Octopus Overlords

Ok, this is round about news. Steve Jackson Games announced, in the Ogre Kickstarter project, that if the Ogre project hits the ~$700,000 mark (now at $586,000), then SJG will open up a KS project for some renewal of Car Wars. I know Car Wars was really well loved, so if you are interested, then head on down there:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847 ... n?ref=live" target="_blank

For people that ONLY want to help open up a Car Wars project, you can donate $23 and get a special "I made Steve Jackson remake Car Wars!" t-shirt. Or, you can go in whole hog and get this really really exciting and extras packed version of Ogre.

Check it out.

I was wondering how Steve Jackson would react to Zombicide reaching $780,000.

Wow. That is brilliant. I loved Car Wars, and Steve Jackson just unleashed a holy fury of positive social media. On top of it, Steve Jackson will make a mint remaking Car Wars as a Kickstarter project.

Hell yeah to Car Wars! This was mentioned in the "what would you like to see re-made" thread quite awhile back.

If we get a car wars can we get auto duel and Interstate 76 pt 2?..a real one.

Am I the only one who furrowed his brow at the idea of SJG holding a new version of car wars hostage with the Ogre Kickstarter? I've always had some admiration for SJG, but this really seems...well, I dunno. Slimy.

Y'know, I really liked the concept of Car Wars, and had a lot of fun playing it the first time around when I was a teenager. Cars, with guns, driving along a highway, shooting at each other, flipping over, blowing up, driver corpses flying left and right... glorious!

But then, I played it as an adult, and, my god, that game is dense. Why do we need to look up numbers in twenty different matrices, Steve Jackson? Why can we only fire weapons once every ten rounds, and the rest of it is making tiny adjustments to your car's position and orientation (and keeping track of a magical "your car is going to go out of control" counter)? Why are your movement rules so complicated? When it comes to my tastes, I want guns and explosions and cars flipping over, I don't need to be figuring out "engine horse power to torque ratios" or whatever. Any denser and I'm pretty sure we'd be taking derivatives and integrals.

So, unless I see something indicating that this time around the rules are going to move things along at a decent pace without having to look through ten Excel spreadsheets, PASS.

Funny you should mention that as I was digging through my Gaming Closet (tm) yesterday and I found my Deluxe Car wars set I purchased when I was 12 or 13. I remembered thinking it was insane and way too much, at which point it was shelved and put away until yesterday. 27 years later it's still too much. It's basically new in the box and I guess somehow I acquired all kinds of supplements, modules, and bonus materials. The prices I'm seeing on Ebay suggest I'm not alone in my lack of desire for it. Someone out there must want to play if SJG is thinking they need to use it as a carrot for OGRE, but I have no idea who.

hentzau wrote:Am I the only one who furrowed his brow at the idea of SJG holding a new version of car wars hostage with the Ogre Kickstarter? I've always had some admiration for SJG, but this really seems...well, I dunno. Slimy.

That was my immediate thought. Plus, I find it odd that the rewards for contributing to one project would be something for another project.

Seems like donating to the first project should only be for the first project. After all, from the OP, it does not appear that any of the funding for the first project will actually be used in the second project. So what exactly does that extra money do? What benefit to the contributors get? It seems to me like the only thing they get is the privilege of contributing a second time when the Car Wars project actually gets put up.

Definitely feels slimy to me.

I've still got my deluxe set plus a few extras, too. I rarely played it, even though I loved the concept. Driving a couple of blocks and shooting a few guns took so damned long and required way too many rules.

I really liked designing cars. I never got to play the game.

I played a couple times in college on the dorm lobby pool table. I remember racing on a tri-lobe track, getting goaded into breaking the first-lap cease fire order, and proceeding to get demolished, my car destroyed, and my driver gunned down as he tried to run for safety.

NickAragua wrote:Y'know, I really liked the concept of Car Wars, and had a lot of fun playing it the first time around when I was a teenager. Cars, with guns, driving along a highway, shooting at each other, flipping over, blowing up, driver corpses flying left and right... glorious!

