Anyhow, let's get to the middle section of my Car Wars and GURPS stuff.
(As always click for bigger.)
As last Car Wars post showed at the end, http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2013/11/operation-game-collection-car-warsgurps.html the big part of this post is the Deluxe and Deluxe Compendium (2nd ed) sets. These sets basically take all the stuff from Car Wars (roughly up to that point and combine em into mega boxed sets with larger counter sheets, less folded maps, and all the fixins! Here is some of the sheets included. (I have both boxes mixed together. Uncut sheets thanks to having the minibox sheets already chopped up. Also you know, the joys of a printer/scanner/copier.)
The back side of the curved road counter still showing those handy turning templates, and some road sheets.
The Compendium Deluxe sets also came with a random supplement. My original Compendium set which I got rid of in the Navy ironically enough had the Millitary Vehicles supplement which is a supplement to the Tanks set this one has! We see the tank sheet on the left with some tank trap counters, and the Deluxe Edition original "Read Me" paper.
More from the original Deluxe Read Me. Other goodies out at the time and a vehicle sheet of the era.
The Deluxe Edition rule book. Combining all those cute and wee mini books into a large and organized one.
The internals. Decent enough to look at but simple. Note how many rules were already bloating the game less than a half decade in!
LOOK AT THE LEVEL OF SPERGE AND WEEP. WEEP FOR CAR WARS. This is just too much nonsense. This is "Design for Detail". I am more a fan of "Design for Effect". And the main weapons chart. It will get bigger. Oh great Alicorn Princesses and Holders of the Matrix of Leadership does this expand.
The Second Edition Compendium! Which is technically the third edition as the original late 80s Compendium was so bug and error riddled it was revised within a year or so. You would think a rules compendium book would not do this but.. yeah. See the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. Dragonsfoot.org had people making like 50 page erratas to it!
Again my flash is getting in the way but you should still get the idea. Compared to the meh looking original and revised Compendium this one looks NICE. I normally love blue as a color but this book just looks sharp and CLASSY.
I TOLD YOU DAWG. I WARNED YOU BRO. How many weapons do we really need? According to Car Wars entirely too bloody many!
This is the normal rules internal. It looks good and sharp. But these rules are what made me get rid of my original Revised Compendium box. (And 3rd edition GURPS actually.) TOO MANY RULES NO SANE PERSON NEEDS. Look at that silly nonsense to move a hovercraft.
Thankfully with original Deluxe Box and the Mini Boxes (and CW Mini) I can have just enough Car Wars to enjoy and can either leave or ignore this supergrog nonsense.
(Something I didn't think of back then. You don't NEED to know all the rules. Just learn the parts you care about and need to play and add stuff in later on.)
TANKS! This pack in obviously doesn't look as glitzy as the retail stand alone probably did but.. you get it free so rock on.
Its still done in the mid-late 80s style. And now more weapons! Weapons that kill normal Car Wars vehicles super easy! Weapons that require about as many D6s as your average Warhammer 40K Ork charge!
AS IF CAR WARS WASN'T COVERING TOO MUCH AS IS. Now we even have rules for nuclear weapons. I know when I think about playing post apocalypse CARS WITH GUNZ games I want rules for nuclear bombs.
No. No I don't.
And the second edition of the GURPS supplement. So now we can combine Car Wars with its' spergeariffic RPG parent for super sperge levels!
But it has lots of fluffy fluff in it that the regular game fails to include. I do not have the original edition but if I could get it for like 5 bucks or so I probably would for completeness sake.
It is at least nice enough to help you convert them over. Much like Battletech and its RPG ruleset.. I would rather use my own: http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-x-plorers-rules-machine-sheet.html
We even get a nice two page spread of CAR WARS AMERICA. A future where Utah and Texas are basically no longer part of the USA? Doesn't sound too bad really.... Sure we eat algae based foods and most highways are an NRA member's wet dream (except for the part where people you know.. can shoot back which sort of limits their Rambo fantasies..) but we don't have to put up with either state any more outside of being nearby.
A bit of fun I made. My hand made sheet using multiple bits from multiple Car Wars record sheets, creating a handy all in one sheet of sheety goodness.
A friend who decided to move away and never run the GURPS roaring 20s game he had in mind? Well before he did this I got excited and bought the computer character generator program (which I traded off for some sweet Battletech stuff), and the GM screen. Which came with the free to download in PDF "Lite" ruleset and the Character Creation booklet. In nice hard copies. (Dunno or CARE if the Character Creation book is the same sitch as Lite.) Again, a smaller more REASONABLE set of rules that doesn't go into stupid megadetail levels is what I like. What I need. What I crave.
GURPS at its' core is.. not bad. It is nothing on Basic Roleplaying or D6 System but.. its ok. However this is the double sided official character sheet.
An example of how overly detailed and silly GURPS gets, much like so many good games that get too big for their own britches.
Advantages in GURPS are basically what Fallout calls Perks, and D20 calls Feats. Except GURPS did it first.
Another way to GURPS Lite is through Dark City Games. They basically have taken GURPS daddy (Fantasy Trip) and made Fantasy, Modern, and Sci Fi versions of it free to download and then you can buy a bunch of solo adventures for them. Not too bad!
Gee.. looks a LOT like GURPS slimmed down to make it fast and fun..
At one time Car Wars was so popular as to have its' own quarterly in house magazine! Autoduel Quarterly! Here is the first two years.
A picture of one of those issues' backs with new items for the game done in universe fluff, and an example of the internals of the magazine.
Year three of the magazine in AADA (American Autoduel Association, the official fan club of Car Wars) subscriber mailer covers plus my last of the small forma issues. I am missing a lot of the middle era issues. But I have the first three years worth.
Showing the mailer covers protecting their issues. Extra goodies or things to buy in these mailers. Nice of them to do so. I guess.
Somewhere in between the fifth year (of which I have one issue) and this, year seven they switched to a larger format magazine.
Still basically the same style and format, but now it is standard sized.
Sadly I am missing a few issues from years nine and ten. If I ever get a complete run a fun blog project might involve reading the Car Wars rules of the time, and then following along and posting about each issue and the rules and changes and stuff. (I kind of want to do the same with Palladium's The Rifter. Except I need a lot more issues of it. And there are way more issues with way more in them.)
I did not even know there was a comic book mini series done by Marvel's more "Adult and Creator Owned" imprint known as Epic! Plus as we see the internals now more or less match the 2nd ed Compendium as we are in the Nineties now.
Was issue four of the tenth year the final issue of ADQ? I must get it to find out. Issue three does say something "exciting" was to be announced in it. Probably it got merged with SJGames' Pyramid gaming magazine where all their other in house stuff went. It then became a paid on line magazine by the late 90s/early 00s.
Part two is done. Part three will contain the failed reboot of the line along with what other GURPS junk I have laying about because I am a retail "vulture" and get books on clearance. Because nobody else wanted them regardless of quality.
