A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Death Race

Death Race by Joseph Mohr is a role playing game supplement published by Old School Role Playing for use with Cepheus Engine. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.

The supplement is available as a 32 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. Two pages are the front and rear covers, three the front matter and three the Open Game License.

The opening paragraphs explain that Udenho is a desert world whose sands are reputed to be soothing to plasma burns. However, it’s major draw is the Udenho Death Races, in which teams of ground vehicles race around a track for a million-credit prize. The race is dangerous, the cars are armed and armoured and the planet itself is lethal. The characters are hired by a corporation to enter in the race.

Game Master Note explains that the adventure is set in the Frontiers of Space.

Complications cover the problems. The patron is being rather more truthful than usual for these adventures; they have every intention of splitting the reward. However, they have two entries and the cars are intended to showcase a new model. Other complications are other racers attempting to kill competitors and cheating, despite being punishable by death if found it, is not only common but expected.

The Planet Udenho gives a brief overview of the world.

The Town of Sandfall gives a brief description of this town.

The Race Track has a key to the map, which includes various hazards.

Vehicles has stats for several vehicle types.

Vehicle Modification and Speed is on how vehicles can be upgraded.

The Other Contestants has stats for the other teams and their vehicles. This takes up a substantial portion of the supplement.

Encounters Off of the Track has a random encounter table of off-track dangers.

Encounters on the Track has a random encounter table for dangers on the track.

Conducting the Race explains how to do so.

Conditions for Success is simple; finish first.

Feng Fujii and His Bodyguards has stats for the patron and his guards.

Finally, there are maps of the planet and of the racetrack.

Death Race in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough with enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a single column format and some minor errors were noticed. Bar the maps, and there isn’t a player friendly map of the track unfortunately, there are no illustrations. Presentation is adequate.

This is a simple enough adventure in concept; drive around the track and win the race. The problems are staying alive, coping with cheaters and cheating without dying, all of which combine to make this a rather difficult adventure to successfully complete. It would clearly appear to have been inspired by things such as Death Race – the clue is in the name, after all. Cepheus Engine is not best designed for this sort of thing, though; Car Wars, which explicitly is, would work better, but that would need a bit of work to integrate. Death Race can be found by clicking here.