But then, I played it as an adult, and, my god, that game is dense. Why do we need to look up numbers in twenty different matrices, Steve Jackson? Why can we only fire weapons once every ten rounds, and the rest of it is making tiny adjustments to your car's position and orientation (and keeping track of a magical "your car is going to go out of control" counter)? Why are your movement rules so complicated? When it comes to my tastes, I want guns and explosions and cars flipping over, I don't need to be figuring out "engine horse power to torque ratios" or whatever. Any denser and I'm pretty sure we'd be taking derivatives and integrals.

So, unless I see something indicating that this time around the rules are going to move things along at a decent pace without having to look through ten Excel spreadsheets, PASS.

Yeah, I agree with this. But then, maybe that's not so surprising given that I was playing it with Nick when we were teenagers. Plus the rules were so complex that I never had any substantial confidence that we were applying them correctly - there were plenty of times where I'd see the result and think "this can't possibly be right", but where we seemed to be following the rules pretty exactly. Lots of "slight course adjustment leads to horrible flaming wreckage" moments, and fatalities from driving tended (IIRC) to exceed fatalities from weapons.

Basically, if he dramatically streamlines the rules then I'm in; if it's just a faithful reproduction of the original then I'm out.

I think that Car Wars could be a brilliant, fast paced game if you would use the Wings of War system with it.

hentzau wrote:I think that Car Wars could be a brilliant, fast paced game if you would use the Wings of War system with it.

But then I could only turn left and I hate left turns when driving.

(I also don't remember Car Wars being that complex. It came in like a 10 page manual with five sheets of cutouts in a tiny 4x8 plastic case and that covered everything. So then I bought Truck Stop and that was first time I ever felt truly ripped off by SJG. A paid how much for map a truck stop? Really? That's what comes in this case?)

LordMortis wrote:
(I also don't remember Car Wars being that complex. It came in like a 10 page manual with five sheets of cutouts in a tiny 4x8 plastic case and that covered everything.

That must be an earlier version. I just checked my book. If I don't count the first three pages as being fluff, and don't count the last 25 or so as being parts list, the rest (all rules) still comes in a 72 pages.

Blackhawk wrote:

LordMortis wrote:
(I also don't remember Car Wars being that complex. It came in like a 10 page manual with five sheets of cutouts in a tiny 4x8 plastic case and that covered everything.

That must be an earlier version. I just checked my book. If I don't count the first three pages as being fluff, and don't count the last 25 or so as being parts list, the rest (all rules) still comes in a 72 pages.

Now I need to go home and break it out to try and get a better memory of almost 30 years ago. This is the version I have somewhere (along with Truck Stop and Sunday Drivers and trio Illuminati plastic boxes as well):

An, I remember that box well. The town of Midville from the games was based on the town next to the one I grew up in. It had a Midville Speedway. At least that was what I read at one time.

Steve Jackson is at $632,000+ with 3 days to go.

While the Car Wars and GURPs rules were sometimes crazy, my high school gaming group created a series of futuristic house rules that made things simpler and crazier at the same time. We'd pre-clear our new rules and configurations at the end of one gaming session, then get quick-and-dirty playing with the results the next session. And when our rules didn't include a result, we looked them up...one time leading to the discovery of my favorite "shatter rule" when Vehicle #1 has sufficient mass to demolish Vehicle #2 and keep going after turning it into scrap.

It did not matter that my team was on the losing side of the rules debate. The result was just perfectly appropriate for a trike getting run over by an out-of-control tractor.

Good times.

Blackhawk wrote:

LordMortis wrote:
(I also don't remember Car Wars being that complex. It came in like a 10 page manual with five sheets of cutouts in a tiny 4x8 plastic case and that covered everything.

That must be an earlier version. I just checked my book. If I don't count the first three pages as being fluff, and don't count the last 25 or so as being parts list, the rest (all rules) still comes in a 72 pages.

Sounds like you have the Compendium.

LM is talking about the little box, prior to all the Uncle Alberts additions.

And I have nearly all the old Car Wars stuff, I actually taught my son and kenetickid and his son to play last summer.

We played off and on for a few weeks.

Chaosraven wrote:
Sounds like you have the Compendium.

LM is talking about the little box, prior to all the Uncle Alberts additions.

