[Operation Game Collection] Car Wars/GURPS: The Steve Jackson Connection Part 3

I have been a bit late on this one eh?  Well if those few people who actually read my stupid posts actually commented here or any of the other places I link them maybe I would be inspired more to GIT ER DUN yes?

Anyhow I want to clean up my living room and I got a few pickups these last few weeks.

Let's dig in!

But first since it has been forever, links back to the first two installments:
http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2013/11/operation-game-collection-car-warsgurps.html

http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2013/11/operation-game-collection-car-warsgurps_26.html

(NOTE:  You can also click most images for larger ones if you want.)

Six more of the small format Autoduel Quarterlies, four of which have the fun mailing covers on them with their little cartoons and other nifty bits.  I am worried I might already own one of them but I haven't had time to properly inventory them yet.  And they were cheap so at worst it is collateral damage.

One of the big format issues I didn't have and the new retail rerelease edition of classic Car Wars!  Because the Ogre Kickstarter proved to SJG that HOLY SMOKES THEY CAN DO MORE THINGS THAN JUST CRAP OUT AWFUL ARSE MUNCHKIN GAMES ALL DAY LONG.  

For twenty US dollars it is a good value!  It even has precut counters as opposed to the sheets you had to chop up yourself back in the day!  Sadly it keeps to the older format record sheets as opposed to the more advanced look of the last Compendium release.

Something they tried also was a stand alone card game in an anime style given the time it was released.  Obviously they.. didn't exactly get the best art.  The game itself is quite a fun little card game however.  Just ignore their bad attempts at anime people.

The thing under it is that Fantasy Trip remake's one dollar intro product.  A little solo party adventure you can also run players through as a GM.  Has a battle map and some counters to cut.  Neat!

And the previous attempt at a Car Wars reboot.  Get rid of all the cruft, all the absurd levels of megarules and nonsense?  Make it cheap to hop in?  Sure! Even everything in FULL COLOR and toy car sized scale so minis fans can customize toy cars.

But.. are you noticing what 6 bucks got you?  Repeating the majority of rules per book.  No construction rules.  Two cars and two variants plus some minor options.

They broke it down and made things easier to get into but for existing fans it was clearly a giant longer term waste of money if you wanted everything.  And things like a vehicle design ruleset, larger cars and trucks/vans, no motorbikes.  In trying to slim it down they gutted it entirely.  And as it did not do well at all it hamstrung the game as even the vehicles they do have don't fit into a construction ruleset thus even making it a failure in the future had it done well.

Its still basically classic Car Wars just streamlined to the rules you CARE about in an easy to digest format and some lovely counters.  Its just even weapon rules are generally split per book that needs it, while 80-90% of the rules in each booklet are identical.  It could almost be considered a prototype of modern BUY OUR SUPPLEMENTS gaming.  Just.. it was cheaper per hit as opposed to nowadays with 50-60 dollar core rulebooks that still need three or four other books to actually be a properly complete game.  

The rules look lovely though.  Very well put together of products.  And it removes the grid from classic Car Wars meaning it is well suited for miniatures play.  If nothing else consider getting one of the Vs books for a miniatures rules supplement.

And some of the bought at clearance GURPS books I got.  As I have said GURPS itself I think is an ok system it just gets lost up its own ass with tons of extra rules most of the playerbase seems obsessed with.  But the books are fun for fluff if nothing else.

This could even be counted as a proper game system for the amazing Steampunk setting of Castle Falkenstein which is a very addicting and interesting world setting but was also one of the first uber rules light storytelling game styled systems which I am not too keen on personally.  I go for lighter middle levels of rules crunch myself.  Enough to be interesting but not so many as to be overwhelming, annoying, slow, and forgettable in play.

And we finish out with the stand alone Prime Directive GURPS game.  So you don't even need to buy the big ass GURPS Fourth edition megabooks.  Just get Prime Directive and play Starfleet Universe Star Trek with just the GURPS you need.  And the Klingon book is cool fluff for their empire.  Making them more than the silly NOBLE WARRIORS of Next Generation and more than their Original Series NOT SPACE COMMUNIST RUSSIANS YOU JUST CAN'T TRUST.  They are by no means angels but they are interesting antagonists you can play as!  I should really see if they released the Romulan book one of these days...

