Corporate Car Wars

Shaun M Wheeler brought up playing a corporate autoduelling campaing in the comments on Thursday's post.

Back in the 80s, we played a lot of Car Wars. When Autoduel Quarterly 4/4 came out, with "Corporate Car Wars," we had to go for that.



Or at least, I had to, and I dragged my friends along.

"Corporate Car Wars" was written by Mad Al Loud of the Canadian Autoduel Association - that's the actual author credits.

The concept is simple - corporate teams of autoduellists. Instead of the "lone duellist" approach of standard Car Wars, or perhaps a driver and a gunner, you run a whole team of skilled duellists with a corporate pool of money to support them. You fund vehicles out of that pool, recoup prizes based on the competition size, and sell off (or keep) vehicles to keep the books balanced as you head to the next event.

I loved that the article was written very much with a "here is how we play" approach. There's an address for the Black Death Autoduel Association if you want to write to them and compare corporate league scoring. There is discussion of why they made rules such as Prestige Rollback to deal with long-serving popular duellists. There are examples, not of "maybe you can . . ." but rather of "we tried and enjoyed . . ." scenarios.

It was amazingly fun to read, and fun to actually play. While our game derailed after a few events - mostly because of a small number of players and one guy winning all too often (okay, me) and an argument about a result of another game (between one of my still-occasional players, and me). So the whole thing kind of ran down. Which is too bad, because I really liked the structure of play.

If you're the kind of person who still sits in traffice behind a tractor-trailer and thinks, "That's the only vehicle besides a bus that can mount a Tank Gun," and you like organized structures for play . . . go find a copy of ADQ 4/4 and read this article. It's inspirational and fun even if you don't get to play the game itself or use a different edition. Re-reading it really made me miss Deluxe Edition Car Wars in a way that the new editions simply don't.

Links & Thoughts for 7/30/2021

Random stuff for Friday!

- Know anything about Naruto and GURPS? One of the commenters on my previous post would like some help.

- I blame and credit this game series for my interest in, and knowledge of, the Sengokujidai. Even that I know the warring states period as "Sengokujidai" and learned words like "jidai" long before I even knew "konnichiwa." Arigatou Koei-san-tachi!

- Next time I play a historical game, I want to involve Rome. This series, and this post especially, will be really useful - The Color of Purple. Not a terrible shock to my adult self, Rome was a heterogenous mix of people even before it turned into an even more heterogenous mix after conquering basically everyone they met and incorporating them as citizens (eventually.)

- Once again we're having trouble getting a proper group together, so we may play on Sunday but it's unlikely to be AD&D. It's possibly going to be alternate PCs for a squad delving into Felltower. The question is who and what - and at least one player has no extra PCs. We'll see if we're playing at all, after all.

GURPS books I'd like to see - July 2021 edition

Here are a few things I'd like to see for GURPS.

- I'd really like to see some additional sourcebooks on Japan. We have GURPS Japan, which is Edo-period with some supernatural stuff thrown in. It's fine, but my first interest in actual Japanese history sprung out of the game Nobunaga's Ambition by Koei, which takes place in the Sengokujidai.

Before that you have all of the bloody battles and political fights of the Heian period, the war between the Minamoto and Taira, the legends of Benkei and Yoshitsune, etc. All the good stuff that happened long before Sekigahara in 1600 effectively unified Japan.

I'd be happy to write this stuff but I can't read sufficient Japanese to tackle historical research with any kind of speed. So it's better that I act as a peer reviewer than a solo author.

- GURPS Martial Arts support, with new styles or with campaign settings much like Gladiators. I could write this stuff if I didn't basically have a full time job and a half, which kills a lot of my time for research.

- Short DF Adventures like 2-Page Dungeons, soon to be released. Again, I'm not the ideal author for this, but it's useful stuff to have and I'd be willing to support it with my money and time.

Crypt of Krysuvik in PDF - It's beautiful!

The title of this post says it all. The Crypt of Krysuvik was dropped into my DriveThruRPG possession today . . . and it's beautiful.

I won't comment on the adventure or the writing, except to say that Doug did an excellent job editing and I really like Marshall's ideas and what he did with them.

But the layout, text, maps, and art . . . excellent. I'm very pleased that my book is so attractive. Not since DFM1 have I had such an attractive book, physically.

Thank you Doug!

You can see the cover here:

Crypt of Kryusvik cover

Method I for Gary's Birthday

So it's Gary Gygax's birthday, as I was reminded by this Tumblr blog:

Suggested Options for Rolling Character Stats in AD&D

I love this quote:

"Character generation, then, is a serious matter, and it is recommended that the following systems be used."

"3d6 in order" is a legendary hallmark of early D&D, but I came up with Basic Set D&D (3d6 in order, with lowering one stat to raise another) and then right into AD&D. We generally used Method I.

So let's get on with the serious matter of rolling up a paper man for AD&D, using, oh, Method I:
6-4-1-1 = 11
5-5-4-3 = 14
6-6-5-5 = 17
5-5-3-2 = 13
6-1-1-1 = 8
5-5-3-2 = 13

I can put them in the order desired. So let's make this guy a halfling thief!

Str 10 (11 -1)
Int 13
Wis 8
Dex 18 (17 +1)
Con 14
Cha 13

Not bad. With max HP he's HP 6, and has AC 6 without any armor and AC 2 with leather. That's probably survivable.

I could have done a dwarf fighter with 18 Con, a cleric with 17 Wis, a magic-user with 17 Wis . . . I was tempted to make a Str 18 Half-Orc Fighter/Assassin, too, with Con 15 (14+1) and Cha 6 or Int 6 (not bright, but wise and deadly?) So much fun.

Happy birthday Gary.

Big Noble Knight Games sale

Noble Knight Games is doing a "Buy 3, Get 1 Free Product" sale on certain items. Some of them are already at a pretty steep discount.

Here is the link to the sale and the list:

Buy 3 Get 1 Free

If I needed more stuff, I'd be all over this. Sadly, I'm more trying to downsize my collections just a bit. But I did want to pass this on.

Just browsing, geez, I wish I was into 15mm armor games . . . 5 Shermans for $7, 5 Tigers for $7 . . . you could lay out less than $100 and have a nice battlefield full of armor . . . hmm . . .

Gaming session plans for the next 3 sessions

Our gaming plan is:

- next game, A2, in all likelihood.

- the following game, the Cold Fens.

- the game after, either A2 (if we didn't finish it - see below) or Cold Fens or Felltower.

I'm hoping we can do A2 in one go. I plan to push the pace rather strongly, and rather aggressively keep the pedal down on time spent. It shouldn't take multiple 8-hour game sessions to finish what's a 4-hour tournament adventure. I may just declare the game finished if the PCs don't finish the game. Otherwise it's likely people will spend, say, an hour on the very first puzzle or trick or trap they encounter, then another couple hours on the first fight, then another hour or so trying to figure out an alternate way around an encounter because there "has to" be another way than through the heavily guarded guard posts, etc. I get the caution, but it's useless in A2. So I am hoping it's a one-session game.

After that we should be back to alternating weeks of DF until such a time as our Gamma Terra GM can spend some time prepping so we can play that.