Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

We played a modified version of the classic Midville scenario yesterday afternoon.  It took a mere four hours to play it out.  This was my first time playing and I was rather pleased with it overall– especially after hearing about some of the dirty tactics others have used in the game.  We still have reservations about the rules for burst effects, missed shots, and grenades– and we play pretty fast and loose when figuring out where a cycle ends up after its killed– but nevertheless a good time was had by all.

In a previous scenario, the Memphis police department was nearly wiped out.  The PC’s were deputized shortly thereafter… and then were warned that cyclists would more than likely attack due to the percieved weakness of the locals.  The PC’s played the part of both the duellists and the police, and the cyclists took an extra $20,000 or so to make up for the extra dollar value of the PC vehicles.

As the Mad Dog player, I decided to try to use cycle designs that looked like the original counters that came with the Sunday Drivers pocket box.  I didn’t take the time to design them all by hand, so I used the original vehicle guide cycles extensively.  Here’s my line up: (C-2 and C-16) Flash-II, (C-3) Hawk, (C-5, C-19) Maxi w/ sidecar, (C-8, C-12, C-15, and C21) Mad Dog Cycle w/ sidecar, (C-9) Taurus w/ sidecar, (C-10, C-13) Scrapper w. sidecar, (C-11, C-24) Spider, (C-13) Aquarius, (C-17) Santa Cruz, (C-1 Tornado.  The Mad Dog cycle carried an MG and two HR’s with a side car carrying an SS and an SMG armed passenger.

Here are my first five cycles entering downtown:

Chain was no problem.  Just loose some front armor and take a hazard.  Mines on the other hand, are bad news.  The locals can block off any street they want with this stuff… and you’re going to have to break through one of these things.  After the dust had settled I’d wished I’d taken a cheap van and a few really cheap cycles that were designed for the express purpose of busting through the road block.

Pedestrians located in doorways, etc. were impossible to hit.  Well…  11’s and 12’s might have gotten ‘em.  Make your cyclists all Cyclist-0 Gunner-1 for a better chance of hitting stuff.  My MG’s accomplished very little.  But with RR’s and RL’s… you can blow up most of the wimpy buildings in a second or two and then take out the pedestrians that flee the rubble with your burst effects of the following turn.  HR’s can speed up the process of bringing a building down if there happens to be several pedestrians giving you grief from it.  Note that any pedestrian so foolish as to shoot from the rooftop will automatically die when the building collapses.  Also, keep in mind that side mounted weapons on the side cars– and even SMG armed passengers– can really earn their keep in this scenario.  

My heart sank when my opponent mentioned that a certain pedestrain had a plunger.  Here the surviving Mad Dogs split up after the cross walk went down due to the militia’s explosives:

The Mad Dogs took down the hospital and killed most of the rifle-armed guards that tried to flee the scene.  Most of the cycles went straight down Kazango leveling every building on their left and then leaving the map.  Grenade launchers made life difficult for me, but the fact that most of my cycles had sidecars on the left side was the only reason I had any success at all in this scenario.  A half dozen of my cycles stayed near the area where they entered the map to take out some underdefended buildings.  The rest braved the fire of the militia men on third and the duellists on second and first.  It took about 8 seconds of game time to play this out– we didn’t bother using phased movement, either.

I ended up losing 2.5 cycles to grenades, 2.5 to mines, one to a portable flame thrower that hit a powerplant from the side, and three cycles to vehicular fire.  Note: don’t bother taking cycles to town with anything less tough than PR tires.  Also… super power plants are much more survivable than small ones– expect to take damage from the side.  (We played with just 2033 era equipment, so I didn’t have the luxury of using component armor….)

If my opponent had left mine counters on the sidewalk next to the over-walk that got blown up, I’d have had a much harder time.  Also, mines and a vehicle guarding the other end of Kanzango would have made my killing spree a lot more costly.  The locals have a lot of ground to defend because even a lone damaged RL-armed cycle can drop a building in 6 seconds if there’s nobody nearby to stop him.  A lone pedestrian with 4 grenades can take out a cycle or two, but he can’t get anywhere fast.  The cars are monstrously strong against cycles… but they can’t be everywhere.

