Before one of my offline seasons I had this wacky idea that would I could integrate RPG (D&D) elements.
My first idea was to accrue "XP" which could be used for subsequent seasons in the same series or new seasons. This hasn't really been fleshed out yet.
The next idea I had was to be able to use D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) game mechanics and dice rolls to choose a team for an upcoming season.
Firstly I just made a level 1 character on www.dndbeyond.com (this is FREE) which I had to roll dice for some basic stats (not all of these will come into play, see below).
From there I narrowed down the stats needed for this "battle". The modifiers don't really come into play. I figured that in a contract signing you may use Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma to get your drive. In DnD these stats can also refer to Athletics, Insight, Investigation and Persuasion.
I picked the 1979 F1 mod as my test for this system as I was going to do my 100% season 2. So off to wikipedia I went for names and drivers!
These are the teams from the 1979 season (not all represented in the mod I later found out). As a start on performance I ordered them on finishing position that season (I could technically have done that from 1978 but I guessed not all teams would appear so I simplified it).
What do the columns mean?
A/D - In dice rolls this means Advantage or Disadvantage. If you have Advantage you roll 2 x D20 dice and take the highest value from the 2 rolls. Disadvantage is the opposite, you take the lower value of the two rolls. If it is neither then it is just 1 dice roll.
DC - Does apply here yet (stands for difficulty of a challenge, you need to beat this value to pass a skill check.
HP - Health Points - first one to reach zero will lose. Team and driver has this.
AC - Armour class - In one round the the driver would have to beat this value on a D20 dice roll to "hit" the team. Higher the AC, harder to hit. The driver has this stats also.
Dice - Is the dice type used for each attack if the driver gets above the AC, the driver also has this. I thought that this could increase depending on finishing position in the season ("leveling up?").
The difficulty scales so that it would be easier to get a team driver lower in the order, but getting a Ferrari drive would be damn near impossible for a new driver.
I thought it was easier to setup a spreadsheet to track stats. I populated the stats from the team and the driver to use in the "fight". The yellow cells are the damage dealt to team and driver each round. On every spreadsheet refresh the team and driver will roll to "attack". I looked at this like a conversation back and forth.
When I did this live on stream, I used custom scenes in OBS and automated certain parts with Touch Portal. Dice rolls were achieved by hiding and unhiding preset OBS layers with "Bee's Dice Roller". Colours and effects can be customised.
The Team Rebaque team chosen in this example, they will roll at disadvantage against me (B6). I will roll at advantage against them (B28).
Is this round they rolled at disadvantage, 4 (D13) and didn't meet my AC (B30) so they missed. I rolled at advantage, 11 (D17) so I hit for 2 (B18) rolling a D4 dice (B31).
Because the team missed I have the option to heal using my stats. The team rolled against my stats and if they don't get the value or higher then I heal 1 HP (B20). Total heal this round was 2 (D25) which can't go beyond my current maximum HP of 13 (B29). Kind of the equivalent of knocking the interview out of the park when asked questions using these skills.
That is basically it.... first to reach 0 HP will lose the interview.
If I win I can suppose I have the choice to take the contract for the upcoming season. When I did my team encounter I had several teams to choose from so I assigned a value to each team. I then rolled a dice to choose my team placement. For example if you have 6 teams to choose from, assign teams a 1-6 value and roll a D6.
I had more ideas on how I might incorporate RPG elements to mid season to but I have not implemented those yet.
Driver performance surpassing or going below team expectations. This could play into whether you get re-signed for the upcoming season. A top team might expect you to finish in the top 5 every race and your reputation may go down within the team in the season if you fail to reach that target or end up with a DNF. A lower order team may have lower expectations. They may just want a finish in the top 20 every race. This could be like an XP system (reputation) gaining experience within a team. If you finished the season in the positive with a team... there could maybe be a bonus +1 or +2 to each roll against them when negotiating next season's contract. The opposite if you finish with negative reputation, there could be a penalty -1 or -2 to each roll.
After the finish of the season, finishing position may determine a level up in HP and AC, not currently gone through this though.