Alonzo Swartz
Prestige: 3
Kills: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 2
Notes: 3/21/08 Armadillo Autoduel Arena: Took out an enemy Killer Kart by blowing throw the front Machine Gun and setting the power plant on fire, but was “killed” a couple seconds later by a ram from behind.

Wayne Hertz
Prestige: 5
Kills: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 2
Vehicle: Killer Kart with 15 shots left, no side armor on either side, and one point of damage to the power plant.
Notes: 3/21/08 Armadillo Autoduel Arena: After having his side armor blown off with a lucky shot from a badly damaged opponent, he narrowly survived a 2-on-2 hairball. When he drove to the other side of the arena to make a high speed pass against the remaining vehicle, his opponent missed-- but he made his winning shot with a natural twelve!

Anita Valdez
Prestige: 3
Kills: 1
Driver Skill Points: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 2
Salvage: Killer Kart with no armor except the 3 points on the back.
Notes: 3/21/08 Armadillo Autoduel Arena: Anita focused fire on a single enemy for the first seven seconds of the game. On the 7th second, she took power plant damage from his prey just as she killed him. Another opponent closed in for a T-bone and Anita had no choice but to turn it into a head-on at the last moment. The damage rolled was exactly enough to give both drivers two hits of damage. Anita nearly died in the flames, but narrowly made her survival roll. (Technically, she should have been toast. My opponent generously declared that medical teams could quickly reach her because the battle had moved to the opposite side of the arena at that moment.)

Rodney Fischer
Prestige: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 1
Notes: 3/21/08 Armadillo Autoduel Arena: Rodney was shot up early on in the game, but instead of leaving himself open to SMG attacks while focusing on an opposing vehicle, he decided to take down a pedestrian. On two separate damage rolls he rolled ones… while the pedestrian was able to set his car on fire. The fire was just enough to knock Rodney unconscious and the pedestrian pulled him from the flames.

Rules wise, we decided to keep everything the same. The previous duel was so good that we didn’t feel the need to change anything. I think we might have been a little lax in keeping track of to-hit penalties due to maneuvers and hazards this time around, though. We kept our house ruled speed/range penalty chart, lenient survival rules, and our stingy skill award system. (We did end up dropping our gentleman’s agreement to do all movement for the phase first, then give everyone an option to fire after that. We also had some hinky fire at the very beginning of the turn before any movement at all. It’s probably time to reread the sequence of play rules again….)

Before we began, I suggested to my opponent that we be really fastidious for the first second of the game and pay extreme attention to the movement order due to the reflex rolls. He did not heed my request and moved most of his vehicles before me. This gave me the opportunity to react to his moves, and each of my pairs of vehicles on opposite sides of the arena ganged up on one of his cars.

On both sides of the arena we successfully took out our initial targets, though one took an especially long time to kill. By the grandstands, one of my cars lost its back and left armor and could not foil the following vehicle even when he dodged behind a TV bunker.

The other fight on the opposite side looked like a cakewalk until the nearly dead enemy lashed out with 6 points of MG damage to the side of one of my cars. That damaged car could no longer get in position without risking exposing a bare side, so the driver panicked and made a U-turn. He just couldn’t get his guns in position anymore after that even against the other closing enemy vehicle. That car’s “wingman” (my other car on that side of the board) got off a killing shot about that moment, but the other opposing vehicle was closing in for a T-bone. At just the last moment I turned in—converting it into a head-on collision. The damage rolled was exactly enough to do two hits of damage to each of the drivers. Body armor doesn’t protect from ram damage, so they were both knocked unconscious.

Meanwhile, over by the grandstands the hairball had shaken out so that we each were down to a single vehicle over there. Being very irate about the pedestrians from the last game, I said, “throw down your SMG, or I’ll kill you!” The pedestrian refused and responded with hand weapon fire. (The other opposing car was going too fast to bring his guns to bear for the next couple of seconds, so I thought I had time to take care of this. In any case, my lack of side armor on the car sort of forced me to target the ped anyway.)

I think I missed the pedestrian once, hit him for one or two points of damage on the next shot, and then did a single point of damage as I rammed him against his abandoned car. On the other hand, he managed to hit my power plant through the exposed facing. My car caught fire and the flame damage was exactly enough to cause my driver to go unconscious. To add insult to injury, the pedestrian pulled my driver from the flaming wreck—scoring a rare 3 point prestige bonus in the process for the sheer audacity of the act. The television crews at the event ate it up.

That left both sides with exactly one car each. My car’s left side was gone, but his car’s front armor was gone and he had only one DP left on his MG because he had taken down one of my cars already with a deadly rear-end ram. We took several seconds to accelerate and get into position. As we closed for the final pass, we traded shots. He missed, but I had rolled a natural twelve to take out his MG and set his power plant on fire. Even a parting sideswipe couldn’t even things up at that point, so he conceded.

The Armadillo arena has turned out to be an excellent location for our team events. It’s large enough that going any particular direction generally commits you to being in a particular sector for ten seconds—an eternity by Car Wars standards. Also, the randomized start positions in an already asymmetrical environment ensure that each pitched battle is subtly different as well.

Tactically, things were a wash. The Killer Karts are egg shells, but they can still take six seconds or more to kill even under heavy fire. Because we don’t reset handling status each turn, I drive much more conservatively. With our stingy skill point awards, that means I don’t pick up driver’s skill points in the games now. (We only give the usual driver skill point award for an event if the duelist makes a successful control roll.) My five mph pivot maneuvers leave me open to be rammed by my opponent, but the rams are risky and can cripple the attacker even if they are successful.

We were very pleased with the combination of solid Compendium 2e rules, the Armadillo map, and the minimal number of house rules. Sure, I have won three matches in a row now (and my opponent was nearly irate about that), but I’m not sure that Car Wars is a particularly good game to attempt to play competitively with only two players. There’s too many opportunities for serious mistakes to be made, and a lot of trust is required without a referee. We knew that going in, so the main purpose of the campaign was to generate interesting background for an ongoing alternating-refereeing type troupe style rpg. As far as that goes, my opponent is killing me. The flame damaged insane female from the last game is clearly a Daredevil with a High Pain Threshold. The minister that rescued my driver from the flaming wreck this game clearly has Enhanced Dodge, Luck and some sort of Code of Honor.

