Watched Mad Max. Want a car pursuing game.

[silva]

Is there a car pursuit game that actually feels fast and furious ? The only car chasing rules I know are Shadowrun and Gurps ones and they are a slow and convoluted mess.

By the way the new Mad Max is pretty cool. Worth the time even if only for the visuals and imagery.

[violence in the media]

Okay, so assuming this doesn't devolve into another discussion of BearWorld, I actually agree with the thread title.

Would Car Wars work well enough for this? I haven't played that game in ages and don't remember a whole lot about it.

[hyzmarca]

Is there a car pursuit game that actually feels fast and furious ? The only car chasing rules I know are Shadowrun and Gurps ones and they are a slow and convoluted mess.

By the way the new Mad Max is pretty cool. Worth the time even if only for the visuals and imagery.

Car Lesbians. It's really for racing rather than pursuit, but it works in a pinch.

It's very rules lite, though. And half the rules are dedicated to making out with other women.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

You could build some pretty crazy vehicles in HERO. You could build cool vehicular antagonists suitable for post-apoc too, like an OGRE tank.

Savage Worlds has speed and maneuverability stats for a number of vehicles,. Savage Worlds is of debatable quality but I don't think its unplayable if you just want to make some characters and then push a few Hot Wheels down a map while rolling dice. It has rules for chases as extended tests, which you should probably ignore and just play it as a bog standard combat.

[Prak]

For the brief period in which Polyhedron Magazine had been absorbed by Dungeon as a way to put out d20 minigames, there was one they put out called Thunderball Rally, which was inspired by 80's cross country car race movies like Cannonball Run or Death Race 2000. It could probably be made to function for Mad Max.

[PhoneLobster]

This is a Silva thread so I'm assuming the answer from Silva to his own question will shortly be forthcoming as "Apocalypse world".

But... why WOULDN'T the answer be Apocalypse world? We know Silva is a raging fan of it, it IS a god damn post apocalyptic mad max setting already AND it even has a fucking driver as one of it's base character archetypes.

Silva wants a post apocalyptic RPG (that he would like, so one like Apocalypse world) with cars in? He is already attached to one at the hip. And it's as much like Apocalypse World as any RPG can be, because it IS that rpg.

If even Silva thinks that Apocalypse World can't do a mad max style game... then that is almost flat out an admission from him that it doesn't satisfy him for ANY useful purpose, because as far as I can telll, that's its main fucking intended purpose.

[Prak]

I must admit, I haven't seen any of the Mad Max movies (I'm a terrible freak, I know), but unless the trailers really down play it, I don't think there are enough wanton orgies in Mad Max for BonerApocalypse World to be a proper fit.

Which isn't to say you couldn't rewrite the Apocalypse World classes to not function off of getting off, but as is, I think Apocalypse World focuses too much on people fondling fucksticks and too little on people stroking shift sticks.

[TheFlatline]

Spycraft.

[Maxus]

Borderlands

[RelentlessImp]

This is a Silva thread so I'm assuming the answer from Silva to his own question will shortly be forthcoming as "Apocalypse world".

But... why WOULDN'T the answer be Apocalypse world? We know Silva is a raging fan of it, it IS a god damn post apocalyptic mad max setting already AND it even has a fucking driver as one of it's base character archetypes.

Silva wants a post apocalyptic RPG (that he would like, so one like Apocalypse world) with cars in? He is already attached to one at the hip. And it's as much like Apocalypse World as any RPG can be, because it IS that rpg.

If even Silva thinks that Apocalypse World can't do a mad max style game... then that is almost flat out an admission from him that it doesn't satisfy him for ANY useful purpose, because as far as I can telll, that's its main fucking intended purpose.

Wait, wait. We can work with this. We know, approximately, what the damage to a vehicle traveling at cruising speed (50-75mph) sustains when it nails a deer crossing the road. All you really have to do is scale up for the potentially infinite bears strewn across the roads in a BearWorld game and give those numbers to bearva so that every vehicle is infinitely crashing into bears forever, taking an infinite number of bearva's characters with them.

