Cepheus Light: Classic Car Wars

This topic was discussed in the previous article. This article attempts to recreate our hybrid Traveller Classic and OG Car Wars role-playing game, which lasted 30 years. The two systems complement each other well, and we were surprised at how well they all worked together.

Let's start with the SJ Games Car Wars Bundles, which get you started with Classic Car Wars. This is not the new version with all the 3D figures and cards; this is the OG design system and phased movement, where 20 seconds of combat took you four hours. Horribly inefficient? Trying to do what a computer does better by hand? Full of math and engineering?

Yes.

And fun.

Oh, this is so much fun.

Wait until you solve an engineering problem of "other players trying to kill your character." This isn't some DVD player DM reading the text boxes in an adventure; you should rather just read through them than play because it is all predetermined anyway.

This PvP game killed AD&D and left it on the asphalt as roadkill. BattleTech killed this game later, but that game was nothing like the gas-fueled rage of the open highways and death arenas. BattleTech was also not a great multiplayer game where four to a dozen or more players could all play together in teams or a free-for-all. 

BattleTech and MtG were primarily two-player games. Car Wars was multiplayer gang warfare on wheels.

You have a budget, a crew, and one car.

Now, build one to win.

Every other car on the table will be gunning for you.

You also want a copy of Cepheus Light; anything more is overkill and distracting. There are a lot of fantastic advanced and expanded editions out there, and they say this version is depreciated, but it is well worth picking up as a rules-light 2d6 RPG core. The skills are directly mapped to Car Wars skills, and there is an ability score and advancement system for extra fun.

For personal combat, skill rolls, hazards, and roleplaying, use Cepheus Light (CL).

For car combat, use Car Wars.

The skills and ability DRMs work on both sides. Yes, add the CL ability DRMs to appropriate Car Wars to-hit rolls and the skills that apply.

In Cepheus Light, ability modifiers are capped at +3 (human maximums), and skills are capped at +5. The Car Wars Compendium (CWC) has no upper skill limit; even a +9 is mentioned. So, the caps and skill levels are comparable, and Cepheus has a lower overall cap. I would allow a DEX DRM modifier to both gunnery and driving skills, so lower-level Cepheus characters with DEX 9 or higher will be more capable than a 30-point starting Car Wars Compendium character. Driving skills do not affect Handling Class in CWC, only crash rolls (by subtracting from the crash roll).

For mixed combat, use Car Wars with the Cepheus skills. Keep people in the Car Wars at the standard 3 hits (plus body armor) when vehicle weapons fire at them; it won't matter in too many cases. The rough damage conversion is 1d6 Cepheus hits to 1 hit of Car Wars damage. If body armor gets destroyed in Car Wars, it is destroyed in Cepheus.

Convert in Car Wars hand weapons and map them to Cepheus hand weapons. Most of them can be swapped one for one.

Character generation will be random, and you can be creative in freely swapping out career types. The pirate in CL is a "raider" in Car Wars. The army in CL could be a mercenary. The belter is an oil worker. A colonist is a townsperson. An agent is a law enforcement officer. The merchant is a trucker. The rogue is a criminal. The scout is a scout. A scholar could be a doctor, engineer, oil survey geologist, or professional. Marine (paratrooper) and navy (air force) careers could be airborne forces for corporate and government factions if you have the Car Wars Compendium and want that level of government power in your game with the helicopters. If you have boats, leave Navy and Marine as-is, or use them for both.

If you want to expand your game, pick up a PDF copy of the Car Wars Compendium. This has a more complete skill system, but there are too many skills for what the game is trying to do. It also lacks ability scores and sticks to the 3 hit system of the main game. I like the more "zoomed-in" feeling of Cepheus Light, especially in combat, abilities, and the standard 8+ checks modified by DRM and skill.

A word of warning here, this expands the game considerably. It is easy to get overwhelmed with over 100 pages of special rules for a pocket box game and tons of options like gas engines, metal armor, helicopters, boats, hovercraft, and many new weapons and pieces of gear - this is worth it if you want to immerse yourself in the Classic world, but complete overkill for a simple road warrior style game using the essential pocket boxes.

The biggest thing you would want this for is Road Warrior-style games where the cars use gas engines, metal armor, and those cool cupola turrets with a gunner in them and a weapon they manually point and fire. Get this book if you want to be less "plastic armor and electric engines" and more "steel and gasoline."

Also note that many vehicle designs are of the "electric and plastic" type, though those can be easily converted to metal armor. The power plants need to be swapped out, and you will dive into vehicle design to customize them.

There is an alternate expansion path with Cepheus Deluxe Expanded Edition, which adds a talent system and ways to buy talents and increase ability scores with XP. The rest of this book is overkill for a Car Wars game, and soon, you will be off exploring space.

Cepheus Light has just enough and not much more, which keeps it focused on the 2d6 mechanics without too much extra supporting cruft. While CD is a fantastic game, stick to the lighter system for Car Wars and let the books fill out the rest.

Is Classic Car Wars slow? Yes. You will play a battle for hours if you are not strict about time. A 30-second 8-car battle took us 6 hours. We played car battles with over 200 vehicles, which took days, but this was before computers, pre-NES, and post-Atari 2600. It was summer, so we had the time, and it was fun. You will not sit there and ponder your move. At most, a 30-second sand timer should be set in a phase when a decision must be made. Otherwise, you move forward and do nothing.

The drama of these battles is like nothing you have experienced. I have not tried the new game, but the old game blew BattleTech away for us, and even Warhammer. Those games seem slow, overly methodical, and plodding compared to simulating a car flying around the board at 60 mph, and you want to keep going since you will make yourself an easy target. And after a few hours with a car that is barely holding itself together, to win is a fantastic feeling.

Adding a role-playing element opens the world up and makes you feel like more is happening from a story perspective. The 2d6 RPG and Car Wars combination killed AD&D and our Aftermath game for us, and we never returned. It was this or Star Frontiers, and that is all we played.

Those were the days.