Honk If You ❤️ Car Wars

"One of 1982's Ten Best Games" - OMNI Magazine

When the Satanic Panic caught up with us, we had been playing war and role-playing games for a few years. We started with AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons), but had to diversify when some of our friends' parents stopped letting them play. The solution? James Bond 007 from Victory Games(Avalon Hill), because playing a misogynistic sociopath in the employ of a brutal colonial power was much more wholesome than fighting make-believe monsters.

We never got the hang of James Bond 007, but our horizons had been broadened. We quickly ran through a bunch of other games, lingering more on some than others, Villains and Vigilantes, Star Trek: The Role Playing Game, Marvel Super Heroes, Toon, Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, among others. Aside from D&D, and to a lesser extent Villains and Vigilantes, the game that really grabbed us was Car Wars.

I think what we liked most about it was that it allowed us to be cruel to each other. Being cruel to one another was about as close to affection as boys in the '80s were allowed. So, many of our games devolved into PvP (player vs player). It got to the point that we just set up contrived arena battles so no one got upset when their character died.

Then we found Car Wars. It was crunchy, mathy, had cars with machine guns mounted to their hoods, and best of all, it let us attack each other. On top of that, it was based on some of the coolest movies: Death Race 2000 and Mad Max/Road Warrior.

Every week, we would pull out a map made of sheets of 4x4 graph paper taped together and drive our cardboard cars around until a victor emerged—usually Jeff. We finally lost interest in the game after one of us, probably Jeff, figured out the most damage that could be delivered was to put all of your armor in the front and rig a bunch of heavy rockets to a bumper trigger so they all fired on the point of impact. After that, our games were like a Benny Hill routine as we drove around in circles trying to ram into each other.

Recently, I ran a couple of sessions of the tournament adventure Convoy. Once at Ettin and again at Gamehole Con. Both were disasters. Amazingly fun disasters that filled my heart with joy. Most of the sessions were spent discussing (arguing over) various accounting methods, fuel economy, and armaments. About 25% of the time involved combat. It was like I was 14 again! If there had been a pizza and sleeping bags, it would have been perfect! 

I'm going to run Car Wars again. I've got sessions on the books for Midwinter Gaming Con, Polar Vortex, and Gary Con. I'm not going to run Convoy, though. I'm going to give Crash City (Sunday Drivers) a try, and if that's too much for a convention session, I'll strip it down to the basics and let folks pick from a pool of pre-generated cars, then let them loose on each other.