Keeping with Starfleet Universe and GURPS heritage the artwork is.. nothing special at best.  And given your leanings TOS women's wear in the Federation might be distressing or hot depending on how you feel about such things...  As complicated as GURPS can get I would honestly rather play Trek RPG using this game than using FASA Star Trek rules and ship combat.  I mean I have enough Federation Commander supplements to pretty much cover the entirety of the TOS-Animated era through the Andromedan Invasion...

The core book pretty much has the foundational rules to pretty much play any of the Starfleet Universe races.  It just so happens the SFU is full of furries.  For some people this is a good thing.  For others not so much...  I am in the middle.  Don't mind space animal people races but don't exactly think what most of the furry fanbase really wants out of playing them if you know what I mean..  (And if you don't count your blessings.  Lovecraft was right about ignorance sometimes being a good thing.)

  So as far as I know/remember these are my Car Wars and GURPS things.  I may have more but if I do I don't really remember WHERE they are.  I could have sworn I had a couple more books but if I did my record of it is gone.

 You see part of the reason for this long term collection posting thing I do is not only to show off what I have, and to share my love/like/dislike of various gaming things with others but its also to organize stuff, get it all in the same place so I can find it, and then be inspired to get more storage solutions for them.  In some cases it even makes me remember things I forgot I owned!  Or want to go back and enjoy them again.  I HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF.  So nowadays I am trying to be more responsible in my purchasing and realize how much I already have that I don't get to enjoy.  

  Saves me a hell of a lot of money on Steam sales I tell you what!

Though if I could get more folks to try some of this stuff out and hopefully LIKE IT I might use it more, eh?

Some Stuff March Edition

First off a toy related bit.  After years of collecting and months waiting for them to come in, I now have a complete and amazing Transformers Bruticus, made up of all small run collector's oriented toys.

See during the Transformers Energon line they made a couple combiners based off the concepts of the old 80s "Scramble City" concept where there was one big body bit, and 4 interchangable limbs.  The Energon toys refined this with poseable figures, no extra parts that didn't store on the figure somehow, and even the combiner could pose about.  Sadly these toys only sort of combined with generally terrible hands and feet doing secondary duty as equally poor looking weapons, and each combiner team was really 3 figures, each limb being just 2 different paint schemes.

From time to time since they got reissued, sometimes with better paint schemes, but still sucky.  However the Transformers Collector's Club in a way to not make their 40 dollar a year fee seem completely a waste of money gives you a 8-12 dollar value toy in an exclusive paint scheme every year for free.  For 5 years they did their own team using the above combiners, but with a long running story, and each figure having lots of lovely transparent plastic.  I subbed for one year, used their discount price for member's store (which basically makes in print toys MSRP, and the previous year's freebie toy 20 bucks instead of non member 40.) to grab the other 2 out, and a few months back stumbled upon the limb I didn't have for 15 bucks.

Now Transformers has some third party companies making accessories if not their own figures out there, some of which blow anything Hasbro (TF's parent company outside of Asia) can do, albeit at a 2-4 times price markup of what an equivalent toy would cost in stores.

They decided to improve one of the combiner teams, the Combaticons who form Bruticus.  Not just with parts, but 2 whole replacement figures, being the Space Shuttle Blast Off, and the Jeep Swindle.  For 48 dollars a figure.  Figures who without all the accessories and being from Hasbro would be 8 bucks.

I still bought them.  They are AMAZING renditions of these classic characters with some tweaks.  And the accessories.  Oh the accessories.  Each box with full color instruction booklet has 3 trays worth of moving plastic parts not just for use with the included Transformer, but for the other Combaticons.  Guns, missile racks, truck beds, you name it.  And all these pieces go on BOTH modes, robot and vehicle.

While waiting for these lovely money sinks I grabbed the main body commander bit.

And now?

BRUTICUS IS REBORN!

Thankfully the grey of the combiner/weapon bits meshes well with the primarily red and blue and grey of the TFCC pieces.  And in spite of my less than optimal photo, you can see its big.  And amazing.  Every weapon has moving parts in it, the main AT rifle going down to a smaller size.  The combat knife is an axe for Blast Off.  The feet are both truck bed parts with moving wheels AND as you see they have hidden missiles in them, turning this massive death machine into the universe's most bad ass Jester.

Like in hobby gaming its mostly small companies that really provide fans with what they want.  You just pay a premium for it.


