Lichtenstein

The most cursed build I enabled in the v0.8 draft of Downforce: a V8 engine hooked up to a triple turbocharger.

The most cursed build I enabled in the v0.9 draft of Downforce: a cybertruck technical so you can pop autonomous driving and crawl out the back to operate the big gun.

I think I'll turn the latter into a premade NPC, because the mental image amuses me greatly.

PS. I'll probably do a series of chosts about the game's actual dice mechanics and how the driving is conveyed rather soon. I've been meaning to do so for quite a while, but had to wait for some streamlining changes to settle in first.

He's a driver for the ZERN team, one of the premier car manufacturers and the current reigning champion for the past few years.

Kynon is built unfair. His power level is kind of like that of the players at their best, except he's an NPC so it's really just a static statblock while the players are constantly fighting against the tear and wear, as they rip their tires and overheat their engines, steadily decreasing in capabilities across the race.

What this really means, Scollee isn't really expected to be beaten. Not consistently - but if you pick your moment, pop your abilities, make a big play, you still have a shot. A shot that, if successful, will be tricky to maintain, but if the race is nearing its end you may try holding on for that brief stretch you need.

On the inaugural race of this season, Scollee worked perfectly: he was this unassailable wall for the players fighting in the podium, then finally got bested right at the finish line, in the very last diceroll of the event.

Then he wasn't relevant for a while, since we had a copyright free Monaco GP equivalent in West Berlin and, uh, the players had very bad qualifiers and you know how it goes in Monaco.

Today, on a copyright free Interlagos, the same player - the most successful of the bunch - stuck to the top, hovering near the edge of a podium for most of the race. Around second-to-last lap he finally crawled his way back up, ready to challenge Scollee again.

Thanks to an earlier exceptional success, he was in control of the situation and could patiently choose where and when exactly in the sector to make his move - an easy concession to make given he was on the backfoot against Scollee by default.

He goes for a straight, some good old fashioned contest of speed, nothing fancy, just two guys racing cleanly. I grab the dice for Kynon - a sizeable pool bolstered by the highest possible Stardom rating in the game and roll...

... a success of such magnitude I later checked it had a 0.145 percent chance of occurring. 1/7th of a percent.

We went with the veteran driver discovering this was merely an illusion of competition. He didn't catch up to Scollee, Scollee allowed him to get close to give him a slipstream (something that, mechanically speaking, this player was built around exploiting and thus very eager to do) to make sure the third place - a driver from a country on the wrong side of the Cold War - is left behind. And then, easily ditched him the second he was no longer necessary.

And guess what. The motherfucker did it again. Closed the gap over the last gap and beaten Scollee - with an exceptional success - on the very last roll of the game, on the last short straight before the finish line.

Now that I've mentioned guaranteed first place Scollee I can actually share the most impressive play of that race.

Another of my players took the Bookmakers favor (as mentioned in the Affiliations write-up), allowing him to basically make sidebets on specific outcomes. He doesn't have some big brained Debt management strategy, he just picked up abilities that looked fun and pops them for the hell of it.

When he first went for the Bookmakers, he made a point of writing his call on a sealed piece of paper, so that I wouldn't intentionally fuck with the result. The ability text doesn't really say anything about the bet being public or private, but I was game for the battle of wits.

I wrote out my own secret fixed call: Scollee won't finish first this time. In Downforce, we constantly track the player positions (which sort of double as ordering cars and loosely keeping track of relative distances) but the NPCs are essentially handwaved. They're not real people, so the no-names just get a Competition rating on a race-by-race basis and the named Rivals get inserted to whichever position is right for keeping the game fun.

Since I was very open to the players about Scollee's role (so that they know beating them is a big deal and not something expected consistently) I just had to make a stand: a bet of Scollee placing first would be very safe and cheap and most uncool. In the end, it didn't matter: he gambled on the third player getting a podium and it was a horrible whiff (they placed 12th).

This time around, I really didn't care. The player was not doing great, with poor race performance, drowning in debt and about to lose a finger to a yakuza. Even if he went for something very obvious, I was fine in treating it as a softball.

What I didn't expect is him pulling 9000 IQ moves right as I wasn't paying much attention to this.

It was a secret bet for an NPC again, Hua Tian. Groomed as China's first female astronaut, ended up a gravlift racer as the stalling space race shifted to flexing one's technological superiority on the tarmac. Tian was a Rival that kept recurring, but really all over the grid - that sort of unstable 'top of the midfield' kind of competitor.