There’s a lot less salvage being generated in our games now because so many of the cars catch fire ever since we remembered to apply the 2 in 6 chance of fire for MG damage on power plants. Our slower speeds and larger arenas seem to cause a lot more vehicle losses as well. Winning a Killer Kart duel is worth some prestige, but the real money is going to be in the later Joseph Special and Hot Shot rounds. We’ve now played 5 of the 8 Killer Kart rounds—those high end events just aren’t that far off anymore. I wonder how much the dynamic will change when we switch Stingers… but we won’t have much time to adapt because the vehicle types will change pretty quickly at that point.

Anyways, this is great Car Wars…. Definitely some of the most fun I’ve ever had with the game….

Coyotito Alvarez
Prestige: 3
Kills: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 2
Salvage: Killer Kart with 1 point of damage to the right and 5 points of damage to the back. 8 rounds of ammo left in MG.
Notes: 3/20/08 Armadillo Autoduel Arena: Killed an opposing Killer Kart in a close range pass. (Took a D1 maneuver after the opponent’s D2 and traded shots.) Turned around to battle the remaining Killer Kart with a teammate, but took was killed by relentless fire from two pedestrians with SMG’s.

Amadeus
Prestige: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 2
Handgunner Skill Points: 1
Notes: 3/20/08 Armadillo Autoduel Arena: Began event randomly placed in the middle of three opposing cars. Weathered 6 seconds of combined fire power; barely survived event with emergency medical attention.

John Turing
Prestige: 3  [This was marked as 5, but I think it should be a 3.  -- jeffro 3/28/08]
Kills: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 2
Notes: 3/20/08 Armadillo Autoduel Arena: Passed a little too close to a “killed” burning vehicle which fired a surprise shot through his armor and set John’s power plant on fire.

Odysseus Deloatch
Prestige: 5
Kills: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 2
Vehicle: Killer Kart with 1 pt damage on the right armor and 16 shots left in its MG.
Salvage: A ruined hulk of a Killer Kart with intact tires, 3 points of back armor, and one remaining point of armor on the right side.
Notes: 3/20/08 Armadillo Autoduel Arena: Started far away from the action. Made a pass against one car that got killed by his “wingman,” then turned and took down the last car while his buddy succumbed to SMG fire.

Note the complete lack of driver skill point awards. It’s much more risky now to push that handling status down below zero, so I avoided putting myself in situations where I needed a control roll. Unless we lower the number of skill points required to get Driver-1, these guys won’t be improving their driving ability any time soon. Of course, with driver skill being added to what you get back on your handling track each turn, those skill levels will be worth all the more.

A duelist can pretty well expect to get to Gunner-1 by the time that he’s been in 5 duels and scored 5 kills or so. That’s not so with Driver-1! Perhaps under our house rules we should award Driver-1 at 6 skill points, Driver-2 at 14, and Driver-3 at 24.

With only a few exceptions, we tried to play by fairly strict Compendium 2e rules for the game. For simplicity’s sake, we did play that each phase everyone conducted their movement… and then everyone had a chance to fire weapons. We tried to be conscientious about using reflex rolls to determine who moves first when two vehicles were going the same speed, and over all we were quite pleased with the effect of this on game play. There was just a lot less to argue about.

We also tried to remember to apply penalties to fire if you had maneuvered during that phase. Also, we marked vehicles that had been hit so that we could apply a to-hit penalty to vehicles that had taken hazards from enemy fire. (Cars making passes at each other tend to fire in the same phase, so this doesn’t tend to be as fiddly as you might think.) We also moved the useless top and underbody armor to the much more critical left and right locations.

(Our homebrew speed/range chart seems to be holding up, though neither of us are entirely happy with how we’re accounting for relative movement. For now the main use of high speed under the chart is to maybe gain an extra -1 to be hit and to deny enemy’s their point blank bonuses.)

We chose to randomly determine starting gates for variety’s sake. There’s a long tunnel in the middle of the map that we used as an impromptu eighth gate. One of my cars started the game surrounded by all of my opponent’s cars. My poor driver only lasted 6 seconds of their combined fire, but dealt enough damage to his target that it wasn’t a complete loss. Another of my cars tailed an opponent that was speeding in to join his buddies in ganging up on my lone duelist. My opponent ignored the tail, and that driver got a kill even though I’d forgotten to roll to-hit one turn. That left two of my cars on the opposite end of the action-- they kicked it up to seventy in order get in on the fun.

Things were looking pretty good for my team in spite of the rough beginning. In our previous session, pedestrians generally left their vehicles as soon as they caught fire. One car that had caught fire was sitting harmlessly by the grandstands. My car that had gotten a kill sped by it in order to turn back into the fray. (This was difficult to do quickly because we were playing that our handling status only recovered 3 points per second.  You just can't execute consective D6 maneuvers with that rule in effect!) The supposedly “dead” flaming vehicle then lashed out and set my driver’s power plant on fire with a lucky shot! This was very hard to bear. The insane woman driver in her flaming wreck had stayed in the flames so long she was taking serious physical damage!

This left us with my two pristine cars facing two damaged opponents, but my opponent also had two pedestrians right in the middle of the hairball. My two cars each made a pass against a single opponent. The second one was interesting because we both chose to take a maneuver just as we’d closed for a point blank shot. My opponent moved first because of his high reflex roll and did a D2, while I only needed a D1. He missed his shot while I nailed his driver.

The glory wouldn’t last. In the final confrontation, my car that had just scored a solid kill lost his car when he turned and fought too near to the enemy pedestrians. I’d focused all my fire on the last remaining car but I just couldn’t take him down. Finally my last car (practically untouched) pivoted and dealt the killing blow. That last remaining driver got to keep his near-perfect Killer Kart, but got little salvage from his kill because he’d destroyed the power plant with his last shot.

The only person in the duel in danger of dieing was the driver of my first car that had gotten surrounded. He’d gone to -3 DP, but fortunately made his “health check” on 3d6 by rolling a ten exactly.

We were pleasantly surprised at how well the Armadillo arena worked out. Also, we were both pleased at how fair the rules worked out whenever we applied the Compendium 2e rules to the game. While we do play a little loose with the sequence of play sometimes, use house rules for hospitalization and speed/range modifiers, and also are extremely stingy with our extra restrictions on skill points, we admit that even the most fiddly looking rules in 2e make for a much more realistic and flavorful combat.

