Classic Car Wars

I love classic Car Wars.

The new game is cool, and more miniature and card-based. Nothing beats the original for me, as I remember long summers of my brother and me playing days-long battles like a massive wargame on card tables covered with quarter-inch ruled maps.

And the game lets you design the vehicle your mind could imagine, from sports cars to buses to 18-wheelers. Motorcycles, too! Tanks, helicopters, boats, and planes joined the fight later. The game had both electric and gas engines for the cars, though, really, you could just say whatever you wanted the engines to be, and it did not really matter when we started playing. The gas engines were cool, along with the metal armor rules and the low-tech "Mad Max" style of play, where the battles were more "chassis and crossbow."

The game was slow. You were simulating a vehicle battle with real physics, one-tenth of a second at a time, though later that was increased to one-fifth of a second, and that sped up play by double. That level of accuracy was needed, since the battles were these chaotic dances of death where everything was in motion, and those "planned random moments" where a damaged side of armor appeared for a fraction of a second were often the difference between life and death.

If you don't have the patience to play a battle one second at a time without a computer, this game is not for you. And we designed these vehicles by hand, using an LCD scientific calculator. I still have this TI calculator, 50 years old at this point, and it is still working (and on its second battery).

Seriously, this country used to make stuff that lasted back in the 1970s and 80s.

Car Wars is a lot like simulating World War 2 dogfights: motion, fire angles, momentum, control rolls, lucky shots, and planning movement in slow motion were the keys to victory. Though on the ground, tire management became an issue. You are only as good as your contact with the road, and mines and spikes took their toll. Oil, paint, smoke, and other defensive weapons were highly effective.

Predicting your opponent's movement hours ahead of "real world time" and figuring out where you wanted to move, for 15-second slices of "game time," helped you gain foresight into where your opponents were likely to move. A car moving 40mph moves 4 inches per second, which gives you an idea of where it was going and could be in the next 10 seconds of play.

If you don't have the patience for this, stay far away.

But if you ever wanted to simulate a car-versus-car battle where every heartbeat of time matters, this is car nirvana. This hits the classic American "car culture" vibe perfectly, mixing it with Western and post-apoc genres in a tasty blend of nostalgia and muscle-car madness. The game slaps hard and is the meat and potatoes of simulation wargaming.

Fighting on foot is a death sentence, as cars were like ogre main battle tanks. You can mount an effective pedestrian defense against a vehicle assault, but you need urban terrain and a lot of coordinated fire and ambushes to do so. Pedestrians are slow compared to vehicles!

The game works for post-apocalyptic play, flashy autoduel arena battle play, low-tech car battles, battle cars versus superheroes, and every place in between.

Autoduel GURPS/Champions 2024

I am working on converting Classic Car Wars to a 3d6-or-less system, such as GURPS or Hero System. The ideal goal is to use the 3d6 system for the to-hits, while everything else—damage, handling, combat, and vehicle designs—still use the Car Wars system and keeps the "metal underneath" the same.

Damage is going to scale. Car Wars to Champions is a 3-to-1 scale, so 1d6 Car Wars is 3d6 Champions. Car Wars to GURPS is more like 18-to-1, based on the 0.50 cal. M2HB (7dx2) and the 66mm LAW (6dx6). So if a LAW in Car Wars does 2d6, that is 36d6 in GURPS, and the 0.50 MG in GURPS does 14d6, which is close enough to 18d6, so 1d6 in Car Wars, which matches the MG damage.

To-hit modifiers in both games are doubled. So, if firing at the front of a car is a -1 in Car Wars, that is a -2 in Champions or GURPS. Use Car Wars for all to-hit modifiers, with the only exception being the OCV and DCV modifiers in Champions - the driver's OCV and target driver's DCV do apply to the to-hit roll (if they have Combat Driver skill otherwise it is zero), as they do in Champions. This was a cool rule in the Autoduel Champions days, where a driver's abilities could make the vehicle harder to hit.

Do not do size and range modifiers with either system! Stick with Car Wars' range and to-hit to calculate the final CW to-hit modifier, then multiply by two.

To-hit modifiers for weapons are based on a Car Wars 7+ to-hit number. Every point above or below is a +/-2 modifier to hit when using the gun. Targeting computers factor in as usual, so a hi-res target will give a -4 to-hit modifier (lower is better).

For handling, use the Car Wars Control Table. If you get a 'safe" result, do not make a driving skill check. If you get a number 2 through 6, that is your negative modifier to your driving skill check to avoid a roll on the Crash Table. So if your vehicle is at 60 mph, and you have a current -2 HC, the number on the chart is 2, so you need to make a driving skill roll at a -2 to avoid a Crash Table roll. HC resets as it does in Car Wars.

With GURPS, the combat turn is one second, and you usually get one attack, so this is a very clean conversion. The Hero System rules use a Speed system from 1 to 12 and a 12-second turn. This does not work that well in Classic Car Wars, and the old Audoduel Champions' way of handling it is allowing characters to make a vehicular weapon (not hand weapon) attacks every second (like SPD 12) but zero out OCV and skill bonuses on non-acting phases.

This means an SPD 4 character in the Hero System who acts on phases 3, 6, 9, and 12 and gets their full skill and OCV bonuses on those phases only. They can attack in phases 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 11, but at an OCV or zero.

