• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.

MGT Only: How do you handle Racing?

Spinward Scout

SOC-14 5K
Baron
Whether it's horse racing, groundcar racing, gravbike racing, or even starship racing, is there an example in an MgT2 book that can show me how?

How could you run getting a hospital ship to a plague moon before everyone dies?

What rolls are needed? And how often? I understand how getting more speed from the maneuver drive works Engineering-wise, but what does the Pilot and Astrogator need to do?

Has anyone run a race in a game?
 
There are caps on acceleration, so you'd need to find a mechanism where these could be bypassed.

So if it's a straight line, it's likely engineering.

If you have gravitational wells inbetween, maybe pilot and slingshotting.
 
How could you run getting a hospital ship to a plague moon before everyone dies?
Well, the real question is are you going to let the party fail and kill everyone, i.e. does their agency directly impact the lives of the people on the plague moon? "You're 10 minutes late, that another 10,000 people dead. What do you do next?" kind of thing?

Or do you just want dramatic narrative that lets them arrive in the nick of time just before the masses rise from the dead and start eating everyone else?
 
the RPG Apex has an interesting abstraction for chases, which possibly could be applied to a race. Basically, dice rolls against each other with DMs based on skills, terrain, etc. 1d6, high roll wins per round until the chase difficulty is met. Whoever meets it first wins: either escaping if being chased or catching if doing the chase.
 
How could you run getting a hospital ship to a plague moon before everyone dies?
Well, you're going to need maneuvering power/acceleration. In a time sensitive disaster response situation, "the faster the better" ... BUT ... you're also going to need to "bring enough STUFF™" with you to make the trip worth the effort. No point arriving first if all you brought with you was a thimbleful of water to a population dying of thirst (for example). As with everything in engineering, it's the tradeoffs that become important since you need to find a "sweet spot" balance point between a pile of competing priorities. The trick is figuring out which objectives need to be prioritized (and in what order) to engineer a capability that meets the need.
What rolls are needed? And how often? I understand how getting more speed from the maneuver drive works Engineering-wise, but what does the Pilot and Astrogator need to do?
Think of the Pilot as being the "local controller" of the craft. The Pilot is the one who flies the course.
The Navigator is the "long distance plotter" for the craft. The Navigator is the one who plans and determines the course which the Pilot is then obliged to fly.

If you want an analogy to ground car track racing (so as to have something easier to grab a hold of conceptually), there is a notion in track racing that there exists a LINE through the track which is the optimal path to complete the track in the least amount of time. It is then the responsibility of the drivers to stay as close to that LINE as possible, since deviating away from that LINE will negatively impact their time score and position within the race. The more time a driver spends "riding the LINE" as closely as possible, the better/faster/more efficient their race performance is.

Pulling this back to maneuvering spacecraft, the Navigator plots the LINE ... and the Pilot then attempts to fly along it as closely/cleanly as possible.

Under nominal circumstances, a Navigator is only really needed for acceleration voyages lasting 12+ hours. Anything that takes 12- hours to transit will not require the specific skillset of a Navigator and can be done by a Pilot alone (the distances are short enough that "everything is local" between origin and destination). If you're needing to make an interplanetary transit (which will typically take longer than 12 hours), best practice would be to have a qualified Navigator to generate the course plot which the Pilot then flies.
Has anyone run a race in a game?
... Maybe ...? :rolleyes: 🤫
 
I’d just do pilot/driver skill plus whatever Dex bonus plus platform speed/agility differential if any. Compare rolls between positions from lead to back, higher roll moves ahead one. Give it a reasonable number of checks, 1 for a drag race, 2-3 for foot race, 5-10 for vehicle race.
 
For a race - pick a threshold number - say twenty.

Set a number of "checkpoints" which are described and assigned a target number- sharp bend, chicane that sort of thing.

Roll 2d plus applicable stuff vs a target number based on the difficulty of the checkpoint - record effect number (ie the [2d roll + DMs] - target number.

Repeat until someone achieves the threshold number twenty.
 
I need to reiterate, in regards to the RPG scenario, what's the point of the race?

It is truly a game where the outcome is bragging rights with few actual scenario consequences? Or is it "important". Where success or failure has substantial impact on the outcome of the scenario in the eyes of the players.
 
For a race - pick a threshold number - say twenty.

Set a number of "checkpoints" which are described and assigned a target number- sharp bend, chicane that sort of thing.

Roll 2d plus applicable stuff vs a target number based on the difficulty of the checkpoint - record effect number (ie the [2d roll + DMs] - target number.

Repeat until someone achieves the threshold number twenty.
pretty much the Apex system described above
 
Never heard of the Apex system - what is it?
I'll post this blog post - as there are a lot of Apex RPG hits it would be hard to find. My blog may have some labeled w/Apex as I ran 2 games so far with it (one in the default 1930's Island setting, the other a Cowboy And Dinosaur thing as one of the players really loves westerns and while he gets to tun them, he rarely gets to play. Ended up with an 80 page bible for that setting, though mostly copy/paste to get prices and historical facts in place).

Blog post: https://www.doalg.co.uk/post/apex-astounding-thrills-rpg

edit: and a link to my western game resource: Cowboys and Dinos
 
Last edited:
Back
Top