The Seven Faces of Doomsday

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Unlike Star Fleet Battles, “doomsday” never came to the Car Wars gaming system. Compendium 2nd edition made great strides towards compiling and revising everything, but several loose threads were left untied while Aeorduel, Tanks, and the new 5th edition came along to muddy the waters yet again.

The net result of this is that there isn’t a definitive edition of the game in existence. (5th edition can resolve this… but it hasn’t yet.)

Off the top of my head, here are the major versions of Car Wars:

* The Original Black Pocketbox Edition

* Scott Haring’s Deluxe Car Wars compilation/revision

* First Edition GURPS Autoduel (featuring Scott Haring’s pre-Vehicles ‘port’ of the Car Wars rules)

* The Car Wars Compendium (Second Edition)

* Second Edition GURPS Autoduel (featuring Christopher Burke’s tweaks to GURPS Vehicles)

* The new 5th Edition Release

Of course, the are several incremental steps between these milestones– what with new gadgets and rules coming out with each ADQ and supplement….

Chassis and Crossbow, the major Car Wars “sub-genre”, comes in 3 flavors: the ADQ 1/3 version, the Dueltrack version, and the “Mutant Zone” version.

I tend to think of GURPS Vehicles as being the ultimate evolution of Car Wars. That may not be entirely true, but it helps to comfort me with a feeling that the Car Wars concept has been supported and developed by Steve Jackson Games over a much longer continuous period of time.

In trolling the web I’ve found a few positive reviews of 5th edition Car Wars like this one:

http://www.rpg.net/forums/phorum/rf08/read.php?f=338&i=10&t=4

However I haven’t found anything positive regarding the GURPS Vehicles varieties of Car Wars. There is some good resources for the brave over on GURPS Net, though:

http://gurpsnet.sjgames.com/Archive/Vehicles/Autoduel/

I do own a copy of GURPS Vehicles, GURPS Mecha, and even GURPS Traveller Starships. I admit that I really don’t have a clue on how to get any play out of them. (And I always thought I was pretty smart for being able to understand Car Wars, SFB, and Battletech….)

Everything I Needed to Know About Computer Science I Learned From Steve Jackson

“SharpDevelop was designed for Windows, which as of now, does not have the range of developer-targeted operating system services that Linux does. In Linux, there is really no reason to code a custom `grep’ and `sed’ for MD, we can just use the same code as these tools do. The less code in MD, the fewer bugs we have to deal with and the more time we have to spend on features that will make MD shine.

“In addition to maintainability, we get another freebie by using standard toolkits: consistancy. A Linux sysadmin, no matter where he is, knows how the system’s grep generally works. He does not need to look at the manpage each time he uses the tool because it is the same.”

– from Ben Maurer’s blog:

http://codeblogs.ximian.com/blogs/benm/archives/000131.html

This post illustrates how Ben Maurer and Steve Jackson operate according to the same principles of design. Just substitute “GM” for “Linux Sys Admin”, “GURPS basic set” for “toolkit”, and think of “MD” (MonoDevelop) as being a sort of world book….

But there are other principles at work in good design:

“There’s one kind of simplicity that I like to call simplexity. When you take something incredibly complex and try to wrap it in something simpler, you often just shroud the complexity. You don’t actually design a truly simple system. And in some ways you make it even more complex, because now the user has to understand what was omitted that they might sometimes need. That’s simplexity. So to me, simplicity has to be true, in the sense that the further down you go the simpler it gets. It shouldn’t get more complicated as you delve down.”

– Anders Hejlsberg (Designer of C#)

http://www.artima.com/intv/simplexity.html

I think Gary Gygax’s original AD&D is a good example of “simplexity.” People are complex. Wrapping them up into “class” and level” concepts merely shrouds their complexity.

The GURPS Basic Set, however, is a good example of “true simplicity.” The abstractions used in GURPS pretty well encapsulate everything that really goes into the whole concept of “character”. And the simplicity is actually “true” in some sense. A “fighter” might be pretty good at sneaking around even though he’s technically not a “thief”– just like a programmer might also be a good musician.

