How would you handle a swoop bike race or something like a podrace? and make it exciting?

and what about a space race like the kessel where speed doesnt play as big a part as navigation.

It's hard, honestly. I'm a huge F1 fan and I know a bit about racecraft etc. but trying to simulate the race and keep it exciting? Not easy.

Firstly, work out what kind of race is it. Obviously the KOTOR swoop races are terrible inspiration as there's merely time-trialling in a straight line to consider. If you can find a cheap copy of AEG's Spycraft d20 then grab that, they had good rules which can be adapted (for chases, but I'll get to that).

What makes racing truly exciting isn't the raw pace of the vehicles; it's the rivalries. The battles between drivers. Try and build a narrative around the race for the exciting finishes. Therefore, when your players are down the pack, and making their way through it, just have it happen against, say, easy-moderate difficulty until they reach the top, say, 5 swoops. Then work out how you'll set up those battles. If you look at Episode 1's race, we focus more on Anakin's battle with Sebulba than his passing the back markers after a stalled start.

Watching MotoGP or Formula 1, you'll see those moments in which the overtake is timed to perfect. I'd go back to the 2011 Belgium GP as an example: coming out of Eau Rouge onto Kemmel, it was clear Jenson Button's McLaren had more pace than the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg. Prior to hitting the DRS zone, Button eased his nose just out of the slipstream of the Mercedes to slow himself a fraction, then he moved back in, opened the rear wing and sailed based, building enough of a lead to not be challenged into Les Combes.

The above might be an example of a net success with advantage roll; it's worth delving into racing history (if you want oval racing, ok but it's not nearly as exciting) for examples of moves and working them in. i.e. look at Zonta and the overtake on Schumacher by Mika Hakkinen at Belgium in 2000 (seriously, it's generated better overtaking than most other circuits).

Designed the race course with a number of Challanges. Each segment of the course has a challenge to overcome in order to gain advantage over the other racers. Describe the challanges and give them a difficulty to over come. Each sucesss moves you ahead of the other racers. When you have equal number of successes to another racer, you can do more things during the straightaways. Like finding a line to the apex of a turn, or a good entry point for the next challange (gaining a boost die) even trying to knock the other racers swoop around.

The last 10 pages of the WEG book "The Black Sands of Socorro" has some great rules and examples of obstacles for swoop racing.

Same thing with Starships, only the challenge, with something like the Kessel run is how good your hyper-drive is and astrogation. Then you have to deal with hazards between jumps, some examples are astroids, dense nebula, solar flares. maybe even trying to outrun / outsmart a Patrol

I imagine creating a race mechanic would be pretty easy in this system. The vehicle maneuvers and actions are already there, you just need a structure of a race. Set a round limit for the race. Determine the number of challenges and plan them on specific rounds. Where a challenge is not planned during a round, that part of the track is a straight away. Keep a collective total of each racer's speed to determine place. Then run the race in combat rounds with initiatives.

One primary challenge could be turns themselves. It wouldn't be hard to rate a turn for a certain speed, and the driver has to make a piloting check for the turn depending on how fast they are going. So if a turn is rated for 3 speed, then going 3 speed is an average piloting difficulty. Should the driver be going slower than the turn rating, then decrease the difficulty by one step for each speed unit less than the turn rating. Increase the difficulty if the racer is going faster.

You can flavor it up without giving the exact difficulty for the turn. Though be sure to tell them about the turn on the round before they reach it. A driver could have a chance to make a perception check to get an idea for the turn, this skill check could even cost a maneuver to do so since the racers are actively looking as to what kind of turn it is. Failing the pilot check during a turn should cause them to bang into another vehicle (if going in the same place as another racer) or a solid structure so the vehicle takes hull damage equal to the number of uncancelled failures. Advantage and threat could be spend to accelerate through the turn, or loose speed during the turn.

Flavor: "Up ahead you see a sharp left turn ahead." Then give the player the option to spend a maneuver to do their perception check. Success could look like "You realize for the upcoming corner you are going a little too fast." The driver then has the option to change the speed they are going at with another maneuver, either converting their action or taking strain.