Nope, I have the Car Wars Deluxe box. The little box, above, was the first edition published in '81. Mine was 2nd edition from '85. Apparently they ended up going all the way to 5th edition in 2002 (which apparently did not include the option to design your own cars - what the hell were they thinking?)

I have what I think is the compendium. I like looking through it, will probably never play it but I'm strangely interested in a new car wars anything.

El Guapo wrote: Lots of "slight course adjustment leads to horrible flaming wreckage" moments, and fatalities from driving tended (IIRC) to exceed fatalities from weapons.

I have the first edition, deluxe edition, multiple Uncle Albert's catalogs, add-ons, expansions, and even the Champions/Car Wars crossover called Autoduel Champions.

Our group mostly dueled in an auto-arena of my design (Lake Placid Autodrome) which consisted of an L shaped arena with multiple bunkers and hazards.

Play sessions were usually divided up into heats. Players were typically given 10, 25, and 50 thousand dollars per heat and could design any number of vehicles per team as long as they didn't spend over their given allotment for that round.

My favorite session was one of the 10K rounds and I decided to field an all motorcycle team. The game started and my team came roaring out of the starting gate. Within three seconds of game time all three of them were dead as a result of losing control and crashing into bunkers. They never even fired a shot.

Good times.

damn brian, between your love of grindhouse films and now car wars, i think you needs to get your ass to the next octocon and hang with yours truly.

Brian wrote:Autoduel Champions.

Anything for a buck. Did they eventually remake it into GURPS Autoduel Champions?

They made EVERYTHING into a GURPS module. There was GURPS: Lifeguards, GURPS: Pastry Chefs, GURPS: Receptionists....

LordMortis wrote:

Brian wrote:Autoduel Champions.

Anything for a buck. Did they eventually remake it into GURPS Autoduel Champions?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Steve-Jackson-G ... 1817wt_905" target="_blank

of course

hepcat wrote:damn brian, between your love of grindhouse films and now car wars, i think you needs to get your ass to the next octocon and hang with yours truly.

We will be there in October.


Even though I played both Car Wars and Champions I really only bought Autoduel Champions for the helicopter rules supplement to Car Wars.

Had that too.

I remember trying to run a champions/car wars campaign in junior high...it was less than successful.

But good lord, the expansion set in a mall was something we couldn't stop playing.

With the GURPS Autoduel I tweaked out the armor on my car to PD 16, DR 1. So anything shot at it glanced off on anything but a 17 or 18 on 3d6. But you could punch your fist thru it.

I really played Autoduel on the C-64 way more than I ever played the original Car Wars. Man, that was a frustrating game.

Autoduel Champions was rather awesome (in the Car Wars world, bringing cars into Champions was less than stellar). The Animal Farm module was sort of interesting as well, but putting superheroes in with the cars was a fun gig we went back to multiple times.

I moved away from Car Wars once the full-sized Uncle Albert's compendiums started coming out. I had started with the simple boxed set which was among the most fun we ever had.

Great times.

baelthazar wrote:if the Ogre project hits the ~$700,000 mark (now at $586,000), then SJG will open up a KS project for some renewal of Car Wars.

They're past the 900k mark. I'd say they're doing Car Wars.

10 game rounds was only 1 real time second right? Didn't seem bad to me that you focus more on not crashing than on shooting while driving.

Yeah, but when each round takes a minute and there are four players, that means you get to shoot once every forty minutes, which is not exactly good game design.

"Nothing by Car Wars"?

That's embarrassing.

triggercut wrote:"Nothing by Car Wars"?

That's embarrassing.

Should be "but". Do you get the reference?

Classic Car Wars rules available online. I think I still have my box of Car Wars counters tucked away somewhere in back of the gaming closet.

What's the word on a new edition? Wasn't there confirmation of one during the Ogre Kickstarter?

Somewhere I read that it might be shaping up to be more like Fantasy Flight's X-Wing, which I hope isn't true.

Zarathud wrote:Classic Car Wars rules available online. I think I still have my box of Car Wars counters tucked away somewhere in back of the gaming closet.

Those rules always confused the hell out of me.