Hero System DCV always applies; this helps balance the "firing every phase" issue below!

Stick to the Hero System phases when making hand weapon attacks or using superpowers. So that SPD 4 characters can make a hand weapon or superpower attack every 3 seconds. This is a change from Car Wars, but given the games, it makes sense. This also puts people on foot at a more significant disadvantage than vehicles since they can get fired at every phase.

This has stayed the same since Autoduel Champions, and letting characters keep their full DCV (even in non-acting phases) helps balance this out and keeps superheroes from being sitting targets by a stream of per-phase machinegun fire. Haying for a DCV of 6 is going to be a huge benefit when the attacking vehicle is acting off-phase, and the attacker can't use their OCV and skill bonuses.

Movement should be done in Car Wars, with everything in mph, including foot movement. I know this will mess up Hero System movement rates, where characters only move during their phase, but we are entering "simulation land," where all foot movement is done per phase.

Hero System uses meters, so do a rough conversion and multiply by 3 for feet. For simplicity, assume Hero System "meters per turn" equals "miles per hour." Most characters in Hero System move 12m, which is about 12.5 mph in Car Wars, which is running speed foot movement (Car Wars Compendium). If a character has a running superpower of 40m per turn, he runs at 40 mph, and all movement is done according to Car Wars (every second).

Speaking of Autoduel Champions, we were sort of inspired by this project since we played it a lot in the 1980s. We had our own Traveller-like system for our game, but having Champions' superpowers convert easily was a huge plus. It allowed us to do the mixed superheroes and Car Wars campaign we loved.

And you can tell we played many of these games since these conversions are very natural for me to bust out as I think through how the games are played.

If I were to do our game today, our Traveller-inspired 2d6 system, I would skip all the newer versions of Cepheus and go straight for the digest-sized Cepheus Light. The skills are 99% compatible with Car Wars and are all 2d6 and N+ compatible. The personal combat rules can be used instead of the ones in Car Wars. The only rules I would add are the optional Traits system (30 XP to buy a new one) and the Cepheus Enhanced Edition rule for raising an ability score (3x new level in XP).

Why Cepheus Light and not one of the newer versions? I don't need anything in the newer versions. It is digest-sized and feels like a Car Wars book. The game even has a "cargo" system that works directly with Car Wars to haul loads between cities (Grav Vehicles would be Auto Parts or the cars themselves).

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/257644/cepheus-light

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/262129/cepheus-light-traits

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/342060/non-random-character-generation-for-cepheus-light

Those three are really all you need. Another benefit? If you need a simplified RPG for Battletech, that works just as nicely. For Battletech, you may want to use a more complete and modern edition since you will get a lot of extra "sci-fi stuff" you will use, but for Car Wars, Light is all you need.

Classic Car Wars: Cepheus Atom & Other Games

Suppose you are doing a Car Wars campaign with the Cepheus Light set of rules. Another great book to accompany your game is the excellent post-apocalyptic Cepheus Atom rule book, a rules-light version of a science-fantasy Gamma World or Mutant Crawl Classics setting.

Suppose your game leans heavily into post-apocalyptic themes, such as scavenging wastelands, survival, and barter with groups of survivors. In that case, this is a perfect digest-sized book to add to your library. This game also has Gamma World-style mutations, mutant monsters, and exposure to mutation-causing contaminants.

Our game was a mix of magic, superheroes, war themes, sci-fi, and gonzo post-apocalyptic maniac insanity. Different areas of the world were almost like classic post-ruin theme parks; some were super science, some were superheroes, some were like Mad Max, others Gamma World, some Death Race, primitive areas, some like Rambo vs. the Soviets, and some mutated animals. Our game was this wonderful mix of crazy but loosely related 1980s after-the-bomb-style insanity and action-movie tropes.

In our world, Detroit, Fort Wayne, and Toledo were the triangle of destroyed, barbaric, mutant-filled mayhem that was impossible for everyone to traverse, and they just did their own thing. Grand Rapids and Toronto, along with most of Michigan, were also in this destroyed, ruin-filled, toxic blast zone area of savage mutants and ruined cities.

The more Car Was area was Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Pittsburgh. Along with Midvale because we loved that place. Between Midvale and Pittsburgh are oil wells; if I start this game again, those will be a major focus.

The "Car Wars" part of the world was just a few areas left with roads and civilization. There were also destroyed parts, uncivilized areas, mutants-and-mayhem, Mad Max, and 1950s sci-fi enclaves worldwide. There were Land of the Lost-style areas with barbarians and dinosaurs, much like the Savage Land-style superhero theme comics, and there is also another excellent game in the 2d6 sphere called Barbaric 2E.

If areas of the world were sufficiently barbaric and isolated, they may have degenerated into violent tribes. This is more like a "Thundarr the Barbarian" feeling and has a magic power source. Parts of the world can be different, and the people there accept that and see their way of life as the proper reality. If there is a savage area of Michigan where people ride dinosaurs, that is how it is. One of the problems with the OG Car Wars was assuming "everything will be like normal America," which was a significant theme problem with the AADA Road Atlases.

In our world, there were areas where everything was turned on its head, and it wasn't this modernist, 20th-century American throwback. Like the new Planet of the Apes movies, there were parts of the world that were not the same, nor would they ever be.

