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Old 05-07-2022, 08:22 PM   #21
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Default Re: World-Building, Campaigns, and Scenarios

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I've found that the first question in "worldbuilding" one's CW/Autoduel is to figure the overall nature...
There's also the issue of "style", for lack of a better term.

What got me thrown out of NOVA, in part, was: They were running a "comic-book"-style campaign - Villain comes up with Plan; Villain launches Plan; Heroes stop Plan; Villain escapes to come up with new Plan; repeat. The only comics I ever read as a kid were the old EC Comics -- _Tales from the Crypt_, and such. I "didn't do the Four-Color Ethos"; someone attacked me, I would hunt them down and annihilate them. This did not sit well with the rest of them.

So it's good to have some notion of the style of the campaign -- is it Serious; is it Silly; is it "gallows humor"; or what.
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Old 05-08-2022, 03:15 AM   #22
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Default Re: World-Building, Campaigns, and Scenarios

43 also identifies another factor, that of collaboration. Meet the expectation of your players (or choose ones who meet yours).

When designing your game environment you need to work with the players to come up with something mutually satisfying (session Zero). I made the mistake of coming up with a setting that was entirely internally consistent and rich in flavour, but discovered that some of the players just weren't interested in playing in it.

Some to be fair had been brought in by another player and hadn't really understood the mechanics of the game.

One thought he would be a genius mechanic fixing things in the middle of combat and didn't realise that just isn't possible in CW. Because his tasks took many hours in game, the rest of the team left him behind when they needed repairs done. Because his task took minutes of table time to resolve, but their trip to the next town took hours of table time, he was sat around watching for most of the time.

Another was basically playing Warhammer and was working on the premise that as long as one person survived on your side then you had won. As a result he completely totalled his vehicle in suicide attacks every game and made each session a net loss for the players even when they technically won.

The last one was more subtle, he was a dedicated gunner on the rig but unfortunately that meant he was basically was just waiting for a combat. He had no control over where the rig was going or often what targets were available as the trucker would call out the priority targets and position the rig accordingly. He would have been better replaced by a computer gunner.

In CW the characters are the vehicles, the crew are just components of that vehicle. If a car has a driver and gunner, the same player should run both characters. A rig with half a dozen crew should still be run by one player. This means you have to be careful in allocating play time to each player and ensure you don't allocate time to each character.

If the game has a dedicated mechanic make it a friendly NPC. You might think that roadside repairs are practical and fun, but they need to be either cut scenes or something every player has a role in. If combat happens everyone needs to be able to fight and the mechanic activity stops. A 30 minute mech task is 1800 combat rounds. A single tire change is two mech tasks (one to remove, another to replace). You might fix a tire before the next fight arrives, but anything else takes too long.

We added in a rule that sped up tasks to try to make roadside repairs a but more credible. Basically take a -2 to your skill check to complete the task in half the time or take twice as long to get a +2 on the check. You could redouble your efforts for a -4 and take 1/4 of the time. Sometimes taking it slow saves time. We also allowed up to 3 people to work on a task at a time and divided the time taken by the number of successes of the work party combined.

Thus a even unqualified people working together stood a good chance of changing a tire in tens of minutes rather than hours ("hey doofus, stop reading that Gunnery Today magazine and hand me that torsion wrench... the big one over there... no, the red one"). It also meant that every character could take part in repairs as even a schmuck stood a chance of influencing the outcome. On rare occasions the Mechanic would fail his roll, but one of the "tool holder" assistants would make theirs and save the day.

Example - A Mech 1, and two unskilled characters all work together to replace the destroyed front tire on the rig. They only have improvised tools for a (-2). Even so with such a trivial task all stand a good chance of succeeding (needing 3, and 4's respectively) and as the projected time is 2 hours (an hour to remove the damaged tire and an hour to fit the new one) they decide to hurry (taking a -2 now they need 5, and 6's). They roll 7, 7 and 10. Three successes mean the removal task takes a third of the revised half hour projected time (10 minutes). They roll 2, 10, 6 for the re-fit task and despite the mechanic looking embarrassed they still manage to get the job done in 20 minutes instead of the half hour projected. The truck is ready to roll in half an hour. Just as well as the radar starts pinging ominously.

That's why I suggested that your wrecker gang's job is to secure the area and the recovery itself is an off-camera activity. It isn't actually that much fun to play out on the table.

Last edited by swordtart; 05-08-2022 at 03:21 AM.
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Old 05-08-2022, 02:34 PM   #23
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Default Re: World-Building, Campaigns, and Scenarios

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In CW the characters are the vehicles, the crew are just components of that vehicle. If a car has a driver and gunner, the same player should run both characters. A rig with half a dozen crew should still be run by one player. This means you have to be careful in allocating play time to each player and ensure you don't allocate time to each character.
That's not fundamental; in the campaigns I've run, I've had players who opted for 1 PC per player; others for 1 PC and one or two "secondary characters" (paid for from the PC's point pool at 5 points for a 30pt character, +5 points per +10 to SC).