Of course, I also think Ogre and Car Wars are examples of good design, too.

RPG History According to Kevin Siembieda

“1986, Steve Jackson Games® releases GURPS®, the Generic Universal Role Playing System. Not take anything away from Steve Jackson, ‘cuz he is one of the great game designers or our industry, but the idea of a “universal” game system wasn’t new. Palladium Books had been doing for six years, starting with our first publication back in 1981. Today, those same basic rule and concept of play are still the foundation of our role-playing game, have spawned mega-hit RPG after hit, and is more popular than ever. “

http://www.palladiumbooks.com/profile.html

Okay. I was there.

The first gaming stuff I ever bought was the black pocket box Car Wars and the Double Arena expansion set, the Basic D & D boxed set with the Green Dragon on the cover, and an unbelievably weird game called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I continued to buy stuff for those games over the next several years, and also ended up playing the original First Edition AD&D, Gamma World, and Battletech.

I remember what the 80s gaming scene was like. And I remember vividly the fear and trembling with which I opened that GURPS box so long ago. Reading and playing that material with those first few world books that were released, it quickly became obvious that the bar for RPGs had been raised.

There’s a lot more to GURPS than simply coming up with a cross-genre “universal” system.

If you look at the early RPG’s, you see a lot of repetition and variation among the same set of ideas. You had attributes, classes, alignments, saving throws, and levels. Each of these ideas were generally made up of simple rules, but as the systems were extended with new rules, it would take more and more rules to make things to work and work together. In programming, we call this sort of thing a “kludge”. Kludges can work, but as you add features to them they tend to get unstable and unwieldy.

What Steve Jackson did with GURPS is this: He took all of the RPG ideas and came up with a higher level abstraction that could easily model any role playing character or situation. Levels disappeared and were replaced with “points”– a much more flexible and accurate representation of character value. Alignments disappeared and were replaced with more generic mental disadvantages and quirks. Classes disappeared and were replaced with generic advantages and skills lists. (An elven fighter/mage and a bionic superhero with psionic powers could be designed with ease. GURPS made blending various “class” concepts a cinch.) Extraneous attributes that weren’t really useful for anything were thrown out. Saving throws were derived naturally from attributes, skills, and advantages. “Monsters” were constructed with the same generic rules, instead of requiring a separate system.

Steve didn’t invent every single one of these ideas himself– he acknowledged his debt to other games. But he was the first to compile a system with this elegant combination of simplicity and scope. Steve applied the principles of good design to RPGs. His design was like that of a good software engineer. And not only did he solve the character/NPC/monster/multi-class problem, but he also hard wired his system to be easy to use in play and also to emphasize Role Playing over “Hack and Slash.”

Because GURPS is such a good design, its source books are easy to adapt to other systems. Sourcebooks from other systems are easy to adapt to GURPS. Because GURPS books don’t have to repeat the same old rules over and over, space is freed up and authors have room to try to make the definitive RPG treatment of their subject matter. Over time, GURPS has gone from being the simplest RPG to use to now having the most elaborate collection of optional add-ons of any system. And as far as background for science fiction campaigns, lots of settings have gotten RPG world books that probably wouldn’t have been covered otherwise. Settings that haven’t scored their own world books can be campaigned in by using the generic rules in GURPS Space and Ultra-tech.

Palladium has always had good artwork, fun books, lots of adventures, and innovative concepts. I’m sure the system has evolved over time. But GURPS set the standard for cohesion, consistency, modularity, and scope– and it has not been surpassed. Its more than just one the “same basic rule and concept” for several genres. It’s one system for any genre.

