'Ere we go again

I'm contemplating another exercise in wretched bad taste, to be run at miniatures conventions (hopefully close to Halloween). Mind you, I already have a bad rep among the fuddy-duddy historical types for games like AMISH RAKE FIGHT and SERGEANT SLAUGHTER IN BUN-BUN LAND. Now I'm envisioning something that rises to a new tableau. I'm calling it the TIBETAN CORPSE RACING OLYMPIAD for now (although I'll entertain other name suggestions).

This started as an innocent conversation with young Drew, the college aged lad that shows up at our Thursday night gaming gang. He's a sharp guy, kind of quiet but he has good ideas. We were all playtesting the new fantasy variant of THE SWORD AND THE FLAME (Awken the Storm) and had a bunch of skeletons and zombie figures out. Drew was idly looking at the zombies and said something like 'you like designing racing games, right? Why not one with Zombie racers?' We both giggled like school girls at the image of zombies dressed up in rotting racing silk colors.. shambling around a race track.

I agreed that the idea was pretty funny. Being a couple of tinkerers at heart, we started adding little bits that would make a game like that work.

Naturally, these are animated corpses. Some animated corpses hold together better than others. Thus, we came up with either skeleton racers or zombie racers. Skeletons fall apart (leave body parts on the track) slightly faster than the zombies do.

Then we wondered at WHY a zombie would be in a race, anyway. So we took the obvious example of racing grayhounds chasing after phoney rabbit lures at the dog track: bait. So now each zombie has an ox-cart just slightly ahead of it, with a cute as a button Victorian child in the back of it (we don't go into detail here about what will happen to darling Amelia if the zombie catches UP with the cart, we let the human mind use its imagination.

Later, I added a "braking mechanism".. a bucket of rocks for the darling Victorian child to use to make the zombie slow down, and an integral chart that combines ENDURANCE EXPENDITURE (like Circus Maximus, the AH racing game) with ZOMBIE ENTROPY (parts fall off as you move down the chart). I also set it in Tibet for no good reason, just like the old pulp magazines do.

Now the mechanics are more finely tuned.. as a player you constantly balance a few simple but incredibly important factors-- the distance between zombie and cart (too far, the zombie walks away. too close, and little snookums becomes lunch!) and also the zombies endurance (which is a factor of how long he'll hold together) as well as the natural limits of the chld's braking factor.

Since that (memorable) evening, I've been acquiring the pieces for this game, which I think is a winner. I have Victorian children a-plenty. I have no single axle ox-carts with Tibetan drivers (DAMMIT!), but I suppose they could be scratch built. Terrain is dirt simple, just dirt with a lot of windy trails.

I'm not going to hobble myself with a landing time, but I should have it done (if I don't have to end up buying a buttload of ox-carts) over the Winter.

The track will be a long winding in and out doughnut shape. Each racing team will have two elements, the racer (either one zombie or two skeletons, dressed in rags painted in racing colors) and the bait (an Ox Cart with a driver and a little adorable Victorian child in the back).




Appropriately Adorable kids

The object is to get your racer across the finish line first. The challenge is that your will always draw the zombie forward at a variable pace. If you get too far ahead of it, the Zombie will risk getting confused and wandering away or attacking another zombie or cart (not really a good thing). If you go too slow, you risk allowing your zombie to catch up with the cart (with appropriate horrible consequences).

Zombie Racers, grouped together, with standard garish British paint jobs

Like many racing games, I'm starting with Circus Maximus' endurance and "building" model (points for using a skeleton or a zombie, points for the driver mod, the cart and team, etc.), merged with Silent Death's incremental damage model (different for skeletons and zombies-- zombies "hold together" literally... far longer).

As a crowning touch, I'm giving a bucket of rocks to the "bait" (lovely Victorian child). Tossing a rock at the zombie will cause it to "brake" for a turn and allow the cart to get a few inches away from it.

The resulting game should be fairly challenging, I think.

Suggestions and questions are already rolling in!:

An idea that Steve Verdovila uses in his Circus Maximus games at out L.A. conventions is to give each player a card with a special event on it; some benefit the player, some are attacks on other players. You could have cards that cause priests to throw vials of holy water from the sides of the track, or make a cart have to test to see if it spills it's delicate cargo into the waiting clutches of the undead. This is very similar to a system that my friend (and now neighbor) Steve Gibson uses for his "Circus Magicus" fantastic chariot racing game (last post on this here). I skeeved the variable damage thing from him as a way of representing the Corpse racers falling apart during the race.

Do the zombies lose body parts? Yes, that's the incremental damage thing from SILENT DEATH. You roll to "whip" your zombie every turn to give it a variable ENDURANCE COST (this is tracked on a grid chart). The Grid Chart has special little codes on it every 3-5 boxes, like "lose a toe, -1 inch"). The Zombies and skellies have movement rates associated with various states (prone, kneeling, crawling) due to limb loss.

Can the child fall out of the cart? Possibly. I dunno if I want it to get that complicated yet. Perhaps this could handled in the rules as a "saving throw" when the zombie catches up with the cart. If the child gets caught, it could roll a save and "fall out of the cart", then chase after the cart as fast as its wee plump legs can carry it.

How about a pack of zombie dogs that harry and damage whoever is in last place, discouraging that guy that always wants to be extra cautious and come on strong at the end. Oh, come on Jason, now where in the world could one get a pack of zombie dogs, hmmm? (this one is a long slow pitch inside... you gotta swing, boy!)

Skeletons that erupt out of the ground at preplotted points on the track in a shower of dirt and bones, acting as land mines that damage zombies but actually heal skeletons. Now THAT has a certain panache. I like that. Skellies are pretty wimpy as oppposed to Zombies, and I compensated for that by giving the Skelly racer two for one, but this idea can do away with that.

[EDIT]: How about carts running over opposing zombies? No reason why they shouldn't, it just adds another layer of complexity, but in this instance the payoff is worth it.

How about whipping your opponent's zombies, giving him a burst of speed but perhaps also doing enough damage to handicap him? Whipping zombies is already part of the game (you whip them to move them variably per turn). Whip attacks on other teams are certainly possible, if I want it to get that complicated.

Oooh, I know - damage to the right leg makes the zombies less stable in the turns, possibly toppling them if they attempt to take it too rapidly! Probably more complicated than it needs to be-- a zombie or a skelly falls apart as a natural consequence of the race-- all that movement and whipping and such. I envision this as being incorporated in the damage rules

---