Truckers!!!

Just keep trucking

• Designing the Rate, Bonus, and Penalty system for delivering cargo

• Designing Fatigue accrual system

• Designing Fatigue Check & Punishment system

• Deciding amount of each type of card appeared in the deck

• Facilitating Playtests

To mimic the time limits imposed in the real world, Kate developed a fatigue system where every shift (8 hours in fiction) driven would give the player an additional d6 to roll and each shift spent resting would cause the player to lose a d6. Breaking up the day into 3 shifts was intentional, so player would be forced to drive either one shift and have sub-optimal driving times, two shifts and slowly accrue fatigue, or 3 shifts for high speed but a huge amount of fatigue and chance of crashing immediately.

The constant addition of fatigue spiking the theoretical highest roll was an attempt to mimic the reality of trucking, where the experience is relatively unaffected by driving efficacy UNTIL an accident occurs. At 1 fatigue (the lowest possible), getting anything but the best case scenario was basically guaranteed. Dying essentially requires a minimum 3 fatigue, as a 16 is the lowest roll that can kill a player. However, both unforeseen events and the deadlines on delivery often drive players to recklessly accrue fatigue due to said lack of punishments, often forcing them into situations where they end up having dangerous levels of fatigue and losing the game.

What Kate found during play tests was most players on their first attempt would often push forward quickly and die about halfway through the game. On subsequent playtests, returning players would be significantly more conservative with their movement and pay much more attention to their total fatigue. They'd often still make risky plays, but  were much more aware of their total fatigue and would would reserve risks for when they were most vital to meeting deadlines.

Kate  reused a previous system she developed  for Crazy Taxi Boardgame Design Exercise, where each locations reward was fixed and based off the distance from the starting point. This was also used by the game's other system designer to set the deadlines for cargo. He balanced the deadlines out of an assumed 1.5 shifts driven per turn with no event cards occurring, this meant that not only would players never have an optimal amount of movement in a single turn, but also that with the amount of event cards in the deck slowing the players, players were often forced to gain fatigue faster than losing it, even when trying to play safely.