Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

The recent podcast on The Vintage Gamer includes a very healthy interview with Greg Costikyan, the Maverick Award winning designer of such notable games as Paranoia and Toon.  While the discussion ranges from topics on the 70’s wargame market to modern indie computer games, the podcast still contains a healthy dose of material of interest to folks that are obsessed with classic eighties era games.

Aspiring game designers will want to hear this– Costikyan says that most professional game designers burn out within five years.  If you’re going to college, don’t major in some goofy program geared totally towards games, but go ahead and do Computer Science or Graphic Arts instead so that you can use your industry experience to get your foot in the door for what will likely become your real career.

CAR WARS fans will note the cameo appearance of podcaster Jimmy Anderson, but don’t forget to check out the links section: Van Verth includes a reference to this Costikyan article that describes how TSR almost single handedly put an end to the wargaming hobby.  The article includes a concise history of War Games and of Strategy & Tactics magazine in particular.  And according to SPI’s feedback, 90+% of all wargamers played alone.  Just based on the number of CAR WARS and Traveller players that appear not to have a gaming group, this shouldn’t have shocked me like it did… but I’m surprised.  I’ve long despised “game designs” that target, not people that play games, but people that play with games… but evidently that has pretty much been where the market was all along.

Costikyan also comments in the article on the fact that computer games do not “match paper games for sophistication, depth, and accuracy.”  Hopefully his new Manifesto Games company can do something to address that.

One thing I could quite parse from the podcast was Costikyan’s opinion of the atrocious looking Paranoia XP.  I think Jim Van Verth was expecting him to slam it, but it might be that he actually was pleased with it: the author was from a preapproved list of people he had complete confidence in.  But there was one edition that he completely hated… I think it might have been the one before XP, though.  Not being a Paranoia expert, I may have completely botched this exchange, so if anyone can clear this up, please let me know.

At any rate, it sounds like the definitive version of Paranoia to pick up is the second edition.  According to the podcast, the first was probably overly complex and still “finding its voice.”

The Vintage Gamer continues to be a good resource for solid material on game design history and analysis.  It can really open your eyes to classics you might have missed.

In the latest Roll 2d6 podcast we get a pretty good over view of Carcassone by a couple of seasoned gamers.  I find it interesting that the blurb for their site that’s returned by Google emphasizes the fact that these dudes occasionally throw in some Car Wars material on thier show.  Oh yeah… like that fact’s really gonna help Google pull in more ad revenue.  Like 80% of their listeners wait with baited breath for the next Car Warsreference from these two guys….  Heh.  (Well… it’s why I listen to the show.)  At any rate, it’s evident that whoever is getting tapped for these Google blurbs is as obsessed with Car Wars as I am.

Anyways… I’ve covered Carcassone in previous blog entries… though I notice that the Wikipedia page does a better job of summarizing the key tactics of the game.  I’ve played several games of it in the past few months and have a few thoughts to add in.

As Adam and Nate so humorously put it, Carcassone is a great “gateway game.”  It’s short playing time of 45 minutes combined with it’s attractive pieces and simple rules make it very accessible.  You can’t always find people to play Ogre and Car Wars… and Carcassone can keep you gaming when you’re stuck with less-than-geeky people.  While Settlers of Catan’s similarity to the classic M.U.L.E. makes it highly intriguing to myself, it’s just a little bit too consuming to work as a game to be played with “normal” people.

I’ve ended up playing Carcassonne as a two player game quite a bit.  I’m used to crushing the typical non-gaming sort of player… but after getting whipped 5 times in a row by a new player, I begin to suspect my tactical skills are lacking.  I believe I think way too much like an accountant… and not near enough like a warrior.  Being a good accountant has caused me win more than my fair share of autodueling events… but I notice that my neanderthal-style just-play-for-material approach to chess puts a distinct limit on my potential rating in that game.

I agree with Adam and Nate that the score board in Carcassonne leaves much to be desired– the final game that I lost ended in grumbling over whether or not one player had scored over 50 points or under 50 points.  It was late at night and I’ll never know if I really lost or not.  How aggravating!

One thing we noticed was that the player that goes first has a big advantage in that they can play a farmer before anyone else.  This gives that player a strong advantage in scoring the central farm at the end of the game– and as we were playing Winner-Goes-First, I have to wonder if this fact is enough to completely unbalance 2 player Carcassone.  Or maybe I really am that bad….

We quickly switched to playing with the river expansion and also with The Count of Carcassone.  The Count completely changes the dynamic of the game as he allows people to “pin” the other players… and then win not so much by scoring but by preventing other people from scoring.  This makes for a risky game… as any attempt to score a section with The Count in play opens up an opportunity for the other players to pin you.  This makes the tactics much more difficult to ascertain… and the usual “Accountant” mindset becomes irrelevant.

At any rate… keep an eye out for upcoming Roll 2d6 podcasts.  These guys are smart, humorous, and put out a well-produced show.  And don’t forget to comb through their back log looking for Car Wars references.  (The show is named for the 2d6 to hit rolls from Car Wars, by the way….  So don’t miss it!)

In the latest MADHAT Car Wars podcast, Jimmy Logan asks, “what are HTM’s?”  Me, I have no idea what the answer to that one is….  I presume it must be a part of the Car Wars I never knew.  If I had to guess, I’d say it’s some sort of tricked up power plant accessory that resulted in numerous rules changes and arguments at the national championships….

I notice that most newcomers to the game are directed to buy something called Compendium 2.5 and Uncle Alberts Catalogue from Hell.  (A guy just wrote to the MADHAT podcast to say as much.)  I also notice that most of the designs floating around on the web utilize Tanks era equipment– and the 1 space/2 die HMG weapon in particular.  I see this sort of thing and feel distinctly out of touch.

For me Car Wars was all about the development of the game from the Pocket Box to the first Deluxe Edition to the two Compendiums.  It was about incredibly cool products that made me jealous when my friends owned them but I didn’t: products like Dueltrack, the Uncle Albert’s Catalogues, The Combat Showcase, and the ADQ featuring Microplanes.  (Of course, the compendiums included most of the material I was too cheap to buy, so us cheapskates had our day eventually….)

The Car Wars material from the latter days generally suffers from lower production values and a diffused emphasis.  During the first five years of ADQ, the game was about duelists, cycle gangs, highways, truckstops, and interesting folks in a rugged future.  Even critics like Herb Helzer would get caught up into thinking about the consequences of the setting and future history.   In the last years, “Road Warrior” style role-playing content dissipated and we mostly got articles centered on boats, planes, and tanks.  You know… material that had little or nothing to do with… CARS….

As I said, I feel a bit out of touch with Car Wars fandom.  Am I the only one out here that’s obsessed with the iteration of the game that folks like John Nowak wrote for and played to death?