Nice to see some updates on the project. :)

Honestly, I think once the core mechanics of the game come together, it’ll be clear what the main purpose of play is. But, yeah, bumble through old posts all you like.

* Formula Dé has a clever bit of tension in which you choose which gear to set your engine during the race, which is represented by the size of your die. The larger the die, the more spaces you can move. However, it’s possible that you’ll go too fast and crash into a wall or another driver.

* Unknown Armies, Second Edition has some fairly decent car chase mechanics, in which the quarry is a certain number of “lengths” ahead of the hunter. The hunter wants to narrow that head start and the quarry wants to widen it. (Naturally.) The twist is a variety of obstacles like vegetable carts, baby carriages, traffic, bystanders, and newspaper stands that can augment that gap.

* Dangit, I thought I had posted this idea on my blog a while back, but I can’t find it. Anyway: I thought of a racing game mechanic in which the goal of the game was to reach the finish line with the most Resource X. The only way to harvest Resource X was to sit yo’ ass down. The only way to trigger endgame was to be the first person across the finish line. Therein lies the tension: Get to the finish line first and risk having less stuff or get more stuff and risk not reaching the finish line first? Note: I never tested this idea, so there may be some unforeseen problematic emergent behavior.

* Heck, you might even want to take a look at the basic mechanics of roller derby. In derby, there are five players per team on the track. One of these players in each team is the Jammer, who scores points for her team. She scores one point for each person of the opposing team that she passes. The elegant bit of game design here is that both Jammers are playing at the same time. At first, you might think the trick is to just pack up your roster with the fastest players so the opposing Jammer can’t score. However, that leaves _your_ Jammer defenseless as she tries to pass the opposing team’s players. There is a delicate balance as you try to create a tight enough formation to clear the path for your Jammer without being so tight that it’s easy for the opposing Jammer to swing right past your carefully constructed phalanx.

Racing games are probably the oldest board games around, so there’s a lot of elegant little tricks you could incorporate. Again, apologies if this is coming way too late to be of any use, I’m just bumbling through some older posts. :)

Thinking out loud here: My first thought was something like the “blip” counters in board game Space Hulk.

To quote from this review:

“In the game, the Marine player does not actually see the aliens moving until they are in his direct line of sight. Until then, they’re represented by “blips”, little cardboard tokens that are meant to evoke the motion detectors that were featured in Aliens. The Genestealer player moves these on the map and once spotted they’re replaced with 0-6 aliens…”

I think that’s similar to what you’re going for in the first method, right?

The second method is really neat though, so I’m wondering if you could roll a bunch of dice, then cover them with cups? Wait… That’s basically the same as the first method.

Hmm…

I suppose both methods are technically the same, the difference is how much information you want at one time.

The first method favors in-game, on-the-fly travels. The upside is that there’s a lot of surprise as the game progresses. The (possible) downside is that it’s a step in actual play might distract from other stuff you’d rather focus on in the design. (I dunno that for sure, obviously. Just trying to figure out pros and cons.)

The second method favors having a readymade world before the game begins. This is cool for those who would rather not interrupt the flow of play for star-generation. This isn’t so great for whoever has to record all this stuff before the game begins.

Assuming that the second method favors pre-game prep, you could very easily make a web-based random generator for the second method, correct? That takes care of the record-keeping problems right there.

(Incidentally, is there a way to get an email or RSS alert when a new comment is posted? I’d love to engage in a longer discussion, but it’d be another stop in my already dauntingly lengthy morning web-travels.)

I guess in that case, you could just summon a holographic map of the cosmos though…

Nah, forget the AR thing, sign language feels more elegant.