Vehicular Mayhem

[Christougher]

I'm looking to create (or steal) some rules to make vehicular mayhem more entertaining than just opposed Combat Driving rolls.  

 

Some points I'm considering:

 

Separate movement from SPD for vehicles, let vehicles move every segment and handle driver ability separate.

Revisit acceleration, braking and turn modes, allowing for 30/60/90 degree turns or even finer.  Consider a number-of-wheel based modifier so motorcyles handle better than semis.

Examine martial maneuvers as an option, including things like spinout braking, cross-lane turns, PIT maneuvers, and half of the Fast and Furious movies.

Create a new look at smooth vs rough terrain and suspension to handle it - why you drive a dune buggy and not a sedan in broken desert.

Make a race/pursuit jockeying system so it isn't always the fastest one wins.

Look at adapting these ideas for dogfighting, space combat, and foot pursuit / parkour.

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Run up to the HERO store on this site. 

 

 

Never cared for that one myself, but I did toss the counters and maps in with my Car Wars stuff way back when.  (oh, if I remember right, you'll need Car Wars as well. Stev Jasckon Games periodically releases a super-stripped down version as a give away, but when it's not a give-away, it's still guite cheap. 

 

Seems goofy, but Car Wars already does everything your suggesting, and it's extremely fun.  We did this a time or six for car chases in Espionage games.  It was awesome. 

 

 

 

 

[Christougher]

Its things like this that are why I posted.  Didn't know that existed.

 

I was going to post more of my thoughts on those subjects, but pesky eyelids kept blocking my vision.

 

I think I'm gonna follow through on my thoughts before reading Autoduel Champions.

 

Chris.

[Duke Bushido]

For what it's worth, you can, from time to time, pick up an old print copy for about the same price--I got my back-up copy for about five bucks and 3 dollars shipping.  It even still had the arena maps (though the Car Wars counters were missing).

 

Its just me.  Eventually, I want PDFs of _everything (that's how the Western and Horror HERO books came to be here) - and I've got a huge selection of them already, to be sure! -  but I will always prefer to hold, smell, hear, and read a book.  To _that_ end, I've been slowly working on getting a minimum of ywo copies of everything 4e and older, and two copies of 5e Revised and Sidekick revised rules books. 

 

I also intend to get one copy of each of the blue books for 6e (and _possibly_ a second copy of 6e Sidekick (sorry, "Basic") but I kind of doubt I'll bother). 

 

Not _exactly_ sure why, but let's remember I'm the guy with 13 copies of the 2e rules book, so.....   

 

 

Hey:

 

On that subject, is there anyone who needs and _will use_ the 6e blue book HERO System Skills?  I ordered Skills and Grimoire on a single order (used, excellent condition) from a book finder service, and ended up getting two copies of Skills. 

 

Caveat: if you have 5e "Ultimate Skill," then you do not need this book.  It is a word-for word reprint of that book.  You will find that references to a page number in one of them is equally valid for a page number in the other. 

 

Worse still, the splash page is a black-and-white version of the cover of Ultimate Skill.  I seriously dislike that cover.  Absolutely nothing wrong the art; nothing at all.  I just think it would be more suited for "Ultimate Gadgeteer" or something, given that the guy on the cover is running and cobbling some tech, and looking far to frantic to be someone in possession of "ultimate skill.". ;). I don't know: as much as I don't like him, the phrase "ultimate skill" conjures immediately images of Batman or Terminator (is that right?  Black and orange one-eyed mask with scale mail sleeves and legs?), who have unflappable faith in their skills, and not some guy running through a cluttered apartment in a near-panic.  Great art; bad match. 

 

 

Anyway, if you need and will use it, it's free to a good home. 

 

A few weeks ago I found myself with a second copy of CC and gave it to Ruggles; some time before that I had too many 3e bestiaries, and gave one to Goodwin.  Either can attest that the packing will be postal-worker proof.    You'd have to go straight to UPS to get them damaged.   