Replace bears with, I don't know, Thunderdomes and Master Blasters and now you have a completely unworkable game set in Mad Max-verse and bearva can shut the fuck up. It's a win-win.

[Prak]

This is a Silva thread so I'm assuming the answer from Silva to his own question will shortly be forthcoming as "Apocalypse world".

But... why WOULDN'T the answer be Apocalypse world? We know Silva is a raging fan of it, it IS a god damn post apocalyptic mad max setting already AND it even has a fucking driver as one of it's base character archetypes.

Silva wants a post apocalyptic RPG (that he would like, so one like Apocalypse world) with cars in? He is already attached to one at the hip. And it's as much like Apocalypse World as any RPG can be, because it IS that rpg.

If even Silva thinks that Apocalypse World can't do a mad max style game... then that is almost flat out an admission from him that it doesn't satisfy him for ANY useful purpose, because as far as I can telll, that's its main fucking intended purpose.

Wait, wait. We can work with this. We know, approximately, what the damage to a vehicle traveling at cruising speed (50-75mph) sustains when it nails a deer crossing the road. All you really have to do is scale up for the potentially infinite bears strewn across the roads in a BearWorld game and give those numbers to bearva so that every vehicle is infinitely crashing into bears forever, taking an infinite number of bearva's characters with them.

Replace bears with, I don't know, Thunderdomes and Master Blasters and now you have a completely unworkable game set in Mad Max-verse and bearva can shut the fuck up. It's a win-win.

This makes me think the perfect webcomic for Silva to read is Bearmageddon.

[hyzmarca]

This is a Silva thread so I'm assuming the answer from Silva to his own question will shortly be forthcoming as "Apocalypse world".

But... why WOULDN'T the answer be Apocalypse world? We know Silva is a raging fan of it, it IS a god damn post apocalyptic mad max setting already AND it even has a fucking driver as one of it's base character archetypes.

Silva wants a post apocalyptic RPG (that he would like, so one like Apocalypse world) with cars in? He is already attached to one at the hip. And it's as much like Apocalypse World as any RPG can be, because it IS that rpg.

If even Silva thinks that Apocalypse World can't do a mad max style game... then that is almost flat out an admission from him that it doesn't satisfy him for ANY useful purpose, because as far as I can telll, that's its main fucking intended purpose.

You know, personally, I'd rather give constructive answers rather than take a piss at the thread creator, but that's just me.

And I don't think Apocalypse World has good chase rules.

Good chase rules are pretty hard to do, and almost require a dedicated deathrace rpg.

[PhoneLobster]

You know, personally, I'd rather give constructive answers.

You want to pull the moral high ground on constructively responding in a Silva thread?

Then you actually manage to give a less constructive answer anyway.

Look it's a Silva thread. You have two choices, the right one you should be complaining I didn't make is "don't post" the other one isn't "mutually constructive dialogue with Silva" it cannot happen.

[TiaC]

You know, personally, I'd rather give constructive answers.

You want to pull the moral high ground on constructively responding in a Silva thread?

Then you actually manage to give a less constructive answer anyway.

Look it's a Silva thread. You have two choices, the right one you should be complaining I didn't make is "don't post" the other one isn't "mutually constructive dialogue with Silva" it cannot happen.

You have more choices than that: you can derail the thread into something more interesting or just have fun heckling too.

[Omegonthesane]

You know, personally, I'd rather give constructive answers.

You want to pull the moral high ground on constructively responding in a Silva thread?

Then you actually manage to give a less constructive answer anyway.

Look it's a Silva thread. You have two choices, the right one you should be complaining I didn't make is "don't post" the other one isn't "mutually constructive dialogue with Silva" it cannot happen.

You have more choices than that: you can derail the thread into something more interesting or just have fun heckling too.

