Car Wars - GURPS Crossover Games

[possumknavel]

Has anyone ever run a game/campaign using a GURPS background other than Autoduel? I always wanted to try a Car Wars / GURPS Reign of Steel crossover campaign. I imagined raids into Mexico City's domain - or cat-n-mouse in the mountains around Denver. The whole Lucifer awakened AI just begs a Car Wars like campaign. I toyed with the idea of writing up a few things from Reign of Steel into the Car Wars world. I also toyed with the idea of making London and Washington DC areas like the world of Car Wars and everything else various robot controlled badlands.

-John

[Chris Goodwin]

I love some crossovers, but sadly never played in one. My first GURPS character (first edition!) was an Autoduel character with spells.

[swordtart]

I use GURPS Wild West interpolated for the 3 states not covered by the RASGs (Desert west?). I also use GURPS Horror for the radiated bits.

I use GURPS Cyberpunk and Cyberworld for the developed corporate enclaves (fortress arcgologies).

I use GURPS Traveller Far Trader interpolated for my trucking campaign.

I use many other GURPS rule sets (Firearms, Biotech, High Tech etc.) to expand the equipment options available to players.

I never quite got round to actually exporting the campaign to GURPS and just running the car combat in CW (I don't think GURPS vehicles is granular enough), but most of the conversion from 3d6 system to a 2d6 system is fairly trivial, and I generally accept that a +1 item is a bit more effective in CW than GURPS.

[RobKamm]

A very long time ago I did a Yrth fantasy game. In one adventure the PCs went forward in time to find a Car Wars-esque environment. If I remember correctly they were chasing a psychopathic minotaur (care of rules from GURPS Horror 1st ed) and wound up teaming up with a group of Halfling duelists to take it down. Halflings dominated the professional circuit on future Yrth because they were small and their cars could support more armor and ammo. I think I was thinking of real world jockeys as the model for that.

[LokRobster]

Our GURPS Infinite Worlds campaign is all Car Wars (Autoduel) based.

The first 2 PCs are a Professional Autoduellist (TX Citizen) and a paranoid US CIA Agent. After running a few AADA Road Atlas adventures (I think we did the ones for Australia, New York Poughkeepsie, and then the Free Oil States). Then throw in Flight 13 for some 1988 Austin transdimensional weirdness.

Using Deluxe CW, I designed an OR XHvy Trike, with Lasers on each side and a deploy-able solar array. It was a Prototype given to the Duellist to test drive and promote as a WasteLand Ranger vehicle - able to go days or weeks with no facilities. After Flight 13, the aliens rigged up one of their computer modules and the trike is now controlled by an AI that occasionally runs off on its own. (Later I updated it to Vehicles 2e GURPS stats, with 20d strike lasers).

The Car Wars PCs have been to a "MERP" Middle Earth-based alternate, travelling from Far Harad to Mirkwood - blasting orcs, trolls and giant snakes along the way. They built a wooden trailer to haul stuff (and more PCs) for the journey - it took a long time because of having to stop and charge the power plant for a few days after 8 hours of travel.

Within Mirkwood, they encountered a Cronobahn - hidden by tech/magic illusion to look like a dried creekbed. This multidimensional highway looped through 10 or so alternate worlds, to activate the gate you had to set a certain frequency on the AM dial and go 60mph - allowing the PCs to see the freeway and go through the gates. The freeway system goes from Houston along I-10, north up hwy 59ish to Texarkana, then East to almost Dallas, then South along I-45 back to Houston. For any Worlds they travel through that have highways, this road is connected directly to them. For most parallels, it's dirt roads or walking/game trails.

They've been to a Dino-world, a 1929 echo (well, it was until the PCs got involved), Gernsbach, Reign of Steel (Trike vs Vertol Vulture! Zone Denver in East Texas), 1885 DeadLands, 1770 Cabal world (Spaniards in this area), and a Cthulhu-esque wasteland world with an acidic atmosphere that rusted all their equipment within a few days.

Explaining their Improved Body Armor and weapons and the 3-wheeled Trike when travelling through alternate worlds is funny. "It's from France" is their most common excuse for the vehicle, though the Cabal werewolf didn't buy it...

[LokRobster]

Originally Posted by possumknavel

Has anyone ever run a game/campaign using a GURPS background other than Autoduel? I always wanted to try a Car Wars / GURPS Reign of Steel crossover campaign. I imagined raids into Mexico City's domain - or cat-n-mouse in the mountains around Denver. The whole Lucifer awakened AI just begs a Car Wars like campaign. I toyed with the idea of writing up a few things from Reign of Steel into the Car Wars world. I also toyed with the idea of making London and Washington DC areas like the world of Car Wars and everything else various robot controlled badlands.

-John

Reign of Steel is one of the best crossovers with Autoduel. The AIs that run the vehicles are TOUGH - you'll have to make up stats to make them compatible and maybe up-gun the computer opponents. Leaving out space for Drivers and Gunners will help... and maybe make their armor 20-30% more efficient (i.e. more DP per lb.) then the Human-built equivalent for more of a challenge.

[Chris Goodwin]

I really want to see the Autoduel future of Technomancer. I don't remember what the official Infinity Unlimited designation of that world is - Merlin-1?

[Chris Goodwin]

Originally Posted by swordtart

I never quite got round to actually exporting the campaign to GURPS and just running the car combat in CW (I don't think GURPS vehicles is granular enough), but most of the conversion from 3d6 system to a 2d6 system is fairly trivial, and I generally accept that a +1 item is a bit more effective in CW than GURPS.

In the one short GURPS Autoduel game I played in, we ran combat in phases, but otherwise did everything in GURPS -- Driving skill rolls, shooting, &c. It worked exceedingly well, exactly as if we were playing Car Wars with 3d6. (When I tried designing Cart Wars many years ago, it seriously started looking like GURPS done with 2d6. This is not surprising at all.)

If I were going to do it now, I'd use GURPS 3e, GURPS Autoduel 1e, replace cubic feet with spaces, port in the full power plant rules, and port in the rest of the missing weapons and gadgets. I would definitely keep the damage scale at Autoduel 1e, because reasons.

[LokRobster]

Originally Posted by Chris Goodwin

I would definitely keep the damage scale at Autoduel 1e, because reasons.

This is definitely the most difficult transition when swapping CW to GURPS. Figure a "Machine Gun" in Car Wars does 1d damage... that's during 1 second. A 4e GURPS .50 Browning MG does more like 7dx2, with a RoF of 8 during a second. Luckily, with GURPS Recoil rules, not all 8 of those shots are likely to hit every second, but even so it's a vast difference if you're trying to port in vehicle armor.

As a very rough estimate I figure to multiply everything by 10-30 DR wise "ablative"... 1pt of CW armor = 10 points of GURPS protection, ignore actual weight because material physics won't get you enough armor on a car to match Car Wars durability in a small, nimble vehicle. Damage in GURPS 1e (Autoduel) is extremely low compared to modern 4e paradigm, but in many ways is more game-able!

[swordtart]

After many begging attempts here to get Autoduel 1st edition on E23, I have had to resort to buying a second hand copy from the states and getting it shipped over (Still waaaay less than the UK second hand price and funnily no where near $53 in postage ;)

I am looking forward to poking the vehicle design rules to see how they stack up.