumes you're familiar with some of the game terms. Apologies for that; this is just a stream of consciousness as I process the experience.

Since there were only two of us we each picked one Primary and two Secondary roles. I went with a Mechanic/Pit-Crew-Coach, and John chose a Security/Driver-Gunner. I'm not going to post a blow-by-blow account of the session, but in summary:

We spent maybe half an hour coming up with the League (a single-event demolition derby race), the Team, and the Vehicle (good Speed and Integrity; low Handling and Lift). We only had half an hour for the Build-Up before the Event started, but managed to cram in a number of scenes and get some things done. The time limit definitely did build a sense of tension, which was good! I think the number of Complications we had to cram into a short time was a bit much though, so I may look at either revising the points you need to winnow down based on the time you have to play, or else try to come up with a different way to motivate the Referee to introduce complications.

In the end, the race went badly due to several factors and we ended up coming dead last. Without a Primary Driver Role, John was missing out on rolling a d8 in his pool. Our Vehicle also ended up with pretty flat tuning, mostly punctuated by poor Lift (I'd corrected its Handling problems at the expense of Speed). We didn't gain very many Sparks during the Build-Up, and spent a lot more of them before the Event than I'd anticipated, so neither of us could affect the outcome very much.

I think half an hour for the Build-Up was not quite enough time. We could have benefited from some additional scenes to establish more motivations for the Event. Mind you, some of the scene goals still need to be written up, so we were a bit limited in what we could choose to do. I also think another player or two would make it easier to share the load.

Maybe it was because we didn't have much time, but I didn't feel that the Passions were really being played out well. We pretty much used the same ones all the time - "The Vehicle is my baby" and "I need to win the Event." I need to consider how Sparks are assessed and awarded. Since we didn't have many other characters to interact with, our descriptions were pretty sparse. The post-justification of some of our Passion usage felt a bit tacked on, and I also noticed the conflict of interest in the Referee being the arbiter of what constitutes a "good enough" use of a Passion, with their desire for the team to do well. I think I either need to come up with clearer guidelines for how Passions must be worded, or how they have to come into play, or else I may need to strip out and revise the entire method of generating Sparks. Maybe it just requires a deliberate call-out in dialogue or description during the scene, rather than just "OK, I roll for this... Oh yeah, and I totally bought this gear so I can Win The Event." However, I'll reserve judgment until I've both played it with a larger group, and with a bit more time to play out the scenes.

So, it was interesting to see a whole session in motion, and gave me some food for thought. I'll keep filling in the blanks in the document, and reviewing what's already there to see if it needs any changes in the light of this test. I'm eager to try again with some more players, but I'm not sure when I'll get the opportunity.

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, please feel free to let me know either in the comments here, or in the Google Doc. Just highlight the relevant text and right-click to leave a comment. Thanks for reading!

Neon Burn: racing game development

Okay, so it's been about four months since I posted about my idea for an RPG based around an antigrav racing league, which now has the working title Neon Burn. I hadn't thought about it much or made any progress since I made the first post about it, but last week I started fiddling about with dice and managed to come up with what is hopefully an interesting core mechanic. As far as I can tell at this stage, it meets all of my requirements.

Please note, most of the terminology hasn't been finalised. I'll brainstorm some more concise, punchy, evocative terms.

• Tracks may have an environment modifier - a special rule or effect that applies to the whole race.
• The Track is made up of Segments.
• A whole Race will probably encompass 6 to 12 Segments, although the Track itself may only be 3 to 6 Segments long if a number of laps are required.
• Each Segment has a Difficulty (0 to 5) and a Width (1 to 6). Some may also have special rules or restrictions.
• Racers roll a pool of d6'es.
• I haven't yet figured out how the size of the pool will be determined.
• Racers have the option to roll fewer dice; it reduces the chance of getting Successes, but also reduces the chance of Failures. In this sense, the size of the pool represents how much the Racer is willing to put on the line.
• There's a general Field pool, representing generic unnamed Racers. This will usually be larger than the PC Racer's pool.

For every Segment, each named Racer and the Field roll their pools.

• Any dice that roll under the Segment Difficulty are Failures.
• Failures reduce your resources (Fuel, Integrity, Position, Focus, Vehice stats). Depending on the resource, this may penalise your ongoing performance, or bring you closer to being knocked out of the race.
• Any dice that roll equal to the Segment Difficulty are Basic Successes.
• These Successes only go towards negotiating the Track successfully, and don't usually provide any other benefit. This is the minimum required for safe driving.
•  Any dice that roll greater than the Segment Difficulty are Bonus Successes (Bonuses).
• Bonuses are used to compete with other Racers for Position or other advantages.
• Each Segment has a number of slots for Bonuses equal to its Width. 
• Starting with the best-Positioned Racer, each Racer takes turns to assign all of their Bonus dice into the available Width slots.
• When all Bonus dice have been assigned, go through each slot and:
• Eliminate any matching numbers (pairs, triples etc.).
• Keep only the highest die in each slot; eliminate the rest.
• After the elimination, Racers who still have Bonuses may spend them to benefit themselves or penalise their opponents.
• Typically these are used to increase Position.
• Depending on the race type, they might be used to reduce opponent Integrity or other resources with weaponry/ramming/special manoeuvres.