Next up is a bit of gaming.  I got to play some Formula De this week.  (I plan on reviewing it eventually.)  I not only won, but I was vindicated for something an ex friend insulted me with a number of years ago.

See Formula De is a Formula 1 racing game where you have various dice as your gears, and damage points for things like braking, taking turns too fast, downshifting multiple gears, ect.

In 2-3 lap races you can take a pitstop to take care of such damage, in some cases not really losing any time whatsoever.  (Unlike in real racing where you are gonna lose some position even if its just a quick fuel and fly.)  In the official rules you can effectively enter at top speed no problem and possibly leave, still head of the pack.

I remember playing the game and this came up.  I make a small comment about how that seems unbalanced.  My ex friend (and this action is the LEAST of his horribleness) starts YELLING at me for saying it, that I am just whining and don't know what I am talking about and I always do this.

Of course he was always the sort to find any broken advantage in any game ever and you could NEVER EVER EVER remove any unfair advantage he may have discovered.

Going back to playing it with an experienced player I bring up the pit stops being kind of broken and he told me, "Yeah I have houseruled that.  You can't go in at 5-6th gear anymore".

I like when I am vindicated.  I do have a pretty good eye for broken or unbalanced mechanics.

(Games Workshop on the other hand?  Not so much.)


And my final bit of news is that I may actually be in a REAL RPG CAMPAIGN and not the fast food D&D Encounters styled Gamma World game that replaced the D&D Encounters campaign when we all got tired of it.  (Though its a different day so I will probably play both.)

And what is it?  FASA STAR TREK.

A game I bought on a lark a few years back I might finally get to play.  Reading through it and its both impressing and disappointing me at the same time.  Its full of fluff and information on the universe, something a different game I am also reading (Robotech Shadow Chronicles) fails at.

Both are based on TV shows, but Trek expects the players to not just know everything about the setting and gives you that information.  All Robotech gives you is 100s of pages of equipment porn.

But that seems to be a problem with Palladium in general.   When they want to, they can write some compelling background and adventure seeds.  Most of the time its just a laundry list of new weapons.

The disappointment in Trek comes from the involved character generation that involves basically tracking your character's entire Starfleet career till they are skilled enough for whatever role the campaign needs them for.  The example character is in his late 40s!  Its a bit much to have to roll or expect a new player to do.

We will see if its 9 tables of generation works better in practice than on paper though.  It still makes more logical sense than Warhammer 40K RPG/1-2nd ed Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

(Involved?  9 Steps?  Its an 80s game alright!)

But unlike those games I bought into alongside others who were usually the ones to bring it up in the first place, FASA Trek should at least get played for a bit, while GURPS, Starfleet Battles, Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Star Wars Saga Edition, and Pirates of the (Locale Here), World of Warcraft CCG, and 2 different Star Wars CCGs sit around as reminders why most of my friends are horrible people.

And lets end this selection of stuff with some not just good news but GOOD NEWS.

Ogre Sixth Edition!!!  Big Steve Jackson has decided to do a product other than the endless Munchkin rehashes that form the foundation of his company's profits.

(I'll leave out opinions on the man himself, which from most people seem to be entirely negative.  In this case I am approving of what he is doing.)

Full color big box game with a reported TWENTY ONE SQUARE FEET OF CARDBOARD.  Its gonna be nearly TWELVE POUNDS, containing the rules from both Ogre and the expansions GEV, Shockwave, and some additional things.  (I doubt the long unreleased Ogrethulhu rules will be one of them.)

Look at part of the sell sheet showing what it is slated to look like:

Cardstock constructible Ogres!  Full color counters that also use the miniatures designs!  Map overlays to make for more varied setups!

Its gonna be awesome.  Ogre is one of my favorite games and this edition is a must buy.

Though its gonna hurt.  About 100 dollars, extremely low print run that might not even make it to stores.

But oh lordy do I so want it!

Federation Commander Campaign Notes

One of the many projects going through my head when I am not feeling sorry for myself is an RP campaign system for Federation Commander, a hex n chit/miniatures wargame of the "machine sheet" variety.

You know, Machine Sheet. Those games where your units have a big sheet of paper filled with stats and damage boxes and piles of other detail most gamers don't care about.

Well Federation Commander is a Star Trek machine sheet game. Except it has a sort of kind of Trek license and could possibly be a prototype game universe for what many of the current wargame universes are. You know, "In the grim darkness of the grimly dark far future/fantasy world of Blah Blah there is only war". Basically Federation Commander is Star Trek how I always wanted it to be. Lots of jolly big capital class starships shooting the stuffing out of each other. Trek sans Roddenberry's idealist utopian dreams.

