Topic: So You Want To Design an Amazing Race Leg? | A comprehensive guide

[Pi]

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Sources
Part 3: Organization
Part 4: Workflow
Part 5: Conclusion

[Pi]

Part 1: Introduction

Have you ever got the inkling to design your own Amazing Race leg? Between the eight RFF Design Challenges, the Wishlist thread in the Discussion section, and the Fantasy Game Board (a section only available to those with an account that has made at least five posts), RFF has been a place for fans of the show to do just that. I’ve been a TAR fan for over a dozen years and have been experimenting with designing my own fantasy routes and legs for nearly as long. During that time, I’ve kept track of lots of the tips and tricks. I decided to curate this guide to give you a perspective of how a leg is designed, from beginning to end.

Hopefully, this guide will help or inspire you. If it does, I’d love to hear about it Go ahead and post if you have something to add to the guide - I’m sure I haven’t thought of everything! I always enjoy talking about leg design and I hope this thread can spark some good conversations. (Psst - if you’re not on RFF yet, it’s easy to sign up and join in the discussion. )

Designing legs for fun as a fan of the show is quite different from the way that World Race Productions designs their legs. I don’t have any inside knowledge of how they operate - it’s probably quite different from how I do! Since this is just one fan’s perspective, your mileage can and will vary. That’s okay, and to be expected! We all have different tastes, opinions, and objectives. This is my way of going about it. With that said, let’s jump in.


First of all, why do we create our own Amazing Race legs? There are a few good reasons.
- For fun, pure and simple.
- To engage with the show. Especially when it’s the offseason, designing legs and playing games furnishes a supply of Race content.
- To investigate what our own travel to a particular place could look like. If there’s a place on my bucket list that I am not going to travel to anytime soon, I can live vicariously through the planning process in the meantime.
- Conversely, after traveling to a place, we can apply and share the things we experienced in that place via a design.
- Perhaps the foremost reason is to just learn more about the world. I have always been extremely curious about geography and culture across the globe. Watching the Amazing Race and designing my own legs has been a major outlet for that.

What should be the goal of creating a leg? This will vary from person to person, and that’s okay- there’s no right or wrong way to design. I have found that my goal is to design a leg at the intersection of original, interesting, culturally relevant, and realistic. I don’t hold myself strictly to these criteria, especially as they are somewhat subjective, but I find that most good designs hit these marks. Now, it can be difficult to be completely novel when hundreds of legs have already been created by the various franchises and by designers. It’s okay to design in a place that isn’t currently going to be visited soon due to geopolitical or safety reasons, and if a design is just for fun, then it doesn’t have to be realistic.

Another goal could be to aim for a leg that a person from the part of the world in which you designed would approve of. If a local could see your design and think “That’s how I’d like to see this place showcased on the Amazing Race”, it is probably a successful design. Again, there’s no right or wrong way to go about it! Your goals may be different. The most important thing is to create something that YOU are happy with.

There’s basically no limit to the potential places to go and things to do- the world is your oyster. To narrow it down, a design generally starts with an inspiration, which can be an entire country, a specific location, or anything you see that makes you think “this would be a great task for TAR”. Inspirations can come from a photo, video, literature, blogs, recipes, the spoken word, or really just about anything.

If you’re reading this, you probably hold a good deal of curiosity about the world, and inspirations may come to you quite frequently. In fact, an inspiration may have popped into your mind since you began reading this post! However, just one inspiration does not fill out an entire leg. Once you have an inspiration for a leg, you will likely need to fill in other details to start building up the design. In the next post, I’ll detail the sources that I use for material. Expect that post to come tomorrow.

[Pi]

Part 2: Sources

If you have a seed of an idea for a leg but need more ideas for locations and tasks to round out your leg, you’ll need some sources of information. Luckily, there are many types of sources you can access, both on the Internet and off.

First, I’d like to promote good old-fashioned books. Libraries are wonderful, often underutilized resources, and I am lucky to have access to more high-quality books than I’ll ever read. Signing up for a library card was completely free! Books can be a great introduction to learning about a place and, despite the torrential amount of easily accessible information available on the web, I’ve come to prefer them as a starting point. Not all books are the same, however, and the ones I select tend to have detailed information on an area’s culture and feature color pictures.

