Design a board

A board is the thing a race is run on. You draw one at /design: waypoints over real places, with roads between them, and challenges gating their exit.

Design only works on desktop

The design functionality only works on large screens. Dragging pins, drawing roads and reading the side panel all want a pointer and a wide screen.

The four panels

The map fills the screen. Everything else lives in one panel beside it, which you can drag wider or collapse to a rail.

Panel	What it holds
Map	The six tools, and the record of whichever waypoint is selected
Challenges	The prompt, reward and veto cost for one waypoint at a time
Power-ups	What each power-up costs and how long it lasts
Issues	Everything wrong with the board right now, split into what blocks publishing and what is only worth a look

Drawing the map

There are six tools with associated keybinds.

Tool	Key	What it does
Select	V	Inspects a waypoint. Dragging one moves it
Point	C	Drops a waypoint wherever you clicked
Road	R	Places a road between waypoints
Start	S	Makes that waypoint the starting line
Finish	F	Makes that waypoint the finish line
Delete	D	Removes the waypoint or road you clicked

Esc returns to Select. Delete removes the selected waypoint along with every road on it. Ctrl/Cmd + S saves.

Selecting a waypoint opens its record: its coordinates, its name, its arrival radius, which roads lead off it, and whether it is the start or the finish.

Arrival radius is how close a phone has to be before the waypoint counts as reached. It is 25 metres by default. Widen it where GPS struggles, under trees or between tall buildings, and keep it tight where two waypoints sit close together.

Start and finish

A board has exactly one of each, and they have to be two different waypoints. For a loop that ends where it began, place a separate finish next to the start.

The first waypoint you drop becomes the start. The finish carries no challenge, because reaching it is the whole objective, so handing the finish role to a waypoint that already has a challenge discards that challenge.

Writing challenges

The Challenges panel edits one waypoint at a time, listed in the order a team walking from the start would meet them.

Field	What it is
Prompt	What a team has to photograph. For most challenges this is the entire standard
Coin reward	5 to 40 coins, in fives. Paid to the first team to clear it, and to nobody after
Veto time penalty	15 minutes to 4 hours. What declining this challenge costs
Grading criteria	Optional, and folded away. Must show, Fails if, and Acceptable ambiguity

The veto penalty is a cooldown in a team race, seconds added to the clock in a solo time trial, and nothing at all in a casual run. You write one number and each mode spends it its own way.

Power-ups

Three power-ups exist, and the board sets what each one costs and how long it runs. You currently cannot add custom power-ups.

Power-up	Default cost	Default duration
Nerf Dart, freezes a rival team	10 coins	5 minutes
Tracker Off, hides your own position	25 coins	10 minutes
Challenge Skip, bypasses a challenge with no veto penalty	100 coins	Instant

Saving, and who gets to edit

There are two saves doing different things.

1. The draft in your browser

   Every edit is written to local storage as you make it. This is what survives a refresh, a crash, or a dropped connection. It never leaves the machine.

2. The save to the server

   The Save button, or Ctrl/Cmd + S. The first one gives the board an address and hands your browser an edit key. The server keeps only a hash of that key.

That key decides who can change the board, publish it, and take it down again.

Link	Grants
/design/{id}	Read only. Anyone holding it can look, and can fork their own copy
/design/{id}#key=…	Full edit. Opening it copies the key into that browser and strips it out of the address bar

Forking takes a full copy of a board: new waypoints, new challenges, new id, new edit key. Nothing links the copy back to the original, and the original is untouched. It is how you build on somebody else’s board, and how you get an editable version of one you can only view.

Publishing to the gallery

Publishing lists a board in the public gallery, where anyone can find it, race it, or fork it. It asks for three things: the edit key, no unsaved changes, and no blocking errors. The gallery is for boards people want to share.

It is reversible. Removing a board hides it from the gallery and leaves it on your device, ready to publish again.

Publishing is not what makes a board raceable. You can launch races from boards in the public gallery as well as every board this device drew and never published. See Set up a race for what that means on the day.

Import and export

Export writes the whole board to a JSON file: waypoints, roads, challenges, power-up prices. Import reads one back, replacing whatever is on screen.

It is the way to back a board up and to move one to another machine. The file carries no edit key, so sharing it shares a copy rather than control.

Next

Set up a raceGet a board, decide who referees, open a lobby, and get everybody into it with one code.

Runway is in Alpha release

Rules, data formats, and APIs change without notice, and databases may be wiped between releases. Runway is an independent, fan-made game, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with Jet Lag: The Game, Wendover Productions, or Half as Interesting.