The Amex Proving Grounds is a single map sheet sized arena with four corner sections and a central cross shaped area with a TV bunker in the middle. We agreed to enter in pairs in the four gates with each vehicle heading into a corner. I thought this would result in four separate dog fights in each corner, but what happened was that all four pairs kept driving right past each other to meet up with a second head on pass against a second vehicle. (I actually made a silly error on the first turn-- I ended the round with two of my cars unable to target their opponents. This essentially gave the enemy drivers a free shot; this didn't turn out to me significant, though.) Because of this style of opening, we essentially had a dry “die rolling competition” during the first few turns.

One of my opponent's cars took a tremendous amount of damage in these first few seconds and caught fire due to power plant damage. Lucky shot! On the other side of the arena, two cars met at 30 mph. (Under these rules, the sweet spot for any weapons fire is the sides of the cars. With only three points of armor there on the Killer Karts, you have a chance of taking out the car with a single hit!) The two cars traded shots to the sides at point blank range. I turned to the right sharply to head towards the TV bunker and the other cars. My opponent immediately turned the same direction and pulled right next to me. I think the very next turn he went ten miles per hour or so and ended up half an inch ahead of me. I went 5 mph and pivoted toward him, getting a chintzy free shot in with some slightly heated discussion about how exactly this should have played out. The next second, I stopped while he pivoted. The second after that, I went in reverse and got in another free shot in.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the arena, two high speed passes were going down. All four vehicles took power plant damage and we all had to check for vehicular fire. Each of us lost a car because of fire! I angled two of my surviving cars against one of the survivors and did minimal damage while taking a lot stray hits. Our SMG armed pedestrians left their flaming wrecks after taking a point or two of fire damage to their body armor. They braced themselves against the arena walls and fired at enemy vehicles. These were essentially free shots doing a point or two of damage-- the peds weren't worth targeting if an actual car was in arc. (My opponent said several times that he actually felt safer out of his car!)

My pink Killer Kart (the one that scored the first lucky kill) hurtled across the arena and took a point blank shot at the enemy vehicle that had been pinned early on in the game. A point blank hit through the side resulted in another vehicular fire. The single point of fire damage at the end of the turn was enough to knock the driver unconscious. We agreed that the driver had somehow managed to throw himself out of the car even though it didn't make much sense. Other than him, the event was fairly safe. (Playing some of those overlooked rules makes for amateur night events with much higher survival rates.)

This left three vehicles on my team to take down the remaining car. A lucky shot by even the pedestrians could kill one my cars, though, so we still had to carefully play out each phase for a few more seconds. I regrouped and repositioned for the final shots. The yellow Killer Kart that had gotten tangled up in the low speed dog fight got the lucky shot that knocked the last driver unconscious. This would be the only kill that was not caused by vehicular fire.

The rules changes had a tremendous effect on the game. We'd agreed not to reset handling tracks each turn. This eliminated the annoying D6-right-angle-maneuver-every-single-second approach that we'd seen in our second Amateur Night event last session. We also drove slower-- and as a result, no one died due to a wipe out on the crash table. Any time we did an extreme maneuver, we had to go straight for a full second afterwards in order to get back in full control. This leads to combats that are less like a WWI dog fight and more like a series of high stakes "jousting" engagements.

The other big rules change was to play the 1 in 3 chance of vehicular fire each time the power plants took machine gun or submachine gun damage. This ruling would obscure all other tactics in the game. At the same time, it actually increased the chances of the duelists to survive the event. If your car caught fire, you simply got out of your car. This led to many a pedestrian picking up a prestige bonus even after effectively being taken out of the game.

There were a few minor rules that we still managed to mess up this time. We were probably adding back the reflex bonus to handling status each turn when we should only have been adding back the HC of the cars. Also, it's -2 to hit the side of a vehicle when you're not in that side's arc. (We'd been playing just a minus one penalty.) Finally, to prevent the argumentative simultaneous action type arguments like the one we had this game, we should move vehicles going the same speed in the order of their reflex roll results-- with ties being broken before the beginning of the event. (Oh yeah, and we need to fix that infamous missing column five on our speed/range chart.)

The only tweaks I'd suggest for the next game would be to possibly a) Move the useless top and under Killer Kart armor to the vulnerable sides, b) Give the drivers the use of a portable fire extinguisher (along with their BA and SMG) for the duration of the event, c) Use a larger and asymmetrical two map-sheet sized custom arena, and/or d) Possibly switch the ammo to just ten shots of high density rounds. We should also comb back through the Compendium 2e for any other obscure rules that we should try to remember. We should test out the entire set of rules one more time... and then we should lock it all down for the next four duels. These radical changes from one game to the next have to stop!

We are steadily moving our game to a more-or-less "by the book" Compendium 2e approach. The only real difference is that we're using a GURPS style combined speed/range modifier. (We feel that the official 2e rules for this give way too much of a bonus for high speeds. Our rules give more of a flavor like the original pocket box rules: -1 per full four inches (more or less) but with an extra -1 or -2 due to higher speeds. The biggest difference in the new rules is that you don't always get a sure hit anymore on those point blank shots-- unless your target is a "turtle"....) The only house-rule that came up for discussion during this game was to change the d6 roll to check for fires to a 2d6 roll with different targets for each weapon in the game: MG’s should be less effective than 33% and should certainly be less effective in starting power plant fires than, say, an RR. Also, Lasers should be less effective than flame throwers.

Here's the results for my four winning characters which all have base level skills in Driver, Gunner, and Handgunner:

"Green"-- Elroy McKnightridge
Prestige: 3
Gunner Skill Points: 1
Handgunner Skill Points: 1
Notes: 3/7/08 Amex Proving Grounds (KK)-- Vehicle caught fire after two high speed passes against enemy Killer Karts.