I’ve found that the best books for these research purposes are classified in section 910-919 of the Dewey Decimal system (Geography & Travel). Sections 940-998 (History of places) and 390-394 (Customs) tend to be good as well, and 306.4 (Specific aspects of culture) and 305.8 (Ethnic and national groups) can sometimes be fruitful. The arts and cookbook sections can also have books that pertain to a particular country or culture.

Travel guides are a good starting place. Lonely Planet, Fodor’s, Moon, Bradt, and Rough Guide are names of popular series of travel guides. These books have specific and well-organized information about places to visit, as well as write-ups on the country’s culture. They also have practical information about traveling to the country (phrasebook, visa requirements, vaccines needed, and so on). Travel guides provide a good structure of a place, but information can be outdated- make sure to confirm details, especially if you’re reading from a book more than five years old.

Novels that mention a particular place or culture can be a great source. I’ve also found interesting books by searching for “ethnography” or “travelogue”. Tip: Even if you’re an adult, don’t overlook the children’s section at the library! Children’s books about countries tend to have a lot of pictures and usually hit on the main points of a country’s culture in an easy-to-read format.

(Note: You can tell I’m pretty enthusiastic about books. If you ever want to swap book recommendations, I’d be happy to!)

Magazines can also be a good source of information. I read National Geographic and Smithsonian through my library system. Travel & Leisure and National Geographic Travel (if you live in a country where that is still published) are germane as well.

The Internet, of course, provides a major source of information. There’s nothing wrong with starting with Wikipedia; articles titled “Culture of …” are valuable. Wikipedia can be a good jumping off point if you explore the sources cited. Wikivoyage.org has well-organized information and is a good source especially when there’s no travel guidebook published for an area you’re interested in.

Other good websites include:

• The travel sections of major media outlets such as the New York Times or CNN
• Atlas Obscura has a ton of great locations, which can be viewed on an interactive map
• AirBNB Experiences
• theculturetrip.com
• Google Arts & Culture

Travel blogs are wide-ranging and do a good job of interspersing pictures and video with text. YouTube videos can provide a lot of inspiration (I like the Geography Now series for information, especially about less-popular countries). When researching transportation, Rome2Rio.com helps to figure out how to get from A to B.

Although there are a lot of “stock” websites to lean on for information, I’ve found a lot of things just by searching for the right phrase on a search engine. Searches can look like *Guanajuato culture* or *Fulani traditions* or *what is unique to Kazakhstan* or *daily life in Borneo*. It tends to be more of an art than a science.

Tip: You can always search for information in a different language, then translate to your native language. There may be more information about a particular country in its official language or lingua franca than in English. For example, the French Wikipedia page for Algeria has about twice as many bytes as the English page. However, I can instantly translate the French page to English with my browser, giving me a lot more information for a little bit more work.

Other television shows can provide inspiration for where to go and what to do. I know that some have drawn inspiration from Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, and others are frequent viewers of the Travel Channel.

Perhaps the most underrated source of inspiration for TAR design can be your own travels! I know that when I travel, I like to take lots of pictures and always have good memories to think back on. What is different about the places you’ve traveled to vis-a-vis the place you call home? Plus, “your travels” isn’t limited to just your vacations: I’ve noticed interesting things at the local art museum and cultural center. Your friends and family may also have interesting travel or cultural stories that they would like to share.

That’s a lot of sources for inspiration, and it’s not even an exhaustive list! (Feel free to chime in with additional sources if you know of them.) When going through these sources, what do I do when I begin coming across things that would make for good material? I’ll detail how I stay organized in my next post, and then follow with how to tie it all together.

[Alenaveda]

I want to add to the outstanding description of the sources made by Pi social media apps. I have found inspiration for tasks or places in the posts that the engines of X, or Facebook or Instagram
show randomly everytime those apps are used.

[Pi]

Part 3: Organization

Keeping myself organized has been a major improvement to the process, as compared to when I first got excited about designing legs as a teenager. I had no trouble coming across places and inspirations, but then, when trying to finish out the leg, I’d often either a) not be able to come up with other good ideas for tasks and locations, leaving a lot of half-finished legs lying around, or b) fill out the leg with low-quality material just to finish, leaving a lot of half-baked legs lying around!

