I was thinking: Maybe it would be interesting for a year at Necronomicon to run some games that are thematically similar ... and the theme this year would be roadway action (or adventures that feature it heavily). I could experiment with some rules for vehicular chases that (I hope) improve upon the official Savage Worlds "Chase" rules (which are far too abstract and bizarre for my tastes, and don't fit all situations very well). Either that, or I just have a map that's at a different scale from normal, with PC-controlled cars buzzing around (I might need some sort of "turn ratio" tool to help reflect the various maneuverability ratings of different types of vehicles), engaged in combat of some sort.
If PCs are PEOPLE rather than vehicles, there might still be need for some minis to represent characters, just in case the action covers people getting out on foot -- after all, just having one big car chase might not be enough to fill a scenario. It just might be the "main event" of the scenario.
Rough ideas I'm toying with right now: 1) Ghostbusters and the Haunted Car Show. The PCs are either Ghostbusters in various ECTO vehicles and/or haunted cars, or actually playing "haunted cars," or somewhere in between. Lots of vehicular action and ghost-busting.
2) Post-Apocalyptic Road War! Perhaps themed after "Deadlands: Hell on Earth," or maybe after "Fallout" (in the latter case, requiring some "retro-futuristic" vehicle conversions), and more than a few references to the Mad Max series of movies. Could it possibly fill a 4-hour game slot? I don't know, but only if the action takes place in something more interesting than just a vast Australian desert flat-land. (Perhaps a chase through a ruined retro-futuristic town would fare better, as the scenery would change at various points, and different obstacles/modifiers would come into play, to mix things up.)
3) ... Motor Club of Extraordinary Automobiles? Maybe I could totally split off the Ghostbusters & Haunted Car Show scenario from something more "League-of-Extraordinary-Gentlemen-ish," and use THIS to be the scenario where the players are actually playing a bunch of '80s "character cars." Somehow I mix in a bit of Maximum Overdrive, references to Decepticons, or whatever it takes to hand-wave an excuse for the cars to be characters. I like the idea of working in "Christine," but that might overlap with my Ghostbusters scenario too much. Maybe this is where I'd have KITT as one of the good guys, and KARR as one of the big-bads.
4) Some sort of cyberpunk vehicle-heavy scenario. I could imagine doing a bit of '80s throwback by tying it in with Max Headroom (where police cars -- despite being "futuristic" -- are all 1950s-era Studebakers) ... with the secondary feature of letting me get away with using some retro car toys for some of the "futuristic" vehicles, rather than having to custom-build something. I don't really need this many scenarios, but at the last Necronomicon, someone was nice enough to give me some Infinity figures for free, and I said I'd try to find a use for them the next year ... so I probably need at least one sci-fi/cyberpunk/near-future type scenario.
And three games should be enough to keep me busy through the convention, let alone four. I would hope that I might be able to reuse some of the scenery (and cars) across the scenarios, so I'm not packing a bazillion minis and big set pieces. They're all very rough ideas right now.
You covered some of this in your original post. :)
Maybe think about car chases a bit? Instead of just straight-up demolition derby action, PCs might be in pursuit of a convoy of bad-guy cars/a monster truck. They might have options of trying to cut across difficult terrain in order to beat the enemy who might be sticking to safer roads, or roads not passable by their mammoth vehicle.
Yeah, demolition derby action would be ... less than desirable. I need to brush up on all of KITT's powers, but I'm sure he'd have enough gadgets that he could do something to take other cars out of the action. The ECTO-1 could be equipped with a vehicle-mounted ghost trap (as seen in the video game), and a vehicle-mounted proton gun (made-up for my scenario, but surely Egon could invent such a thing).
Perhaps the General Lee's "ability" could be a bit of reality-alteration. Like, on demand, you just happen to "find" a conveniently-parked car-carrier trailer, collapsed set of boards, or other steep incline that serves as a perfect ramp for you to do a crazy jump whenever you need to, as long as you go "Yeeeeee-hawwwww!" while doing so, and it almost always goes badly for any car that tries to follow you in the stunt. (Maybe part of the gag is that an enemy car pursuing you has to do some sort of roll NOT to follow you, or it's sure to flip or crash into a wall as a result.) I feel like I can't limit it to just that, however, since KITT was another one of those cars that happened to do a lot of gratuitous jumping (via "Turbo Boost" or whatever).
For the A-Team van ... I guess it ought to be packed to the grill with weaponry, and part of the perk of being an automated van is that it gets to use the equipment on board. Maybe a tripod-mounted machine gun on the right side that is revealed when the side door slides open, and another that can fire out the back, and at least one rocket tube. (Because KABOOM!)
... As for others, when I make my selection, "What can the PC *do*?" is going to have to figure into things. I'd like every PC to have some sort of niche, special ability, etc.
Keep in mind those guns are going to be extremely powerful unless you allow the car-PCs to carry crew with guns, or the game simply doesn't have that much combat-- it'd be like being the only ranged combatant in an arena full of melee, you could pick them off from a distance smugly while they try to catch up to you.
