Hi guys,

I was messing around with this game idea where players race along a dangerous road in trucks to deliver their cargo. As they travel along the road (especially if they decide to go at speed) they will run into dangers: landslides where they must dodge/clear terrain, fog so they can't see the cliff sides etc.

I'd love to try this out 'on paper' first with some friends. However I'm not sure how to simulate a real time experience of driving the trucks at various speeds. The most simple solution I have come up with is rolling dice to move however many grid squares; wherever you land you roll again to see if a randomised disaster occurs. To measure speed I could add a modifier, such as if they're going an 'above average speed' they get a +1 to the amount of grid squares they cover but also a +1 to the chance of a disaster happening.

However, in a video game I'd be simulating acceleration (by holding down a key for example) and changing gear for speed. It also would not be turn based and they would have free control of the truck's movement and could accidentally plummet off the edge.

I guess the game can track when a player leaves and enter a new square in the grid and, after so many, roll to see if a disaster occurs. However, I don't think my current idea would really reflect the real time game experience/dynamics I'm trying to create in the video game. Am I looking at this the wrong way?

Many thanks

hahaha, I'm loving that idea. Maybe simulate a driver's cab-view experience using cardboard boxes!

You can use the paper-version as a brainstorm/inspiration to get ideas for the video-game, but you can't use it as prototype imo.

rolling dice to move however many grid squares; wherever you land you roll again to see if a randomised disaster occurs.

A common problem with board games, the fix is to use more dice and average the result.

To measure speed I could add a modifier, such as if they're going an 'above average speed' they get a +1 to the amount of grid squares they cover but also a +1 to the chance of a disaster happening.

I would advice the danger increased exponential. Fast: +1 Speed +2 Danger, Faster: +2 Speed +4 Danger, Fastest +3 Speed +8 Danger.

Like everyone said, speed and time doesn't translate from board games to real world at 1:1 scale.

I have a game called Soldiers, vehicles and aircraft; yes it is a RTS based on rock-paper-scissors. Soldiers > Vehicles > Aircraft > Soldiers

In the beginning I found players just used the same units so they could counter all units, we used speed to cause a unbalance. Soldiers 1 speed, Vehicles 2 speed and Aircraft 3 speed.

When we turned it into a real time game speed didn't matter, players went back to keeping equal amounts of all units. To counter this, we tested firing speed and range as new values on the board game, we had to keep decreasing the amount of units, to allow the new dice roles.

We learned time is more significant in turn based games than in real time, you would never allow a unit to miss a turn but in real time some units would stand around for whole minutes.

In the end we noticed, that the less units a player had the closer it was to the turn based game, we added range and more cover and unit grouping so players could command a few groups instead of single units.

What I am saying is that you can test the mechanic of speed and danger by doing a dice roll when players need to turn, the faster you drive the harder it is to turn. You can test the concept of racing and there are a lot of racing board games.

You can't test real time with turn based games, because in turn based games you exist in more than one place at a given time.

I think you're probably better off just prototyping this in a free game engine, Unreal, Unity, or one of the various free 2d ones. You can pretty easily make some cubes or squares that represent trucks, throw some basic controls on them and mock out some hazards. That will give you a much closer approximation to a real time game, and you can see if it will be fun fairly quickly.

For example, in Unity, toss down some Planes, a couple of Cubes, add a rigidbody to each of them, add a simple script for turning and acceleration, add some obstacle cubes, and you should have yourself a rough prototype very quickly.