The Great Race

[phydaux]

Anyone remember this classic old movie with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon?

Well, I'm going to be starting new characters, and the first hurdle they will have to cross will be getting enough money for a ship of their own.

Yeah, I know. So far this isn't very original. I'm getting to that.

Has anyone (OTHER than MJD) heard of the Spinward Marches Point To Point Race? For those of you who haven't, it's a race around the Marches, visiting some of the major worlds like Lanth, Rylanor, Regina and Mora. The only rule is you have to start and finish in Glisten. The winner gets a huge cash prize, plus all kinds of honors, etc.

I was thinking I'd have the characters hired by a wealthy young noble. He would have a ship entered in the race, but be in need of a crew. They would have all kinds of misadventures, be assured of finishing last if they managed to live at all, then pull out a startling finish, winning by no more that a few inches!

Whew!

The thing I'm strugeling with is all the misadventures. There will be a "Professor Fate" character as the major rival and a "Max" who is constantly trying to savotage their ship.

I'm wondering if you guys can help me come up with other stuff that will make for fun, light hearted, one evening adventures along the way.

Thanks in advance

 

[Nurd_boy]

that is one of mine most favorite movies....back in days when stars ACTUALLY KNEW HOW TO ACT !!!

I can see replacing the cars with ships, ton/crew limits of course....hmmmm, know you got me thinking.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I remember Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in "The Great Race."

A classic film of all time.

However, I must confess I only vaguely remember the Spinward Marches Point to Point. But it does ring a bell.

 

[J]

Originally posted by phydaux:
Has anyone (OTHER than MJD) heard of the Spinward Marches Point To Point Race? For those of you who haven't, it's a race around the Marches, visiting some of the major worlds like Lanth, Rylanor, Regina and Mora. The only rule is you have to start and finish in Glisten. The winner gets a huge cash prize, plus all kinds of honors, etc.

I've heard of the spinward marches point to point race, but only whats mentioned in Behind the Claw. It did inspire me to run a point to point race on the ct-starships mailing list.

We ran a design competition (the budget for the ship was 200MCr) and each entrant planned their route round the marches. All the details were pushed through a spreadsheet and the times used to create a series of TNS articles describing the race.

Don't expect a nail biting finish though, the winner of my race was 3 days ahead of the rest. Second and third were an hour apart and the last finisher crossed the line 40 days behind the leader.

It was good fun, and it made a change from building warships all the time

J.

 

[MJD]

There's no mention of the SM point-to-point anywhere other than BTC as far as I know. I invented it, y'see....

 

[phydaux]

Damn your creativity, Martin!

So help me fill in the blanks.

I'm thinking I'll have one of the race ships, one owned by a wealthy dilitant noble, cut in front of the player's ship on the way to the 100-D limit. Then sensors will detect that he fires something at them from his missile launcher.

Give the players plenty of time to over react, then they find out it's not a missile, but a modified Sand Caster trailing 10-mile long party streamers.

"More champegne, anyone?"

Then there's constant savotage by Max; Varger pirates paid by Professon Fate who then doublecross the professor and kidnap the PCs, their patron, the Professor and Max; the Dutchess of Mora who insists the racers join her at a party in their honor and sends SDBs to prevent them from jumping out-system.

I just can't seem to work in the pie fight, though...

 

[RobertFisher]

Originally posted by phydaux:
I'm wondering if you guys can help me come up with other stuff that will make for fun, light hearted, one evening adventures along the way.

Have then run across a ship in distress. They have to decide whether to respond or pretend like they didn't notice it. Assuming they do respond, they have to figure out how to help as quickly as possible. Maybe it isn't really in distress, but a red herring set up by an opponent.

An opponent has managed to enter a warrant into the computers of one of the destinations saying that the PCs are pirates.

One word: Stowaway!

OK, I'm guess I'm not good at light hearted ideas. How 'bout this: Make the crew of the ship in distress the cast of Gilligan's Island. Put Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrain in charge of the security forces of the system with the warrant.

Create a group of annoying race fans who always somehow seem to reach destinations before the PCs and inadvertantly cause them no end of trouble.

...well, I guess that's all I've got for now. Nothing great...

 

[N.I.C.E. Labs]

Originally posted by phydaux:


I just can't seem to work in the pie fight, though...

In the Fred Saberhaggen Beserker story "Jester"...one of the planet killing war machines was sort of reprogrammed by a rebel from a world who's planet outlawed comedy. It was told that to destroy life it had to make things laugh. At one point it shot down a fleet of fighters coming at it with giant cream pies.

Now imagine the players stopping at a place where a very bizarre and amusing civil war is going on

 

[Ranger]

Great Movie!

Here's my two cents worth on how to do the campaign. You'd have to force the characters to interact with the locals (that was the best part of the movie), so have part of the rules require them to obtain an item from each 'point' of the race (this rule is, of course, intended to ammuse the organisers). Something they would have to leave the starport area to obtain. The item for each location would have to be a secret ahead of time, or the teams would have it waiting at the starport when they arrived. This would turn the race into a scavanger hunt type situation as well, providing for ground and space based racing.
One Idea that springs to mind is make one of the items an animal, that must arrive alive at the finish line. Something big and hard to trasport, like a pigmi elephant (there was a JTAS article about eliphants as a transplanted beast of burdon IIRC). they would have to locate it, transport it back to the ship, then figure out how to house it in the cargo deck (too big to put in low passage) till the race was over. They would also have to figure out how to keep the items secure, as the other teams might try to steal smaller ones to disqualify the opposition at the finish line.

Just some random thoughts,

Rob Whiting