That's why I suggested looking at the car chase scenario: if the rule is you have to catch *up* to the other car so, say, your crew can board theirs and capture a person held captive, then the General Lee's ability becomes more relevant, and naturally you couldn't harm the car with gunfire or you might risk killing the hostage.
Or if you have to keep a VIP out of the enemy cars' clutches, then the ability to improvise and deploy an oil slick might be more valuable for the A-Team van than shooting up a seemingly inexhaustible supply of enemy cars. Maybe the rule for the A-Team van might be that it can only deploy one thing at a time, and it takes time to retract and "improvise" a new equipment.
The flip side of giving the hero cars powers is that the villain "boss cars" will probably have powers too. :) Maybe the Batmobile can be on the villain side. It'd be a juggernaut of a car, since it's heavily armored and can smash through walls. Maybe it'd be able to go through the water, but the trick there is finding somewhere on the other side to come back up onto the road.
Anyway, to make it more about the PCs and RPing, maybe there ought to be room for talking or exploring, so everything doesn't look like a driving exercise or a battle. A VIP turns out to have been captured and moved to a hidden location, say, so they have to find out where. Or perhaps the supernatural event that did this has resulted in opening a Junkyard Dimension that they have to close down, in order to bring back some place/thing the hero cars need, and there are puzzles (your favorite thing!) that need to be completed to achieve this. Car-style dungeons!
I rather like the "Extraordinary Automobiles" as incidentally animated by the Decepticons. But then again, I am also a huge sucker for KITT so I want a scenario where he gets to be a PC. :D
Well, whichever way I go ("cars that are already autonomous" vs. "cars that are iconic of the '80s") KITT is certain to be included. It helps that it'll be one of the easier cars for me to represent with Micro Machines with a minimum of kit-bashing. But more to the point, it's very likely I'd have a player who at least has an idea of how to roleplay KITT.
I suppose if we went with the "cars get animated" route, then it might be fun if the A-Team van comes with roleplay instructions along the lines of "Pick your favorite A-Team character, and role-play the van using that persona." I'd expect high chances of getting a van that speaks in the voice of Mr. T / B.A. Barracus.
Regarding the non-talking cars: I know that in "Maximum Overdrive," the cars didn't talk, but I'm not about to reduce players in a convention game to not talking. I prefer to encourage the PCs to work together as a team, and preventing them from in-character communication isn't going to help the quality of the role-play for a pick-up game. I'll hand-wave it somehow, if anyone's concerned about that. Maybe Optimus Prime grants them all "vocoders," or once you're an animated car, you can just somehow communicate with other cars. But it's not like I'm going to seriously get too deep into the "science" of this, since it's a silly scenario anyway. :)
So, even if it makes precious little sense, I want to make sure each PC (Player Car ;) ) gets a personality.
The General Lee would be easy enough. Lots of "Yee-hawwwww!"
I guess for ECTO-1, "Pick your favorite Ghostbuster ... or, hey, I don't care, just throw in whatever Ghostbusters movie quotes you can remember when you get the chance." ;)
If I had the Back to the Future DeLorean (without the combined problems of having to handle a FLYING car AND the prospect of time travel), then I suppose occasional technobabble and interjections of "Great SCOTT!" would do the trick.
If PCs are PEOPLE rather than vehicles, there might still be need for some minis to represent characters, just in case the action covers people getting out on foot -- after all, just having one big car chase might not be enough to fill a scenario. It just might be the "main event" of the scenario.
Rough ideas I'm toying with right now:
1) Ghostbusters and the Haunted Car Show. The PCs are either Ghostbusters in various ECTO vehicles and/or haunted cars, or actually playing "haunted cars," or somewhere in between. Lots of vehicular action and ghost-busting.
2) Post-Apocalyptic Road War! Perhaps themed after "Deadlands: Hell on Earth," or maybe after "Fallout" (in the latter case, requiring some "retro-futuristic" vehicle conversions), and more than a few references to the Mad Max series of movies. Could it possibly fill a 4-hour game slot? I don't know, but only if the action takes place in something more interesting than just a vast Australian desert flat-land. (Perhaps a chase through a ruined retro-futuristic town would fare better, as the scenery would change at various points, and different obstacles/modifiers would come into play, to mix things up.)
3) ... Motor Club of Extraordinary Automobiles? Maybe I could totally split off the Ghostbusters & Haunted Car Show scenario from something more "League-of-Extraordinary-Gentlemen-ish," and use THIS to be the scenario where the players are actually playing a bunch of '80s "character cars." Somehow I mix in a bit of Maximum Overdrive, references to Decepticons, or whatever it takes to hand-wave an excuse for the cars to be characters. I like the idea of working in "Christine," but that might overlap with my Ghostbusters scenario too much. Maybe this is where I'd have KITT as one of the good guys, and KARR as one of the big-bads.
