Roman-style Chariots and racing - ala' Ben Hur

[Jim Kane]

Has anyone worked up stats and rules for Roman-style chariots, rules for racing, and/or using them as a war-vehicle?

JK

[JLV]

Avalon Hill did, 50 some odd years ago! In the game Circus Maximus! ;-)

Okay, I know; I'm just teasing... Sorry, I'll shut up now! :D

[Jim Kane]

LOL! I meant for TFT.

JK

[Skarg]

In GURPS, and not writing them down in detail, yes.

In TFT, we had megahex wagons pulled by one or more 2-hex horses or oxen, and used the GM Discretion system to figure out how they can/do/don't move and what happens when they roll through people in combat, etc.

Definitely an important and fun thing to be able to do, not just with chariots but with wagons, sleighs, carriages, litters, rickshaws, etc.

[JLV]

Ooh! Chase rules! I love it!

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by Skarg

In GURPS, and not writing them down in detail, yes.

In TFT, we had megahex wagons pulled by one or more 2-hex horses or oxen, and used the GM Discretion system to figure out how they can/do/don't move and what happens when they roll through people in combat, etc.

Definitely an important and fun thing to be able to do, not just with chariots but with wagons, sleighs, carriages, litters, rickshaws, etc.

Agreed, I would be very interested in seeing the ideas of others on these items and how the play.

Are the chariots found in Gurps: Rome, or somewhere else?

JK

[CardDiceian]

Originally Posted by Skarg

In TFT, we had megahex wagons pulled by one or more 2-hex horses or oxen, and used the GM Discretion system to figure out how they can/do/don't move and what happens when they roll through people in combat, etc.

Definitely an important and fun thing to be able to do, not just with chariots but with wagons, sleighs, carriages, litters, rickshaws, etc.

Definitely interested in rules for wagons / carts / carriages - I have included some in the story I'm putting together at the moment - but to be honest, they were just obstacles / containers int he setting I had them in - so rules to actually be able to move them would be cool.

Currently it is a traveler encampment - so it could just as easily be tents or market stalls etc.

I've based them as a 4 hex item (like a 4 hex dragon) - But I hadn't thought about the actual positioning of the horse / horses - which actually makes it quite a tricky unit to move.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

Agreed, I would be very interested in seeing the ideas of others on these items and how the play.

Are the chariots found in Gurps: Rome, or somewhere else?

JK

I don't actually own it, but I wonder if GURPS Vehicles might have some information on chariots and what-not. It was supposed to have the ability to design just about anything you could think of...

[Jim Kane]

Again, I would really like to see rules and descriptions for a TFT chariot, as well as Skargs' wagons, carts, et al. - especially how much they can hold for transporting *stuff*.

And, now... I am thinking about a new Mundane non-combatant NPC to torture your players with... the Used Chariot Salesman LOL!!!

JK

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

Agreed, I would be very interested in seeing the ideas of others on these items and how the play.

Are the chariots found in Gurps: Rome, or somewhere else?

There and elsewhere.

Yes GURPS Imperial Rome has a few pages of chariot rules, but they are mostly geared towards resolving a whole Circus Maximus - style chariot race without using a map. It provides quite a few details, but it assumes you're going to be racing and not doing a mapped combat.

The Basic Set has generic vehicle rules (nothing specifically about chariots IIRC) which include turning radius and skill rolls to maneuver and mishaps.

GURPS Low Tech has more detailed rules relevant for chariot combat... though there are two versions of that book (the 3e version and the 4e version) and IIRC they offer a somewhat different set of ideas.

(GURPS Vehicles (3e and 4e editions) are generally overkill-yet-abstract and I think actually have nothing specific about chariots unless I'm forgetting and missed it when I took a look just now.)

All of the above is both a bit more crunchy than TFT usually goes with things (though not a whole lot), and also manages to not really provide everything I'd really want, even at the TFT scale.

Specifically, they all fail to really address mapped combat details (sigh) such as what the counters would look like for the chariots and things like where the sides and wheels and animal attachments are and what their actual specific hex-by-hex effects are. But they give various good well-thought out ideas for how fast they ought to be able to go, what DX penalties ought to be like, how tightly they can turn, tricks you can do, what sorts of animals and their training you might use, etc.

I have to say, though, even when having to use GM discretion a lot, wagon combat can be really fun and hilarious! And situations tend to come up in my games that I have to come up with rules for in any case. Such as when someone shot a gargoyle in the wing, so I randomly determined where it landed, and it crashed into the driver of a horse-drawn 10-hex sled, who was a big dwarf in heavy plate armor, which I realized was an awful lot of weight, so I improvised a chance and yes, they broke the sled and crashed through the wagon onto the ground underneath it for HTH combat (and caused all the players to bust out laughing!).

Our parties, when they can, tend to have wagons where they pile the supplies, camping gear, backpacks they don't want to carry all day, and the resting wounded, night shift people, and/or prisoners. This is extremely convenient and practical. Of course, it becomes important then when there is terrain it's hard to get across with a wagon, or something might happen to the wagons, such as damage, fire, theft, panicked horses... and/or chase antics.