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Jaycemonde
2013-09-11, 08:02 PM
I, uh, have never created a thread of my own on the forum before. So bear with me here.

Fairly recently--about a month and a half ago--I got ahold of a .pdf of the original, 2nd edition Shadowrun sourcebook, and while I'm hoping to find ways to circumvent or change rules that don't make too much sense by amalgamating newer material with the old stuff, something that I thought would be pretty interesting to try would be a predominately vehicle-centric, racing-themed campaign--namely, players would be involved in a sort of grand prix or perhaps some form of street-racing tournament, and there would be a heavy dose of vehicular variety and customization. (NPCs at the least would likely borrow heavily from real-world street racing culture--neon carriage lights, ridiculous airfoils, etc.)

What I need help with are three different things:

First, how would I get potential players interested in a campaign like this and more importantly keep them entertained?
Second, what kind of modifications to the rules would I need to make in order to allow players to add their own performance flair to their ride? Cosmetic stuff is easy enough to justify without bending the rules--although I would need to find or make a good selection of what would be popular car designs in the future, for players to use as a template--but I'm not sure how I'd handle things like different levels of tuning, fuel injection/afterburners, airfoils and etcetera.
Third--while lots of Shadowrun nuances and common sense make Lone Star reactions to street racing obvious, how would different canonical companies and organizations react? How about the general political or social view of such races? If I know what sort of precedents there are in other campaigns or possibly in canon fiction, it would help me model my own encounters and 'adventures' immensely.

Thanks for the help in advance.

kidnicky
2013-09-11, 08:28 PM
1. This really sounds like a one night thing as opposed to a campaign.
2. There is probably already a better futuristic racing game.

Jaycemonde
2013-09-11, 08:39 PM
1. This really sounds like a one night thing as opposed to a campaign.
2. There is probably already a better futuristic racing game.

Your startling insight is appreciated, David. It really changes my entire perspective on this, and makes me want to just mention it as a scene backdrop in passing and go play Wipeout, instead of, y'know, designing a campaign based around it and finding a way to make it consistently fun and interesting. I mean, c'mon. I wouldn't have bothered making a thread about it if I just had the idea in passing and felt like immediately dismissing it.

Trekkin
2013-09-11, 09:06 PM
First, make it Shadowrunny. In less unhelpful terms: let them fight dirty. There probably is some kind of street racing going on canonically; regardless, just weave it into the existing tapestry of gangs and organized crime. Let them sabotage other racers' cars, steal better hardware from the corps, that kind of thing. Perhaps include some elements from Podracing -- not many, but some.
Second, see if you can work Arsenal into 2e. It has rules for that already; it's just mod slots, skills, facilities and nuyen.
Third, I have a feeling it would be most fun if the corps were quietly appreciative and publicly against it. For one thing, most of 'em probably bet on it. It might also have a positive public image, if you were careful about it. Keep the innocent casualties down, that kind of thing. The various gangs get to flaunt their power (relatively) nonviolently and the public gets a show -- and hopefully doesn't get to see that everything but the track is stolen, illegally modified, and then possibly stolen again.

In a more general sense, I'd try cribbing from Redline, all the Podracing stories, and the Fast and the Furious series of movies.

comicshorse
2013-09-11, 09:06 PM
I, uh, have never created a thread of my own on the forum before. So bear with me here.

Fairly recently--about a month and a half ago--I got ahold of a .pdf of the original, 2nd edition Shadowrun sourcebook, and while I'm hoping to find ways to circumvent or change rules that don't make too much sense by amalgamating newer material with the old stuff, something that I thought would be pretty interesting to try would be a predominately vehicle-centric, racing-themed campaign--namely, players would be involved in a sort of grand prix or perhaps some form of street-racing tournament, and there would be a heavy dose of vehicular variety and customization. (NPCs at the least would likely borrow heavily from real-world street racing culture--neon carriage lights, ridiculous airfoils, etc.)

What I need help with are three different things:

First, how would I get potential players interested in a campaign like this and more importantly keep them entertained?
Second, what kind of modifications to the rules would I need to make in order to allow players to add their own performance flair to their ride? Cosmetic stuff is easy enough to justify without bending the rules--although I would need to find or make a good selection of what would be popular car designs in the future, for players to use as a template--but I'm not sure how I'd handle things like different levels of tuning, fuel injection/afterburners, airfoils and etcetera.
Third--while lots of Shadowrun nuances and common sense make Lone Star reactions to street racing obvious, how would different canonical companies and organizations react? How about the general political or social view of such races? If I know what sort of precedents there are in other campaigns or possibly in canon fiction, it would help me model my own encounters and 'adventures' immensely.