Another challenge could an obstacle, either some environment barrier that needs to be dodged or it could be racers who 'crash'. A crash should be any racer whose vehicle has met or exceeded its hull trauma threshold. A crash could provide a setback dice for the other racers in any track that loops. If the track doesn't loop then this setback dice wouldn't make much sense. The racer should make a damage roll equal to the speed of the vehicle (or something) to determine if they took any wounds from the crash.

Combat between two racers would be easy to handle as well. Make the range bands the difference in speed between two racers. If 0 or +/- 1 then short range. If +/- 2 to +/- 3 then medium range. If +/- 4 to +/- 5 then long range. If greater than +/-5 then extreme range.

A race is just a type of chase, and PCs should be constantly speeding up/down trying to win. I would run the entire chase in combat rounds against the other drivers, that way each driver has a chance to roll for their own success or failures. During a challenge to determine behavior on a NPC racer's turn you could roll your d%: 1-33 take a risk (speed up), 34-66 stay the course (stay the same speed), 67-00 play it safe (speed down).

The only stats you'd need to keep up with during the race is NPC racer's pilot perception skill, vehicle speed, vehicle hull threshold, initiative, and each racer's position. A race lasts X amount of rounds. The track has Y amount of challenges. So if you want a race to last 10 rounds, give the track as many challenges as desired. I would think 4-6 challenges, depending on track difficulty would be reasonable. At the end of the 10th round, person with the most cumulative speed throughout all ten rounds is the winner.

Quick summary for a race.

• Race length in combat rounds.
• Assign challenges to specific race rounds.
• Determine challenge difficulty, use 'pilot' skill to overcome challenge difficulty.
• Roll each racer's initiative (vigilance/cool).
• Each racer gets vehicle maneuvers/actions during their initiative.
• Track each racer's cumulative speed at the end of each round to determine place.
• Racer with highest cumulative speed at the end of the last round is winner.
• On a speed tie, the racer who acted first in the initiative of the last round wins.

Example race: Nar Shaddaa swoop race. 10 Round track. 4 Challenges. 5000 credits to the winner. Four Human racers (Pilot YY , Perc GG , Vig Y G , R(L) Y G , holdout blaster). Swoop bike (Sil 2, hand +2, speed 3, HTT 2, ST 3)

1. Straight away.
2. Straight away.
3. Sharp left turn (speed 2)
4. Straight away.
5. Hairpin right turn (speed 1)
6. Large obstacle, construction crew. (hard difficulty)
7. Straight away.
8. Straight away.
9. Medium right turn (speed 3)
10. Straight away.

That's just my basic idea for running an interesting race. Everyone is doing things every round. The racers have the chance to push their vehicles to the limit. It all uses normal vehicle maneuvers and actions. And adds interesting challenges to the race forcing the racer to be strategic with speeds, actions and maneuvers. That way a racer doesn't win by luck of the dice rolls, they win by being the fastest racer. For a tie, I would use initiative order as the tie breaker. A racer who had the higher initiative beats someone who matched their speed all the way through the race. (But flavor it as an electronic microscope photo finish.)

Space races wouldn't be much different except use astrogation instead of perception to identify upcoming challenges. And flavor turns into dropping out of hyperspace, changing course and jump back to hyperspace.

Use the chase mechanic, its a rather large full page "sidebar"/box in the starship chapter (AFB can't remember page number).

Tweaks: the "chase" is not over until all challenges of the race has been overcome; i.e. crossed the finish line. So when someone is in close range, the are side by side.

Difficulty would be speed of course, but also add a copious amount of setback dice for terrain and other factors that should count.

As already suggested, divide the race into a set of sections/challenges that needs to be overcome.

Use initiative, but also let the racers use manoeuvres and actions, although no "move" manoeuvre as this is already a part of the chase/race mechanic. Although accelerating/decelerating, evasive flying/driving, gain the advantage (if you play dirty) and so on should be possible, attacks also of course. I'd modify these checks by speed and/or terrain though, since its a race and not combat I'd upgrade combat checks for attacks at least by speed, or something along those lines.