"Yellow"-- Arnold Schlamer
Prestige: 5
Kills: 1
Driver Skill Points: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 2
Handgunner Skill Points: 1
Vehicle: Killer Kart with 1 hit to power plant, 1 hit to front armor, 1 hit to right armor, and 2 hits to left armor.
Salvage: Killer Kart with 2 DP left on MG, 1 DP left on power plant, and no front, left, or right armor left.
Notes: 3/7/08 Amex Proving Grounds (KK)-- Through devious rules lawyering and general sliminess, Arnold managed to "pin" an enemy Killer Kart. He effectively got two free shots at his opponent, even though it was a teammate the put in the killing blow. Arnold did however get the final lucky shot in that ended the event.

"Blue"-- Buck Lescynski
Prestige: 5
Kills: 1
Driver Skill Points: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 2
Vehicle: Killer Kart with 3 hits to power plant, 14 shots left in MG, 2 hits to right armor, and 3 hits to left armor.
Notes: 3/7/08 Amex Proving Grounds (KK)-- Buck set an opponent on fire during his second pass in the event. He failed to get any decisive hits in for the rest of the event.

"Pink"-- Marla Zuckerton
Prestige: 7
Kills: 2
Gunner Skill Points: 3
Vehicle: Killer Kart with 12 shots left in MG, 3 hits to front armor, 1 hit to right armor, and 2 hits to left armor.
Notes: 3/7/08 Amex Proving Grounds (KK)-- Scored first blood in the event by setting an opposing car on fire with a lucky shot. Crossed the arena at high speeds to nab a kill out from under her teammate, Arnold Schlamer.

My 4 year old son spen5 a while looking at the beautiful Denis Loubet cover. The next day, the family was discussing what kind of car we should buy. "I want a pink car!" he exclaimed. This color choice surprised me... until he clarified. "I want a pink car with a flamethrower on the back!"

1) Subcompacts and light-weight Compacts only do two thirds damage in rams. That includes Killer Karts and Stingers! [p 13]

2) Head-on, Rear-end, and T-bone collisions can cause concussions. Take the amount of speed change for each vehicle and divide it by 10 (rounding up.) In T-bone maneuvers use the ramming vehicle's speed change for both vehicles. Roll two dice for each crewman. If the result is less than this target number, then they are unconscious for a number of seconds equal to the amount by which they missed the roll. [p 14]

3) Debris is produced when a vehicle takes more than 10 hits of damage. Don't forget these when collisions occur! Hitting debris is a D1 hazard and does 1d-3 damage to each tire. Debris can only be hit once per phase; starting the turn on top of debris does not trigger damage or hazards. [p 15]

4) A vehicle takes a D2 hazard if its driver is wounded. (Hits to body armor do not count as wounds.) [p 31]

5) Wounded drivers have all skills at -2. [p 31]

6) A vehicle has a 2 in 6 chance of catching fire on any turn that its power plant takes damage from weapons fire. Roll at the end of the turn to check for this. If the vehicle catches fire, each occupant, component, and armor facing takes a hit of damage on that turn and on all subsequent turns until the fire is put out. Body armor protects against burning damage. [p 31-32]

7) Immediate medical attention can generally save the life of duellists knocked down to zero DP. Duellists that go to negative DP must roll 5+ to stay alive. To keep you alive, a paramedic must roll 8+ with -1 per negative DP and a bonus of up to +3 for the quality of his equipment. The paramedic roll must be made at the arena and every 15 minutes during transit to the hospital. Once at the hospital, the character must roll 2 dice and get result greater than the negative DP amount in order to survive. (A roll equalling the negative DP amount results in crippling.) The character must stay in the hospital one week plus one additional week for each negative DP at a cost of $3000 per week. [ADQ 4/4]

On that last rule there, we were playing a somewhat more forgiving rule for our last two games that we shamelessly pilfered from GURPS 4e. We declared that immediate medical attention could automatically bring back anyone that goes down to -2 DP. For every full -3 DP's a character drops, he has to make a "health roll" of ten or less on three dice. (Missing that roll by one or two results in a crippling injury.) Characters that drop to -15 are too mutilated to have a chance of coming back into the game. We also played that hospitalization costs are paid for by sponsors. I haven't decided which way I prefer better, yet. I think I would like the characters to have a better chance of staying in the game after going to negative DP's, though. Amateur night characters certainly wouldn't have the cash to pay for hospital bills the way that the ADQ article described.... (I thought we were insured?!)

Fernando Rodrigez
Prestige: 5
Kills: 1
Driver Skill Points: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 2
Vehicle: One Stock Killer Kart ($3,848 value)
Salvage: One Killer Kart with 2 hits to the power plant, no right or back armor, and only 6 shots left for the MG.
Notes: 12/1/07 Southtown Amateur Night (KK)-- shot and killer opponent through rear armor after three seconds of continuous fire.

"The Gimp"
Prestige: 3
Driver Skill Points: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 1
Vehicle: One Stock Killer Kart with 9 shots left. ($3,273 value)
Notes: 12/1/07 Southtown Amateur Night (KK)-- Survived event with car intact, but made no kills.

"Dutch" Wenger
Prestige: 1
Kills: 1
Driver Skill Points: 2
Gunner Skill Points: 1
Salvage: One Killer Kart with 7 hits to the power plant, 14 shots left for the MG, and no Right armor.
Notes: 12/1/07 Southtown Amateur Night (KK)-- T-boned an opponent for a kill but rolled enough damage to knock himself out. Hospitalized.

Bobby Drake
Prestige: -1
Driver Skill Points: 1
Gunner Skill Points: 1
Notes: 12/1/07 Southtown Amateur Night #2 (KK)-- Didn't take a D2 maneuver in order to protect his damaged left side and ended up being killed after a few brief seconds of gun fire and maneuver.

"Dominoe" jones
Prestige: -1
Notes: 12/1/07 Southtown Amateur Night #2 (KK)-- Came out of the gates side by side with an opponent who braked slightly while moving to the center. Killed by gun fire and repeated sideswipes with no chance to return fire.

Calculating Winnings and stats:

We awarded prestige more or less normally. To gain driver skill you had to successfully make a control roll or execute a ram. To score a gunner skill point, you had to successfully hit an opposing vehicle. If you make a kill, you get a single skill point: one in gunner skill if you used weapon fire to make the kill, or one in driver skill if you used a ram. (This is extremely stingy... none of the characters can really expect to gain a skill level even after playing in 4 duels.) If you survived the event, you could keep your vehicle. If you made any kills and survived, you could salvage them. Also, we're playing that the duellists don't have to take the salvage values of their kills right away-- they can hold onto them until they graduate Amateur Night at which point they'll consolidate everything into repairing a car or two and converting everything else to cash.

