Hi everybody,

We played the Cloud City Grand Prix in Jewel of Yavin recently, and everybody loved it, so I tried to make a universal rulebook for racing to use with everything from podraces to racing through asteroid fields with weaponized light freighters. English is not my native language, so apologies for my grammar errors. Please let me know what do you think of this, every constructive feedback is welcomed! This is mostly based on the rules in Jewel of Yavin, but I changed some parts what seemed very illogical or unbalanced and complemented some to be able to use with even smaller or bigger spacecrafts. Probably someone has already created a similar rulebook and I'm just too inexperienced to find it, if that's the case, please let me know it.

So about the race:

Each race consists of several stages, and every stage works like one turn in a combat. The narrative description of stages should be the route from one checkpoint to the next one.

The goal of the race for everybody is to get their Place Value as high as they can - at the end whoever has the highest Place Value wins the race, who has the second highest is the second in the race, and so on.

Before the start of the race, we have to determine the initiative order for the first turn - probably the best is to use a simple Vigilance check for that. The initiative order after the first stage can always change - whoever is the first in the race (who has the highest Place Value) will always have the first initiative slot, the second in the race will be the second in the initiative order, and so on. If multiple racers have the same Place Value, the Speed of the vehicles determine the initiative order. If it’s also the same, whoever was ahead in the previous stage will be ahead in the next too. If this happens right after the first stage, then who had the better start (who had the better initiative check) is ahead. One important thing to add: in races members of the same team can’t swap the initiative order between each other like in regular combat.

We assume that everybody tries to get forward and wants to win the race, so the pilots’ action in every turn is a Piloting (Planetary/Space) skillcheck to determine how fast they get through that stage - basically this is a Navigate Terrain maneuver as an action. The difficulty of the stage is equal to the vehicle’s current speed, or half of it’s silhouette (rounding up), whichever is higher. The lower of the two values indicates how many times the difficulty of the check is upgraded (For example: an Incom T-47 Airspeeder going at Speed 4 has the difficulty of 3 purple and 1 red die). Don’t forget to add blue or black dice equal to the handling of the vehicle! For GMs: feel free to add black dice according to the terrain or dangers they face.

If the check is successful, we add the speed of the vehicle to the Place Value. If the check fails, it means they missed the racetrack and had to slow down, so they lose one Speed and have a black die for the next check (but they still add the resulting speed to their Place Value!).

Spending advantages, triumphs, threats, despairs: I think it should totally depend on the environment you are racing in. The Cloud City Grand Prix is a good baseline, be creative to expand it or invent new things.

The pilots also have a free maneuver in each turn before their Piloting skillcheck: probably they will use a Punch It for the start as they begin the race from Speed 0 (homebrew addition: they don’t have to go immediately to their maximum Speed with Punch It, they can choose a smaller value, and the strain suffered is equal to the difference between the starting and resulting Speed). Later they can use any other maneuver they logically able to: Accelerate, Decelerate, or if the vehicles have weapons and multiple crew: Stay On Target or Evasive Maneuvers. We also have one more homebrew maneuver: Measure The Terrain: add one blue die to the Piloting check.

If they race with multicrew ships, divide each turn to two phase: the first one is the pilots’ phase as previously described, the second is the gunners/copilots’ phase. You could use an initiative check at the start to determine the initiative order of the copilots, but I think it’s easier (and add a bit more tactical depth) to just use the same initiative order as in the first phase: so the copilot in the vehicle in the first place of the race is always the first in the initiative order. The copilots work the same as in any space combat: they can repair the ship, boost the shields, try to shoot or slice the enemy, or do any other action they are logically able to do.

Range bands: should work as GM’s discretion. I would recommend 2 value differences in Place Value equal to one different range band when you try this race first: so if the two ships have the same place values or the difference of the Place Values is only 1, they are in close range; if the difference between the two is 2-3, they are in short range, and so on. I would also recommend to give one black die to each pilot’s piloting check if there is another ship in front of him in close range (noted at the beginning of the turn, as when the 3. pilot in the race does his piloting check the pilots in front have already made the Piloting check and have a higher Place Value), to simulate the difficulty of an overtake.

If there is combat involved, it should be similar to the spaceship combat described in the Core Rulebook, just a bit more restricted: if any ship only has forward-mounted weapons, they can only shoot the ships in front of them, and only those ships’ rear defense zone, and if the attacker is in the front and has weapons which can shoot the ship behind, they can only shoot the front defense zone of the other ship. Spending advantages and threats in combat should be similar as in any other space combat.

If there are PCs who can't participate in the races, encourage them to be creative to help the racing PCs from the outside. For example: use Perception check to see what will be the next stage of the race: if they are successful, describe the next part, and give a blue die to the pilot. Or they can try to listen in conversations between other racer's engineers with a Stealth check, and get detailed information about the other ship's condition, or hear what the engineer's say what the pilot should do. If the PC is good in computers, he can also try to slice one of the competitor's systems: turn off the shields or weapons, maybe manipulate the thrusters, so the pilot of that spacecraft gets 1-2 black dice for the next piloting check. They can also try to hide somewhere near one of the stages, and set up traps, or shoot at the competitors.

Love it 🤗 I'm so using this in my own game!

That is similar to how I have done mine games on track races. Below are the minor changes

The speed and size determine the base difficulty for the racer.

Then depending on the portion of the track I will upgrade or add setbacks to the roll and it is the same for all players on that track. The more dangerous gets upgrades, the smaller distractions get set backs.

I my races combat hasn't been allowed so I skipped initiative, if they could then everyone would get their turn after the results of the track.

If the person fails then they only go half distance , I didn't round since then it discourages players from going on odd numbers.

The race would be a certain number or rounds, if it was tracked when they started the loop over they could make a cool check to regain strain.

Can only use your advantages and disadvantages to effect other within 3 points of your current score. Others were to far away.

On challenge is vehicle strain is so low on all but ships you don't want to give vehicle strain often or you will lose a lot of racers. Personal strain, setback or narrative effects.

If some characters were not actively racing, then I would give them an NPC to play. And give and EXP award to any player that won, if they were an NPC, to encourage them to try harder. (and less for me to track and Roll.)

I did something very similar except:

1) I made the point totals based on speed for each leg. Roll a piloting check, add Boost Dice for maneuver. Score = Base Speed + Successes + Modifiers (eg Full Throttle). Thus the faster vehicles and better pilots get the advantage.

2) Each leg I preset a recommended speed and had the pilot guess what the proper speed should be based on the information I supplied. Going too fast adds black dice.

3) Failing a check means you take strain and reroll at a slower speed. If total strain > character strain + vehicle strain thresholds then pilot crashes and takes a critical injury.

4) I also allowed for "shenangians". Like I had the rival gang plant a mine at the last leg of the race and also sent a guy out to snipe at the racers. The party had to fight off the sniper and disarm the mine.