These are some general (and mostly untested) ideas for staging games in which the players race against each other rather than shoot at each other. Most of these ideas should work well with a standard size large gaming table marked off to make an oval or winding course.
Since similar vehicles or creatures will have the same movement rates, a racing game will be more challenging if it includes difficult terrain and numerous tight turns to get players to make choices balancing speed vs safety. The difficulty of making multiple turns at higher speeds should encourage players not to go full throttle every turn.
A gamemaster also can add some special hidden dangers, noting their location on the table at choke points where there is a choice between a few narrow routes due to terrain. When a player's racer approaches one of those spots he gets a single roll on his perception to spot the danger at the last minute. These extra traps are entirely optional, and a vehicle race through winding terrain can be exciting enough without any extra hidden surprises.
Beggar's Canyon:
Lay out a table full of rocky desert terrain with a course that includes hairpin turns, narrow gaps, and irregular outcrops. This course should work with swoops and other bikes, T-16s flying low, or the pod racers from Episode 1. Random dangers could include landslides or falling rock spires caused by startled womp rats, or a Tusken Raider shooting down at racers from a mesa top.
Urban Drag Racing:
If you've got a table full of urban terrain have a gang of swoop bikers or a group of landspeeders race through the crowded streets, dodging spooked Micro Machines riding beasts, other civillian landspeeders passing by slowly, confused worker droids carrying long loads of pipe down the street (who turn around to see what's happening, swinging their loads around vaudeville-style),
street corner moisture evaporators (which just might let off a nasty geyser of steam if you clip one of their pipes on the way past -- this might be to a rider's advantage if he escapes the steam and leaves the street behind him blocked), and maybe a cop or a couple of stormtroopers who step out of the shadows and take a shot at anyone who tries to ride through their intersection checkpoint.
Combined Urban/Canyon Route:
I have tried a swoop race around a big table in a roughly oval course, with buildings on one end of the table and a jumble of desert mesas and spires on the other end. This makes a great display, with the option of adding all kinds of urban and natural obstacles to the table. This is a good way to stretch your terrain as well, if you don't have a table full of just buildings or rock outcrops alone.
Imperial Biker Scouts on Endor:
A group of Imperial biker scouts are racing back to their Endor base with news about enemy troop movements. They have to dodge around giant trees and over fallen logs, watch out for Ewok log traps, and perhaps stay ahead of a rebel pursuer who shoots at the slowest Imperial.
Beast racing in the Jundland Wastes:
Players should all ride banthas, dewbacks, or rontos. Hazards can include soft dunes that slow a creature down (crossing a soft dune requires a perception or beast riding roll, and the number of points by which the roll is missed is the number of inches of movement lost while stumbling through a spot with bad footing), a sarlacc pit
(quite fatal -- a rider gets a perception roll to spot it, then if that's missed he gets a difficult beast riding roll to make a last minute stop before falling over the edge), a half-buried krayt dragon skeleton (herd animals often shy away from carcasses -- bantha or ronto riders should have to make a beast riding roll to pass this successfully,
while dewback riders might have to restrain their mounts from stopping to sniff around for scraps of meat), and sandpeople (or worse) laying in wait to creature-jack passersby.
Rebel Tauntaun Scouts on Hoth:
Rebel scouts are racing across Hoth with important information. Dangers can include soft snow banks (like the soft dunes described above), a hidden ice crevasse (fatal unless spotted and avoided), sudden strong snow flurries (reduce movement and visibility, making it harder to spot hidden hazards), a wampa or probe droid that pops up out of hiding to take a swipe/shot, a tauntaun carcass left by a wampa
(requires a beast riding roll to keep a rider's tauntaun from stopping suddenly and possibly throwing the rider). First reb back to base with his scouting report gets promoted; last one is tomorrow's wampa poo.
And on a related note...
Loada Smasha: A demolition-derby game from Jake's Workshop:
Use AT-PTs as unarmed power loaders (as per Aliens). A bunch of underpaid dock workers decide to quit, and one of them suggests a round of power loader sumo amongst the stacked crates in their boss's warehouse. Extra points for smashing really expensive cargo in the process. Optional rules: The workers are all drunk and their loaders tend to veer from the intended direction at random moments. One of the workers gets control of the overhead lifter system and tries to pick up his mates and drop them on each other. (Yes, that one is a joke.)
Back to my Star Wars Miniatures Scenarios page.