Intro
Prizes
Enhancements
These are some races you can have in Rumble City.
You can roll one, choose one, or better yet, just
make up your own with what you have.
1. Army-Man-Slam.
They wander out of the dessert in rambling clouds.
Army-Men. Mindless military homunculi with welded-on guns. These aren’t
zombies. They are not quite machines. They look a bit like army people used to
look, but can’t put down their guns. Or, in fact, shoot them at all. Their features
are all wrong. No-one knows where they came from or why. It’s Rumble City,
no-one cares. Some think there’s a crashed alien forge out there in the boiling
sand. Maybe it’s trying to conquer us. Maybe it’s begging for help. Whatever it
is must be automatic or dumb because it keep crapping out these rambling crowds
of ineffectual animated army-drone-clones. We keep smashing them up. Then they
come back.
Spread as
many army-men or other figures in as many positions and places as possible. Try
to make them look like a real army. Begin your cars at opposite sides. At the
end of your turn you can move ten army men anywhere one inch. Whoever blasts or
smashes the most army men wins.
2. Suicide Louise.
Can’t take it any more? FINE. Go out into the
Terminal Hate Zones where every rock and tree loathes life. Even getting there is hard. Set a course
through the crackling infra-tech. Make Bad-Credit-Cliff your finish line. But
you better beat those other bipolar racers to the edge. Only the first
successful crash from Bad Credit cliff earns entry to the afterlife. Everyone
else mysteriously lives. And is banned from racing for life!
Make a long
winding track with a cliff at the end. Make every piece of scenery dangerous.
Name a particular crew-member whose race this is. Think of a really good reason
they ‘JUST CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE’. (Having to live in Rumble City is a ‘good
reason’) They have to go over the edge. Other crew can try jumping off before
the fall, of just not going to the race. If someone gets killed on the track,
either by murder or accident, that doesn’t count. Only the first car counts.
The jumper is world-famous and every baby born in rumble city that day will be
named after them. Everyone else mysteriously survives whatever happened to them
and is mocked in Rumble City for the rest of their lives. All Fanimals are
lost.
3. Sky-Scraper-Slalom
Really tall buildings are dull. You can’t jump off
them and there’s no ramp access to the upper floors. The racers of Rumble City
have solved all that. They have built vast ramps that bridge the
business-district scrapers twenty floors up. Elevators have been re-engineered
to take up cars. Every accessible window on the non-racing floors above is full
of cheering crowds. Just make sure you make the turn.
Make a
series of large squares. These are the floors of the skyscrapers. Draw a ring
track inside each square. Each car must circuit this once before it leaves.
Link the building floors together in a ring with marked-out narrow bridges.
Remember in Rumble City these bridges are twenty stories above the ground. Cars
must enter each building, circuit the in-building track, then take the bridge
to the next, building. First to finish wins. Don’t come off the track.
4. Oil-Tanker Escape Jump
Rumble City bay is full of huge decaying ships. When
the world was going wrong everybody on earth bought all the gas they could
right here. Now the big tankers drift slowly in the oily muck. Each one sized
like multiple football fields, they form a shifting floor of steel above the
oozing sea. Perfect for racing on! The only problem is, no bridges, so the
racers have to jump from ship to ship. Decks have been flattened and ramps
installed to make the jumps survivable. Probably.
Get as many
big boxes (or equivalent) as will fit in the racing area. Give each box a
tanker name. (i.e. the SS Salami) Draw
the names on the sides of the box. Leave one to three inches between each
tanker. Put tracks on each one and a ramp on the deck aimed at the closest
ship. Make sure they link up (or don’t). A racer must circle each ship at least
once to build up the momentum for the jump to the next ship. First racer to the
last ship wins. (And is helicoptered home.) Other racers must find their own
way off the tanker.
For extra
strangeness, put ramps everywhere and have the tankers move randomly, one inch
per turn.
5. Valley of the Dolls
It’s out there, beyond the atom-screens and the
alien receivers in the sand. The cage of the murderous cyber-things called
‘dolls’. They are low on power now, it’s said, the light of slaughter glows
dimly in their eyes. But everyone remembers the terror they caused in that last
insane war before the end. Everyone holds the image of those beautiful, still
features stained with blood. Only the bravest racers dare the valley where the
dolls stand dully ranked like standing stones. Winning the race is notable but
even living through it earns you cred.
 |
| Mariel Clayton |
Mark out a
narrow, twisting valley with the finish line at the end. Fill it with as many ‘dolls’ as you can find.