The final victory point tally for the Mad Dogs was 126 points for buildings and 80 points for killing pedestrians (5 Militia, 11 Hospital Staff, and 5 Hospital Guards.)  This was plenty of points to make the 50 point margin for a decisive Mad Dog victory.  However, my opponent didn’t stoop to such tactics as taking out my cyclists with his burst effects (the way I did against a couple of Militia men….)

It looks like the locals have to spread out a little more… and entice the cycles to come in and split up.  If the defense appears too strong on certain streets, the cycles simply won’t go there.  This was the only mistake on my opponents part in an otherwise devious and spirited defense.  Of course his PC’s vehicles may not have been in the thick of the fighting because he wanted them to survive the battle… but this will have its own consequences in due time….  (He claimed he didn’t know where the cycles were going to go, so he was unsure of where to commit them until they were already gone….  Riiiiight. :)) 

I’ve been concerned lately that I’ve had 90% of my blog focus on Car Wars and hardly anything about Star Fleet Battles or Battletech.  It looks like the next several game sessions will be more autodueling madness, so to tide you over until I can play those other games, here’s a link for you.

 This other Jeff blogger/gamer has had similar thoughts as me, but he probably describes them as good or better.  Enjoy!

If you’re role-playing in the Car Wars setting, it’d be nice to have a little bit more to go by than “Driver-1 Gunner-3.”  However, elaborate rules such as those presented GURPS Autoduel and Autoduel Champions seem a bit overboard for a game with such high death rates.  The heart of any duelling campaign is, of course, the combats.  Secondary to that is the maintenance, design and development of the character’s vehicles.  Car Wars addresses these issues admirably, but we’d like to have some additional “glue” to connect the scenarios in our campaign together.  These rules attempt to encourage character development and quick colorful play. 

Character Background

Car Wars characters do not have attributes or other such stats.  They are fully descibed by a short list of skills and their associated levels.  These rules aim to keep it that way and avoid the additional complexity that more elaborate systems entail.  Instead of a confusing list of advantages, disadvantages, and quirks, Car Wars characters have a brief paragraph describing their background and major fields of experience.

Characters generally begin the game with 30 skill points and no prestige.  Your background first of all needs to be consistent with that fact.  If there are a few broad non-combat skills that you feel are appropriate, you can identify them specifically in order to differentiate the skill levels your character has acheived.  In general you should spend no more than 50 skill points on these.  (For a list of possible additional skills to use, see Compendium 2e, Midville, or AQD 7/1– but feel free to go beyond this list if you’re feeling creative.)

Task Rolls

There four levels of difficulty for a task roll:

4+ — Trivial

6+ — Easy

8+ — Moderate

10+ — Hard

12+ — Difficult

The referee decides the difficulty of a particular task and the player responds by pointing out any additional bonuses or penalties that are relevant based on his character description.  A character that achieved a rank of First Class in the Boy Scout commandos might argue that he would get a +1 for stealth or +2 to camoflage his vehicle.  A character with a weakness toward members of the opposite sex might admit he has a penalty of -3 to resist the wiles of a femme fatale.

In any case, the game should move quickly.  The task roll is there just to add a bit of uncertainty to the game and wringing every last bonus point out of a vague character concept is against the spirit of the rules.  The referee has the final say, as always.

Survival Points

I find as a referee that characters often end up with a chance to die that’s based completely on the outcome of a single die roll.  I usually allow the NPC’s I’m playing to get cocky at this point… or give my player a 1/5th of a second to turn a different facing toward his opponent.  It’s been fine so far, but the game could lose a bit of its suspense if my players ever notice me pulling my punches.  In order to address this issue I’m adding “Survival Points” to the game in order to give the player characters a bit more cinimatic flair during key points of the game.