Advantages on pilot checks can supply opponents with setback dice as per combat rules.

If, when approaching the finish line there are two (or more) contestants within close range of each other (and in the lead), an extra opposed check (for instance modified positively for any pilot who has "gained the advantage" over one of the close range contestants?) or competitive check could make sense.

Beyond this I think the rules as is would work well, and this is a minor tweak.

I've run races a few times (in both d6 and d20) and there are some surprising challenges.

My first piece of advice: Don't base the final outcome on overall successes. When I've done that, I've had players who would up so far ahead that other competitors couldn't catch them.

Second piece of advice: Unless most/all of your players will be involved, keep it simple and streamlined. A bunch of players will stay engaged only for so long when only one person is making a roll.

With that out of the way, I might do something like this (this got way more detailed than I wanted):

SET THE STAGE

• Determine how many legs there are within a race (I would suggest somewhere from 3 to 6).
• Give each leg at least one characteristic that makes it interesting and unique. For example, maybe one leg has a shortcut that allows a player who spots it to add a Boost die to their check, or another leg has obstacles that can cause physical damage on a failure.
• If you want to have multiple laps, consider this: don't roll for each leg, but rather once for each lap to determine relative position. For the first laps, though, DESCRIBE the course as the player goes through, giving hints about what's to come (eg, "After the big snowy slalom, there's an abandoned temple complex looming over to your left. You were moving too fast, but you can't help but wonder if maybe there's a shortcut there..." or "You see a shadowy figure on the ridge. It looks like maybe they're setting up a weapon of some kind.")
• Invoke Obligation as much as possible. This may help engage the other players. "That bounty hunter who's after Player B? I just saw one of his informants at the ticket window, so if Player A wins and gets a lot of attention, we're gonna have to high tail it out of here!" Or maybe the crime lord that Player C is indebted to has a lot of money on the race, and wants Player A to lose... and asks Player C to make that happen...

INTRODUCE THE COMPETITION

• Characterize a few of the other races. I would suggest 1-3 who are legitimate competition, and 1 or perhaps 2 who are sympathetic, interesting, or just plain comic relief. Determine basic stats for those characters. (If you're going to do racing a lot, develop a pool of character for the circuit).
• Run the rest of the racers as a minion or multiple minion groups. We'll refer to that as "the pack".

DURING EACH LEG (OR LAP)...

• For simplicity, I would either let each character take a single (non-Piloting) action during each leg/lap, either for free, or by taking strain. Options (and results) might be based on the individual leg, but some ideas: Perception check to find a short-cut (Boost die) or Deception check to try to mislead an opponent (Setback die for them), Mechanics check to nurse a little more speed (upgrade Pilot check once), or Skullduggery to sabotage another racer (downgrade their Pilot check once), maybe Cool or Vigilance to avoid an obstacle (and thus make the Pilot check easier).

ENDING EACH LEG...

• After the characters act during the leg, at the end of the leg, make a Pilot (Planetary) check vs... whatever you determine is appropriate for the leg. Rank this like initiative order to determine position relative to the pack at the start of the next leg. Those who are ahead of the pack gain a bonus, while those who are behind are penalized in the next leg (Boost and Setback, I would guess).
• If the player (or key opponents) have relevant talents, figure them in. Maybe Full Throttle provides an automatic success or something.
• Anyone who fails the Pilot check is out of the race: either they've wiped out or fallen so far behind that they're out of contention. Be creative. If "the pack" fails, defeat an appropriate number of minions (which will also make their roll worse next time).

WINNING THE RACE

• Whoever wins the last leg wins the race... and hopefully that's the player!
• Alternately, that may be a little anti-climatic, so perhaps more is called for at the end...

Hadn't thought about doing something like this. I kind of like the idea, although I'm not sure how I'd fit it into an adventure.

Anywho, swoop in kotor sucks. Pod racing has a episode 1 after taste that makes me not want to even think about it.

Maybe something similar though. Say with swoop bikes, or speeder bikes. Weapons are a-ok.