Rank them up like silent statues. Racers must slalom between the dolls to make
it through. If any car touches a doll for any reason, it activated. They are
looming cybernetic death machines that can tear cars apart with their bare
hands and always seek to eat the crew one-by-one. They will chase any nearby
car but will not leave the valley.
6. Midnight in Death Valley
As if Death Valley wasn’t dangerous enough! You
want to race there at night?
Mark out a
long, narrow valley course. Use no terrain. Inform players the track is dark so
anything could be there. Obstacles may look up out of the blackness without
warning. After their turn, each player must stand on the edge of the playing
area and throw a piece of terrain onto the track. If the terrain hits a car
that player that threw it loses a turn. If it damages a car, the thrower is
disqualified.
7. The Atom Screens
Everyone in Rumble City can see the deranged
flickering of the Atom Screens on the edge of town. They say the screens are
why the city still exists. That, somehow, they protected Rumble City when
things fell. Only the crazed, religious, or indifferent dare to race beneath
the screens. They fear the faces of the alien gods that loom through from
shattered realities. These tears in space and time exhibit impossible things and
issue cryptic inarguable commands. It’s claimed the commands of the Atom
Screens can speak the future of the racer they address. But if there is a
system to it, no-one knows it now.
Mark out a
simple track in front of, or beneath, a television at maximum volume. Turn off
every other light in the room. On each players turn, change the channel
randomly. The first coherent sentence from the screen must be treated by the
racer as a direct order. If the player finishes their turn without a coherent
sentence being heard, lucky them.
8. Slime Tank Slalom
Sometimes children go the glistening tanks of
intelligent slime in rows. They gaze into the rippling ooze and watch ghost
faces form inside. This fearsome liquidised entity must have been trapped in
ranked crystal prisons for a good reason. No-one remembers what it was. Now the
tanks are good mainly for extra-dangerous racing. Sometimes the tanks are
cracked and slime escapes. Who cares? Call it parole.
Build a
slalom race in which the poles are glasses or Perspex cups. Wine glasses are
dangerous and fun. Half-fill the glasses with water or (with prep) jelly. Run
the race as usual. If any car impacts or touches a glass, tip the glass over.
Any pools remaining on the racing surface will cause a car to skid of touched.
No cleaning up till someone wins.
9. Alien Transmissions.
Somewhere in the silent zones, tiled monoliths
glow with a source-less inter-dimensional light. Each strange and luminous
shard stands vertically facing another of its kind. The transmitters can be
activated, but not used. No-one in Rumble City knows the code they speak.
Though its effects are chilling, the means of its action unseen.
For this
game, everyone will need a mobile phone. Arrange the phones around the edge of
the playing area, facing inwards, as far from each other as possible. Place
each players car before their phone. When a car impacts directly with an
opposing players phone, the owner of the car must pick up the phone, bring up a
random number and hand it to its owner. The owner of the phone must call that
number and explain, truthfully, exactly why they have called. Any player too
embarrassed to make the call is knocked out. Last player in the game wins.
10. The Towers of Change
Money in Rumble City is mainly symbolic (See
prizes). There are no mints, but piles of giant sculpted disks erupt from the
heart of playing fields and volcanic zones. The disks will soon sink back into
the ground and disappear. The only way to catch them is to smash them down. At
speed.
In racing cars. If this is not achieved the
economy of Rumble City will collapse. So this is the race of a responsible
citizen. It’s like a nine-to-five.
Get as much
loose change as you can. Stack it in as many piles as possible. Make the piles
high. Put them all over the playing area. When a car smashes into a change
pile, the change is theirs. The spot where the pile was, is now a magmatic
bog. There is a countdown to this game. 3d10 minutes. Then the piles collapse
back into the volcanic zones. Whoever has the most money at the end wins.
11. Canyons of Crime.
No-one knows what a criminal is but from the films
it looks like fun. The most important thing seems to be a chase. Every crime in
Rumble City is built around the getaway. There are special places arranged for
crimes to happen. The canyons are deep, dark and seemingly without end. If
necessary, side-routes are walled off to prevent early escape. To be a cop in
rumble city you need 1. A flashing light. 2. The ability to shout “police,
stop!” 3. Possibly a badge.