Take Trek, mix with Warhammer 40K, add in some original races and ignore any Trek besides the original series and the animated one, stir for 30 years. (See Federation Commander is a fancier streamlined version of the long running "Star Fleet Battles", a game for people who like the rules insanity/lifestyle gaming of Advanced Squad Leader (the full version) but would rather have starships neeming each other as opposed to replaying World War 2 for eternity.

Seriously. I am all WW2ed out. Greatest Generation, some of the worst atrocities ever recorded, Normandy blah blah. Humanity's history encompasses more than just the 1930s and 40s. There have always been soldiers dying for causes just and unjust for millennia.

Ahem.


Back then we had a miniatures RPG goulash where everyone was Star Wars Imperial TIE Fighter pilots taking on missions for the Empire and given options to join various factions and maybe not always backstab each other.

(Of course most people DID, but its not the GM's place to enforce player cooperation. Merely to make life difficult for the jerks in the long run. Sadly, karma never had a chance to rear its ugly head.)

As an aside, why DO hobby games players love jumping at the chance to be douchebags anyhow? Am I the only one who wants to play heroes anymore?

I combined 2 miniatures games, Silent Death for starfighter operations and Star Wars Miniatures for ground ones. Then I added in a simple quickie RPG advancement scheme and away we went.

Except this time using Federation Commander for space combat, and I have no idea what for Away Team missions. (My Adamythryl Engine system? Necromunda/40K? Traveller? D6 Space?)

With Star Trek now hot again because of a TOTALLY AWESOME movie, and my desire to play more Federation Commander, it seems like a good time to overload some Photon Torpedoes, cloak a Romulan vessel, and launch some Kzinti drones.

And I need the excuse to buy the 2 newest expansions. Orion Pirates as a full faction! Lyrans! Hydrans!

Basically it would be a riff on the movie events happening in the Star Fleet Universe which changes ITS timeline, except the villain of the movie's actions change and the SFU's main baddies, the Andromedans show up a good 30 years early and everything changes.

Everyone is a captain of a small ship from their chosen faction at the edge of space, guarding against pirates and the potential return of the Andromedans. While everyone is loosely allied, old grudges die hard (I know this one IRL all too well.) and who is to say anyone is REALLY gonna make nice nice with old enemies?

Plus secret orders from Starfleet/Romulan Command, ect could make for some tricky situations out on the frontier. Work with your new allies? Maybe its the smartest and best solution, but since when does anybody ever do that? :p

Ground stuff will be little ground battles/RP bits ala Trek.

Now my goal is to figure out which game system will be selected for the ground battles, and write up a quick set of campaign rules.

A Blast From the Past and my 3.0 D&D Character: LET ME SHOW YOU HIM

Today I wanted to see if my ancient Athlon 3200 XP machine with a Radeon 4400 would turn back on. (Its got issues with being turned off and on. Its why I gave up on it, went laptop, then went Mac!) To my surprise it did, allowing me to clean up the machine and empty its little 80 gig HD into merely Windows XP, Service Pack 2, and Nero Express.

It had a couple of files I missed having and a few I totally forgot about, like the free release of The Dominion War Sourcebook for the Last Unicorn Games edition of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. (Which is even nicer for Pico, who plans on running a DS 9 game using my copies of Savage Worlds and the DS9 RPG.)

So I am looking through pictures and folders and finding nice things and no porn whatsoever. (I am a goodie goodie after all. Probably too much of a goodie goodie. Sure as hell doesn't get me anywhere!) However in my D&D folder I found a little treasure from way back in the year 2000. The D20 character write up for a PC I played in a 2 years long campaign before I finally realized most modern D&D players are nitwits and most modern editions of D&D suck. (Ok, every edition besides Basic D&D sucks..)

Thus I shall share his writeup here. Not to mention its an archive of it so I can have it handy should he appear in my Basic D&D games in some form. (Its amazingly easy to plug AD&D 1st and 2nd classes into Basic with AD&D Hit Point values given to PCs and NPCs..)

Enjoy!

