Advice for What Car Wars Products to Buy

[Blue Ghost]

Originally Posted by Suncrush

Honestly, even Boat Wars is gimmicky. Other than the fact that they maneuver differently, you're basically still just playing Car Wars, only typically without any barriers to weapons fire, so it's actually worse.

Hovercraft actually do something different, so that's cool.

To get back on topic, I think both the US and Russia/Soviets use (or used) hovercraft for amphibious assaults. The USMC has the LCAC, and Soviets have a real monstrosity that nearly the size of a small ocean liner for the same purpose. So from that standpoint, some PCs coming across one in a coastal campaign or something, I can see rules for them.

And I guess it was inevitable that rules for tanks, jet fighters, and whatever else would eventually get published. I guess I'm still kind of locked into the perspective of CW being that new game about a post-apoc USA or whatever country, and people slap weapons on cars for survival. Kind of like a slightly higher tech Mad Max kind of thing.

Just me.

[Suncrush]

Originally Posted by Blue Ghost

To get back on topic, I think both the US and Russia/Soviets use (or used) hovercraft for amphibious assaults. The USMC has the LCAC, and Soviets have a real monstrosity that nearly the size of a small ocean liner for the same purpose. So from that standpoint, some PCs coming across one in a coastal campaign or something, I can see rules for them.

And I guess it was inevitable that rules for tanks, jet fighters, and whatever else would eventually get published. I guess I'm still kind of locked into the perspective of CW being that new game about a post-apoc USA or whatever country, and people slap weapons on cars for survival. Kind of like a slightly higher tech Mad Max kind of thing.

Just me.

Right, and Car Wars is a the best game for that feel. There are better games for tank and aircraft battles.

But, hey it was RPG-making in the late 80s, early 90s. Getting a core game that could support a ton of supplements was the business model. I'm not going to hold against them that they hadn't learned the business lessons that would come from the next 30 years.

(And since, in a lot of ways, today's business model for some companies is "Milk everything you can out of an edition, and then arbitrarily release a new one," I'm really not going to complain about how SJ Games does business.)

[Blue Ghost]

Originally Posted by Suncrush

Right, and Car Wars is a the best game for that feel. There are better games for tank and aircraft battles.

But, hey it was RPG-making in the late 80s, early 90s. Getting a core game that could support a ton of supplements was the business model. I'm not going to hold against them that they hadn't learned the business lessons that would come from the next 30 years.

(And since, in a lot of ways, today's business model for some companies is "Milk everything you can out of an edition, and then arbitrarily release a new one," I'm really not going to complain about how SJ Games does business.)

I've been trying to think about how to respond to this post. From a lay-consumer's perspective, ... it did seem like the CW game was being milked some, but in a good way. Boat Wars came out and where my group sighed (I didn't, just for the record) we didn't feel obligated to use it. To me it was just another cool thing to have.

I just remember sitting there in my friend's atrium during a summer gaming session, with the roof pulled back (great memories) after the game was first released and we both bought a copy (I may have bought him one for his birthday), reading both the box and the rules, and thinking that the next logical thing for the game would be tanks.

Instead we got Sunday Drivers, but whatever. Sunday Drivers was cool. Truck Stop was interesting, and the Dempsey was in an ADQ, but I think a lot of us were curious about full fledged tanks.

To me CW is kind of like Traveller or GURPS. It's got that "do it yourself" kind of feel. There's an official setting, but you don't have to use it. Ergo you really don't need all the expansions, but they're kind of fun to have.

I'm glad I bought all the CW stuff. Even CW Tanks and the TSR addons like Streets of Fire or Turbofire. Fun times (when you're not arguing over rules, or interpretations thereof).

Long live Car Wars, man =]

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Blue Ghost

Even CW Tanks and the TSR addons like Streets of Fire or Turbofire.

Task Force Games, not TSR.

[Blue Ghost]

My bad, I meant TFG.

[schoon]

Originally Posted by Blue Ghost

My bad, I meant TFG.

Darned autocorrect! ;)

[ColBosch]

TSR did, however, produce the Car Wars game books which are all insanely expensive on eBay now.