aprilmarch

First, determine your starting spot in the DEATH RACE by rolling 3d4. The sum of the highest and lowest dice make up the tens of the starting position; the dice that remains is the ones. For instance, if you roll 1, 2 and 4, you add 4+1=5 and get 52 as your starting position.

The first ten racers are always incredibly rich bigshots who are somehow related to the Sponsors. Most of them actually are good drivers; those who are not can make up for it through technology. You are not one of these.

The next ten racers are a mix of people who are wealthy but not enough to be sponsors, some random thrillseekers, and 'elevated' regular racers who got someone to be their (lowercase) sponsor. All of these are excellent racers. In fact, other than raw talent in the back ranks, these are probably the best pilots in the race. You are not one of these either, which is why your starting position cannot be lower than 21.

ONE CAR, MANY RACERS
It used to be that, in order to get a position in the DEATH RACE, you had to drive through the starting line and the finish line in roughly the same vehicle. 'Roughly' is key; if your car exploded, you could bring a sufficiently large piece and still claim the prize. This rule was meant to encourage more violent interaction during the finish line, since if you blew up you'd lose a lot of places but would still be able to claim a relatively high spot if you were in the lead.

It was common for ambulances to also pick up a car piece and drive through the finish life, to give downed races a placement (sometimes posthumous).

However, a corollary to this rule was that, if you picked a piece of your car and hopped aboard another car, that car would effectively count for two. This was a minor issue until the BoomBus.

The BoomBus was a junked city bus with a massive jet engine nailed to it, driven by a skinny bearded fella named Ol' Mac. Mac stopped to give a ride to every driver ze saw stranded on the track. That year's race had been particularly heated, so by the time ze was gunning for the finish time ze had twelve racers in the bus, not even counting zirself. And ze hadn't even used the jet.

Then ze used it.

The bus blew past the people nearing the finish line before they even knew what was going on. This created some very interesting results. The last racer to be overtaken by the bus was half a second behind it, but this caused their position to drop from 59th to 63rd. And this caused a lot of complaints. Why did the people on the back of the bus got a positon in front of the car that was keeping up with it? And what should be the order of the racers inside the bus? They had photos taken at the finish line, but the flash glared off the windows and the inside of the bus was not visible, so they had only memory and honour to account for their order. This did not go smoothly.

The present rules were added the next year. Now, in order to hold a position, you just to drive through the start line in a vehicle, then drive through the finish line in a vehicle. Doesn't even have to be the same one. Everyone in a vehicle gets the same position, regardless of whether they started together or not.

This has, of course, given space to numerous new strategies. The first one is that it's possible to carjack other racers, which the Organizers find hilarious. It's also possible to scoop more than one spot by having a car that contains or breaks into smaller cars, which the Organizers also find hilarious. The tamest strategy is that it's now possible to race as a team. Quite a few people now bring a mechanic, copilot or 'spare' driver, but this is widely considered to be lame, kind of like showing up to the Tour de France with training wheels on. However, it does allow larger vehicles that do require a multi-person crew to operate, which the Organizers, unsurprisingly, find hilarious.

Ambulances still drive downed racers through the finish line, which means they are technically the winning vehicle for that racer. There are very strict guidelines to stop people employed as paramedics by the Organizers from being even near the starting line, as to avoid shenanigans.

(It's important to notice the ambulance only covers about the first and last kilometers of the track, close enough to civilization that leaving people to die would be considered unsporting. For the remainder, well, it's not called the Somewhat Severe Wounds Race.)

SEX IN THE DEATH RACE
They say there's a rule that says you score a point every time you have sex during the DEATH RACE.

This is absolute bollocks. You don't even score points during the race. You have your position and that's it.

This concept probably came out of some in-joke that was misheard out of context. Maybe someone said something about 'scoring'.

Still, lots of people like to have sex during the DEATH RACE. It's kinda of its third, unofficial thing. You have death, you have racing, and you have sex. The Sponsors like it, it makes the whole thing looks exciting and forbidden.

Some people actually believe the whole sex = points thing, and while it's fun to make fun of these people, it's in good taste to let them know about the truth - which can be actually quite hard, since they tend to think you're lying to them to make them earn less points. This has caused some racers to try to replace this story with a new fake concept that you score for having sex during the DEATH RACE but only if both parties give enthusiastic consent. They've had moderate but suprisising success with this operation.