On our first event, we entered the arena on opposite sides. My opponent entered the central area immediately, but I pulled my vehicles toward each other so that they could enter the central area from a middle opening instead of one of the diagonals. As we entered the central area in two groups of two, my opponents 4 vehicles were converging on them. My opponent had much better targeting mods due to the set-up. I was suddenly very afraid-- I was sure that he could get his group to tailgate mine and pick us apart one by one with little chance of return fire. I accelerated and split up, hoping that one group could somehow cover the other.

Things got ugly for my first group. All four opposing vehicles converged on them and they took heavy fire as they continued to accelerate attempting to leave the central section of the arena. My other vehicles circled back to come to their defense. One of the opposing vehicles made an extreme maneuver in order to get a shot in. He failed his control roll and he turned sideways and began to roll. The mob of vehicles continued to converge and one slipped around the rolling vehicle and then made a sharp turn to get another shot off. He failed his control roll as well and began a spin out. My cars turned to exit the central area and one of them failed a control roll, skidded, and then rammed a barrier.

My other two cars slowed down and concentrated fire on the spun out vehicle while the other vehicles attempted to pull around back into the action. The now stationary target could do nothing to prevent us from shooting up the driver. This left us with 3 cars on my team versus two on the other. In the final face off, I used one of my damaged cars to ram one of my opponent's fresh cars. I had a pair of other vehicles slow down and combine fire against the other, taking out its driver from the rear.

On our second game, we agreed that the 4-on-4 "in formation" game was maybe not optimal. Off the cuff, we agreed to have vehicles from each side enter in pairs in each of the four gates. We rolled 1d6 to determine how fast each group was going and agreed to abide by the "tag team" rule of no fire unless we had no more than 2 vehicles in each section. The idea was the break things up a bit and make things a little less predictable. We also worked up some rules to make the speed modifiers come out a little more sensibly. (See the rules for "Head-on", "Crossing the T", and "Tailgating" below.)

The faster pairs entered the central region directly. In one pair, my opponent slowed down faster than me by just 5 or 10 mph or so. He was able to shoot up my car and sideswipe me multiple times and killed my vehicle in two seconds. In a similar situation on the opposite side, I had a similar advantage, but was not able to capitalize on it due to missed to-hit rolls, low damage rolls, and also to my not realizing that the sideswipe was a viable tactic.

In another corner, I slowed down to 5 mph while my opponent accelerated away. As soon as I could fire, I began shooting at his rear and quickly killed his driver. On the other side, our two vehicles fanned out, heading toward opposite corners. My opponent turned on a dime and got a lucky shot through my side before I could react. I turned back to face him down, taking more fire to that side. I turned into the central area, but miscalculated my turn. Another speeding opponent on the inside was able to take me out with a shot that just barely could hit that weakened side.... That was a mistake that easily cost me the game-- especially when combined with the bad luck in another of the pairings.

One of my surviving vehicles ended up chasing one of the opposing team. I'd occasionally get a shot off, but the penalties were generally pretty bad and the walls in the arena were effective in eliminating the continuous fire bonus. In the chaos, I was reduced to a single vehicle. I ran it out of the central section just as two opposing vehicles were rounding the corner. As I'd lost my MG to an opponent the aggressively targeted fronts in spite of the extra penalty, I was hoping for a T-bone at 35 mph in order to save face. Things didn't work out-- the t-bone turned out to be a head-on, and the extra damage was enough to kill my driver permanently.

So we ended up each with a single victory and some continuing characters. We drove a lot more conservatively in the second game after all of the wipe outs in the first round. With to-hit targets running in the 9 to 11 range, we quickly discovered the importance of rams in the second game. I'm considering shifting the to-hit bonus for translating the GURPS targeting mods from +6 to +7-- that would encourage a little more shooting and a little less ramming, hopefully-- but I wouldn't want that change to negatively impact other events beyond the amateur night scene.  Here's my current proposed chart:

We had discussed using these house rules to eliminate handling status tracking, but I was concerned about its effects on a series of small D1 maneuvers and hazards that got more dangerous. After seeing these two games run with almost excessive use of d6 maneuvers being used in the dog fights, I'd almost consider using both systems. Any Bootlegger, T-stop, d4, d5, or d6 maneuver should require a driver skill roll as described in those house rules-- on top of any control rolls required by the handling status. Of course, that adds complexity to an already complex system... which kinda defeats the purpose of the house rules.... It's just a thought, though.

One thing was sure, we didn't want to do all of our amateur night duels in the same arena. The next time we duel, it will be at the Amex Proving Grounds. We'll have pairs of vehicles enter each of the four gates and then swerve off into their respective corner pockets-- forcing hopefully a fairer initial duel than what we got with our last game. I'd almost recommend not giving the contestants complementary body armor like we did just to make sure things end quicker. Making to-hit rolls slightly easier and punishing hard core maneuvers a bit should create some more interesting games, I think....

In our first "corporate Car Wars" campaign, we experimented with a large variety of massive duels meant to tour all the various flavors of dueling scenarios. Because we failed to create a fleshed out arena schedule, this soon devolved into "rules negotiations" wars-- before each session we'd both carefully debate each nuance of the game to favor our current roster and pet tactics. Also, games that required large amounts of vehicle design put Earlburt at a disadvantage while games that required understanding the implications of the rules in an unusual setting put him in an advantaged position. Whoever could successfully lobby for a game that favored their strengths would usually win.

In our follow-up role-playing campaign set in the years 2033 and 2034, we discovered that the usual $80,000 pay-offs left little room for development. Sure, we could move to a big-rig or helicopter oriented game, but that's not really where we wanted the focus to be. Another thing was that the character advancement rules were pretty broken-- you gain skill levels pretty fast just by playing scenarios against cyclists. What we want to do now is focus in on the amateur duelist that's just getting his start and is slowly scraping together the funds to patch together a decent dueling machine: the classic rags to riches campaign, but set in a grittier, poorer world. It's no accident that Car Wars characters begin the game dead broke.