Design a course that has several obstacles that need to be piloted around. Failing the piloting check can cause a wreck, threats will just force the player to slow down. You could even design in a shortcut. Make this a difficult check, but if you make it, you can make jump ahead a bit.

Weapons are ok, in fact, they are encouraged. This is a high speed blood sport. Firing a handheld weapon adds a black die, firing behind you adds 2 black die. Firing vehicle mounted weapons adds no black die. Extra piloting checks required if in difficult sections of the track when firing.

Targetting of vehicles is allowed, and each hit adds difficulty to future piloting checks.

Add some rules for ramming and you have yourself an interesting star wars death race kind of thing going.

If you just want straight up racing with no combat, well I just can't see that being all that interesting.

Hadn't thought about doing something like this. I kind of like the idea, although I'm not sure how I'd fit it into an adventure.

Anywho, swoop in kotor sucks. Pod racing has a episode 1 after taste that makes me not want to even think about it.

Maybe something similar though. Say with swoop bikes, or speeder bikes. Weapons are a-ok.

Design a course that has several obstacles that need to be piloted around. Failing the piloting check can cause a wreck, threats will just force the player to slow down. You could even design in a shortcut. Make this a difficult check, but if you make it, you can make jump ahead a bit.

Weapons are ok, in fact, they are encouraged. This is a high speed blood sport. Firing a handheld weapon adds a black die, firing behind you adds 2 black die. Firing vehicle mounted weapons adds no black die. Extra piloting checks required if in difficult sections of the track when firing.

Targetting of vehicles is allowed, and each hit adds difficulty to future piloting checks.

Add some rules for ramming and you have yourself an interesting star wars death race kind of thing going.

If you just want straight up racing with no combat, well I just can't see that being all that interesting.

Pilot as attack rolls, speed as damage for ramming, rammer takes half damage? Easy peasy.

That sport pretty much exists already in the "Dueling Ambitions" story arc of KotOR. I forget if it has an official name.

I've done races where you work out the difficulty of each turn and it can bog the flow down a bit. During a Spycraft 1.0 game, we had the Wheelman partner the villain in driving his works Ferrari FXX in a 12 endurance race at Spa. During this time, with the villain's resources deployed to the track, the rest of the team could infiltrate his villa in France and make their way back to Belgium in good time.

Spa's about a 5km race circuit, so it's much longer per lap than your average track. What we did here, and this would help, is work the track into sectors which corresponded to one round's worth of time. Some corners, like a chicane (Les Combes, Busstop) would be harder rolls but we mostly focussed on getting the player up against another WEC classed car for position, then battling them.

If it's all just rolls it loses the pace and flavour of racing. I'd suggest more focusing on rival drivers and their driving style (i.e. are they ice cold under pressure like Kimi Raikonnen; will they try and drive you off track like Michael Schumacher, or will they just drive the swoop beyond its limits like Fernando Alonso?) and let the player battle them using chase rules. Otherwise, as has been stated, you can have your player 2mins ahead of second place and dominating. As Sebastian Vettel shows, that gets boring.

If you start your player at the back of a grid, as Anakin did in TPM, don't make them roll to pass back markers. Precious little effort is devoted to showing the tactics Anakin uses to pass them. He just passes them. It's only when he gets to the front of the pack that he has to try a bit harder, hence his battles with Gasgano and Sebulba (look, I just happen to think Episode I is the most Star Wars-y of the prequels! Honest! ;-)).

Rolling to see how far off the racing line a swoop is perfectly accurate but a little joyless, IMHO.

PS: I use a lot of racing terminology which, if you need me to explain it, just ask and I will.

Rolling to see how far off the racing line a swoop is perfectly accurate but a little joyless, IMHO.

Is this in response to my suggestion to keep track of key racers relative to the pack? If so, it's just been my experience when doing races that if you base it solely on the PC's skill checks, they outdistance the other racers so quickly that all sense of challenge is lost. In the movies, no one wants to see a race where the hero laps the other racers.

In the movies, no one wants to see a race where the hero laps the other racers.

In real life, nobody wants to see it either!

