Hi everyone,

i am planning to run the Jewel of Yavin adventure and after reading the book i have a question about how to run the race itself.

To sum up, the book says that the race is divided on several legs, and every leg requires a Piloting check.

Pilots are sorted by current speed (faster on front), and people going at same speed is sorted by number of successes made on the roll.

Advantages/triumphs add (while threat/despair subtract) to speed to crate a "Place Value"; who has the highest Place value at the end is the winner.

My question is:

in the first round everyone sets a speed (with manouvers) and roll the check, and add/subrtract to obtain the place value.

What happens in second round (and following)?

1- Place values are added every round - so the "top speed stays in front" is no loger applied, instead the leader is the pilot with the best overall place value (ties won by successes on current leg). The final result of the race will be the sum of all the Place values of all the legs.

2- Every leg follows the rule of the first. So place value is calculated every leg and not added to a total. The winner will be the racer who "wins" the last leg (this seems strange to me)

3- Another option that i completely missed.

How did you run this encounter?

Also, for initiative i assume to go in race order (both for pilot and copilot). Is this right?

The official rule in the book is a weird mix of 1 and 2. Here's what happens by the letter of the rules:

- Each round the cloud cars with the highest current speed are in front. Cars moving 1 speed slower are one range band behind them, cars moving 2 speed slower are two range bands behind them, and so forth.

- Within each range band, the cars are ordered by the number of successes rolled on that round's Piloting check. Advantage breaks ties if necessary.

- Each round each racer adds his vehicle's current speed to a running total of "Place Value". He also adds or subtracts points from this total due to advantage and threat on Piloting rolls (or anything else the GM deems appropriate).

- Place Value is cumulative from round to round. The racers finish the race in order of total Place Value after all legs are tallied. The highest total wins, the second highest total comes in second place, and so forth.

- Note (and this is the really weird part) that current total Place Value is unrelated to current position in the race. Current position relative to other racers is based solely on current speed. A car traveling at speed 4 (right now) is always ahead of a car traveling at speed 3 (right now) even if the latter driver currently has a Place Value of 20 and the former currently has a Place Value of only 10. Driver 2 is closer to winning the race, and yet driver 1 is somehow ahead of him. And no, this does not make any sense.

My guess is that this is a case (as is fairly common with the official rules in this system) of trying to keep things "simple" and going a little too far.

I will actually likely be running the race in my next game session and am planning to do the following:

- Racers accrue Place Value based on their speed each round and the results of their Piloting rolls (more or less the same as described in the book).

- At any given time, their positions relative to one another are (as they should be) based on their current Place Value, not their current speed. Speed has no effect on position, save as a contributor to Place Value. The racer with the current highest Place Value is in front, the next highest Place Value is in second position, and so forth.

- Racers are one range band apart for every X points of difference in their current Place Value. I'm still debating what number X should be; but suppose, for example, that it were 5. This would mean that if two racers had current Place Values of 28 and 25 they would be within Close range of one another. 28 and 22 would be at Short Range. 28 and 17 would be a Medium range, and so on.

- And, of course, racers then finish in order of final total Place Value.

Thanks Overmatt, this is what i was thinking to do in my adventure.

I agree the rules are somehow weird as written, but keeping at the letter will result quite confusing, even for a narrative approach.

Regarding the race bands, it seems fair what you are planning to do, 4/5 points for every range band should work fine.

The only thing that makes me unsure, is that using this system can possibly create a runaway leader, impossible to catch after just 3 o 4 legs of the race.

Maybe the speed+advance/threat can balance the outcome, i did not test it, but it would be fine if you can report how the session went for your group.

Are you allowing a lot of combat during the race or do you think to keep it limited?

I just got Jewel of Yavin (my son bought it for me for Father's Day. He's not much of an RPG guy, but he thought it sounded awesome and wants to play. Score!), and I was also having confusion about how it was supposed to work. I thought Baltazar's #2 interpretation was the intended reading. It also never really says how many people are competing. It gives you the three important rival teams, and the flavor text seems to suggest a lot of mooks without much chance of victory, but it never really spells it out. I kinda figured eight cloud cars total, because that's what Mario Kart does. That's my logic and I'm stickin' to it.

There are other racers, but they are background dressing in the fact that they simply have no chance of winning the event.

The only thing that makes me unsure, is that using this system can possibly create a runaway leader, impossible to catch after just 3 o 4 legs of the race.

This is possible; but note that it's equally possible in the official rules. The official rules "narratively" describe equal-speed vehicles as remaining close together; but that's only set dressing. The winner is still determined entirely by total Place Value, which might be much higher for some racers than others. A racer who does very well in the early stages of the race might, indeed, be extremely difficult to catch.

Are you allowing a lot of combat during the race or do you think to keep it limited?

When I looked at the numbers, I noticed that the cloud cars are very brittle next to the damage values of the weapons. Each hit will be causing 4+successes damage (i.e. no less than 5) to vehicles with Armour 1 and Hull Threshold 5. This means that a cloud car will be lucky to survive two hits without going down. In fact a good attack roll could take one out in a single hit.