The first phase of the campaign will be a series of 4-on-4 arena duels. Characters begin with no wealth, no prestige, base level in driver, gunner, and handgunner, and a killer-kart. The first several scenarios will consist of arena combats featuring four killer-karts versus four killer-karts and fought by a total of 64 duelists. The survivors may salvage their kills. We'll be playing Team Amateur night, which is a little different than the usual free-for-all. In a 4 on 4 match, there may be more than one surviving car on the winning team. They will each get to salvage their own kills and gain additional prestige for being winners of the event. People that score a kill but lose their car will still get some salvage-- but they have to live to do it. (I don't think I want to add incentive to actually murder people, so I wouldn't allow duelists to pick up the salvage of people they kill.) That gives three outcomes for a person surviving a duel: keep a car and salvage his kills, "killed" and salvage kills, and "killed" with no kills to salvage.

Note that some variants of the Amateur Night rules have a winner-take-all component. If you lose three events or if you win, you can no longer enter anymore amateur night events. In the preliminary round of a Team Amateur Night game, two teams of 16 duellists each will play. They will be broken up into four 4-on-4 Killer Kart events. The four duellists from each team that have the highest amount of prestige (using the dollar amount of their salvage to break ties) move on to a special 4-on-4 "Stinger" event.

After two preliminaries are run (each with two separate teams totalling 32 duellists on a side), the top ranking duellists from the two Stinger rounds advance to a special 4-on-4 "Joseph Special" round. Meanwhile, the duelists that failed to advance into the Stinger round compete in a second-chance "Outlander" round. (If there's ever not enough survivors to make a 4-on-4, downsize the event to a 3-on-3 or 2-on-2.) The highest ranked duelists from the both "Outlander" round and also the ones that failed to advance to the "Joseph Special" round come back for a last-chance "Stinger-RR" round. Finally the top ranking duellists from the "Joseph Special" and "Stinger-RR" rounds return for a final "Hot Shot" round.

The Amateur Night events are run in this order: 4 4-on-4 Killer Kart events, 1 4-on-4 Stinger event, 4 Killer Kart events, 1 Stinger event, 1 Outlander event, 1 Stinger-RR event, 1 Joseph Special event, and the final Hot Shot event. This is (in effect) a loose form of a double elimination tournament. Final team and duelist rankings are based on prestige scores and the salvage value of the kills. Comparing this to Allston's rules, each Amateur Night contestant can play in up to four events-- but the the salvage money will be spread around a little more. Duellists that score low prestige might not get invited back if the death rate is low enough. Everyone has a small chance of getting a Hot Shot, though.

         +- KK --+
     + --+       +
     +   +- KK --+
     +           +--> S --+
     +   +- KK --+    |   +
     + --+       +    |   +
     +   +- KK --+    |   +
O <--+                |   +--> JS --+
|    +   +- KK --+    |   +         +
|    + --+       +    |   +         +
|    +   +- KK --+    |   +         +
|    +           +--> S --+         +--> HS
|    +   +- KK --+    |             +
|    + --+       +    |             +
|        +- KK --+    |             +
|                     |             +
+---------------------+------> S2 --+

64 total duelists are entering. One-fourth of those will continue to the "Stinger" round-- and half of those will go on to the "Joseph Special" round. One eighth of the original duelists will go to the "Outlander" round. This means that less than half of the initial duellists will progress past the first round. One-third of the Stinger and Outlander contestants will go to the Stinger-RR round. Half of the Joseph Special and Stinger-RR contestants will go on to the Hot Shot round. All of the surviving "Stinger" duelists will at least play a third round of some type... and the very best of the "Outlander" round will get a chance to take on the worst of the "Stinger" round.

(What if one team completely wipes out the other team in the "Joseph Special" and "Stinger-RR" rounds-- and literally kills all of the opposing duellists?? In that case, dig back into the duelist rankings of the other team. Some of the guys that didn't advance from the "Killer Kart" rounds might get tapped to come into the "Hot Shot" event!)

After the 14 Amateur night events are run, each player takes stock of his surving duelists. Those with vehicles and/or enough salvage money to become professional duellists may move on to compete in AADA sanctioned events. (Many arenas on the L'Outrance circuit offer off-beat "tag team" and "cat and mouse" events that would be highly suitable for the continuing campaign.) Those that have next-to-nothing may join pedestrian defence forces of a small or medium sized town. Duellists that fall into neither group may become bandits or join cycle gangs.

One idea of the campaign is to play all of the classic scenarios with continuing characters instead of building custom vehicles from scratch for each game. Hopefully, each player will end up a small cycle gang. If two duellists (with roughly equal vehicle values) are traveling to an arena to compete, then each gang can bid for the right to attack one of the duellists. The lower bidding gang may then pack-attack the other player's duellist with cycles and cars that total in value no more than the bid amount. If one player can amass a large enough cycle gang, then he can play a Midville scenario against the other player's pedestrian force and duelist characters. Also, players can pit their duellists against their opponent's pedestrian forces in a Wheels versus Walkers scenario. Players that travel to regions where the classic GURPS scenarios were set from the Survival Guide supplements may opt to play those as well.

If players are feeling particularly competitive or if they want additional duelist characters and gang members, they can agree to play another series of 14 amateur night event games to bring in some new blood. Otherwise, the primary goal of the campaign is to create a believable continuity for scenarios and to also create balanced background information for characters before they become fully fleshed out for more "serious" role playing sessions. Just as Traveller characters are built with a series of die rolls to generate their background, we'll do the same: but instead of die rolls and table look-ups, we'll use Car Wars scenarios. (In a similar vein, the 64 character and 14 event Amateur Night games will produce enough data to develop "realistic" simulations for randomly generating Amateur Night graduates....)

One thing he mentioned... there do exist original Australian versions of Mad Max and Mad Max II. It always bothered me that they dubbed over Mel Gibson lines, but it never crossed my mind that I could get the real thing.... We both agreed that Tanks was ultimately disappointing even though it was the first thing we wanted in 1984. We both lamented the drop off in role-playing content that occurred with the departure of Scott Haring. The increased focus on arena dueling hurt the game-- and the dilution of the Uncle Alberts catalogues with boat equipment was a real bad move. The move to making the Vehicle Guides just a bunch of designs instead of a representative selection of what you could expect to find on the roads was a real downer. The Road Atlases were incredible, though. But Autoduel Champions poisoned the game with some pointlessly silly equipment that became "official" and spawned more stupidity. I always loved the choice of granularity in the rules, but the game's inability to handle "Chassis and Crossbow" well was a problem. Messing with the simplicity of the game is tricky, though: at some point you just might as well get some real military miniatures rules and go at it if that's what you want.