Also worthy of mention (but not digest-sized) is the entire Sword of Cepheus game, or as a more traditional fantasy game based on the 2d6 system, the Westlands game.

Westlands is highly underrated. I would not use this as a Car Wars resource but more as a parallel fantasy reality to Car Wars. Where Sword of Cepheus is more dark magic and talismans, Westlands is more traditional fantasy. Westlands is an awesome 2d6 fantasy game, complete and more like a full OSR implementation.

Cepheus Deluxe deserves mention as another game to pull from, especially talents. Where Barbaric 2E and Sword of Cepheus are digest-sized games, the others are full-size books and do not have that "small book" feeling I want for Car Wars. If it is a digest-sized game, it is in my Car Wars world. Big-book games are their own worlds.

This also includes the 1950s-based Solar Sagas game for retro-1950s style space adventures, based on the sci-fi digest game Quantum Starfarer. This makes my high-tech enclaves (like NASA, non-oil Houston, Vandenburg, and a few other isolated space enclave futurist cities) a more Fallout-style pre-ruin enclave that shuns the regular Car Wars world and explores near space to try to leave Earth's madness behind. These places existed in our world, and they were highly isolated since they focused on off-Earth activities and did not share much with anyone.

Car Wars was the glue that loosely held the world together. Savage fantasy mutant areas existed in the wilds, and superheroes lived in fortress cities. Oh, and there is also a 2d6 Cepheus digest game for that, and out superheroes were often accused of ignoring the outside world (which they did). Fallout-style enclaves were more interested in living their own way and leaving the planet. it all worked together wonderfully as a gonzo post-apoc game with Mad Max cars, mutants, sci-fi, and superheroes. The evil Soviets kept trying to destroy the world like classic Cold War enemies. The world was factionalized, and people believed in their way of life.

This wasn't the AADA Road Atlas world at all. It was closer to the Umerican setting in a wasteland future with strongly themed factions with their own outlooks, lands, goals, beliefs, and even technologies. Parts of the world were mutant strongholds, while others had savage magic. Parts were isolationist retro-future enclaves, while others seemed like superhero comics. The glue holding our setting together wasn't DCC; it was Car Wars and a 2d6 Traveller-like role-playing game.

There are many fun 2d6 games out there, and they are just as good as many d20 games. They mesh well with both Car Wars and Battletech, and they are a unique alternate reality in the gaming sphere worth checking out.

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.

Mail Room: Car Wars Bundles

The Car Wars Bundle box sets from Steve Jackson Games are fantastic. All of the original boxed games are here, and they include both the original cardstock "cut them yourself" counters and a set of very thick-stock punch-out counters for all game pieces. A Car Wars game with thick "sneeze-proof" counters is impressive.

This is the original game, with the later 5-phase turn instead of the game's original 10-phase one, and it plays faster without losing too much simulation.

There is a new version of Car Wars with 3D-printed cars and cards, but this is the old-school, designed vehicles, cycles, rigs, busses, and everything else on the road - and take them to war. This is closer to an RPG than a card game, and it is what I grew up with. I have not tried the new game, and I am sure it is fun and fast-paced, but it is not the original.

The original is more than just "car versus car" - it is a game creation kit for any automotive mayhem. You could do motorcycles versus a big rig, races, road battles, arena PvP battles, street battles, police chases, heists, offroad racing, spy car versus pursuit, and any other vehicle battle with these rules. You can design today's no-armor vehicles or future armored battle cars and battle them all with hand or vehicle weapons.

They have four boxes with a collection of everything you need to play the original game, maps, counters, road sections, rules, and the original box sets. You may want to invest in the Car Wars Compendium if you wish to use all the rules in the final form (with the most options), but the pocket boxes work great, too.

This is such a fantastic throwback nostalgia ride, and you can also base an entire roleplaying campaign around the battles with a 2d6 Traveller-like set of rules (Cepheus Light is my choice).

This is one of my best purchased this year, and will give me a lifetime of throwback, nostalgia, thrill-ride fun.

Old School Car Wars

We only had calculators back in the day. We did not have Excel, spreadsheets, computers, cell phones, or the Internet. We designed these cars by hand. Columns of numbers down a sheet of paper, sums and totals, points of armor, notes on weapons and accessories, and a grand total at the bottom, making each design fit into a cost and weight budget.

Pencil, paper, and imagination to create dreams.

The tables were covered with maps and counters. We laid large sheets of posterboard over the maps to ensure the counters weren't disturbed and picked them up carefully and slowly each day. We wanted to return to the game as it was tomorrow.

The games went on for days, with the story of each car a little plotline running through a massive battle with 12, 24, or even 200 cars on the board. By the end, the wrecks covered the battlefield, and those tough, lucky, or smart enough survived. The battles took hours to complete, 30 seconds of play, or days for massive battles. We had lists of who went next and handled them down the line. Special counters to track conditions like fire and lost tires.

This was the long summers in a poor Appalachia household with no Nintendo and no Internet, as they did not exist at that time. The Atari 2600 was a dead console, and there was nothing to do but go outside or play Car Wars all day.

We played Car Wars all day.

This game is in my blood.

Every other game faded away. AD&D and Mystara died. New games paled in comparison. There was no BattleTech, nor was there Warhammer. Just Car Wars, Star Frontiers, and a little West End Game's Paranoia. We made our own roleplaying game to go with Car Wars, a Traveller variant that seamlessly meshed with the board game.