Thanks for the help in advance.

We did run a game in which two of the players were involved in street racing but as a hobby more than as a focus of the game. The Rigger created the bike and the Phys Ad actually rode it
First of all I'd suggest checking out the Rigger book which should have stuff on improving your vehicle to your heaqrts content.
Also if you're going for a lregal racing than you can go with the standard Corp. stuff. Stealing tech. for rival teams, gaurding against your drivers being assassinated, covering up scandals of your team ( or exposing scandals of rival teams).
If you're going for the street racing thing then there are the added problems of the cops trying to bust you and Organzied Crime trying to fix races to make fortunes on the betting
You might check out the background stuff on Combat Biking and Urban Brawl as that might give you some ideas


P.S. Ninja'd

Black Jester
2013-09-12, 04:17 AM
Of course, illegal street racing should be more fitting for Shadowrun than a more legalized game, especially when it is popular and backed by a large number of bets. Hey, you can easily include various criminal organisations in this, add a lot of glamour and pressure for the drivers, and of course, manipulations and sabotage. I can see that such a racing team hire bodyguards and specialists for sabotage, especially when the mafia gets involved. And, as a bonus, you can have pursuits with the police as well.

The problem with this idea is, I fear, that you will either have no racer in your team, or you have the whole group with the exception of one player sitting around doing nothing during the actual races. That is not that interesting. I would suggest that the racing team's top driver is actually an NPC, (in which case, you can kidnap him/her and have the PCs try to find and liberate her before the next race starts) and that for the actual races, every player gets to play one NPC and his car for one race, to get everybody involved in the spectacle.

However, I personally would think that a short campaign where the characters are hired by the racing team for a concrete season, including a few races and ongoing rivalries and then a clear end after which another adventure without the racing background might work better (at least for me), because while there certainly quite a few adventures you can do with this background (espionage of the rivals' cars, stopping a sabotage attempt, trying to find the mole in the own team, stopping a grid-girl blackmailing the team manager, trying to find the kidnapped driver etc.) before the background itself becomes so established it becomes boring and your players want to leave for some change.
Because of the prevalence of NPCs in the game - the team, potential rival teams, the Shadowrunners of potential rival teams, etc. will probably really relevant for the game and therefore should be memorable and at least partially likeable (for Shadowrun standards at least).

And because it is Shadowrun, the player's racing team should so not win the cliché last race. A bit futility and desperation fits the setting so much better than any happy end.

Earthwalker
2013-09-12, 05:16 AM
Answering Questions not in order.

3) Horizon Exec - "Wow the folks do seem to like this street race treand and culture that seems to have sprung up, lets make some money off that".

Welcome to Death Race 2073.

Make it a 4 month long season. the racers travel to different citys and in what ever passes for the slum areas in each city they race. So you have say 12 different races as part of a season. You can get other teams of NPC to play as antagonists.
Each race has to include all members of the party (Either all as drivers or as gunners (we want guns involved yeah ?))

All kinds of things spring up.

Looking for sponsorship.
Dealing with the other racers between races and sabotage attempts.
Trying your own sabotage.

I can see you having to work in alot of rules of how to handle races, but there should be alot of adventure posibilities.

2) Lots of rules have been printed for different editions of the game. Rigger black book, or arsnel depending on edition.

1) Your going to let them play as famous race car drivers what else do they want ?

sleepyphoenixx
2013-09-12, 06:20 AM
The Shadowrun vehicle rules have a well deserved reputation for being clumsy and incomplete (at least up to 4th. I'm not familiar with 5th Ed.).
It's bad enough if it comes up in a game once every few sessions. If you want to focus an entire campaign around vehicles i strongly recommend looking for homebrew vehicle rules or making your own.