As it stands, the game is great for adventuring through a deadly future inhabited by many demented folks that are ready to engage in random acts of violence. While our tongues were never far from our cheeks, we were still serious about our fun. There's only so much "realism" or silliness that you can add to the game, though....

My player played his characters from last year's 2033 campaign.  In those sessions, we played Convoy from ADQ 1/1, Road Duel and Pack Attack scenarios from the original pocket box, a weird role-playing session that culminated into a freaky Truck Stop variation of Pack Attack (with "magic" rules thrown in), and a slightly modified version of the classic Sunday Drivers game.  That would make this the seventh session for the campaign-- with no shortage of Car Wars material in sight!!

My player took his Moose that he'd won from the Road Duel and also the two luxury sized vehicles that he'd designed for the Convoy scenario. He made no modifications to them in spite of all the new equipment that had come out in Uncle Albert's in "recent" months.

One question that came up in the game was how long it would take to get armor repairs if you were in a hurry.  I played that the PC's could generally get 5 mechanics to work on a car even if it was Sunday morning-- but the players would have to pay double the standard rate for patching armor whether a mechanic was successful or not.  I played they were skill level 2 and could each successfully repair armor on  roll of 5 or better.  Hiring 5 mechanics for an hour by PC's in a hurry costs $1500-- but this trick only works in fortress towns.

Don't read any further if you intend to play this scenario!!!

***

The insane tire wear rules from Convoy were dropped by the designers of Badlands Run. The scenario retains a similar rumors set-up. The final stretch of road forks just as in Convoy-- with really bad things occurring if you try to take the short way. My player could see that coming from a mile away even without the hints in the rumors....

The "Gang of Thieves" were complete wimps. Like stock Vigilantes could do anything to $80,000 worth of PC firepower?! Rusty Pinkerton was a much tougher opponent. His tactics were very sound relative to the salvage gang... but by the time (2 seconds!) he realized things were going against him, his powerplant was on fire due to a shot from a laser! Still, the car he'd targeted had lost just about all of its side armor-- both left and right! In the encounter that required the special counters from the mailing cover, it was all worth it just to see the look on my player's face. The scenario was fairly harmless, though, except for to the guy in the station wagon!!

The rock throwing encounter was devastating. The Moose was completely demolished in that encounter and there was nothing the players could do. Also, the final ambush from the Hussar and the Iron Horse was unstoppable. Point blank shots from a pair of MG's, a pair of HR's, and an RR will send even the toughest car into a flaming roll. Fortunately the van carrying the VIP was equipped with a fire extinguisher-- the players could still get him to San Francisco with only moments to spare. (Point blank tire shots were not very good for the ambushers....)

This was a very tough adventure with little room for miscalculation on the player's part. I'd hate to see this game played with the helicopter coming out at the end!

Not everyone can claim to have been a Boy Scout Commando-- this is only at the referee’s discretion.  Players using these character generation rules have to use them in sight of their fellow players if they intend to use their characters in a game: you can't just roll up a hundred characters until you get what you want.  (Go play GURPS if you already know exactly what type of character you want to play!)

To determine your character's background, first roll up the standard Traveller attributes for your character.  These consist of 6 2d6 rolls applied consecutively to Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social.  Don't worry if you don't know when, where, and how to adapt these values to your adventures: a consensus has never really emerged even among Traveller fans.  You could even throw them out altogether when you start playing your character: in a high tech future, skills are going to be a lot more important than attributes.  If they do impact a skill roll, they should never improve a roll 2d6 skill check by more than +1 or +2.

Scouts begin the character generation process at age 12.  Each year they will make rolls to determine if they survive, advance, and if they persevere.  The survival roll is required because like in the corps is dangerous: that really cool character with nifty skills and attributes is likely to improve each year he stays in the corps... but you just might lose him.  Not everyone advances and not everyone stays involved with their troop; rolls for both of those are required each time as well.

To become a scout, roll your Soc attribute or less on 2d6.

To Survive, roll 6 or more on 2D6.  (Add one to your roll if your Dex is 8 or higher.  Add two to your roll if your End is 10 or higher.)

To Advance, roll 9 or more on 2D6.  (Add one to your roll if your Int is 7 or higher.  Add two to your roll if your Edu is 9 or higher.)

To Perservere, roll 7 or more on 2D6.  (Add one if your Str is 9 or higher.)

Each time you advance, you gain a new skill at base level.  When you advance to Tenderfoot, you gain the Handgunner skill.  First Class scouts receive Paramedic skill.  Star scouts gain Driver skill... and Death scouts pick up Gunner skill.  If a scout fails his survival roll, he's dead.  When you finally get a character to survive the process, you can use the dead ones as fellow scouts from your character's patrol that all died on a particularly gruesome mission.  If you fail a perseverance roll, then your character quit scouting for some reason and the process ends there; you do pick up your skills for that year, however.

Each year your character remains in scouting, he gets to roll on a skill table.  If he doesn't have the skill he rolls, then he receives it at base level.  If he already has the skill, then he gains a level in it.  Low ranking scouts roll on the Skill Awards Table.  Star and Death scouts roll on the Merit Badges Table.  Scouts gain these skills in addition to the ones they pick up for advancement.

Skill Awards
1) Survival
2) Stealth
3) Scrounging
4) Handgunner
5) Runner
6) Climber

Merit Badges
1) Driver
2) Gunner
3) Mechanic
4) Explosives
5) Paramedic
6) Martial Arts

The only new skill in the above list is Scrounging-- use that to help determine if your character can find supplies, ammo, and/or spare parts for jury-rigging equipment.

Once you survive your 6th year of scouting, fail a perseverance roll, or drop out, add up your character's total skill levels in Driver and Gunner (including your base levels.)  If you have less than 3 total skill levels there, then round out your character by adding the difference in new skills or skill levels.  For instance, if your character was Driver-1, you could pick up Gunner-0 at this point.  If your character had no skill levels at all in Driver or Gunner, you might pick Mechanic-2 or even Politics-2.