The Canyons
of Crime are inaccessible, you can play this one behind the couch. Or tip the
bed over. The race starts at a building designated ‘bank’. One racer is
designated criminal, they have the loot. They get a head start. The other half
are cops. When the criminal is caught, they are knocked out. Whoever did it has
the loot and is the new criminal. This continues until a time limit is reached
or no cops are left.
12. Coat Mountain.
The crags of Coat Mountain can always be seen from
the cracked windows of Rumble City. An ever-shifting ripple of waving stone. Looming
from the desert plain, shifting its position, but always the same distance
away. Still whenever seen but never the same shape from day to day. As if it
were an animal stalking the town, waiting for it to blink Hiding in its folds,
the only beings crazed enough to live there and survive. The Pocket People. Warped
and transformed by long exposure to its woven tombs. Emerging one by one,
babbling impossible tongues. Firing scratch-built jezzails at any who come
close.
Drop your
coat in a heap in the middle of the racing area. This is Coat Mountain. Your
track will be one circuit of the edge. If longer tracks are needed, more coats
may be used. Any car that touches Coat Mountain must roll damage. On every turn
of combat, one of the following must take place. A Pocket Person may emerge.
(They may only come out of the coat pockets where they live.) All Pocket Person
may move. All Pocket People may fire at whatever they see. (Pocket People count
as level one snipers.) At the end of their turn, a player decides which of the
events will take place. The next player enacts that event before they being
their turn.
13. Escape The Vault.
The hugeness of the Vault is beyond the
comprehension of man. Some say it has its own weather systems. Some say the
evils of lost ages are preserved there, far from the light of the sun. Some
claim giants walk there underground, or strange beasts track across its level
plains. A cyclopean cavern, city-sized, yet hidden like a sinkhole beneath the
city streets. Its half-mile high arched ceiling holds up Rumble City. Just. One
day everything will collapse into its dark embrace. Maybe tomorrow.
There’s only one thing to do. Built giant
oil-drills, install racing cars in shielded nodules at their tips, burrow them
into the Vault, release the cars and time them as they race back towards the
surface.
In this
race the Vault is the darkest, most cluttered, deepest and most disused room or
cellar you have. Place the cars at the point furthest from the door. Add to the
room whatever else you have that is strange. Race to the doorway or stairs.
14. Pages and Rages.
Out on the plains of Time, the jumbled words
stretch on out of your sight. Mixed-up blockmarks of nonsensical phrases
written in the strata of the desert stone. It looks as if they’ve always been
there, embossed in the rock. But they change too quickly when no-one’s
watching. And sometimes, the word-traps shut. Mounds of ancient earth peel over
like a vice, crushing what’s within. These marks collapsed from a higher
reality during the events at the end of the world. Ideo-shrapnel embedding
itself in the skin of the world. Only constantly chanting the blockmarks of
that zone will let you pass. The Book-Bedouin roam there, minds blitzed from
the endless verbal static they must chant. But it’s a fun place for a race.
To race
across the plains of Time, make a racetrack of open books, lying face-up on the
ground. No-one can leave the surface of a book. Any car doing so will be
considered destroyed. At the beginning of their turn, the player must look at
the lines their car is upon. They must chant, without pause, all the lines
connected to their car. If they do this, they are safe. If anyone fails to
chant, the book will close, crushing the car. (Avoidance may be rolled.) Books
will re-open in d4 turns and may be raced across freely in the meantime.
15. Playing Card Tar Sands
The sands of La Concorde ooze tar. Thick, black,
vicious and a handy source of unrefined oil. The tar forms a crackling
semi-permeable crust that sucks down anything heavy or slow. It’s
nearly-impossible to race on. Nearly. But someone found a way. Huge rectangular
plates of aluminium have been dumped in the tar sands. They can support the
momentary weight of a car, if it travels at high speed. Over the years they
have been graphitised by local youths.
Take a pack
of playing cards and spread them over or around the track in the way that seems
most interesting to you. But not too far apart. During the game, any car that
finishes or ends its turn on a playing card is safe. If a car did not either
finish or end its turn on a card, it starts to sink. The crew may still
successfully abandon ship, if they are lucky.
16. Cryo-Slumber Hijack
The libraries of Rumble City are full of
popsicle-frozen people. The ancients put a lot of useful people on ice. Probably
hoping to thaw them out later. Or hoping they would wake up in a world more
sane. No-one knows how the popsicle machines work anymore. Occasionally one
looks like it’s about to defrost on its own. If the person inside looks like
they might be fun to hang out with, racers gather in the huge library hall,
revving their cars. A few minutes from de-thawing the race begins. Whoever ends
up with the sleeper gets a new best friend.