We had pencils, paper, colored pencils, and magic markers to make our counters and maps. We covered poster boards in huge maps, laying out our grids and planning the maps with rulers, drafting tools, and drafting French curves. Inking and coloring them. those hand-made maps took weeks to plan and create, but they were ours and cool.

I still have them.

It also helped set me up for a lifetime of learning in science, math, engineering, and creative problem-solving. It taught me the value of seat belts and the importance of driving slowly on dangerous roads. It taught me how to be aware at night, how to drive defensively, how to be responsible and budget for the things I want, and how to deal with adversity. It taught me how to know when a battle can't be won and to bow out before things get too bad.

The honor of accepting a surrender. And expecting the same mercy in return. And when to know there would be none.

This was life.

And life was Car Wars.

Elegant, Simple, and Expressive

As much as I love Savage Worlds, Cypher feels much easier to play and transfer ideas into. Where a Savage Worlds version of a setting feels like "the Savage Worlds version of a setting," Cypher feels different - almost like a stripped-down version of pool-based 5E or a d20 system with a flat 1-10 difficulty curve and plenty of room to interpret.

For me, it completely replaces 5E and does many things 5E does, but both more accessible and with greater customization and flexibility. With 5E, I am "buying books" to have more options. I have them all in Cypher and am free to make the ones I want. The 5E design is very consumerist and designed to limit options and sell new ones.

Any of my 5E books are instant Cypher sourcebooks.

Savage Worlds is sort of its own thing. It does anything, but the game requires a lot of "table toys," such as decks of cards, poker chips, standard dice, and lots of structure to make the system and toys work together. To play Savage Worlds, I need to "load" the "Savage Worlds" OS into my brain and think in that model to make the game run smoothly. I love the system and playing with all the toys, but sometimes I have to fit my ideas into the structure, and things feel lost in the translation.

In some games, like OSR d20 games, I can run without thinking and "loading the game's OS" in my head. Cypher fits into this category but also has that "box of Legos" feeling I like. The game also invited you to design your own pieces, unlike Savage Worlds, which warms against tweaking and house ruling (the GM's guide).

Case in point, I tried running a Car Wars game in Savage Worlds, and I had to make a lot of conversions and substitutions for the parts I wanted in the game. The game worked well, but it felt more like Savage Worlds - which is a good thing, in all honesty. The chase rules and vehicle combat relied on the systems and routines built into the game, and while they are designed for the most fun, I felt confined to that structure.

I didn't know how to fight combats with vehicles with Cypher, but the game had a simplified resolution system. For most cars, you could say "they are all sort of equal" based on a "maxed out" design for level one thru six cars. A level 1 vehicle is a light cycle, and a level 6 is a van. The vehicle combat system is very abstract and works for cinematic combat. If a van is weaker than the best-in-class design, lower its level.

Car Wars typically runs between "best in class" designs, and the weapon selection is mostly flavor. An abstract system uses a generic "handle a road combat" sense.

Is that the only way I can do it? No. I could make each car a "creature," give it a level and amount of hits and figure "damage as level" like creatures. 

I could eliminate "leveled damage" and give each vehicle weapons and large gear slots equal to the level, an armor value, and do it that way. Treating "vehicles as creatures" would work well and let me make custom "creatures" for different vehicle types and customize them with assets and inabilities. Weapons are like Cypher, a 1d6 MG is a light weapon, 2d6 weapons are medium, and anything heavier is a heavy weapon. Single-shot weapons get a bonus, like ignoring armor or bonus damage.

It works.

Is it the way the game says to do it? No. But it works.

I could stick with the game's "leveled cars" system, still do the "spaces" thing, and allow one modification or unique piece of gear per vehicle level, such as a targeting computer to ease attack difficulty. Some cars are "higher level" at attack than defense. A flamethrower would give a devastating attack up close but be worthless father away (or fired to the front while moving). Weapons? Assume they are on there, and what they are is flavor. Unarmed vehicles? Just say they are or increase their defenses or cargo if there is weight to spare.

I could develop "vehicular cyphers" to put in those slots and have something more interesting than stock Car Wars. The possibilities are endless.

All of it works.

Hero System: Vehicle Combat

Still, these are the best vehicle rules for Champions ever - at least for movement and combat. And the vehicle rules, even in the 6th Edition, seem copied and pasted from the 4th Edition, and they have not changed, nor do they have an excellent example of how they work. The Autoduel Champions system was written for the 2nd Edition Hero System, and it uses a very early version of the Car Wars design rules as well.

One of the most considerable problems for the Hero System is movement is tied to the character's speed characteristic. A character has a 12-phase turn, with one-second phases. A character with a speed of 2 (average) will move and attack twice in that 12-second turn.

A vehicle or person in motion should move every second, and Autoduel Champions handles this structure. There is a clear difference between the games, and Hero System is more a "superhero sim" than Car Wars, which is a "reality sim."

5 miles per hour of speed or acceleration is roughly 2 meters per second. A car at 50 mph will move (roughly) 20 meters per second. One of the problems comes up with using Hero System combat with the SPD 2 character driving into a wall because they can only act every 6 phases.

Car Wars characters and vehicles can maneuver and turn multiple times during a one-second turn, increasing difficulty per maneuver.

How Do You Fix This?