If one's players are of the type for whom the radio is the first point of contact with traffic ahead, the mechanic type isn't that big an issue. If they're combat focused, and hit the trigger instead of the TX on the radio, RP encounters become wasted effort.

It's like Old School D&D - the rules focus on combat, but not all players/GMs do. If the GM has roleplaying encounters, as opposed to combat, one can have a very different experience. It's one of those things to check with your players.

(The most combat focused campaign I ran was using GURPS Autoduel... the least was using CW mode from ADQ.)
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Old 05-08-2022, 04:05 PM   #24
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Once you get into combat any player with a non-combat PC may as well go home. I agree it is fine for a player to have a combat PC and some non-combat types or even a few combat types, but it is fundamental in my opinion that they are all in the same car. Being a gunner in another PCs car is tedious. You get one action every five phases and chances are the time you fire will be determined by what the driver is doing. You don't have much agency in the game if your movement is determined by another player. It's like having half a character.

In CW the fight is the the thing, you can tart around RP'ing as much as you want (and I love me some good RP), but ultimately it's cars with guns. If you don't drive or you don't fire a gun, you may have a fine old time of it, but it isn't CW anymore.

CW isn't really well adapted to RP (witness the Mechanic rules). Go play with the Traveller rules instead and downplay the SF element (but CW has lasers, so go festival of lasers). You can dice less RP CW but once again that is RP in spite of the game rather than in conjunction with it.
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Old 05-09-2022, 06:05 AM   #25
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Default Re: World-Building, Campaigns, and Scenarios

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Villain comes up with Plan; Villain launches Plan; Heroes stop Plan
He probably would have gotten away with it if not for you meddling kids.
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Old 05-09-2022, 11:56 AM   #26
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Pretty much. Most modern vehicles only have a driver (smart links pretty much killed the need for a gunner). You just need to come up with a system for hiring extra crew. A 30 skill point mercenary should be almost free (considering unemployment is at 37% in the Chronology)

You also level up a LOT faster by yourself

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That's not fundamental; in the campaigns I've run, I've had players who opted for 1 PC per player; others for 1 PC and one or two "secondary characters" (paid for from the PC's point pool at 5 points for a 30pt character, +5 points per +10 to SC).
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Old 05-09-2022, 02:04 PM   #27
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He probably would have gotten away with it if not for you meddling kids.
If by "meddling kids" you mean "one homicidal genius".... >:)

As to "combat characters vs. non-combat characters": This is why I divided the skills list into "combat", and "non-combat", skills; and gave starting PCs three "combat", and six "non-combat", levels; PCs have stuff they can do in combat, and stuff they can do out of combat, thus keeping the players in the game regardless of whether there's combat, or not.
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Old 05-21-2022, 02:02 AM   #28
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Default Re: World-Building, Campaigns, and Scenarios

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If by "meddling kids" you mean "one homicidal genius".... >:)

As to "combat characters vs. non-combat characters": This is why I divided the skills list into "combat", and "non-combat", skills; and gave starting PCs three "combat", and six "non-combat", levels; PCs have stuff they can do in combat, and stuff they can do out of combat, thus keeping the players in the game regardless of whether there's combat, or not.
I use 30 points & 30 points, with no more than half of disad points to combat, but note that ADC makes some 5 per level, and others 15 or more per level.

Most of my players have avoided combats when practical, which is the sign they've decided it's and RP campaign more than a boardgame one.

I've never actually required combat skills, but they all have taken them; some only 20 points of...
from memory, one such PC: Gunner +1, Mechanic +3, Brotherhood member, wanted by EDSEL, duty: brotherhood, significant chunk of co-ownership of rig the two players manned.
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Old 05-22-2022, 02:20 PM   #29
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I use 30 points & 30 points, with no more than half of disad points to combat, but note that ADC makes some 5 per level, and others 15 or more per level.
I didn't do "advantages/disadvantages"; too GURPSy for my tastes. Besides: The players usually brought their own A/D to the table.... :)

Since there were quite so many non-combat skills, 2x Combat seemed a good number.
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Old 05-23-2022, 12:10 PM   #30
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By "non-combat" skill you mean mechanic right? ;)

Mechanic is just too damn useful - cuts the cost of everything, lets you salvage, jury-rig, etc.

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I didn't do "advantages/disadvantages"; too GURPSy for my tastes. Besides: The players usually brought their own A/D to the table.... :)

Since there were quite so many non-combat skills, 2x Combat seemed a good number.
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