What has helped me is to create a Google Doc called “Idea Stage” where I keep my miscellaneous ideas and inspirations. I’ve separated it out by continent; each country for which I have items is given its own subheading. Items are listed below, which can be further grouped by city/region within the country or by other similarities (“Art”, “Sports/Games”, “Traditional Foods”, or specific cultures/ethnic groups).

Items, of course, can relate to multiple countries, so they can be filed in multiple places if needed. I have also created subheadings for cultural regions that span country borders (e.g. “Maghreb”, “Amazonia”) when the need arose.

Once I have enough material to make a leg, I create the leg and move it to a separate Google Doc called “Finished Legs”. Then, I can cut the items from the first document.

I’ve come across an interesting inspiration, filed it away, and then came back to it a year later after finding another good inspiration for that country. In those situations, I’ve been glad to have not abandoned the first idea just because it wasn’t enough to complete a design on its own.

Using multiple Google Docs is the system that has worked for me. Since I tend to bounce around all over the world when thinking about designs, organization is a must! It might be overkill if you don’t have trouble finishing a leg after finding a single inspiration, but my mind rarely goes from A to B like that.  

Speaking of finishing legs, my next post will be about that very subject!

In the meantime, share if you have any good organizational tips you’ve learned from your own projects.

[Pi]

Part 4: Workflow
Tying It All Together

You have a good inspiration or two, and can start to see a leg coming together. What’s next? There can still be several steps before a design is completed. I’ll go through the structure of the approach I usually take. I use word documents, though all or part of this could be done with a piece of paper or “journal page if that’s what you prefer to use.

If I’ve identified anything that I know for sure I want to include in the final design, I keep it at the top of the document, and then dive into additional sources as needed to look for leg-worthy material. It’s not strictly necessary to categorize your inspirations at this point, but I usually put things into lists: Task ideas, Location ideas, Fun Facts, and Photos/Videos. “Fun facts” can refer to the type of things Phil would narrate when introducing a new country, location, or task - for example, ”Athens is one of the world’s oldest cities, founded over 3,000 years ago”. These facts help to supplement your design choices; it can be easier to remember why and explain why you wanted to do a vanilla-related task in Madagascar if you’ve written down that “about 80% of the world's vanilla supply is produced in Madagascar, making it one of the country’s most important exports”.

Task ideas can come from finding interesting locations, or vice versa. If some tradition is particular to a certain city or region, be sure to keep that in mind. If you’ve identified a festival that you want to make the basis of part of a leg, you can search for what place the festival is held, and use that as a location. For the potential tasks you’ve picked out, think: Is it most appropriate for this task to be done in a stadium/market/mosque/whatever, or can I get creative?

When looking for inspirations, I encourage you to list all possible ideas. Just throw things out there for now; you can always pare it down later. I used to have a habit of stopping immediately upon finding just enough material to complete a leg (not necessarily a great leg, but a leg), but that’s certainly not the most thorough way to design. It’s okay to overshoot your initial expectations- in some cases, I’ve found that I can actually create two good legs in a location when I was initially hoping for just one.

I’ll take an aside here to mention that some places are simply going to be much more difficult to research and design in than others. There’s just not as much information out there about rural Burkina Faso or small Micronesian islands as there is about major cities and tourist regions. It should be expected that the process will be more slow-moving and sparse when designing in these areas; you might find only just enough. That being said, there’s never been a better time than the present for researching less well-known places, due to the growth of technology and democratization of information. You’d be surprised sometimes!

Once you’ve listed out a lot of ideas, you can start ranking your ideas and associating them with race elements. What items could work as a Detour side, Roadblock, Fast Forward? What is suited only for a minor task? Does anything need to come before or after another item for the leg in sequence? Are there collections of similar tasks that could be put together for the leg to flow smoothly?

I also like to check things out on a map. Where are the locations in relation to one another? I prefer to avoid unnecessary backtracking or illogical paths during a leg. Rome2Rio or your favorite map software can help you to get an idea of how teams would move from location to location throughout the leg.