Autolykos
2013-09-12, 06:55 AM
The Shadowrun vehicle rules have a well deserved reputation for being clumsy and incomplete (at least up to 4th. I'm not familiar with 5th Ed.).
It's bad enough if it comes up in a game once every few sessions. If you want to focus an entire campaign around vehicles i strongly recommend looking for homebrew vehicle rules or making your own.Yup, they have some of the worst thought out and arcane elements in the whole game (only surpassed by Decking). In 3rd Edition, you can get them to work somewhat acceptably by getting rid of that abomination called "Maneuver Value" (IIRC, I translate it back from German). For the race itself, I'd suggest the approach I used in my own game: Let them collect Successes with [Vehicle]-Checks to determine their positions. Players with a similar number of total Successes are close to each other and can interact (the details need some fine tuning, obviously). Player with most Successes at the end (or first to reach a certain number) wins.
I'd go with every player participating in the race, but in support roles for a NPC superstar (unless the players are ok with one of them outshining them in the race). NFS:Carbon is a good example on what they might do: Scout for shortcuts and help the star find them, block/ram opponents out of the way, make him faster via drafting or clearing the path, etc. The rivals will also have their own support team, obviously.

Seerow
2013-09-12, 07:43 AM
The Shadowrun vehicle rules have a well deserved reputation for being clumsy and incomplete (at least up to 4th. I'm not familiar with 5th Ed.).

5th ed is just as bad, if not worse.

A 5th ed rigger could have a vehicle going several times the speed of sound out of character creation by the rules. Which either completely trivializes the whole race thing, unless everyone's doing it at which point what the heck.

Morgarion
2013-09-12, 08:14 AM
I think this is a really cool idea.

I think the racing should be constantly present in the campaign, but not always in focus. A good analogy might be the ubiquitous 'sea-faring' or 'pirate' themed D&D campaign. It's a lot of fun, but you have to break up the actual sea-faring or it quickly grows tiresome.

I can't believe I'm actually making this suggestion, but think about Fast & Furious. Ostensibly, it was about street racing. But it wasn't a solid 107 minutes of street racing. I haven't seen it in well over five years, but I recollect scenes of derring-do, romance, cop-drama, a brawl and gunplay.

Were I one of your players, I would appreciate a game with this unique flavor, but I wouldn't want every single thing I did to be cars and racing.

Iceheart2112
2013-09-12, 11:30 PM
I'm surprised no one has mentioned combat biking. It's like capture the flag on a speed racer-ish course between two teams of 9 (I think) on motorcycles. The novel Dead Air has a lot of information on it. Might be worth a look.

CombatOwl
2013-09-13, 08:21 AM
A 5th ed rigger could have a vehicle going several times the speed of sound out of character creation by the rules. Which either completely trivializes the whole race thing, unless everyone's doing it at which point what the heck.

Only if the GM is an idiot.

Best a rigger can do in a normal car in shadowrun 5th is 26.6 m/s (speed rating 4 = 80 meters a turn, 20 turns to a minute, that equals 1600 meters in a minute, or 26.6 meters per second). If they get the fastest racing car in the game (which is possible at the start), they can get up to a rating 7, which is 640 meters per turn (which is 213.3 m/s). They're limited by the speed rating of the vehicle, and that same speed rating is also a limit on the number of successes they can get from their pool (with which they could conceivably, with the GM's permission, accelerate beyond the max speed of the vehicle). Incidentally, the speed of sound is around 340 m/s (depending on some conditions, like altitude).

To be honest, 5th edition doesn't have sufficiently developed vehicle rules to be a good choice for a racing-focused game, unless the GM wants to develop some houserules. To be honest, I would think it would make sense to have different handling ratings at low speed than at high speed--"Table: Handling Penalties At High Speed." That simple modification would solve like 90% of the racing-related issues with Shadowrun.

CombatOwl
2013-09-13, 08:31 AM
Yup, they have some of the worst thought out and arcane elements in the whole game (only surpassed by Decking).

Decking is a problem because it kind of has to be different from everything else. Vehicles don't actually have to be incompatible with normal combat--but the designers seem to set out to make it so. Most of the problems relate to differences in movement scales and differences in armor rules--which really had no purpose whatsoever. Why not just treat all armor and body sizes the same? The Vehicle rules are a problem because it's all just so pointless. There wasn't actually any need for them.

The decking and magic rules are complex, yes, but they kind of needed to be to represent what they're doing. The vehicles never needed that treatment.


In 3rd Edition, you can get them to work somewhat acceptably by getting rid of that abomination called "Maneuver Value" (IIRC, I translate it back from German). For the race itself, I'd suggest the approach I used in my own game: Let them collect Successes with [Vehicle]-Checks to determine their positions. Players with a similar number of total Successes are close to each other and can interact (the details need some fine tuning, obviously). Player with most Successes at the end (or first to reach a certain number) wins.