Survival points are awarded for the following actions on the part of the player(s):

Rolling a 12 when rolling a task for any noncombat skill (1 point)

For good role playing during a scene (1 to 3 points)

For staying on task during a combat and keeping things moving quickly (1 point)

For not taking advantage of obscure or unclear rules to unfairly dominate a combat (1 point)

For creating a character background that is interesting but not overly “munchkin” (1 to 3 points)

Survival points can be spent in the following instances:

To reduce the to hit roll against the character for a single shot on a single turn (1 point per -1 penalty)

To increase a die roll on a control roll (4 points per +1 bonus)

To purchase and develop additional non-combat skills (1 point = 1 skill point)

Survival points are awarded after each scene or combat.  They provide a way for the referee to encourage the kind of behaviors that improve the overall game experience of everyone involved and increase the survivability of the PC’s.  Also, I’ve noticed that the general skill points that were added to the game as of the Deluxe edition were pretty much always used to increase gunner skill in our games.  These rules will encourage the development of other character qualities without taking away from such critical areas.

That’s pretty much it!  Enjoy these rules if you want to role play but don’t have time to master the multi-volume monstrosity that is the modern end-all-be-all rpg.  Don’t get a headache when all you need… is to “roll two dice and pray.”

New from Amex… the Womp Rat! 

Tired of your enemies chewing up your armor on the side of your car that your guns are mounted?  Feel like your division 5 car is a little one sided?  Not sure whether you want your opponents well done or blown up?  The Womp Rat is the answer to your duelling needs! 

Loaded with two complementary weapon systems on opposite sides, you can choose between rockets and flames any time you like.  If one of your weapons get shot off, just turn the other facing against your opponents.  No muss, no fuss.  Stay in the game twice as long… with the Amex Womp Rat! 

WOMP RAT — Compact, standard chassis, light suspension, medium power plant, 4 standard tires, driver only, FT with 8 shots ammo left, RL with 8 shots ammo right.  Armor: F 25, R 32, L 32, B 20, T 0, U 0.  Accel. 5, HC 1, top speed 97.5.  Weighs 3,654 lbs., costs $4,997. 

MML VARIANT — Change RL to MML, slope armor, and upgrade tires to HD.  Add two points of armor.  Top Speed 100.  Weighs 3,596 lbs., costs $4,998. 

[Design notes:  This vehicle was built with the standard design rules that remained consistent from the pocket box all the way to the compendiums.  If you are using it with 5th editions rules, you will want to revise the other designs as I described here so that the cars are all built according to the same standards.  The medium power plant used here has 8 DP in the original game, standard tires have 4 DP and the HD tires have 6 DP.  With those caveats for 5th edition, this vehicle can be used with every version of the game-- but of course the sloped armor and the MML in the variant were not available from the very beginning.]

We rented Dune last week.  Twice.

(Sigh.)

I’ve got fond memories of the 1984 David Lynch version.  1984 was just such a good year in so many ways.  Role playing games were probably at their height of popularity and there were still interesting things to discover and perfect.  Eight-bit computers were still the best thing going.  You could still go to the mall and buy text adventures.

It was late one night when we rented the Dune VHS tape.  We’d been playing Ogre and we were all sure that the cybertank was unbeatable.  We’d heard that an all-G.E.V. force could win every time, but I don’t think we had stooped that low.  We put in the tape half in frustration at the seemingly impossible little game and were soon barraged with all that is David Lynch.  We didn’t have any idea who he was at the time, and we were slightly bored by the complexity of the plot… but we were convinced that Dune was somehow supposed to be really cool.

A year or so later I’d end up reading the book during Geometry class.  I’d keep waiting for passages about the Barons weird facial disease and the sound weapon… but they never showed up.  (I’d end up reading the next three books in the series, but could never quite get all the way through Heretics.)

So back to last week: I’m at the video store and I see that there’s two versions of Dune now.  The second one is a four hour version that aired on the sci-fi channel.  The overweight/bearded geek-clerk said it had lower production values (matte paintings and stuff), but it was more faithful to the book.  I elected to take a chance and took it home.

Argh!  The horror!