You have to flip the "simulation switch" on in Hero System and allow everyone to move and maneuver their movement every phase. Make a combat vehicle operations roll for the maneuver based on difficulty.

Remember, vehicles can accelerate and decelerate every phase too. A car with 5 mph acceleration at a dead stop will move 2 meters in the first phase, 4 the next, 6 the next, and all the way up to 24 meters per phase (roughly 55 mph) on phase 12 of the same turn. Deceleration is also per phase, with 5-15 mph deceleration being average and higher levels being control rolls.

See Car Wars for the exact deceleration values, but above 15 mph, deceleration in a phase is very risky.

Making attacks? Keep that to the turn chart on the specified phases in Hero System. Higher SPD characters can make more attacks per turn while trying to avoid death while driving like maniacs. You will miss attack chances, so if there are exceptional cases where someone needs to make an attack before driving behind a building, that will be up to the referee to decide if it is possible and if an ability check is needed to time it correctly for the out of phase action. These out-of-phase actions will be the exception, not the rule, and will still consume the character's following attack action.

Roughly Autoduel Champions

This system is roughly similar to Autoduel Champions but more 6th Edition in spirit. It does require a "simulation mode" toggle, which breaks Hero System's movement system and puts it in a "per phase based on velocity" system of movement. High SPD characters will not move at faster velocities, but they will get to act more during a turn. If you are trying to create a speedster, focus on raw velocity rather than a high SPD.

Also, note Car Wars characters are assumed to be SPD 12 by the wargame rules since they can attack every phase. The Hero System pulls this pretty far back but puts everything on a more realistic level. In the ordinary world, while driving a car, you will be fortunate to get an attack off every 6 seconds with everything going on and trying to control a speeding car.

Also, note movement will be much higher than the base Hero System with "simulation mode" toggled on. An SPD 2 character will be moving "at speed" and six times faster than he would with simulation mode off. For melee, superhero fights, and dungeons, leave simulation mode off. For vehicles - turn it on.

So my jury-rigged system is a compromise between the "on the metal" Car Wars system and preserving the action economy of Hero System 6th Edition. I would play with 2-meter hexes, even if that meant some cars would be 2 hexes long (move and turn with the front part of the counter).

Convert or Play As-Is?

This is tough since the Autoduel Champions system has excellent Car Wars-style vehicle design rules. The design system is dated by Car Wars standards (turrets take zero space in the vehicle), so I would likely use the Autoduel Champions damages and component damage system while using stock Car Wars for vehicle designs - and convert the armor values via the system provided in Autoduel Champions. I would use the latest up to date Car Wars design rules too.

Would I like an updated Autoduel Champions? Yes. Do I really need it? No.

Does Hero System need updated vehicle rules?

Oh, yes.

Our Car Wars RPG

Back when we played Car Wars - and this was pre-GURPS, we wanted to play this as a role playing game. We wanted to keep the original Car Wars combat system intact, the damage scale, the 3 DP people, the 2d6 to-hits based on weapon type, the phased turns, and the +0 to +6 skill system.

There was no better fit than the original Traveller.

This worked incredibly well, and we did the UDPs for our characters, kept the DRM and applied those as modifiers to rolls to the Car Wars to-hits, and even used the Traveller skill system (modified using the Car Wars skills). If you had a high END DRM, that added to your character's DP. STR DRM added to personal melee damage. Handgunner skill plus DEX DRM was your to-hit modifier. Ability scores were straight 2d6, place in the attribute of your choosing. Social Standing got converted to Charisma.

It was simple, easy, converted right over to the original rules, and it worked incredibly well. Characters translated perfectly over to tabletop play using the phased turn system and counters. You could play verbally without a map. We added in some of the cool Traveller skills like Communications, Computer, and others.

We used an XP system taken from Autoduel Champions where you got 1-3xp per adventure, it cost 10 xp times the new skill level to raise a skill (10 for level 0), and 10 x the new ability score to raise an ability. This worked perfectly and gave us character advancement.

We used a universal DRM table of:

• 1 = -3
• 2-3 = -2
• 4-5 = -1
• 6-8 = +0
• 9-10 = +1
• 11-12 = +2
• +1 per 2 every points higher

And those were all our changes.

How Did it Work?

This was our first non D&D RPG. Our very first session was my brother's character sitting in a bar (the Mondo Bar in Midville), and our first "encounter" was the sounds of a car combat driving by outside. I was the referee.

He heard that, he didn't know what to do, I didn't know what to do, and the cars drove by blazing away and barreled around the corner in a screech of tires and hail of gunfire. His character wasn't even involved, wasn't targeted, and didn't get shot at or hurt. His character stood on the sidewalk as the sounds of battle echoed off in the distance.

My brother looked at me and blinked. "Wow. What do you do when that happens?"

I shrugged. "I guess that happens in Car Wars all the time. Do whatever you want."

Coming from pre-scripted D&D modules, this was our first "sandbox" moment, and our eyes were opened. We never knew who those two cars were or why they were fighting, nor did he seek to find out. He got busy earning money and taking transportation missions on his armored bus, and the world was this cool, dynamic, interesting, sometimes random, and crazy place where real people tried to make a living and find their way through a hellish, post apocalyptic landscape of the Rust Belt in 2050.