Take a
jelly baby, lego man or creature of equal dimensions. Put them in an ice tray,
fill it up and freeze them in a cube. When fully frozen, place them in the
centre of the game space. Arrange terrain and obstacles to suit. All cars start
en equal distance from the sleeper. Crews can grab the sleeper on contact with
the cube, simply place the cube on top of, or inside the car.
Enemy crews
can grab the sleeper with a successful close attack. Whoever has the sleeper
when the cube is fully melted wins, and gets a new, free crew member.
17. Fruit Convoy.
Rumble City is fed through the fortuitous use of
mutant fruit. The surviving fruit farms of old California grow one gigantic
monster fruit each. Guarding it over long summer months from the attacks of the
hyper-crows. Fruit-Mercs with specialised weaponry stride the bananas watch
after watch and snipers lock the approaches to every pear. Then, when the
season rolls around, the convoys come from rumble city. The fruit are linked
and loaded onto trolleys and anti-gravity skiffs. Then the vast arrays set off
across the nightmare plains, heading for home. It’s murder. Every fruitpirate,
bandito, mutant scav, biker gang or windriding sunjunkie flocks on the gigantic
convoys as they rumble towards the city gates. The silhouettes of house-sized
avocado’s flash blackly in the rattling muzzle flare against the lowering
midnight sky. The wrecks of fortified pineapples hang in the dawn air like
pencil-sketch gallows when the suns rise, bodies strewn and despoiled. Time to
race.
Get all the
monsters and enemy cars you can find. One player takes the role of the
attacking hordes. Each other player runs one car. Get a bunch of fruit and a
model truck. String up the convoy. One player may take on the role of convoy
driver. Players may place crew members aboard the fruit at armoured positions
if they wish. The fruit convoy goes at the speed of the slowest vehicle minus
one. It can turn one segment per round. If it turns in the same direction for
three consecutive rounds, roll for unstable fruit, they may become loose and
escape. Game ends when the convoy crosses the city gates, whichever side has
the most fruit wins.
18. Kaiju Rumble
Kaiju are a constant menace to Rumble City. It’s
not really sure if they are monsters or normal things insanely sized. Perhaps
they are simply lost wanderers in the desert of time who came back to find
Rumble City shrunk to tiny size before them. Anyway, they are Kaiju now. You
can only be so big in Rumble City! They are easily dealt with. Trip them up
with monofilament wire tied round their legs, then drive up their bodies to
shoot rockets into their eyes.
This race
should be played with a friendly and patient human. Failing that, a pair of
shoes and some chalk should do it. In the first part of the game the Kaiju (or
person) walk very slowly across the playing space. They are trying to reach the
outskirts of Rumble City. The players compete to be the first car to run a
figure eight around the Kaiju’s feet. Once done, the Kaiju collapses in a
random direction. (Cars beneath its fall may take evasive action.) The friendly
human should lie down. Failing this, a chalk outline of a person should be
made. Crosses should be added for the eyes. Cars must race up the monsters
body, starting at the feet and fire once into each of its eyes. The first
car to do this is the victor.
19 Tectonic Gold.
California still hasn’t fallen into the ocean. Maybe
the Pacific doesn’t want it. The plates are cracking though, like a badly baked
soufflé. It won’t be long now… Catastrophic tectonic activity can be a boon to
any race. Rumble City bravoes often ride the San-Andreas plunge-mosaic-flats
for fame and extra respect. A favoured tactic is to flock closely as the plates
are crossed so as not to be disadvantaged by the shakes, then sprint for the
end when it comes.
Arrange the
course as normal, but draw it over as many tables as possible. Two is good, but
four tables linked at the centre would be better. At any point during their
turn, a player may shake one of the tables as hard as they like for up to three
seconds. If any car is thrown off a table, the player doing the shaking is
disqualified.
20 Crash-o-Tron.
The Crash-o-Tron is the most revered and respected
of Rumble City races. Somewhat old-fashioned, its true, and staid, but you know
where you are with the crash-o-tron. JUST CRASH INTO EVERYTHING.
The finish
line of the crash-o-tron can only be passed by a car that has deliberately
crashed into every other car in the race. That means the crash took part on
that cars turn. It’s common for no cars at all to finish the crash-o-tron.