That's the basic resolution system. It looks a bit long, but in practice it's pretty quick and simple. I've been sorting three or four pools and assigning results by myself in a reasonable period of time. It's abstract enough that it could easily apply to various types of racing (boats, cars, bikes, even horses). It's complex enough to allow for some strategies, and has plenty of opportunities for special rules to modify or expand on the basics. I also really like the way it's possible to succeed while failing spectacularly and building up consequences. I hope to make this pool-comparison system the resolution mechanic for off-track rolls as well.

On top of the basic system, characters will get to choose dice tricks they can apply during the race, such as rerolling, modifying, or reassigning dice results, trading one resource for another (Fuel, Integrity, Focus, Position), or generating off-track effects (strengthened relationships, increased sponsorship).

So, the above works as-written for a basic multi-vehicle race. Whoever ends the race with the highest Position is the winner, with ties decided by a roll-off. Let's take a quick look at how it can be modified for different types of races.

• Rally - When there's only one vehicle on the track at any given moment, you're not jostling for position. Instead, the focus is on technical driving and overcoming the track itself. The rules work as for a regular race, except:
• You don't eliminate Bonuses against other Racers; any Bonuses you can assign to the Segment's Width, you can keep.
• You can only spend Bonuses on your own vehicle; you can't use them to penalise other Racers.
• Combat - In a regular race, you can spend your Bonuses to reduce an opponent's Integrity if they are on the same Position, which represents ramming or muscling them into the barrier
• In a Combat League, various weapons may allow racers to spend Successes against opponents in front of or behind them, or increase the amount of Integrity loss, or cause some other penalty.
• I've yet to work out how dedicated Gunners will fit into the resolution system.
• I've yet to determine how to weaponise the Field of generic Racers.
• Street Racing - I haven't thought about this too much yet, but there are a couple of possibilities:
• Increase the Segment Difficulties (or modify them randomly?) to represent interference from civilian traffic.
• Roll a separate Traffic pool that doesn't gain Position but which interferes with Racers. Perhaps it can ebb and flow? Perhaps Traffic Failures result in penalties against the Racers? Perhaps too much fallout may result in the authorities giving chase?
• Drag or Circuit Racing - In these sorts of events, the focus isn't so much on the track as it is on the skills of the drivers and the tuning of their vehicles. It's a fairly simple matter to:
• Drop the Segment Difficulty to 0 or 1, and take off the Width restriction.
• This will turn the race into a batle between two (or more) Racers. More Bonuses means more focus on the direct competition between the Racers.

I'm cautiously optimistic that this approach will net me the results I want. I also have some ideas about the off-track scenes that make up the pre-race game, but I've yet to figure out how I want to approach this end of the game mechanically. Since the race itself has been my major sticking point, I'm just glad to finally have something with potential.

I intend to tie in some aspects of the off-track scenes into race performance, so I'm deliberately leaving some areas vague so I have somewhere to plug things into.

Hopefully I'll have more progress soon! I'm already compiling tables for random Track construction, and brainstorming ideas for character dice tricks and such. I also hope to demo the basic mechanics with another person soonish, to see if they can pick it up easily or if there are any rough spots that need revision.

Racing Game development

A few months ago I started thinking about writing a new roleplaying game. My current groups aren't so big on short games or one-shots, but I prefer those to very long campaigns. I decided to try for an episodic structure. This would guarantee closure by the end of a session no matter how short, but would also allow for an extended story to be told. In addition, it would make the game easier to pick up or put down at short notice.

Possibly inspired by the anime Redline, and by my years of playing WipeOut games on the PlayStation, I settled on the concept of a futuristic anti-grav racing league. The RPG currently has no name.

I'm currently in the middle of testing mechanical resolution methods for the race, which has been a major sticking point for a while now. I'm going to start blogging about the development process so I have a record of how things go.

Although I began brainstorming elements for a completely original game, the recent Kickstarter for the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide made me realise that a lot of my design goals and ideas are possible within the Cortex Plus framework. At the moment, I'm approaching the game as a Cortex Plus hack, using elements of both the Drama and Action versions.


Design Goals

• Episodic - Each session contains character development and climaxes with a race.
• Engaging - Something for all the players to do, both off-track and during a race.
• Adaptable - Easily modified for various types of racing (A-G, car, bike, horse; circuit, rally, drag, street; combat).
• Instructional - Game rules actually tell you HOW to play the game!
• Simple - Fast resolution, and able to handle a dynamic field of NPC racers without slowing down.

