Monday, January 11, 2010

Fossil Forward...

Reviewing the mad fat stack of Car Wars material I have accumulated, I am always amazed at how simple it was to create your character in Car Wars:

you have 3 Damage points (DP)
You select 2 skills, one of them at +1
You have to roll 7+ on 2d6 to succeed.
you can carry up to 6 grenades worth of equipment.
Armor adds to you DP and is crossed off first (destroyed) when you take damage
No DP left means you are roadkill.

looking in an AADA guide they would list the two stats for NPC's the first would be GURPS which ended up being 9 compact lines of stats and skills, the Car Wars Equivalent of this same fellow is one compact line: Damage points, skill(s) and weapon/equip.

I like the quick clean method of this, but I wrestle a bit with going stats free.  I have Car Wars stats for everything from vampires, to mutants, zombies, to mountain men, and honestly, I really like the clean attribute free manner in which they handle people.  Part of this is due to the vehicles being the star of the show, but as the game went on they really fleshed out characters and NPC's not with stats, but with description.  Characters and NPC's were distinctive  based upon their descriptions, not on stat blocks.  The stats were secondary.  This is interesting grist for the gaming mill...

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