No other RPG came close to this experience, even GURPS Autoduel. Having a system that worked with the game's original tabletop wargame rules was a perfect fit, and this campaign lasted for many, many years with those rules.

That basic Traveller book was the key, and I can't think of two better games that worked so well together - yet were so different. And that original Traveller set of rules is so flexible and fun it can practically do any genre.

Minutiae

 

One of the interesting contrasts in the Traveller community, and I will pull GURPS: Traveller into this discussion because it highlights the issue, is the "micro versus macro" topic.

Macro Games

Classic Traveller is a macro game. For all you care, there is one planet in a star system, the most important one listed in the UDP, and when you jump in you visit that. You don't worry that much about gravity, space stations, moons, other planets in the system, what the continents look like, what the safe jump distance is and if the star's gravity prevents jumping in near the planet, or any of that other low-level hard sci-fi detail. We don't worry about what the spaceport looks like, who the planet's leaders currently are, local customs and cultures, or much about anything else - this is all fluff, if it is there it is nice to have but not critical and it is not needed for play.

The universe is a large place, and if we get get bogged down in the details we will never go anywhere!

You see the same thing in B/X and D&D style games, there are parts of the game heavily abstracted because if we got bogged down in details no high fantasy would ever happen. The game would shift from adventure to some second-by-second combat simulator where having a metal pauldron on your left shoulder really matters then the goblin's spear targets a random hit location and you are left-facing them.

Ironically Forbidden Lands is more of a macro-level game as well. It does have resource tracking, but a lot of those systems are abstracted and the system is more of a macro-level game on the macro story level than the "3 arrows left in my quiver" sort of game. I get this feeling it tells a larger brush of events and history than does a game that depends on marching order and precise combat map positioning.

Micro Games

In a game where minutiae matters, such as GURPS, Aftermath, Space Master, Rolemaster or others - heck yeah I want a system layout that lists every planet, every moon, every space station in the system, who the locals are, their government, the current in-system conflicts, what companies are there, what the system's defense forces are like, a random space traffic chart, maps of the planets, data on the economy, any wars or major events going on, what each planet produces, and on and on.

I want to be low level because I want to immerse myself in this universe!

The more detailed games have that assumption, where if you are tracking every kilogram of weight on every character, adjusting their casual and combat loadouts, and designing their skills and abilities down to the last character point - you want detail. The game runs on details. The game thrives when you get immersed in not only your character, but also the world you are in.

In some ways, especially in combat and the rules around feats, actions, and interrupts, D&D 3.5 was more of a micro-game, and D&D 4 especially so with powers and positioning.

I can see how players can get tired of all the detail, and games like GURPS or Rolemaster can be a chore to slog through and get working. It is like a phone or tablet with so many user options things are not simple anymore, while you have incredible options and power available for power users, the average user who just wants a phone that works can get turned off quickly. Even I get tired of the detail - I love it - but there is a point where if all I am doing is shuffling rules and choices there is little room left for story or anything compelling me to actually play.

But it is cool to know there is a mineral rich asteroid floating in low orbit of a low-density gas giant on the outer edge of the system, and you find an abandoned research facility on it not in any system records and the adventure begins...

Variant Games

That, for me, is the appeal of very low-level sci fi, and you see a variant of this in the Alien horror RPG as well. That game has macro-ized rules in places, but micro in the places where the horror is - the characters, what they carry, their stress levels, and where they are in a station are critically important. When the bad stuff happens, the game gets micro quick. In the day-to-day cargo hauling, space business and travel, it stays macro as it should.

Micro games can macro if you hand-wave away a lot of stuff too, like using GURPS to play Traveller and never getting that deep into the details. The question becomes, how deep do you want to go in the areas of the game that DO go micro? Do you even need that level of detail? It is nice to be able to sim second-by-second combat and know all the small things, but is that important for the story you are telling and the game you are running? If you crave the details, go micro and relish the game's low-level expressive power.

If all you care about is story and the large sweeping arcs of narrative, stay macro and do not waste your time with games that are a lot of low-level work for little narrative return. If you love the details, pick a favorite game that gives you what you crave and dive in. Nothing is "better" than the other, it is just personal preference.

Design Matters

Ultimately this is the game designer's job, what parts of the game are micro (and where the focus of the fun is), and what parts stay macro for ease of play and to reduce focus. When we played Car Wars we came up with a pretty cool "tire design" system. Yes, tire design. You could custom design your tires. You could put sidewall armor on radials, customize the tread, add internal run-flat support, and all sorts of cool features.

We could design the tires that came with the game and they came out perfect. Wow!

We had some cool tires on some cars and none of them mattered for the most part. Were they cool? Heck yeah! Did they matter to story? Very, very rarely. We ended up shelving it and just going with the standard tires for the most part, as that type of detail did not add anything to the stories we were telling.

It was the perfect case of adding detail where we thought it mattered, but it ultimately didn't and the game was better without it. Unless you are playing a game where you run a tire company, seriously, buy the ones on the shelf.

The game survived without tire design. It was minutiae and honestly, added detail to an area that wasn't that important. Some games on my shelf I still see this here and there, where some cool subsystem is still in the game yet adds very little.

Depends on the Game, Group, and Mood

Also, I have different moods, ones where I crave the detail, and others where I could care less and want a larger swath of story. Groups are like this too, and they can have preferences on how macro or micro a game should be given their tastes and the genre they are interested in. new players to tabletop gaming should probably start with more macro games, and as their tastes develop, go wherever they wish. Some will want to get into detail. Others just like story and covering everything in a more abstract way.