Heck, giving constructive answers might draw someone who isn't Silva into discussing the matter usefully/

[silva]

Last time I saw Car Wars it had a pretty complex ruleset. I dont think it fits what Im talking about here. And really, this is the crux of the matter: is it even possible to have a car pursuing game that feels as kinectical as the real deal ? Can the tabletop environment even provide that ? Frankly, I doubt. But then the only games Ive seen that try to do it failed miserably. Perhaps Im not looking at the right direction. (and no, Apocalypse World doesnt fit)

Someone above cited "Car Lesbians", "Thunderball Rally", "Savage Worlds" and "Spycraft". Why do these games do it in your opinions ? Do they capture that "fast and furious", that kinetic feeling ?

[tussock]

Spycraft mini-games (also in fantasy-craft and whatever else they did) are basically a track that you act to push a marker back and forward on until it reaches either party's win condition, where actions can take many weeks or a few seconds as appropriate.

The interesting bit is you get to take advantage of different moves when you've almost won or almost lost, as compared to when you're balanced, and do various things to limit your opponent or force certain responses than suit you, rather than just try to random-walk the marker off the track.


If you were to mad-max it up, then the car chases would tend to have boarding actions for the chaser to win and crashes for the runner to win unless you "run for the hills" at long range or something. Making the rest of it interesting is a matter of providing setting-appropriate moves that play off the characters in some way. Short-range defence moves include knocking off potential boarders, or being wide, attack moves including boxing in or grappling or ram-jumping.

[violence in the media]

Last time I saw Car Wars it had a pretty complex ruleset.

I vaguely remember that being the case. Though, I really think that for this sort of game you want to have a character/vehicle creation section that is crunchy as hell. Engine sizes, chassis, tires, armor, nitro tanks, fuel capacity, weaponry, personnel capacity, speed, braking, and a million other things you're going to want to be able to customize for your war party. How good the people aboard are with guns, explosive spears, driving, repair, melee, and acrobatics is all shit that you'll want to come up during the game.

Something that might help with a kinetic feeling for the game would be having compulsory movements/actions and random events that happen on each player's turn before they get to a decision point.

This game probably wants to be more of a board- or war-game than an rpg.

[Prak]

I recommended Thunder Ball Rally because it was specifically made to emulate 80s B Race Movies.

[hyzmarca]

Last time I saw Car Wars it had a pretty complex ruleset. I dont think it fits what Im talking about here. And really, this is the crux of the matter: is it even possible to have a car pursuing game that feels as kinectical as the real deal ? Can the tabletop environment even provide that ? Frankly, I doubt. But then the only games Ive seen that try to do it failed miserably. Perhaps Im not looking at the right direction. (and no, Apocalypse World doesnt fit)

Someone above cited "Car Lesbians", "Thunderball Rally", "Savage Worlds" and "Spycraft". Why do these games do it in your opinions ? Do they capture that "fast and furious", that kinetic feeling ?

Car Lesbians works only be virtue of being rules lite. You only have two stats that matter and a few modifiers for them. Each leg of the race can be handled as a single roll. It's fast.

And if you want a game about shooting your fellow racers rather than making out with them, you can probably replace the Hotness stat with a combat stat.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

Savage Worlds is a generic ruleset and the only sort of "feel" it's trying to recreate is pulp adventure. As death races are a feature of pulp adventure it seemed appropriate enough. The rules are advertised as "fast" and "furious" though dealing a card to every actor at every initiative pass may slow it down. I doubt that it's so fast and furious and kinetic that it'll summon the ghost of Paul Walker into the room and he'll sit down at the table and throw dice with you.

[mlangsdorf]

I've played about 30-40 sessions of Savage Worlds, on both the player's and the DM's side of the table. Tossing cards around a table for initiative isn't particularly fast, but it doesn't slow down play very much either.

I've also done some chase scenes with Savage Worlds. You can make them exciting and kinetic, but the basic rules are a skeleton you have to build on and modify a bit. They will not, by themselves, produce kinematic results emergently.

