Re: [HoE] Hell on Earth & Car Wars

[Sean Michael Whipkey <highway@cstone.net>]

At 09:02 AM 7/19/99 -0600, Allan Seyberth wrote:
>And there is another problem - that in Car Wars you only have three hit
>points.

There were alternate rules for more or less hit points (DP) in Car Wars.

Of course, it's a matter of scale.  The standard .30 caliber machine gun in
Car Wars did 1d6 damage.  That's a 2/3 chance of killing an unarmored human
outright, and an additional 1/6 chance of merely knocking him unconscious.
Even wearing standard body armor you still have a 1/6 chance of being
killed instantly.

My favorite anti-infantry weapons in Car Wars were more like x-ray lasers,
and of course, the one car called the "Manslaughter". :-)

Car Wars was the game that I cut my teeth on, and got me into RPGs
(actually, first into Twilight: 2000).

Being post-apocalyptic in nature as well, Car Wars and Hell on Earth could
cross over fairly easily.  The only thing to really look at is the fact
that in Car Wars a much greater hunk of society both survived the
Apocalypse and has been rebuilt in thirty-odd years since the Grain
Blight/WWIII.  (One thing to remember about Car Wars is that time
progresses in the game world at the same rate as the real world - it is now
2049 in Car Wars.  I got into Car Wars (darn) in 1988, or 2038.)  Also, in
Car Wars, only three states have seceeded - Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana,
the "Free Oil States" which broke off in 2000, and only won their
independence after Texas used a nuke or two.  Of course, Texas is now
skirmishing regularly against the other two FOS and the US, and the US had
a fairly vicious war against the Japanese, including a devastatingly
expensive space war and partisan actions from the Japanese-owned state of
Montana.

Perhaps if you made the pre-war world more like Car Wars; autoduelling was
a popular past-time, thus account for a lot more weapons floating around
the civilian world.  Cars regularly went armed down the highway, and
helicopter camera crews waited to show the results of highway duels.  Arena
duels are sanctioned, with various divisions of play.  In HoE, you would
still have the remnants of the various groups available, such as:

AADA - the American Autoduel Association.  They are the major pro-duelling
organization, and have always tried to maintain some sorts of standards
among duellists.
BLUD - Big League Unlimited Duelling.  They don't like the AADA's
"restrictive" rules, such as not shooting unarmed drivers fleeing their cars.
EDSEL - The Eastern Driving Safety Enforcement League.  A group of
vigilantes that hate guns on cars, and fly in helicopters, destroying
people attempting to have highway duels.  As of 2035, they were on the
decline in many areas, having had a failed expansion attempt towards the
Midwest that left them stretched thin - in HoE they're firmly out of the
picture, I would assume.
Gold Cross - major corporation that provides clones and memory dumps.  It
might be interesting to run into an intact facility of theirs.
ASP - Assassination, Sabotage, Protectionism.  A terrorist group mostly
devised for cheap jokes by Craig Sheeley.  Usually just plain silly, IMHO.
Uncle Al's Auto Shop and Gunnery Stop - the premiere store for weapons and
accessories of all sorts.

There were a number of other more minor groups, but those are better
described in the various AADA Road Atlas and Survival Guides.

It could work.  I might see what I can do, since I own most of what's come
out for Car Wars; I had been thinking of...<Drum Roll Please>

Deadlands: the Funky West!

Fighting the Reckoners in the West in the 1970s, kind of like Vigilante 8
or I-76, crossed with Starsky and Hutch and some other shows...:-)

SeanMike

--
SeanMike Whipkey - Cornerstone Networks Engineering - highway@cstone.net
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