There are times I absolutely love immersion, and that includes rules and detail.

There are others I just want story and the large sweeping arc without the tiny details.

There are even others when I want to play with "story mechanic games" like FATE or Genesys.

Genesys I currently have out and I am playing with right now.

Retrospective: Autoduel Champions

I seriously don't know if many people remember this one. I need to set this one up historically.

Champions was still in the multiple softcover books, pre 3rd Edition as I remember (I could be wrong, my Champions knowledge that far back is sketchy). So this was the superhero game of the time.

Car Wars was still the three plastic pocket boxes of Car Wars, Sunday Drivers, and Truck Stop. Deluxe Car Wars has not been released.

Abd the year was 1983. Thriller. The US invasion of Grenada. SDI. Return of the Jedi. McNuggets. Minivans. The release of the Famicom/NES in Japan (US was 1985). The last big year for the Atari 2600.

So the two companies making Champions and Car Wars get together and produce a book that does three things:

1. Add Car Wars to Champions
2. Add Helicopter Rules to Car Wars
3. Add Superpowers to Car Wars

I know...what do helicopters have to do with this? I guess if superheroes fly, then Car Wars needs to fly. Let us break down each rules section and how it worked, and how we used it in our games. Strap yourself in.

Champions: Car Wars

This section created rules for Car Wars cars and combat inside the Champions game. All the movement was done on hex grids, the damage scales adjusted, and the weapon stats converted over to the Champions scale. This was our first look at Hero system, and a lot of this was so alien and strange to us we ignored it until we started playing Champions years later.

One notable change from Car Wars in this section was the use of non-ablative armor on the cars, versus Car Wars' ablative armor. This concept would later show up in the Car Wars supplement Deathtrack as the metal armor rules.

These rules were surprisingly Max Max meets 007, and I could see a lot of Champions players scream with delight at being able to finally have armed and armored cars in their games. This must have been a huge thing for Champions players at the time, I mean, those still not playing Car Wars all weekend at the hobby store. Everyone played Car Wars in our neighborhood. We played D&D and the number one question during the game was, "When are we playing Car Wars?"

Car Wars: Helicopters

This section introduced totally broken helicopters into Car Wars, and these were later cleaned up in Deluxe Car Wars. The weight allowances on these flying beasts was so high you could stack hundreds of points of armor on them, and your only option for fighting these flying takes was to shoot the flimsy rotors off and watch the armored flying safes fall to the ground, take hundreds of points of damage in a collision with the ground, and watch the passengers crawl out unscathed because the damage from plummeting thousands of feet from the sky did not penetrate the insides.

We never really designed out choppers that way. We could, but they weren't fun. We stuck to faster, lighter armored and armed choppers that mirrored car designs - which we in fact a lot more deadly because of their acceleration and mobility on the battlefield. A chopper that can fly and has double or triple the acceleration of a ground vehicle gives you a whole lot more options when fighting in an urban environment. I am just going to hover low over this tall building where you can't see me, wait until you take a course of action, and circle around to your weak spot at my leisure.

Very few arena cars had decent top armor when this came out, and even fewer could shoot straight up (or a map with a slant range long enough) so it made chopper versus car battles like turkey shoots unless you custom designed cars to fight choppers.

Still, we thought these rules enough were cool to use in our games, and we had a lot of fun with these massive sky behemoths. When Deluxe Car Wars came out, our massive week-long 100 car arena and helicopter battles were all but over, so we never really got to enjoy the revised helicopter rules in DCW.

Car Wars: Superpowers

Now I owe an article on this one, but we used the original Traveller RPG as our rules for our Car Wars RPG. The skill ratings were extremely similar. Both systems were 2d6 roll-high. The format for characters means we could quickly roll them up, spend the 30 starting skill points in Car Wars, and have a character quick - or hundreds of them.

This superpowers system in Autoduel Champions was our superpower system for years, at least until Marvel Super Heroes came out. This worked very well, scaled nicely with the Car Wars rules, and gave us these cool Traveller superpowers that worked very well with our houseruled system. You could rate various superheroes easily, give them armor that defended against the types of weapons they could buy flight, energy blasts, super speed, running, stretchy limbs, and other powers with a quick and easy system that fit well within our Car Wars and Traveller framework.

When Marvel Super Heroes came along, Car Wars and Traveller fell by the wayside, and the superheroes (sadly) took over our games. At least in Car Wars with superheroes, there are equalizers against the massive powers of superheroes and villains. Your combat car could even the odds, and the average person could fight a superhero. Heck, they could be a superhero with a car like that and great skills.

The End of an Era

And then that era was over as the Marvel and DC pen-and-paper games came in, blew out the power level of our games with cosmic energies, and all of a sudden the average person was a nobody again.

There was no great equalizer.

Superheroes were again, the "chosen ones."

Of all the things I don't like about the modern superhero movie and myth, it is this denial of the power of the average person in comparison to the hero on the screen. We wait for superheroes and strong figures to come and save us from ourselves. Back when I went to college, we were taught the power of collective action. If a manufacturer was selling weapons to oppressive regimes, and this company also made consumer goods - like refrigerators - than our community agreed to not buy those consumer goods. We recycled because we knew if millions of us did, it would make an impact. We divested in countries with horrible human rights abuses. If enough of us did together and all as one, we would make a difference.