“Where the Right of Way Goes to the Biggest Guns…”

This advertisement for Palladium’s old “Road Hogs” supplement sounds suspiciously familiar:

“New rules are provided for vehicular combat in a world where those with the fastest cars, biggest guns, and coolest heads get the right of way.”

http://store.palladiumbooks.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=503old&Category_Code=Sale

Scott Haring to Run Car Wars Tournament at DREAMATION 2004

“B278: The Double Exposure Winter Car Wars Championship. Double Exposure presents Steve Jackson’s game of automobile demolition, run by none other that Scott Haring, the product line manager. This elimination tournament will follow standard rules. The grand prize will be a custom-made trophy for DREAMATION 2004! Saturday, 4:00PM – 10:00PM; One Session; All Materials Provided. Beginners Welcome; Fun, All Ages.”

http://www.dexposure.com/d2004sched.html

[FASA] Missing ‘Mechs Revisited

I guess it’s just as well that the “missing mechs” are gone. Although it’s hard for me to conceive of the Battletech universe without the units that appeared in the original 3025 catalogue (er, I mean, Technical Readout…), those original Mecha were the source of many an irritation.

The problem was that the design system seems to have been made first before the decision came out to use those licensed mecha images. You could not design the most of the mecha pictured in the 3025 Readout!!

A classic example is the Rifleman. If you look at the picture, it should have 4 humongous lasers. The design in the Readout specified two lasers and two autocannon. To make matters worse, the Rifleman couldn’t fire even two of his lasers without generating lots of extra heat…. Grrrr….

Then compare the Marauder to the Warhammer. The Warhammer’s PPC’s should be meaner and longer ranged. The autocannon on the Marauder should be much meaner than an AC/5. The Warhammer should have 6 monstrous single shot rockets– not to mention an extra pair of LRM/10s in the side torsos.

And speaking of rockets… where exactly are these mechs supposed to store all the reloads? From the pictures, the Archer should have at most one or two reloads. (Those are mighty big rockets in there….)

The problems go on and on. Robotech weaponry simply does not exist on the basic lists of the original BattleTech game. The ‘mechs look good… but their designs don’t really match their pictures. I guess it’s a good thing then that these Robotech mechs are being removed. Even though they were the Cannonical Mechs of the game for so long, they still don’t really fit with the Battletech idiom anyway!

[FASA] The Case of the Missing ‘Mechs

I was pretty irritated waaay back when the Car Wars Compendium altered the VFRP so that it fired 6 1d rockets instead of 3 2d rockets. This invalidated dozens of old designs and ruined a perfectly good weapon. (Thankfully, the the 5th edition has set things right again.) I see now that this sort of thing is very minor compared to what the Battletech crowd has had to go through.

I noticed recently that they no longer sell the basic Battletech set with a set of plastic figures. I asked a miniatures buff about them and he told me about the Robotech lawsuit. As a consequence of it, all of those units have been erased from Battletech’s history. It’s just like Back to the Future.

Ouch.

(Hmmm…. So that’s why Battletech products no longer feature ‘mechs like the Warhammer and the Rifleman. What kind of ‘mech does Natasha Kerensky pilot now…? What does this do the old novels like Decision at Thunder Rift…?)

It’s really too bad. My favorite mechs to play include the Griffin, the Wolverine, the Battlemaster, and the Marauder. A lot of FASA’s other designs just look like walking boxes with missile ports on them. Oh well.

I still haven’t found any good information regarding FASA’s closing, but the following site outlines the missing mechs and also shows their precursors from the anime series:

http://brianscache.com/unseen/

[Ogre] CP down… Mk III Destroyed

This time I played without any howitzers. Buying 4 in the Mark III scenario would only leave 4 armor units! I wasn’t brave enough to try that.

I got 6 GEVs, 3 Heavies, and 3 Missile Tanks. I broke my infantry into two separate units consisting of 2 “two’s” and 2 “three’s” each.

My GEV’s did well in the first couple turns. The heavy tanks quickly moved in to support them. Good rolls ended up taking out the Main Battery and half of the Secondary Batteries. Woo-hoo! (I was only counting on getting one of the Secondaries….)

Then my luck ran out. My tread attacks failed. Just about all of them. (Ouch.) Anytime a Missile Tank was in position, I took 1-1 odds on the secondary batteries. All of these shots missed.