I'd have to dig out my notes, but two things I remember that worked well:
* explicitly changing the scenery every couple of turns and having the new scenery adjust the strategy. At the simplest, going from the flat plains where speed and ranged fire are most important, then to the switchbacks on the hills where acceleration and turn rate matter, and then to a boulder strewn plain where speed matters but there's a lot of cover against ranged fire. Or whatever. The point is, scenery has to change.
* Bringing in new racers periodically. As Team Bad Guy gets whittled down/lost in the dust, it's helpful to have new members of Team Bad Guy appear ahead of, or at least near, the PCs. Return of the Jedi did this with the extra 2 scout troopers that join the speeder bike chase midway through.

[TheFlatline]

Last time I saw Car Wars it had a pretty complex ruleset.

I vaguely remember that being the case. Though, I really think that for this sort of game you want to have a character/vehicle creation section that is crunchy as hell. Engine sizes, chassis, tires, armor, nitro tanks, fuel capacity, weaponry, personnel capacity, speed, braking, and a million other things you're going to want to be able to customize for your war party. How good the people aboard are with guns, explosive spears, driving, repair, melee, and acrobatics is all shit that you'll want to come up during the game.

Something that might help with a kinetic feeling for the game would be having compulsory movements/actions and random events that happen on each player's turn before they get to a decision point.

This game probably wants to be more of a board- or war-game than an rpg.

There's a more limited version of Car Wars that uses cards instead of turning keys and stuff.

[TheFlatline]

Spycraft mini-games (also in fantasy-craft and whatever else they did) are basically a track that you act to push a marker back and forward on until it reaches either party's win condition, where actions can take many weeks or a few seconds as appropriate.

The interesting bit is you get to take advantage of different moves when you've almost won or almost lost, as compared to when you're balanced, and do various things to limit your opponent or force certain responses than suit you, rather than just try to random-walk the marker off the track.


If you were to mad-max it up, then the car chases would tend to have boarding actions for the chaser to win and crashes for the runner to win unless you "run for the hills" at long range or something. Making the rest of it interesting is a matter of providing setting-appropriate moves that play off the characters in some way. Short-range defence moves include knocking off potential boarders, or being wide, attack moves including boxing in or grappling or ram-jumping.

Most of those moves you're referencing could easily be done with balance checks and passenger actions during the turn.

You'd want to give mook cars a way to be taken out of the fight relatively easily and in a spectacular way too, which would involve some kitbashing, but it wouldn't take much. You just reduce the survivability of the mooks compared to the named PCs/NPCs. I'd also change up the end-of-chase maneuvers to do damage to the cars or inflict driving checks instead of just ending the chase, since you want chases to occur in the 0-4 lengths range because fun shit happens there.

What I enjoy about Spycraft's chase rules is that they create a minigame between the drivers that is fairly interesting. There's also a giant feat list for the drivers and passengers specifically devoted to chases.

The downside I can see is that there will be a point where the NPCs will kind of overload the GM. Probably about 4 or 5 cars filled with a couple NPCs besides the driver will get out of control for the GM.

[talozin]

The full-on Car Wars rules are pretty complex, but fortunately you don't actually want them if reproducing Mad Max is what you want to do. Car Wars has shit like fuel-air explosive dispensers, rail guns, x-ray lasers and superconducting electric power plants.

You can cut out a lot of the nonsense by using the "Chassis & Crossbow" rules published in Dueltrack and which you can probably find in PDF form on Google somewhere, I can't be arsed to look. This is basically a subset of the Car Wars rules that is all but explicit in declaring its intent to emulate Mad Max, and presumably only held back out of fear of legal action. It limits the available weapons to basically machine guns, flame throwers, smoke screens, oil slick dispensers, and spikedroppers, plus various low-tech hand weapons, turning it into a game of man-to-man combat between guys who happen to be riding on vehicles, with the occasional car that happens to have an actual weapon mounted being the equivalent of finding an actually useful magic weapon in a randomly generated D&D magic shop inventory.