But see, our player figured out that the guy who's beaten Scollee (Richard Fox) was getting into a little storyline with her, after a little racing incident and a much bigger call for boycotting his team, sponsored by a US military contractor as this little thing called Desert Storm broke out.

He figured this was basically betting on Fox, but safer - a player can always spin out or have a disaster pit stop or get in some other trouble and fall behind, but the NPC will probably stay around where they were first established.

Then, the motherfucker spent the entire session subtly manipulating me to engineer the right result. Little reminders when she could be useful for overall pacing or setting up something cool, little jokes to keep her in my mind, that kind of stuff.

As we crossed the finish line, we had the top 4 cars established (in the sense that they were present there for the last 2-3 turns as Fox was making his final climb): Fox, Scollee (that he's just beaten), Luca Scaffidi and Hua Tian. I note this down for sake of seasonal standing for the consistent top teams and go 'aaah, fuck it, let's swap Scaffidi and Tian'. A part of it was keeping the results more dynamic across the races and a part of it was feeling right - we had Scaffidi struggle with rain and such.

And guess what. Hua Tian 3rd. Motherfucker hit the jackpot, the exact placement out of 20. It was a while since I was this delighted with a player.

Hi!

As for your first question, not really at this point. In principle, I don't mind showing the text around to some fresh pair of eyes, but whenever I build up a to-do list for the next draft I get really self-conscious about all of the warts of the previous one. It's brainworms, really, but you know how it is.

Try hitting me up once you see me talking about the next round of playtests and I should be pretty happy to show things around. I'm firmly enough in the "polish and balance, no big upheavals" stage and I could devote some time to rewrite parts that worked well, but were confusing to grok at first.

Having said that, I expect to do some write-up on the real meat and bones - the resolution mechanics and driving - real soon. I would've done so already, but work has been keeping me real busy and ultimately social media is not at the top of my free time triage.

As for the second question, yes, I have been made aware of this, but nevertheless thank you for pointing it out. To be honest, I was a bit of a dumbass about it: having never spotted it in the wild, I assumed it to be a non-factor really: some random board game, a different kind of product, from a five years ago.

Then I learned from American friends that it's actually being actively sold in fucking Walmarts. Oof.

I've reached out to Restoration Games and, in some cruel cosmic joke, discovered the company is literally helmed by a guy whose day job is copyright law attorney. I braced for the worst, but thankfully they proved very gracious and chill about the whole thing. We good, and I'll probably have to send them a complimentary copy as my thanks.

He's a driver for the ZERN team, one of the premier car manufacturers and the current reigning champion for the past few years.

Kynon is built unfair. His power level is kind of like that of the players at their best, except he's an NPC so it's really just a static statblock while the players are constantly fighting against the tear and wear, as they rip their tires and overheat their engines, steadily decreasing in capabilities across the race.

What this really means, Scollee isn't really expected to be beaten. Not consistently - but if you pick your moment, pop your abilities, make a big play, you still have a shot. A shot that, if successful, will be tricky to maintain, but if the race is nearing its end you may try holding on for that brief stretch you need.

On the inaugural race of this season, Scollee worked perfectly: he was this unassailable wall for the players fighting in the podium, then finally got bested right at the finish line, in the very last diceroll of the event.

Then he wasn't relevant for a while, since we had a copyright free Monaco GP equivalent in West Berlin and, uh, the players had very bad qualifiers and you know how it goes in Monaco.

Today, on a copyright free Interlagos, the same player - the most successful of the bunch - stuck to the top, hovering near the edge of a podium for most of the race. Around second-to-last lap he finally crawled his way back up, ready to challenge Scollee again.

Thanks to an earlier exceptional success, he was in control of the situation and could patiently choose where and when exactly in the sector to make his move - an easy concession to make given he was on the backfoot against Scollee by default.

He goes for a straight, some good old fashioned contest of speed, nothing fancy, just two guys racing cleanly. I grab the dice for Kynon - a sizeable pool bolstered by the highest possible Stardom rating in the game and roll...

... a success of such magnitude I later checked it had a 0.145 percent chance of occurring. 1/7th of a percent.

We went with the veteran driver discovering this was merely an illusion of competition. He didn't catch up to Scollee, Scollee allowed him to get close to give him a slipstream (something that, mechanically speaking, this player was built around exploiting and thus very eager to do) to make sure the third place - a driver from a country on the wrong side of the Cold War - is left behind. And then, easily ditched him the second he was no longer necessary.

And guess what. The motherfucker did it again. Closed the gap over the last gap and beaten Scollee - with an exceptional success - on the very last roll of the game, on the last short straight before the finish line.