It’s usually about this time in the design process that I pay a visit to the Reality Fan Wiki, a fan-created webpage for everything Amazing Race. Not only is there a page for every televised Amazing Race season (including international versions), there is a page for each leg with information about all locations visited and tasks done. There are also pages for every team and every country that has been visited. This wiki is an excellent resource! I use it to see whether the area I’m interested in designing has been visited before, and to check whether an idea I’ve found has been already done by an Amazing Race. (As I alluded to earlier in the guide, it is very difficult to be totally original after hundreds of legs and thousands of tasks have been designed by Race producers. If you find that an idea has been done before, you don’t have to feel discouraged; think of it as “good minds think alike”. )

At this point, the design begins to take shape. I usually start drafting a “Wikipedia-style” bullet point summary of the leg(s). Each location is listed in order, along with any planes, trains, buses, ferries, etc. The synopsis of each task is also written below. If you’re a more visual person, you could also represent your design with a map. There are many websites/apps that allow you to place a pin on each location, and then you could draw lines between locations or experiment with animations.

Keep in mind that this can be a very iterative process! So many things can change, even at this stage. I’ve split one leg into two, completely changed what city I’m designing in within the country, and more.

I’ve also given up at this point. A couple years ago, I started out trying to make a leg in the Isle of Skye. It’s such a cool place to read about, so I should be able to come up with a leg, right? However, I just couldn’t find good material for a design. (I’m sure it’s out there, I just was not finding it). I came to a point where I had to be honest with myself that it wasn’t happening despite my best wishes and that I shouldn’t try to force it.

So, you may not be successful, despite your best effort. If that’s the case, don’t delete your work! What if you come across some items later on that would make for good material? Your future self would thank you for not deleting your initial progress. And even if you are able to pare down a long list of ideas and finish a leg design, keep what didn’t make it into the leg in your notes. You never know when you could use a backup task or substitution, or when you could come across more inspirations that could be added to previous unused material to result in an expanded design(s).

That recaps the procedure I use to go from loose ideas to a concrete design. If you’re able to design in a more streamlined way, by all means, cut out any unneeded steps. The goal should be to create something you like, using whatever process works best for you.

[Pi]

Part 5: Conclusion

It’s been good for me to type this all out! I’ve learned a lot over the years, and collecting and applying these principles has personally resulted in a big improvement in quality. Quality has become far more important than quantity to me over time, and I have been able to substantially improve satisfaction with the designs I create.

The Amazing Race is one of the best television shows for fans to create their own custom “fantasy” materials. I have been highly influenced by the folks here at RFF and our Fantasy Game section, and I can say that RFF has been the best place for discussion of all types of Amazing Race content, real-life and fan-made. These tips given in this guide were written with the aim of designing “fanfic” legs, however. Fantasy game designers don’t operate the same way that World Race Productions does. In a fantasy game, you don’t have to explicitly consider camera angles, potential TV ratings, seasonality at filming time, security, minimizing costs, what the network executives think, etc. It is okay to create your designs without using all the constraints of the real show.

If you’ve created some designs and aren’t sure what to do with them, consider sharing with a friend who is also into the Amazing Race, or feel free to join the conversation here at RFF. While the number of projects launched in the Fantasy Game Board (reminder: only available to those with an account that has made at least five posts) isn’t as high as it once was, there are still a lot of passionate Race fans that are involved. RFF members have launched voting games (where users make posts to help their favorite teams) and traditional games (where members sign up, create a team, and complete challenges given by the host). Others have also showcased their custom races in this section, with no game elements attached.

Designing Race legs can be tough sometimes. What if you’re just starting out and it all feels like a steep climb? First, we all began somewhere, and most people who stick with it improve a lot over time. Second, it might simply take a while to finish a design- it often does for me. Third, it doesn’t hurt to just go for it and not overthink it too much; it’s not the end of the world if you don’t finish with something perfect. If things still feel overwhelming, you can not worry about the specifics of each leg and instead just try designing a route. Users have posted their routes in this thread.

You can always post on RFF and bounce things off of us. There is a good chance that one of our members will write a constructive reply. Not to speak too much on behalf of others, but I think a lot of us would be happy to give feedback and advice on ideas you have as well as answer any questions.

I’m sure that I missed something over the course of the guide. Throw your comments at me! I also hope that these posts inspire conversation about Amazing Race design. It can be a fun and rewarding activity, and it’s always better to have correspondents with whom you can discuss and share the fruits of your labor. So thanks, RFF, for all the inspiration and community! And thank you, reader, for making it this far.
The world is waiting!