Burning Rubber, playtest rules 0.3

Car Construction

You need:

  • Enough Lego parts to make some cars about 10 dots long by about 4 dots wide, including three 1×1 tiles with matching markings for each car.
  • Two rulers made of 15 pairs of Legoclick hinges with 4 dots between each hinge.
  • Two d6s each in white, yellow, red, and green, plus a d8 of each. Two d6s each in red and green.
  • A way to make a race course on the floor. Tape is good. A Lego city is, of course, better.

Build Your Car

  • It must be no less than 10 dots long and no less than 4 dots wide. You can make it bigger, but it will run into stuff more. That can be good or bad.

Your car can have 6 dice to spend on your car. You can spend two d6s to get a d8 in any color. They’re divided between:

  • Handling components represented by Yellows. These might be spoilers, extra wheels, wings, big headlights (You know, to make it so you can see where you’re going.) They also represent your braking ability, and if you can think of a good way to represent brakes, I’d love to hear it.
  • Fighting components represented by Reds. These might be guns, spikes, reinforcements, contact reactive armor, or whatever else you come up with. Set the range of your weapon(s) to be either a contact weapon or be between -10 to +10. Negative numbers make your target effectively closer and positive ones make them farther. That’s the range at which the weapon will work the best.
  • Acceleration components represented by Greens. These could be visible cylinders, superchargers, big exhaust manifolds. They make you accelerate faster (if you take a d8) and gain a higher top speed. Your top speed is (the number of Green dice you have) + 10.
  • Body. Every die you spend on the body of your car gives you two points of body. These might be running boards, 1×1 plates plugged into the side of the car, your windshield or doors. Your body can take damage before other components, so it keeps them from getting damaged.

Your car is also made of these free components:

  • Two White dice. These can be used to replace any other dice on your car during your turn.
  • Four wheels and tires (You can buy extra wheels with Yellows, but those give you Yellow dice and don’t technically count as wheels.)

Take a look at your car.

Build the Track

Racing isn’t about going straight. It’s about taking curves, switchbacks, S-curves, and other excitement. Make the track wide enough for cars to pass each other at most places, but there can be bottlenecks. Make sure all the cars can actually fit through the bottlenecks, though.

Place traffic cones, police blockades, stacks of tires, and other obstacles. Determine if they get destroyed when hit. If not, when they’re hit, the player who hit it may put it anywhere touching their car.

Set a Start/Finish line. Right behind it, if you like, make a pit stop area that cars can drive into.

Starting Positions

  1. Everyone rolls a d6. The lowest roller goes on the side of the track closest to the inside of the first turn (aka pole position), wheels on the starting line. Put a skid marker under your car before you put it down.
  2. The second goes right beside the first, on the outside of the first turn.
  3. If there’s room for a third car, the third goes there. Otherwise, the third goes behind first, fourth behind second, etc.

And They’re Off!

Turn order goes like this: Whoever’s in the lead goes first, going back. If two cars are side by side, whoever’s on the inside goes first. If it’s still unclear, the car going fastest goes first. (I’d like to have a fun tiebreaker in this eventuality, like plotting secret moves, which can result in great crashes as the players guess wrong at high speed, or triumphant leads, as they guess right. I haven’t figured out a way to do that yet.)

  1. Put the ruler straight on top of your car, facing forward. Click the hinges to plot where you want to go this turn. The sharper the turn you make, the harder it is to make it without skidding. See “Handling difficulty” below to figure out how much risk you want to take on this maneuver.
  2. Roll all the dice for your car. You may opt to not roll a particular dice this turn. Even if you opt not to roll a particular color, you can change your mind and use your Whites for that later.
  3. If you want, you can shoot someone now. You can also shoot at the end of your turn. See “Fighting”, below.
  4. Choose one of your Greens and put your second skid marker as many units down the ruler as that Green says.
  5. Roll your car along your ruler.
  6. When the center of the car gets to a turn in the ruler, turn it to face the next part of the ruler.
  7. If it hits something, see Crashing, below!

Exceeding top speed

If you find yourself going above your top speed, that can damage your engine.

  1. Roll 1d6 for every unit you’re going above your top speed.
  2. On a 4, 5, or 6, you’ve taken damage to your engine!
  3. Lose that many Greens. If you’ve lost all your Greens, lose Whites.
  4. Note that this can set you on fire! See “How To Be On Fire”, below.