That's kind of boring, and assuming that none of the vehicles have any sort of performance advantages over others. Might as well just abstract the tests to "roll your vehicle skill three times, whoever has the most successes wins, if a tie, character with the highest modified reaction wins." Which is not interesting and a bad way to handle racing in a racing themed game. Making the vehicle matter creates two roles for the party right there--the driver, and the technician who builds, maintains, and modifies the car. Having the vehicle matter also creates a motive to go out and do something off the racetrack. "I need money to buy this new part!" or "Hey, I heard about this prototype injector that Ares is developing, let's go steal it!"

There are lots of reasons to have nuanced racing rules for such a game.


I'd go with every player participating in the race, but in support roles for a NPC superstar (unless the players are ok with one of them outshining them in the race).

A vehicle-focused rigger PC as the driver may shine on the racetrack, but if you create a vibrant environment around the race, that will all balance out because his heavy focus on racing performance has created deficits elsewhere.

Radar
2013-09-13, 10:21 AM
The problem with this idea is, I fear, that you will either have no racer in your team, or you have the whole group with the exception of one player sitting around doing nothing during the actual races.
This I don't agree with. Take a look at F1 races, there is a driver in the car, but there are plenty other people dealing with communication and intel (relative position of other racers and their tempo, weather forecasts), monitoring the state of the car (when to change tires, damage status in case of a bump and so on), preparing the pit stops. All this work without even including any dirty tricks inevitable in a Shadowrun game: Rigger can control various course obstacles placed before the race, Decker can screw with communications or even hijack other team's computers, magic users will obviously have to protect the racer from supernatural assults, scout on other teams or give a subtle push in a crucial moment, more physicaly inclined PCs can sabotage other team's pit stops and so on and so forth.

That being said, to make it work for anything more then a one-shot, there needs to be some sort of variety in the races. There will have to be a lot of well developed racing teams with varying tactics and equipment. The same goes for the racing tracks. I actualy wouldn't be above fishing for ideas from the old Speed Racer anime, Wacky Races, Death Race 2000 and other such outlandish productions. You surely will have to make it a wee bit more realistic and gritty, but differentiation is quite important.

Seerow
2013-09-13, 10:29 AM
Only if the GM is an idiot.

Best a rigger can do in a normal car in shadowrun 5th is 26.6 m/s (speed rating 4 = 80 meters a turn, 20 turns to a minute, that equals 1600 meters in a minute, or 26.6 meters per second). If they get the fastest racing car in the game (which is possible at the start), they can get up to a rating 7, which is 640 meters per turn (which is 213.3 m/s). They're limited by the speed rating of the vehicle, and that same speed rating is also a limit on the number of successes they can get from their pool (with which they could conceivably, with the GM's permission, accelerate beyond the max speed of the vehicle). Incidentally, the speed of sound is around 340 m/s (depending on some conditions, like altitude).

You forget the Vehicle Control Rig, which explicitly increases the speed rating of a vehicle while you are jumped in by its rating. So with a rating 3 rig, you go from speed 7 to speed 10. Which is a speed of 5120 meters per turn or 1706 meters per second. Or roughly mach 5.

CombatOwl
2013-09-13, 11:37 AM
You forget the Vehicle Control Rig, which explicitly increases the speed rating of a vehicle while you are jumped in by its rating. So with a rating 3 rig, you go from speed 7 to speed 10. Which is a speed of 5120 meters per turn or 1706 meters per second. Or roughly mach 5.

That's probably a mistake on the description of the control rig augmentation on p.452, because on p.266 it describes something different. The Rigging rules on 266 make it clear that the control rig's rating increases the limits on the dice pools, but not the actual ratings; such that a rating 2 control rig in a vehicle with speed 4 would have a [speed] limit of 6, but the actual speed would remain 4. In other words, the rule on p.266 implies that the control rig gives you a bonus to dice pools equal to its rating, and an increase to [handling] or [speed] rating limits equal to its rating as well. Plus the reduction in thresholds, of course.

This has been noted on in the errata thread, but AFAIK there is no official ruling yet on which of these two is the correct interpretation (but given the absurdity of the p452 rule, that is probably the mistake).