Supporting Car Wars: Foundations for Growth and Development Part III

In developing a campaign setting for a Car Wars setting, it’s crucial to know what is available at any given point of time. Therefore, any list of equipment for Car Wars must include the date at which it became available. Vehicle designs should also include the date the car was produced– and variants and options should list their dates as well.

With this information, campaigns could be run in specific time periods anywhere from the Chassis and Crossbow days on into the far future. The Sunday Drivers/Crash City scenarios have entirely different flavors depending on the equipment that is around!

This sort of thing has long been a feature of Star Fleet Battles, and Battletech partakes of it to some extent, too. I’ve long been curious to know what kind of world it was where the Hotshot design could take the Division 15 championships 2 years in a row. What kind of vehicles were they dueling against? Was the Hotshot actually a thing to be feared on those freeways of yore? The background material just doesn’t say…. It’d be a lot more interesting if it did!

Taking this concept even further, you could build random encounter tables by year and by geographic location. And with that you could create scenarios and campaigns based on long distance travel in different areas.

Finally, one of the most exciting things about playing Car Wars back in the day was having to adapt as new equipment became available. With the above information, the Referee can start the campaign at a specific time and place, and then steadily release new gadgets on a quarterly basis. Players that don’t upgrade their vehicles will get to face off against opponents that have invested in retrofitting….