Episode Structure

• Arrive at next race location
• Group designs the track
• Prepare for the race
• Develop relationships, mechanical work, adjust vehicle for local conditions, local colour, engage rivalries, subterfuge and sabotage.
• Practice lap, qualifying?
• Race Time!
• Everyone engages with the racing mechanics.

Race Time would be determined by real-world time, given a known end-of-session time. Obviously I'll need to figure out how long the races actually tend to last.

It's very important to me that all the players have something to do at race time, to avoid people just sitting around watching the Driver roll dice for half an hour.


The Team

My initial thoughts included relationship mechanics - shifting attitudes towards people in the team, and rivalries with other teams. Now, I'm not so sure - largely because I think that during the race the Driver will be able to rely solely on their single highest Relationship.

Currently, I have a few ideas for the two "core" sets of Traits.

• Roles
• Driver, Navigator, Gunner, Mechanic, Pit Crew, Coach, Publicist.
• Not all leagues would contain all these Roles; for example, only rallies need Navigators, and only Combat leagues need Gunners.
• The GM would be cast as the Manager, as they handle most of the administrative and off-screen duties.
• Relationships
• Other Team members, rival Teams.
• I think it would be good for people to get fired up and inspired by their Relationships, but I'm not sure I want to promote the sort of constant "Challenge and change" cycle that happens in Smallville. 
• Approaches
• Aggressive, Defensive, Indirect, Technical, Persistent.

I'll probably attach Talents (special dice tricks) to Roles, and maybe to Distinctions as well somehow. I have yet to figure those out, or write a list of Distinctions. I think Talents will be a big way that most characters will be able to help out during a Race; in fact, I may either make all Role Talents only work during a Race, or I may divide them into Race/Non-Race Talents, but maybe require at least one be a Race Talent. However, I can see Publicists and Mechanics needing off-track Talents too. It may be better just to say your first Role Talent must be applicable during a Race.

The Vehicle

I would like the Vehicle to have different performance ratings in different areas. At the moment I have:

• Speed: Acceleration and top speed.
• Handling: Cornering and agility.
• Stability: Off-road handling, resistance to losing control.
• Lift: Aerial manoeuvrability and jump performance.
• Resilience: Resistance to physical damage.

The mechanical team will be able to tweak the Vehicle's performance to make it better suited for specific Tracks.

The Track

At the start of each Episode, the team arrives at a new race location and finds out what the Track's like. Currently, I plan to provide random tables of track segments. Random Tracks can then be quickly made by rolling for and combining four to twelve segments. The length will be determined by group consensus, probably largely influenced by the session length and how much time people want to spend on the race itself.

Different types of Track segments (straights, corners, offroad, jumps) may require the application of different Vehicle stats, and will most likely vary in difficulty and consequences of failure.

The Race

This is currently a developmental sticking point. I've tried a few different approaches, which all satisfy some design goals while rendering others more difficult or impossible.

Races are the climax of the Episode. The PCs are not guaranteed a win, or even a place, so the opponents need to be skilled and require luck, teamwork, and dedication to overcome.

At first I tried abstracting the "Field" of racers into a Trouble-like pool of dice, which works quite well against a single PC and keeps things simple. The main problem with this approach is that it's difficult to extract placement data for NPC racers, which would be handy for constructor leagues. It's also hard to compare the performance of individual racers during Rallies.

Next, I thought maybe it would be better to track each NPC racer separately, with a simple statblock giving them a consistent dice pool for ease of use. I re-cast the Field pool as the Track pool, representing the difficulty of the current Track Segment. Failure to beat the Track's roll would result in a slipping position and possible Stress from collisions. It would also work fairly well for Rallies. In practice, however, having to roll a separate dice pool for each racer is fiddly and time consuming, even for a field of three or four racers. The "handling time" for each Segment was too long, and I had to abandon this approach too.

Thinking about it though, I really like the escalating Cortex Plus Contests. In order to make a Contest deep and meaningful though, you really need at least some basic ratings for your NPC - it's a little dull to try and escalate against an abstract Field pool.

I haven't written anything down for my new idea yet, but in my headspace it's a hybrid of both the previous approaches. I'll go back to a Field pool, and have yet to decide whether to have a separate Track pool or combine the Field and Track pools. I'll have simple stats for each NPC racer, but they'll only come into play when the player's Vehicle is directly engaging them. I'll keep track of which NPC is in which place, but I'll use the interaction of the PC racer and the Field pool to decide what their relative situations are - do you have a chance to overtake, or do you need to fend off someone approaching from behind? To avoid having to overtake each NPC racer one at a time, I'd like to maybe have vehicles share the same placing so you can theoretically deal with maybe one, two, or three opponents at the same time.

Whatever I end up doing, I need to make sure the Race mechanics work for Rallies (no other Vehicles on the Track) and Combat leagues (using weapons to take Vehicles out).