Handling Difficulty

Everything you do in your car requires your attention. Turning, shooting, braking, and correcting skids all use your Yellows to keep you in control.

When you plot your course, the sharper a turn, the more Yellow is required. When you’ve rolled, you’ll find that your biggest Yellow may not suffice, and you have Lost Control. See “Losing Control”, below. Add up the things you’re doing this turn carefully to determine if you can do what you set out to do without losing control.

Traction

  • Reducing speed: 1 pip/unit of deceleration
  • Going straight forward: 1 pip
  • One click per hinge: 2 pips
  • Two clicks per hinge: 3 pips
  • Three clicks per hinge: 5 pips
  • Four clicks per hinge: 8 pips.

Skidding

  • 1 pip/1 unit move of your next skid marker. You may only move it left, right, and back relative to the direction your car is moving. To move it forward, you must use Greens.

Shooting (note that this progression is the same as turning)

  • Shoot once: 1 pip
  • Shoot twice: 2 pips
  • Shoot three times: 3 pips
  • Shoot four times: 5 pips
  • Shoot five times: 8 pips

Running over sand, water, bits of other cars, traffic cones

  • 1 pip per object

Losing Control

When you use more Yellow than you’ve got to spare, you’ve lost control of the direction of the car. Here’s what happens.

  1. Roll a die.
  2. On evens, you’re about to turn to the right. On odds, you’re about to turn to the left.
  3. Turn the number of clicks in that direction by the amount you overshot your Yellows.
  4. If your car hits things by turning around, you’ve Collided! See the appropriate crashing rules, below.
  5. Yes, you can go all the way around.
  6. This almost certainly means you’re Skidding. See “Skidding”, below.

Skidding (My Favorite Part)

  1. Roll 1d6. If it’s a 6, you lost a tire! Place it adjacent to your car wherever it causes the most trouble for everyone else.
  2. While you’re skidding, the click ruler affects the facing of the car with your Yellows as normal.
  3. Halve the values of your Yellows and Greens.
  4. Instead of moving forward, you move your next skid marker with your Yellows in any direction but forward, from your car’s point of view.
  5. You can move your skid marker in the direction your car is facing by as much as your biggest Green.
  6. If none of your Yellows allow you to make the turn you want, you Wiped Out! See Wiping Out, below!
  7. When you’re facing within 1 click of your vector marker, you’re back in normal movement!

Crashing (I bet you knew this was coming next)

Crashing into immovable objects

  1. How fast were you going? Roll that many hit dice on yourself. Good job.
  2. Move your skid marker straight away from the center of the object so it’s the same distance out that it was in, then move it back toward your car for every hit you took. (Diagram coming)
  3. You might be On Fire! See “How To Be On Fire”, below.
  4. If the number of hits you took is bigger than your remaining Yellow pips, you’ve Lost Control by the number of hits your took.

Crashing into little, movable objects

  1. If it’s much smaller than a car, like a traffic cone, it doesn’t do damage at all, and it can get destroyed or not. Decide that at the beginning of the game if you’re going to have stuff like that. Either way, it costs 1 Yellow pip.

Crashing into cars

  1. If your next skid marker is ahead of the target’s from your car’s point of view, you’ve hit them!
  2. Measure the distance between the vector markers, rounding down.
  3. Roll that many damage dice against each other.
  4. Break off any relevant parts and put them touching your car wherever they’ll wreak the most havoc on your fellow racers. You can’t put them under a car, though you can put it touching one so the car will hit it immediately the next time it moves.
  5. Rotate your car around its center, away from the closest wheel to the collision point by a number of clicks equal to the number of hits you took.
  6. Move your next skid marker toward your opponent’s next skid marker by the number of hits you took and vice versa.

Wiping Out

Any time you Lose Control twice in a row, you’ve Wiped Out!