Name: Aaron Stewart
Race: Human
Class: Bard 2/ Psionic Warrior 2 (Most below info is 1st level stats.)
Alignment: Chaotic Good
STR: 10
INT: 12
DEX: 16
CON: 11
CHA: 16
WIS: 11

HP:
AC:
Weight: 160
Height: 5' 8"
Age: 16

Skills: (At 1st level)
Bluff 4
Climb 2
Concentration 4
Diplomacy 4
Innuendo 1.0
Intimidate 1.0
Use Rope 1.0

Feats:
Dodge
Point Blank Shot

Languages:
Common

Class Features:
Bardic Music
Bardic Knowledge
Spells
Simple Weapon Proficiency
Proficiency: Composite Longbow
Light Armor
Medium Armor
Shield

Spells: (All 0 level)
Detect Magic
Ghost Sound
Light
Read Magic

Items:
Backpack
Bedroll
Winter Blanket
Entertainer's Outfit
1 day of Firewood
Flint and Steel
Clay Jug
Common Lamp
Composite Longbow
Padded Armor
2 days of Trail Rations

Money:
2 Silver
6 Copper

Appearance:
Hair: Sandy Blonde/Light Brown
Eyes: Green

Family: None

About Aaron:

Aaron is a young man who is mostly out to do heroic stuff and have a good
time. Both of these things will lead him to cute girls, so he believes. He
was brought up in an orphanage where he tended to read anything he could get
his hands on, while trying to get the less intelligent kids there to do his
bidding. When he was 14 he managed to scrape up enough money to go to a pub
and listen to the musicians there. He had heard the street performers
before, but never could get into a pub to hear the REAL musicians and
storytellers like the ones in books.

It changed his life.

This beautiful, but sad young woman was playing songs of such complexity and
detail Aaron knew what he wanted to do: be a Bard. He was able to talk
this woman for a few minutes that night, and found out who she was. (Alys
Dreamchaser, NG Bard 11/Cleric of Bahamut 3) She took pity on this wide
eyed and charming kid, and gave him a letter and some money to get some
basic training with the local bards in the area who were willing to train
others in their craft. He has not seen her since that night, but hopes to
find her and repay her for her kindness someday.

While it wasn't a large amount of training, it was enough to give him
something to work off of. He took the knowledge he was given and spent alot
of time putting on shows for his fellow orphans, who usually gave him a
spare copper or two, though usually any candies or sweetcakes they might
have had. This is why he has a bit of a tummy to him. He also discovered
that girls really liked music.

To him this was the greatest thing ever.

Sadly, when one of his fellow orphans decided to show him just how moving
his music really was to her, the people running the orphanage chose to send
him out the door. On his ass. Instead of letting himself get down about
it, he chose this time to take what little money he had left and go
exploring, something the heroes and heroines of storybooks did. During this
time he played small pubs and inns, which gave him little money, but the
free room, board, and alcohol more than made up for it. He tended to spend
any money he made on charity and revelry anyways.

He mostly prefers to tell stories over actual singing as of late, and has
spent the last year getting some notoriety for this. Unfortuneately, not
all of it is good. Most of his stories tend to be on the dirty side, and
usually about self reliant women. This tends to get him a number of female
fans. Sadly for him, most of them are middle aged women whose husbands are
not very attentive to their wives, yet jealous and generally of foul
temperament.

Needless to say, young Aaron does not do many repeat engagements.

Currently he is travelling from the last town he was at, where his story
about a Drow Elf Sorceress, an inn, and 20 Paladins upset the local clergy
quite a bit.

(Rufus' Note: I actually made this song/poem back in the day on a chat RP site. It was a soft R in content IIRC. Sadly, its totally lost to the ether. But I do like I took something and used it somewhere else. Never let a good idea go to waste!)

When encountered, Aaron usually seems to be overly cheerful and
enthusiastic, though with a mouth that makes sailors blush at some of the
expletives that come out of it. He tends to try to do the right thing
without thinking of the consequences.

He prefers to talk his way out of trouble wherever he can, but is more than
willing to use tricks, traps, and the occasional shots from his Composite
Longbow when he has to, usually while telling his enemies how their sheep
will be widows when he is through with them.

To him, life is one big adventure from a storybook.

And with a little luck, he won't reach the chapter where thousands of women
grieve over his gravesite for a couple of decades!

He has since been konked on the head, which has awakened his latent psychic
powers he has honed into something useful thanks to a trainer in a town.

He still shoots his bow at things, he has just gotten MUCH better at it.