So I decided that race rules require all vehicles to be outfitted with "weapon-systems power buffers" that reduce base weapon damage by 2. This means that attacks only inflict 2+successes damage (unless there are further modifications of some sort). This allows the cloud cars to survive three or four hits before being taken down, especially if the crew performs an emergency repair action in between to recover some hull damage. This also makes sense narratively given that combat is supposed to be non-lethal, and seriously endangering other racers is explicitly against the rules.

As an aside, I've also considered allowing successful hits to reduce the Place Value of the target (perhaps by 2 points per hit, or 1 point per point of damage, or something). This would provide an additional tool to allow tailing racers to slow down the leaders.

It also never really says how many people are competing. It gives you the three important rival teams, and the flavor text seems to suggest a lot of mooks without much chance of victory, but it never really spells it out.

Yes, only three teams are named or detailed. The flavour text in the race section does, however, imply that there is a crowd of other "set dressing" racers who are assumed to have no chance of winning. No specific count is given, though.

I also noted that the statistics of the three detailed teams are extremely similar. If you look at their Piloting and Gunnery dice pools, they are almost identical from one team to the next. Their pools are also very high and likely to crush most PCs.

Plus, there is no indication given of what sorts of cloud cars these teams are flying or what their capabilities might be. The flavour and theme of the race makes it clear that these should not simply be stock models, and likewise they should probably be customised to each team.

So I took the time to modify the statistics of the three teams to make them more distinct, to create a couple of additional named teams with their own flavours, and to give each team personalised vehicles.

So when I run the race it will consist of six main teams - five NPC teams plus the PCs. There will also be a narrative pack of ten other miscellaneous teams that will be assumed to be in close contention with one another and will move as a single swarm around the track. The pack will automatically gain around 3-to-5 Place Value points each segment, depending on the difficulty of the segment. Named teams that give an especially bad performance might get skunked by the nobodies.

As an aside, I've also considered allowing successful hits to reduce the Place Value of the target (perhaps by 2 points per hit, or 1 point per point of damage, or something). This would provide an additional tool to allow tailing racers to slow down the leaders.

I like this idea. Maybe using personal scale weapons (like speeder bikes) could work.

Even using heavy repeating blasters (dmg 15 on personal scale) with the x10 rule will only scratch or inflict at least 1 dmg to a Armored 1 veichle (with a very good roll), allowing a good amount of fighting.

Or even resulting on dramatic critical hits, without effectivley destroy the rival cloud car.

The main purpose of the fighting is not to take the other racers out, but simply to reduce place value or give some setback/difficulty upgrade.

An another idea can be to keep only one "bad guys" team (Carabine?), which uses planetary scale weapons or ion weapons, used to mess things up if the race is going too straightforward after 3 or 4 legs, or your players find it boring.

I think that i will stick to the book regarding the number of main teams, 3 is enough bookkeeping for me

The rest of the pack can be used narratively if needed, maybe with some Triumph or Despair

The place versus speed thing make more sense IMO if you assume a long race with multiple laps and pit stops. Then a speeder in the lead by 10 points might still be next to someone else - maybe the leading car is lapping someone which is why its near a trailing vehicle. Maybe the other racer didn't take a pit stop earlier but will need one later, so a speeder right next to them who has already refueled has a huge effective advantage even though they are running side by side.

Within a single lap race, you could also think about place not just as being ahead, but also being on a superior line through the race. Someone in the rear could approach the leading car to get within range by cutting sharply across their path at a fixed point - but then they'd also need to make an large turn to get back on course.

You also have to consider that a cloud car going fast is likely to be more difficult to control than a slower moving vehicle, so although you are going fast you might have overshot he beacon or veered off course, hence that you might not still be in the lead.

one problem i have found with "races" is the difficulty of the course maneuvers just add setback dice, and most skilled pilots can have 2 ranks of skilled jockey which means only the hardest of obstacles will add any difficulty. then what do you do for failures? Cause in most races I can easily seen about half the skill rolls resulting in failures.

I like Overmatt’s idea in the second post in this thread.

Basically, the race is based on competitive checks between the racers, with other factors like the speed they’re traveling at (or trying to travel at), etc….

IMO, you want multiple legs per lap (five or six?) and multiple laps (3 to 5)? Maybe you could do emergency pit stops between laps, as shown in the podrace in TPM?

And the higher the speeds they’re traveling at, the higher the difficulty, and the greater chance for an upgrade that could result in a Despair.

Try to think of all the various different components that you see in the podrace in TPM, and then work to see how you can incorporate them into your race — or maybe you could do something better!

I could definitely see a lot of work being done on the betting side, by betting on things like who gets knocked out first, what the order of racers is on each successive lap, who gets run over by a stray Rancor, maybe there’s a section of the race course where people tend to stall out and there’s an opportunistic Sarlacc who dug a pit there (or maybe that pit trap was placed, just like they do sand traps for golf), who gets taken out by the Tusken Raiders, etc….

EDIT: Maybe there’s also timed exits, and everyone gets spaced out by a certain amount. So, you could be physically in front of someone, but as far as the race is concerned they’re “ahead” of you, because they launched after you did but they are catching up to you, and have overtaken the relative position/timing difference.

This way you don’t have a whole crush of racers at the very beginning, but you could still have lots of interesting passing, strategy and tactics in executing turns, and so many other things.