The first character I rolled up with these rules had 9,9,5,7,10, and 3 for attributes and was Handgunner-1, Stealth-0, Scrounging-0, Paramedic-1, Driver-1, Gunner-0, Mechanic-0.  (Yeah, he actually did make his Soc roll to join the troop!)

Note that Car Wars skills are much more effective than their Traveller "level zero" counterparts.  But these rules can be used in either game, because most of the additional skills the Car Wars character receives will be in non-combat disciplines.  In Traveller, adding a few level zero skills to a character will probably not imbalance the game-- in fact many referees do so already-- but referees should be aware that this system can yield level 1 skills or even level 2 skills as well.  While characters should technically be able to join a standard military service after 4-6 years in the BSC, referees might want to limit this generation process to only those characters that are from a violent post-apocalyptic world-- a world whose citizens might not have access to the usual Imperial careers!

I saw a demo of Ultima I while in elementary school and was blown away.  I played pirated copies of Ultima II and III until the disks wore out.  When I finally could spend money on these things I was sorely disappointed.  A copy of Amber Star refused to run on my Atari ST... and my version of Temple of Apshai Trilogy would crash randomly.  I got completely stuck very early on in a later "martian" themed Ultima game written for the IBM.  I played a free text game on the ST called Hack compulsively and thought a graphical over the counter version would be even better... but the one I payed money for just plain stunk.

The idea of CRPG's has always fascinated me, but I've honestly never really had that good of an experience with them.

Wil Wheaton is.  While Ogre didn't make his off the cuff list of "will always play" games, he has mentioned it before in an interview.  (Oh, and his fans did make the photoshopped cigar magazine covers that he asked for, too.  Heh heh.)

I just can't get the hang of the game-- probably because I end up playing it just with two players.  The fun of Munchkin comes from the mind games that emerge in the group dynamic-- who will merit the smiting of the "whoop cards?"  With two players, that dynamic is gone because there's only one place for the hurt to fall.

The thing I can't stand about it is how everyone has, just as in Chez Geek, all of these randomly powered cards in front of them.  Not only do they interact in weird ways, but unless you've memorized the abilities, it's very difficult to "read" the current situation.  This makes it a pain to plan any coherent tactics....

Anyways, its pretty cool to see that CAR WARS is still high up on Wheaton's list.  I knew he played it way back, but I didn't know it was something that he'd still play.

Other critics have labeled Car Wars as merely being a "design-a-thing" game, but I don't think that's the best category to describe what its all about either.  Car Wars has its feet firmly planted in two contradictory worlds: it's is part of a family mini-games-- inexpensive and relatively easy to learn games that utilize the trappings of older wargames-- and at the same time Car Wars is part of a family of monster games... mini-games that raged out of control in a series of contradictory expansions and errata culminating into comprehensive "Compendiums" and "Doomsday" editions.  In other words, the true family of games that Car Wars belongs to includes Battletech and Star Fleet Battles-- and genre and even the fact that it uses a design system is secondary to its categorization.

Comfirmation of my approach to "gaming cladistics" can be found in the excellent article, An Introduction to Elegance.  He classifies them as "quasi-RPG wargames" and uses them to epitomize the lack of elegant design in American games.  He then sets up the German games invasion as being infinitely superior in the gaming elegance department... and he uses an example from computer programming to support his argument.

But I don't think it's entirely fair to compare an abstract game to a simulation.  While "Quasi-RPG wargames" can of course benefit from techniques developed by the German designers, they are not inherently inelegant.  It's more fitting to view Settlers of Catan as a more elegant version of the Monopoly and M.U.L.E. tradition of game.  In this discussion, it is important to understand the design differences forced upon a game by its choice of scope and granularity. 

The Car Wars design system is extremely elegant when judged from the correct vantage point.  The equipment list if finite and colorful... and the exact combination of speed, maneuverability, defense, and offense capability can be chosen at the whim and style the designer.  Complex equations are necessary only when calculating speed and range... simple addition tallies and percentage increases are sufficient everywhere else.  Most importantly, cost is an accurate balancing factor: Battletech and Star Fleet Battles both had to develop kludgy "Battle Value" and "Base Point Value" systems to accomplish the same thing.  Finally, the statistical values developed in the design process impact all of the various rules subsystems in clearly defined and significantly game-impacting ways.

Returning to the programming example... a nifty "elegant" abstraction is only relevant to a project if it can accomplish the same requirements as the "ugly" solution.  Sometimes it is the right decision to simplify things... but at some point the maxim "as simple as possible but no simpler" comes into play.  German games are fun... they are interesting toys... but they don't even attempt to solve the same problems that we were trying to solve back in the eighties.  And I'm not sure that a "germanified" Car Wars game could come close to capturing the flavor of an effective dueling machine tossed into mortal combat at a funky arena.

Anyways, just a minor quibble with an otherwise solid post.  Check out the My Play blog for more interesting discussion and gaming analyis!

This problem wasn't fixed even with 5th edition Car Wars.  The Piranha got numerous improvements... with all three machine-guns moved to the front and loaded with incendiary ammo.  It was more than a match for the old same-old same-old Hotshot....

Anyways, here's my version that I worked up during the early nineties-- er, forties.  With a double dose of the minedropper option, incendiary mines and bullets, and extra armor, this version is a little more survivable.  Not by much, maybe, but it will set things on fire!

Hot Shot II— Luxury; Extra Heavy chassis; Heavy suspension; Large PP w/SCs; 4 Solid tires.  Driver w/Body Armor.  2xMachine Gun w/40xIncendiary; 2xMinedropper w/20xNapalm; 2xFlamethrower w/20xStandard.  4xLink; Fire Extinguisher; Targeting Computer; HD Brakes.  137 pts. Plastic (F: 40 R: 29 L: 29 B: 29 T: 5 U: 5); 1x10 pt., 2 spc. Plastic CA (Driver).  Cost: $19,990, Wgt: 6,520, HC: 3, Top Speed: 90, Accel: 5.

[This vehicle was designed with Compendium 2e rules using SPARK’s nifty design tool.]