  1. The car is tumbling through the air toward its skid direction. You may adjust the vector by 1 every turn as though it were a Yellow (any direction but faster) to interfere with other players, but things are looking pretty grim for this car crossing the line.
  2. Place it on its side or roof to show what’s going on.
  3. Every turn, Take as many hit dice as your current speed.
  4. Move your skid marker back toward your car by the number of hits you took.
  5. Collisions are as normal.
  6. If your car is still functioning when it stops rolling, roll a Yellow (or White, if you don’t have any Yellows left). If it’s 6 or better, your car landed on its wheels, facing the direction you want to go! Go get that guy back!
  7. If it’s not upright, next turn it will be, facing the direction of your choosing, thanks to enthusiastic bystanders and the strong back of the driver. Go get ‘im, cowboy!

Fighting

You may shoot at the beginning or end of your turn.

How to shoot

  1. Say which car you’re shooting.
  2. Add together (The distance of the cars’ next skid markers)+(The range for the weapon you’re using). Round down.
  3. Roll that many d6s. On a 5 or 6, the target has been hit!

How to get shot

  1. You may jink to avoid getting hit, lessen the impact of the hit, or take the hit on a nonvital component. Choose a direction. Every click in that direction will remove one point of damage.
  2. Remove one die from any component for each remaining 5 or 6 you received. If a component was a d8 instead of a d6, you lose it all at once.
  3. You may lose tires and wheels.
  4. Place the broken component touching your car wherever it will cause the most havoc for your competitors.
  5. If you took 3 hits or more, you need to see if you’re on fire! See “How to Be On Fire”, below.

How To Be On Fire

Every Green you’ve lost becomes a Fire Die.

Roll the number of Greens you’ve lost, plus another one for every Green d8 you’ve lost whenever you:

  • Take a Green hit
  • Take 3 hits at once
  • Wipe Out

Additionally, if you touch stuff that’s on fire, at the end of your movement, roll a die for every on-fire thing you roll over.

Every 6 you roll costs you a die, and is now a fire die! You’ll have to roll those next turn unless:

  • You pit. See “Pit Stops”, below.
  • You use a 6 from one (or both, added) Whites to extinguish all fires.
  • If you have 3 Fire Dice, you explode (see below)!
  • Roll all those Fire Dice again. Anything 5+ is a hit!
  • You Wipe Out!
  • Put any lost components within 6 of your car, wherever you like. They’re on fire!

Pit stops

  • You can enter the pit at any speed and stop safely in there.
  • No one takes damage or loses control in the pit area. No one is allowed to shoot.
  • Your guy gets out to pee.
  • Oh, maaaaaaan.
  • psheeeeeewwwwwwwwww.
  • While that’s happening, the crew puts out fires, replaces your tires and/or wheels, and you can return to the track next turn.
  • If you’re done in there. Hello?
  • C’mon, man, I gotta go too!

Some ideas:

Choose whether to be off-road on on at design time?

  1. Off-road means you don’t lose Yellow for going over little stuff, but is -1(?) Green
  2. On-road means you lose Yellow for going over little stuff, but isn’t.

Co-driver/gunner

  • The guy’s a component. He costs 1 or 2 dice (we’ll have to see) and allows you to use a different Yellow for shooting than the driver does.

19 thoughts on “Burning Rubber, playtest rules 0.3”

  1. I’m’a post errata down here.

    I double-counted the Whites for building.

    • You have 6 dice with which to build your car, plus the two Whites.

  2. • You can shoot across the track, but of course cover counts.

    • Positive numbers on guns increase the distance of the optimal range for the weapon. Negative numbers decrease the distance. Close weapons work well up close, far weapons work well far.

  3. • Drafting remains. When you’re within 1 of someone else’s tailgate, it increases your skid marker by 1. It doesn’t damage your Greens.

  4. • You declare your target before you go, as in Mechaton. You can target one guy with one weapon but can shoot as many times as your Yellow allows.

  5. • Move your skid marker to accelerate along your ruler.

    • You don’t have to use your whole Green.

    • If you roll no Greens, you slow by 1.

  6. • If you hit an immovable object, if you’re within 2 clicks of perpendicular, you get damaged on a 6. If you’re within 2 clicks, you get damaged on a 4-6.

  7. • If you get hit by someone going slower than you — their front skid marker is closer to you than yours is — then you don’t take damage, but you both make the minimum number of clicks to get out of the way. Both cars make the same number of clicks.

  8. • OK, you shoot at the end of your turn, but you can shoot from where you are or from your skid marker. It’s the same thing as shooting before you move, but this way you have all your ducks in a row.

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