4) Some sort of cyberpunk vehicle-heavy scenario. I could imagine doing a bit of '80s throwback by tying it in with Max Headroom (where police cars -- despite being "futuristic" -- are all 1950s-era Studebakers) ... with the secondary feature of letting me get away with using some retro car toys for some of the "futuristic" vehicles, rather than having to custom-build something. I don't really need this many scenarios, but at the last Necronomicon, someone was nice enough to give me some Infinity figures for free, and I said I'd try to find a use for them the next year ... so I probably need at least one sci-fi/cyberpunk/near-future type scenario.
And three games should be enough to keep me busy through the convention, let alone four. I would hope that I might be able to reuse some of the scenery (and cars) across the scenarios, so I'm not packing a bazillion minis and big set pieces. They're all very rough ideas right now.
Reply
Maybe think about car chases a bit? Instead of just straight-up demolition derby action, PCs might be in pursuit of a convoy of bad-guy cars/a monster truck. They might have options of trying to cut across difficult terrain in order to beat the enemy who might be sticking to safer roads, or roads not passable by their mammoth vehicle.
Reply
Perhaps the General Lee's "ability" could be a bit of reality-alteration. Like, on demand, you just happen to "find" a conveniently-parked car-carrier trailer, collapsed set of boards, or other steep incline that serves as a perfect ramp for you to do a crazy jump whenever you need to, as long as you go "Yeeeeee-hawwwww!" while doing so, and it almost always goes badly for any car that tries to follow you in the stunt. (Maybe part of the gag is that an enemy car pursuing you has to do some sort of roll NOT to follow you, or it's sure to flip or crash into a wall as a result.) I feel like I can't limit it to just that, however, since KITT was another one of those cars that happened to do a lot of gratuitous jumping (via "Turbo Boost" or whatever).
For the A-Team van ... I guess it ought to be packed to the grill with weaponry, and part of the perk of being an automated van is that it gets to use the equipment on board. Maybe a tripod-mounted machine gun on the right side that is revealed when the side door slides open, and another that can fire out the back, and at least one rocket tube. (Because KABOOM!)
... As for others, when I make my selection, "What can the PC *do*?" is going to have to figure into things. I'd like every PC to have some sort of niche, special ability, etc.
Reply
That's why I suggested looking at the car chase scenario: if the rule is you have to catch *up* to the other car so, say, your crew can board theirs and capture a person held captive, then the General Lee's ability becomes more relevant, and naturally you couldn't harm the car with gunfire or you might risk killing the hostage.
Or if you have to keep a VIP out of the enemy cars' clutches, then the ability to improvise and deploy an oil slick might be more valuable for the A-Team van than shooting up a seemingly inexhaustible supply of enemy cars. Maybe the rule for the A-Team van might be that it can only deploy one thing at a time, and it takes time to retract and "improvise" a new equipment.
The flip side of giving the hero cars powers is that the villain "boss cars" will probably have powers too. :) Maybe the Batmobile can be on the villain side. It'd be a juggernaut of a car, since it's heavily armored and can smash through walls. Maybe it'd be able to go through the water, but the trick there is finding somewhere on the other side to come back up onto the road.
Anyway, to make it more about the PCs and RPing, maybe there ought to be room for talking or exploring, so everything doesn't look like a driving exercise or a battle. A VIP turns out to have been captured and moved to a hidden location, say, so they have to find out where. Or perhaps the supernatural event that did this has resulted in opening a Junkyard Dimension that they have to close down, in order to bring back some place/thing the hero cars need, and there are puzzles (your favorite thing!) that need to be completed to achieve this. Car-style dungeons!
Reply
Reply
I suppose if we went with the "cars get animated" route, then it might be fun if the A-Team van comes with roleplay instructions along the lines of "Pick your favorite A-Team character, and role-play the van using that persona." I'd expect high chances of getting a van that speaks in the voice of Mr. T / B.A. Barracus.
Regarding the non-talking cars: I know that in "Maximum Overdrive," the cars didn't talk, but I'm not about to reduce players in a convention game to not talking. I prefer to encourage the PCs to work together as a team, and preventing them from in-character communication isn't going to help the quality of the role-play for a pick-up game. I'll hand-wave it somehow, if anyone's concerned about that. Maybe Optimus Prime grants them all "vocoders," or once you're an animated car, you can just somehow communicate with other cars. But it's not like I'm going to seriously get too deep into the "science" of this, since it's a silly scenario anyway. :)
So, even if it makes precious little sense, I want to make sure each PC (Player Car ;) ) gets a personality.
The General Lee would be easy enough. Lots of "Yee-hawwwww!"
I guess for ECTO-1, "Pick your favorite Ghostbuster ... or, hey, I don't care, just throw in whatever Ghostbusters movie quotes you can remember when you get the chance." ;)
If I had the Back to the Future DeLorean (without the combined problems of having to handle a FLYING car AND the prospect of time travel), then I suppose occasional technobabble and interjections of "Great SCOTT!" would do the trick.
Some of the others might be more of a challenge.
Reply
Leave a comment