The cast was so… poorly chosen.  Gurney was overweight.  Keynes looked like a ghoul.  The duke looked like he belonged on a different TV show.  (Quantum leap, maybe?)  The costumes were just plain silly– everyone had geometric sheets of fabric hovering over their heads.  The acting was so flat.  And the director had to alter scenes in annoying ways– lines from one character were moved to another– and new scenes were scrubbed together when leaving things as they were in the book would have done just as well. 

Yuk.  I couldn’t sit through more than an hour of it.  It was terribly painful.  Fancy computer graphics make cheap costumes look even cheaper than they really are.  So I went back to the store and picked up the Lynch version.  They wouldn’t give me my money back, unfortuneately.  We put in the DVD and immersed ourselves into all that is… DUNE!

Lynch’s version starts off with Princess Irulan attempting to sum up the axioms of the socio-political of background of Herbert’s universe.  Ha!  Like anyone can do that in three minutes….  She begins to fade out more than once and then pops back and says, “oh, I almost forgot to mention.”  She could keep popping back with her tidbits for half an hour and we’d all still be lost.  (What’s an Orange Catholic Bible… one more time?)

Lynch is completely off the wall– he opens up with the bizarre guildmen confronting the emperor.  Wow.  It’s just completely weird.  A bald guy with tubes sticking in his head speaking through an old fashioned microphone with a creepy voice… and somehow it translates.  And its all contrasted with the emperor’s 19th century style.  Then we’re off to witness a visit to the Baron’s session with his dermatologist.  Wagh!

Watching this movie it is completely clear that it was done by the same guy that did Twin Peaks.  It’s kind of appropriate, though.  The 1965 novel is full of hallucinations of all sorts– and everything in that universe is powered by freaks on the strangest sorts of drugs.  There was scene after scene that the director managed to slip in that just had me shouting, “that’s SO Lynch!”  Where did he get some of this stuff, though?  It doesn’t matter… the pace of the film keeps hammering along.  It seems he throws out a lot of this stuff just to freak you out. (But Herbert’s future better freak you out….)

He takes a lot of liberties with the material… but he stays close to the text and the characterizations even when it hurts the cinematic elements.  Characters dish out 100% Herbert dialogue… while strange dubbed over hushed wispers enlighten us to what they’re really thinking.  A little unconventional, but this is Lynch we’re taking about after all.

Lynch’s bad guys are gruesomely despicably irredeemably evil.  They’re on screen for just a short time, but we get the point– with loads of maniacal laughter.  Anyone that makes their slaves wear reversed mohawks is bad enough, but check it out: a cackling floating fat man, an insatiable bug eating binge eater, and Sting playing Feyd Rautha… stepping out of a weird industrial sauna in a metal thong…?  Rrruh?!  But… they’re so evil!  You may not understand anything that’s going on, but you know these guys are… evil!

Sting rocks, by the way.  He has maybe two lines in the whole film, but his smirking and glaring are perfect.  Compare him to the sci-fi channel’s version… sitting around in a dainty happy colored future-suit… grinning… with a geometric figure floating over his head… and a crowd of bored admirers.  Bah!  I’ll take metal thongs and weird saunas over that garbage any day!  Metal thongs are obviously 10 times as evil as floating geometric figures. 

Whatever might be wrong with Lynch’s film, it is in any case populated with a fine group of actors.  They fit their parts perfectly and carry themselves well.  (Except for when it’s an actress with 80’s rock star hair flowing around them as they artfully skip through the desert.)  And the costumes change dramatically depending on the character types and their homeworlds.  It’s a visual feast that doesn’t quit.  Sure, he compresses two thirds of the book into about twenty minutes– making the Fremen sietch into practically bit parts– but it’s still an awesome film.  Any film that has such powerful guitar riffs filling in during every pivotal scene can’t be all that bad.  I mean really, there’s no incomprehensible moment in film that cannot be improved by triumpant Toto guitar chords thrashing out in an unrelenting march in the background.

1984.  Dune.  David Lynch.

Put your hand in the box.  Pull out the DVD.  Watch.

I will not fear bizarre Lynchisms.  Fear is the mindkiller.  I will face my fear of the sci-fi channel… and let it pass over me.  And when it is gone, only Dune will remain.