[swordtart]

Vagueness and inconsistency, flexibility and options ;)

CW is at it's core a table top tactical battle game. All the Role Playing and Campaign stuff is retro-fitted and the product of several authors. Rather than try to pull together a homogenous rule set (and undoubtedly end up loosing someone's favourite bits just because they were incompatible), they were generally left alone (but left in their original context where they should at last be self-consistent).

In real life there are multiple "authorities" on tournament rules (UK has Rugby League and Rugby Union who both play a game that can be called Rugby but have slightly different rules). Soccer has many organisations that have different rules (and even within an organisation there is lobbying from various teams to change rules).

It shouldn't be considered a fault therefore if particular Arenas (and groups of Arenas) have different rules. AADA is an umbrella group that covers road users as well, so it is inherently flexible. An arena billing itself as AADA may only be an affiliate and exempt itself from some "Standard Practice" for pragmatic reasons.

The AADA may well enforce safety regulations in exchange for allowing the AADA logo to be used, but these may only extend to spectators and arena staff. The death or injury of competitors in an integral part of auto-duelling, as long as the competitors has been advised what the risks are before they contract to take part, the AADA will likely have no objection to whatever those risks are.

Safe exit routes from the Arena are considered by some to be "Sissy" (and this is reflected in some of the Prestige penalties). Some Arenas may choose not to allow them. These Arenas will likely have a higher injury rate than others and will be less popular with experienced duellists, but they are likely to be very popular with the media (Blood!!!) and therefore may be able to offer higher prizes to the more desperate end of the duellist community (I am looking at you amateur night heroes here).

My expectation is that you would feed the Amateur night with expendable characters who might win enough to retire but risk death in the process. You might start your campaign here. Each event they can feed in a character and depending on how it goes, their characters will become sufficiently experienced that they no longer wish to enter them into the meat grinder or they expire (or get invalided out). For the players I would expect this to be a cost to them rather than a pay-out. They sponsor the recruit (they pay for the 5K or whatever of amateur car and equipment), the recruits keep any prize-money (i.e. it goes out of game) but they then become a more experienced character on the team that sponsored them.

If a team that didn't sponsor them wants to hire a crewman, they will pay a standard transfer fee to the sponsor that is some function of the characters current prestige. A crewman can also buy themselves out of their contract to the sponsoring team by paying the transfer fee themselves. I would allow the player who currently holds the crew members contract to decide if this occurs (on behalf of the crew member). They may decide to take the money if they have a full crew roster with better crew.

I would establish standard fees rather than allowing the players to negotiate amongst themselves as players have a nasty habit of wrecking the economy and these are supposed to exist within a wider professional duelling team framework. I would also base fees on Prestige rather than skills. Prestige is readily measureable and likely published within the game world (as ranking). The skills themselves are only evident when they are used successfully and are much harder to measure within the game world. This may lead to a less "gamey" mechanism where you may get someone who is really good but has had a run of bad luck cheap rather than paying a fixed price dependent of skill levels.

The difficulty I had was what to do when only a single player wants to compete at a particular division (because his team isn't skilled enough). Playing other opponents (i.e. not your own crew) in a duel where you have no stake can lead to implausibly suicidal play styles.

It might be easier to hire on vehicle crews at each event (and have no standing team other then support crew - mechanics, medics etc.) so anyone can hire the best they can afford. You can still maintain a overall roster of vehicle crewmen and keep track of the individuals skill and Prestige progression (which will set the rate that they can be hired on). You can also allow players to agree personality quirks that develop as the game progresses e.g. "After narrowly escaping a fire, Dave McAllister will never drive a gas car again". As the character is part of the pool anyone can hire from, this quirk will affect all players equally and will therefore be inherently balanced.