Oh Car Wars, take my money!

As I write this in part of the way through listening to an interview with Scott Haring, developer of Car Wars. Not just developer today but developer back then. 

From the little clues he's given away it's getting me excited about sixth edition (Does it have an acronym yet? Can I just start saying CW6 now?). He's saying things like "drive fast and blow things up" and "faster play" and "simpler play."

I really liked Car Wars back in the day. I liked making spreadsheets to help me design cars. In fact, I might have spent more time on the spreadsheets than the designs, and more time on the designs than the play. 

Hmm. That tells you something. 

1. I like spreadsheets. 

2. Car Wars had a high entry point. 

Today I play with spreadsheets much more than my Car Wars games but if the imaginary hype in my head is anything to go by this situation might change. 

So I'm still excited about Car Wars and especially CW6 (see? It works!). 

As they say, "Take my money now!"

Car Wars 6th Edition

I'm so excitement! There's a sixth edition of Car Wars in the works!

I grew up on this game. Finding players was tough and I think I spent more hours designing than playing. Oh the spreadsheets! Oh the miscalculations! This was the height of my crunchiness in gaming. Nothing has ever been quite like Car Wars.

To compare it against something like GURPS, for example, would give you an idea.

GURPS has a point-buy system. Everything has a point value. Physical attributes. Relationships with key individuals. Memberships in guilds. Its creation economy has a general equivalent: the point.

Car Wars has dollars. There's a limit for each event. Every item on the car costs something.

Car Wars has weight. It's an encumberance system that affects acceleration and collisions. Almost everything has a weight. My favourite overpriced weightless object was the advanced targeting computer. That +2 didn't seem like much at first.

Car Wars has space consumption. Every vehicle has limited space to fit in all those guns and ammo. Thankfully armour doesn't have space consumption. Just dollars and (oh noes!) weight.

Should we talk about ammo? Lots of games have that. In Car Wars even the ammo has weight. I don't remember designing anything that was so borderline as to warrant a recalculation part-way through a duel, but I'm sure it's possible.

What about fuel? Duels never lasted long enough to run out of gasoline, but if you wanted to burn your opponents with laser fire, you needed to count the Power Units per shot.

So crunchy. Designing for and playing that game was well and truly down the rabbit hole for me.

Can't wait to see what sixth edition will have!

10 Most-played Analog Games

I've seen this in a gaming blog or two, and have succumbed to the peer pressure.

1. Rifts

I played this game for years, from late in high school through to my mid-20's.  It was the inevitable follow-on from Robotech.  With more toys in each and every supplement, it's little surprise that this appealed to the style of play I had at the time.  I was a munchkin in a munchkin game.

2. Car Wars

A friend introduced this one to me in 1989 and I still have the rulebooks he eventually sold to me.  This was a great little strategy game, with crunchy design and - on a good day - a mountain of dice to roll.  Somehow it managed to capture the whole process from designing and building a car, through to the huge explosion that destroyed it.

3. Robotech

It was the precursor to #1, Rifts.  We played it a lot through high school.

4. Marvel Super Heroes

I can't remember how it happened, but we managed to get our hands on this little gem.  I've not seen it since, but I think it gets the awe it deserves.

5. Advanced D&D

My first RPG system.  My magic-user died horribly in the first game I ever played, and even though I was distraught, I was also hooked.  Since then I've spent countless hours at gaming shops and at home, just leafing through game books.  And no, I haven't yet tried D&D 4e.

6. Dungeon

This was a board game by TSR, although I think we had the Jedko print of it.  Nevertheless, it was a great little game that we played for hours, over and over again.  It was also the game of gloating and being a sore winner or loser.  Sigh!  Happily, we now have Munchkin to make fun of the whole experience.

7. Poleconomy

More fun that Monopoly, this was another way for my older brother to trounce me.  Still, eventually I figured it out and made it tough for him.  We had the John Sands red box (to steal that phrase), complete with little kangaroos.  It's interesting to see how much the world has changed since this game was printed.  Most of the companies on the board don't exist any more.

8. Spirit of the Century

It's slowly catching up with the others, and although it's a contemporary favourite, it hasn't had the hours it deserves.

9. Don't Rest Your Head

Ditto.

10. Pictionary

I hate this game, but it's a favourite in certain family circles.

Car Wars - the Movie

This post has nothing to do with indie games, but a game I played many years ago and which now belongs in the Cult Classic section of your local gaming hyper-mega-mart: Car Wars by Steve Jackson Games. I played that game a lot, but not as much as I sat down and designed cars for it. Most of my enjoyment was in engineering the cars, in much the same way as someone in a points-based game would engineer a character. And surprisingly it was a lot of fun.

Nevertheless, I see that a new movie is en route to us, and it seems to fit neatly within that genre of armed vehicular combat. Affectionately entitled Death Race, the poster alone seems to give the whole thing away. It'll be big action, corny dialogue and bad acting for the whole 2 hours (or less, whatever...) but I will go into it with one simple question in my mind, "How does a miniatures gaming experience compare to a movie experience?"

Now, some of this can be answered by looking at other genres (sci-fi, fantasy, etc.) but I feel as though I'm too familiar with those genres. With a break into minis and into Car Wars I expect to learn different things about it. I'll be sure to put some thoughts up here when the time comes.

Car Wars ?!?

I know that this blog is primarily about indie games, but for a change this one is also going to be about Car Wars. Yes, that quaint little map game about gladiatorial vehicular combat. Sometime in 2007 I bumped into another Brisbane guy who likes to play the game, and now he's working on a kind of Car Wars revival. Cool. I always enjoyed playing that game. There's a lot of suspense and tension in it, and the deaths are usually a spectacle worth enjoying (in true gladiatorial style).

I think Car Wars succeeded in creating a sense of tension when it was played quickly. However, it's all too easy to get bogged down in a lot of extra rules and concepts. For anyone out there wanting to improve their Car Wars experience, play it fast. Plan your moves while the other people are taking theirs. The faster you take the move, the better the experience for everyone involved. This will happen more easily if you design your car with a strategy in mind. Take that strategy to the table and play it to the limit. Don't change your mind, just play the car for all it's worth.

This also applies to something like Spirit of the Century. When you design your character, it will have a small number of key strengths based on aspects and the top three skills in the pyramid. Play them. Play them hard. That's what your character is about, so ham it up and go for it. Is the apex skill Fists? Then punch the villains. Is it Science? Then make declarations about all sorts of things to do with the physics of the strange doomsday machine. A fast-paced game relies on minimalism rather than complexity. It may sound one-dimensional, but it's the sacrifice one makes for action. Even in film this is true. A complex story about complex characters will have a lot of dialogue and monologue. Not much action. However, make the characters simpler and you'll get more action in the film. Take this to your games and have fun.