He had one missile left and was far enough down the board that he could destroy my CP on the next turn regardless of his move. I took 4-1 odds on the missile and put the rest against treads. If I took him down to 2 MP’s and got rid of the missile, I’d have a small chance of saving the CP.

Then the 4-1 missed. I rolled a one! The tread attacks all missed. Argh!

The Ogre killed the CP and turned to flee. He rolled over most of the rest of my units. I scored enough tread hits now that he was down to 1 MP with 10 hexes left to go to leave the board. I had only two GEVs left at this point and bad rolls on the next few turns would mean a solid chance for a Total Victory for the Ogre.

My luck came back. Of the next six shots, five hit!! That left eight chances to score just one more hit. No problem– but complete failure was still a possibility. (I know some people that routinely fail in these situations….) A couple of turns later, the Ogre was destroyed.

A rough game this time around. This is the Ogre I remember from the days of my youth: unstoppable and frightening. I really have to rethink my strategy against the Mark III….

Repairs and Retrofitting

I noticed in the Battletech Master Rules that they’ve come up with rules for salvaging equipment from the battlefield. You can now cobble together “Frankenstein” tanks and mechs after all the dust has settled. Neat! That really improves the game a lot.

Even from the very beginning, though, Car Wars always had good repair and retrofitting rules.

I never liked the aspect of D&D type games where you gain “levels”, and “hit-points”, and take potions to get “healed”. I guess it’s essential for the game mechanic to provide the illusion of “progress”– but it’s completely bizarre when you look at the whole genre. Why should you have to hack on a 30th level fighter with a battle axe for hours before he dies…. Weird.

Anyway, Car Wars makes sense. It’s simple, too. A duelist fresh out of Amateur Night can add extra armor to his car and upgrade the tires. If he defeats a guy with a better weapon, he can rip it out and soup up his car or just sell it for salvage. It all makes sense. I’ll take a Division 30 Luxury Car over a 30th Level Fighter any day. (No wonder Lou Coatney refers to D&D as a pestilence…. I doubt he’d appreciate Car Wars either, though….)

As far as 5th edition goes… I appreciate how they’ve summarized everything you need to know to repair a car over in the vehicle description. Handy… though I have to shuffle through my Starter Sets to find them when I need to look it up.

I still eagerly await the 5th edition design and retrofitting rules to be released. They are, IMHO, the secret strength of Car Wars that clinched it’s superiority over Battletech and Star Fleet Battles for so many years. Without it, 5th edition Car Wars adventuring and campaigning is nigh unto crippled.

[FASA] Battletech Master Rules

I picked this up at the used book store last night– the Battletech counterpart to the “Car Wars Compendium”.

It’s not a redesign of the old game, but it does clarify and compile a lot of stuff. It leaves out Aeorotech, though– but that’s okay, we never really used it! (Though LAM rules would have been nice for the transformable Jet type mecha….)

Most significantly, it adds equations for establishing the “Base Value” of a unit. (Very similar to the BPV in Star Fleet Battles.) Also there are several scenarios built around the BVs. The Battletech boxed sets that I’ve seen really don’t come with any decent scenarios, so that’s very handy. Finally, there are equations for calculating the cost of units. I don’t know if they are any good– if they’re the same ones that were in Mechwarrior, then they give the idiotic result that one Atlas can be bought for the price of 3 Locusts.

Many of my irritations with the system are addressed here, so I feel bad about slamming the game a few posts back.

On the other hand… I’m especially sad to see that Fasa really is gone.

(Moment of silence, please.)

Here’s a link on that:

http://dumpshock.com/FASA-FAQ.html#4.1

I really wish I had more details on this:

“After 20 happy-and difficult-years in business, FASA Corporation is closing its doors.

“The adventure gaming world has changed much in those years, and it is time for the founders of FASA to move on.”

What are the market forces that they recognized there and in what way are those forces going to affect Steve Jackson Games?