GURPS Autoduel 1st Ed; Car Wars Roleplay

[LokRobster]

Ok, I was on the road for 2 months and somehow missed this completely.

Jan 14, 2017 GURPS Autoduel 1st Edition PDF announced

What's good:
1. Great background on the Classic Age of Car Wars and Autoduel America.
2. RP elements and campaign ideas: Lone Wolf, Clubhouse Blues, etc... they're all here. If you've read any of the 7 Road Atlas & Survival Guides, you'll find references to the campaign styles described in this book. The 2nd Edition GURPS Autoduel dropped those particular details.
3. Interesting base look at converting CW to GURPS... see Notes.

What hasn't aged well:
1. GURPS 1st Edition weapons did not scale vehicular weapons to 'modern' 4e GURPS at all... off by a factor of 10 for some high RoF guns; I'd ignore weapon stats.
2. Armor, PD and DR, to convert to 4e you'd increase DR to make up for PD being gone (unused stat); and multiply by 10ish or more to get armor that can stand up to today's high tech weapon stats.
3. Ok ok just scrap the vehicle stats altogether.

Notes: I believe a game-able alternative is to run Car Wars stats in the Cars, and GURPS stats in buildings, social situations, survival in the wastelands, plot stuff, etc. In the Car, your dude becomes a vehicle component and "Vehicle Operation (Car/TL8) - 13" becomes "Driver+1" in Car Wars; use the conversion rules (sidebar, pg69) to get your Car Wars stats.

The book spends a lot of pages moving CW to GURPS movement rules, recreating Crash Tables, damage allocation, that sort of thing. A TON of work went into this conversion and while I find it interesting, I doubt I will ever play the vehicular combat that way. However, the role play aspects and details make the book totally worthwhile for me. I actually prefer it to GURPS Autoduel 2nd Ed, if you've read through that one.

Anyone looking to add more RP to their Car Wars will enjoy this retro offering. Thanks again SJGames for posting it up! I still find it fun to read and browse through periodically; I was reading it (an ancient copy I got off eBay in 2007) during a break at work the day before I ran across the post announcing the release.