I did agree with you later on that having an unassailable lead is boring and it's one of the reasons why I'm over the current champ, Sebastian Vettel (that, and Mark Webber fan).

Mainly, what I'm trying to say is that I think that running it as a narrative based series of battles with other drivers vs rolling for track place and how many tenths of a second advantage you could gain on a rival is the way to go.

I don't know that we're that far apart in approach, although I'm seeing everyone also competing against the course. The intent of running "the pack" like minions is two-fold:

1) It means that the player shouldn't have TOO commanding a lead until near the end, yet can also measure their relative success or failure as they go.

2) The way minions are designed, the pack should gradually "drop away", leaving only the player and "named" opponents... hey, who knows? maybe a few random racers...

To me, pole position doesn't matter, but NARRATIVE position does: Am I fighting to keep my lead, or am I struggling to come back from behind? Either way = drama.

To me, there are multiple challenges with the PC running vs NPCs (rather than the track). If there are too many "named" opponents, they can easily overwhelm a single player. If most characters are ignored, there's a sense of artificiality: sure, we KNOW that it's going to come down to Sebulba and Anakin even before the race starts, but Lucas STILL lavishes a lot of attention of Ratts, Gasgano, Ben, and a few of the others, so you can't be quite sure...

Also, if it comes down to a PC vs one NPC (or even two), it gets BORING, since there's only so much you can do during a race. It becomes the non-combat equivalent of "*sigh*. I hit him again."

Trust me, I've tried a variety of methods since 1999.

I would argue that perhaps the best approach is to characterize a number of racers equal to the players who are not competing, and let the players handle them, with minor instructions (eg, "You're willing to play dirty," "You'll just stay the course unless you start to fall behind") -- with everyone competing against the GM as "the pack."

Downside here, though, is that everyone is trying to win, so it increases the chances that the PC might lose. I never had that happen in a race, but when I tried a similar model with a Sabacc game... well, there was trouble.

Downside here, though, is that everyone is trying to win, so it increases the chances that the PC might lose. I never had that happen in a race, but when I tried a similar model with a Sabacc game... well, there was trouble.

I don't see a single problem with the PCs losing. As long as everyone has equal chance of winning/losing then I don't see an issue. The game is a narrative, but that doesn't make the PC infallible. I agree with the old Mythbuster's adage; "Failure is always an option."

A story that hinges on the PCs winning a race when there is a real possibility of loss is a poorly written story. A story shouldn't come to a grinding halt at any point if the PCs happen to fail somewhere along the way, it should adapt accordingly. Personally I've always felt that PC failure should be a possibility. I don't fudge dice rolls. And if a character dies; then they die, and the PC gains the opportunity to play a different character.

To me, pole position doesn't matter, but NARRATIVE position does: Am I fighting to keep my lead, or am I struggling to come back from behind? Either way = drama.

To me, there are multiple challenges with the PC running vs NPCs (rather than the track). If there are too many "named" opponents, they can easily overwhelm a single player. If most characters are ignored, there's a sense of artificiality: sure, we KNOW that it's going to come down to Sebulba and Anakin even before the race starts, but Lucas STILL lavishes a lot of attention of Ratts, Gasgano, Ben, and a few of the others, so you can't be quite sure...

I would argue that perhaps the best approach is to characterize a number of racers equal to the players who are not competing, and let the players handle them, with minor instructions (eg, "You're willing to play dirty," "You'll just stay the course unless you start to fall behind") -- with everyone competing against the GM as "the pack."

Downside here, though, is that everyone is trying to win, so it increases the chances that the PC might lose. I never had that happen in a race, but when I tried a similar model with a Sabacc game... well, there was trouble.

Agreed with this post and the point about fighting to maintain the lead vs fighting to take the lead. That's where the Spycraft rules are really useful.

I'm inspired by this, and since my PCs will need to make money and have a decent pilot I think some league races are in order. Top 3 get cash rewards, so there's not too much stress if you get a bit of "understeer" and lose the lead on the penultimate lap; you'll still earn cash if you don't make more mistakes but can't retake the lead.