We were all superheroes back then.

Today, I feel we have been trained well by Hollywood to simply wait for the next savior. Let's not individually make a difference in anything, we can just have some "figurehead leader" do it for us. If someone is worried about carbon footprint, for example, do they shop that way? Do they demand Amazon give them information on a product's carbon footprint and shop for lower alternatives? Do they live that way and make informed choices? Do they make a small difference in their lives and urge others to do the same?

Nah, let's just wait for someone or some slogan that makes us feel good about ourselves. Even if the plan does not work or the person will never accomplish the goal let's fight for it like it is the end of the world. The superhero. In essence, I feel the superhero myth has become mass-market collectivism, a false corporatized feeling of doing good sold to us like junk food. You see this in the Marvel and DC movies, those heroes never inspire the people of those worlds to help save themselves, nor could the people of those worlds ever hope to.

Champions Allows Talented Normals

This is likely due to Champions allowing normal people some chance against superheroes. There is this model in the Hero System where everyone uses the same character generation rules, so theoretically a highly-trained super agent could equal the power of a superhero. They wouldn't have all the damage resistances, powers, and immunities - but at least those points could be put to work in some way that could best a hero's powers with skills, abilities, and training.

And Autoduel Champions leveled the playing field further. Combat cars out of Car Wars could help even the odds against those with extraordinary powers. With the Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes games, I get the feeling normal people and even highly trained agents are still inferior to heroes with powers. This power level only seems to get worse as time goes on and the superheroes get stronger and stronger.

There is an article waiting here, as in Champions feels more grounded in power level, character design, and scope. This game also does not have the power of brand names, so your heroes are the most important in the world instead of the trademarked ones.

Blinded by the Marquee Lights

Looking back and seeing the organic system we came up with, and how equal that made each side, versus the later official games, makes me wonder if we didn't make a mistake in abandoning what we had back then. Both the Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes games felt like they intentionally weakened the balance between the average person and superheroes. If you played an average person, or even your own creation, you were a nobody compared to Batman or Wolverine.

And our Car Wars superhero game became more of a super-heroic soap opera past that point as we switched to those systems, and the grim and gritty life on the street, and the average person along with it, faded from importance. The balance was gone. There was no equal to these modern gods.

And after that we gave up on our characters and played with the copyrighted IP characters of Marvel and DC. The superheroes each year only got more and more powerful, both in powers and in our imaginations. Like a Lovecraftian monster, our humanity and ability to affect change was crushed by the people in the spandex tights.

Looking back at this game, as broken and as of an era as it was, makes me wonder what we lost when we fell in love with the hype. I get this feeling our game, our campaign, and the world in a larger sense.

Some interesting feelings today for a book very few likely remember.

Gaslands Refuelled

https://www.amazon.com/Gaslands-Refuelled-Post-Apocalyptic-Vehicular-Mayhem/dp/1472838831/

This looks fun. I heard Car Wars was finally doing a new edition and Kickstarter, so I decided to check that out, and found this game that many car-combat fans were playing. Both of them look fun, but this one in particular looks like an homage to "glue weapons to your Hot Wheels and paint them" sort of a hobby kitbash game that gives you a lot of style and customization.

People say this also plays incredibly fast once you get used to the rules, and any number of players can play. The 6th Edition Car Wars is limited to 2 or 4 players (as I hear), and this allows any number - just bring a car. Or cars, as one player could control multiple vehicles.

If I ran a hobby shop, I would definitely run this game on the weekends and have tournament ladders. It has a very low cost of entry and allows entry players a chance to personalize their cars and play with others. It is a good game that would get people in the shop, and it leverages toys that we are all familiar with and you could make some eye-catching terrain to draw people in who walk by the front windows.

Plus I love Car Wars and the whole vehicle-combat genre, along with the DIY hobby aspects, so this game is a win-win for me. I am going to check this one out.

Car Wars Classic Rules Free Online

http://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/December_04_2015/Car_Wars_Classic_Rules_Now_Free_Online

This one is a couple years old, but it is a cool throwback freebie from the game's publisher, Steve Jackson Games. If you like to see what the pre-computer world of 1/10th of a second car combat sims was like, here is a good chance to turn back the clock and spend 4 hours simulating 20 seconds of car combat.

We loved this game so much it lasted 40 years of tabletop gaming, and even the setting was iconic throughout our gaming years.

Car War Basic: Reissued!

It continues to be an amazing year as Steve Jackson Game re-releases the original Car Wars Classic Board Game game!

This one appears to have die-cut counters instead of the old flimsy "sneeze and die" paper-cut ones. Nice touch. And four dice in the box too, very nice.

This is also the basic version of the game, before Deluxe Car Wars or the Car Wars Compendium added so much the game became unrecognizable. This is just the basic game with a couple cars, a couple weapons, and a lot of tactical fun.

This game is a lot of fun, and by the reviews on Amazon, a new generation is discovering this gem. It may not be the fastest game around, but it is solid and it brings back many Mad Max style memories and good times.

Thank you to a great company for reissuing this classic game, and please check it out for some very cool and fun tactical car combat. This is one of the greats, and it is great to see it back.