IDEA: Points-Buy Game System for RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN'

As I've been planning PLAAY-Dot-CON 2018, I've been wrangling with ways to work all of the games in the catalog into the fabric of the event. For baseball, football and hockey, it's pretty easy: just match up opponents and "PLAAY Ball!" For multi-player games like bowling, golf and demo-derby, it's a little more difficult to coordinate, but still very do-able.

However, some games just don't lend themselves well to head-to-head or group play. FACE TO THE MAT is largely a solitaire game, although it does have a head-to-head component that's activated by strategy cards. And then there's RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN'. It stands alone as the one PLAAY Game which really doesn't have a multi-player aspect. Our Charlotte event demonstrated that it can be fun as a cooperative game, where making the DUEL and chip usage decisions is done "committee style." But there's really not a way to have much competition between gamers.

Until Rob Merino, Barcelona, Spain decided to get creative and invent one!

Rob's variant essentially turns RWBR into a role-playing game, where each gamer is the owner of a garage with two or more cars running in each race. Everyone starts out on equal footing, with a points allocation that can be used to purchase various racing abilities depicted by the game's symbols and qualities. Adroit expenditure of your points is key to the game, as is in-race teamwork between cars of the same garage. Winning races earns more points, which can then be spent to improve your cars, thereby improving your chances to win future races. And so it goes!

Rob's idea is still in the exploratory stages, but he recruited a number of gamers from the PLAAY Games Delphi Forum to join him in a trial run-through of the concept.

The group has now run fifteen of the scheduled 25 races, with great success and plenty of excitement. Interested? Keep reading (and clicking)!...

• Here's the thread explaining the general concept of multi-player competition with RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN'.

• Here's the informational document Rob sent to all gamers who signed up for the project.

• And here's the progress of the project, reports in chronological order, races 1 through 15.

All in all, a pretty innovative way to play RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN' Stock Car Action Game!