[Chris Goodwin]

47 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

A few weeks ago I found myself with a second copy of CC and gave it to Ruggles; some time before that I had too many 3e bestiaries, and gave one to Goodwin.  Either can attest that the packing will be postal-worker proof.    You'd have to go straight to UPS to get them damaged

 

I will so attest.  That was seriously one armored package! 

[Chris Goodwin]

Back on topic:  there's a thread here I started some years ago with a link to a document I wrote with some ideas for characters, Talents, and mechanics.  I did PIT maneuver as a Martial Throw with Weapon Element: vehicle.

 

I do second the use of Autoduel Champions along with Danger International and Justice Inc.  Also take a look at the Ultimate Vehicle and Ultimate Speedster from 5e.

[Duke Bushido]

Is there a way to counter or recover from martial throws: landing on your feet with full or half CV or something like that? 

 

I only ask because it _is_ possible for a skilled driver to counter the Pit maneuver--not just race car drivers or stunt drivers; I mean, we've all seen that video clip with that kid in the Mustang, right?  It _does_ take skill (Ala martial arts, in this build), but if there is no way to counter or recover from a martial throw, it might not be the best way to model the Pit..... 

[Chris Goodwin]

As a matter of fact, yes!  An Acrobatics or Breakfall roll lets the target mitigate some of the effects of the Martial Throw.  The same would apply here for a Driving roll instead.

[Chris Goodwin]

You might be tempted to have players roll a Driving roll on every trip.  I wouldn't do that. Instead, I'd use what my old group from the 80's called a Luck/Unluck roll.  Roll 3d6 plus any Luck dice the character has (which is often zero); count the levels of Luck.  Roll 3d6 plus any Unluck dice the character has (ditto); count the levels of Unluck.  Subtract the lower from the higher to find net Luck or Unluck.  

 

Net levels of Unluck would require a Driving roll, with the exact result depending on both the net levels and the amount by which the Driving roll is failed.  (If my math is correct, this means that a typical person with neither Luck nor Unluck dice will have an unmitigated three levels of Unluck slight more often than 2 2/3 of every thousand trips.)

 

The typical Everyman has an 8- Driving roll.  Note that failure doesn't necessarily mean catastrophe, though this is a "daily driver" rather than a focused adventure.  How does a driver reduce their chances of failure?  Same way you do IRL.  Give yourself Extra Time to reach your destination, drive defensively, know your route (Area Knowledge as complementary), keep your car in good condition (oil changes and other routine maintenance as recommended by the manufacturer).  Of course, a route you drive every day might grant you an automatic +1-3 bonus rather than requiring an Area Knowledge roll.  

 

Of course, the net levels of Luck are as helpful as net levels of Unluck are unhelpful.  1-3 levels of Luck can get you there faster, with less fuel usage and tire wear, or even mitigate a crit-fail on your Driving roll.  

 

One level of Unluck might not even trigger a Driving roll; two would for sure, but even a crit-fail on this roll wouldn't necessarily result in a catastrophe; it might mean a flat tire, running out of gas, engine trouble, a ticket, or being late to work.  Three (or more) levels of Unluck would trigger a roll, with possibly dire consequences for a critical failure.  

 

Active opposition (an adventure, in other words) trumps all of the above, of course.  

[Chris Goodwin]

On 9/22/2019 at 6:10 AM, Christougher said:

I'm looking to create (or steal) some rules to make vehicular mayhem more entertaining than just opposed Combat Driving rolls.  

 

Some points I'm considering:

 

Separate movement from SPD for vehicles, let vehicles move every segment and handle driver ability separate.

Revisit acceleration, braking and turn modes, allowing for 30/60/90 degree turns or even finer.  Consider a number-of-wheel based modifier so motorcyles handle better than semis.

Examine martial maneuvers as an option, including things like spinout braking, cross-lane turns, PIT maneuvers, and half of the Fast and Furious movies.

Create a new look at smooth vs rough terrain and suspension to handle it - why you drive a dune buggy and not a sedan in broken desert.

Make a race/pursuit jockeying system so it isn't always the fastest one wins.

Look at adapting these ideas for dogfighting, space combat, and foot pursuit / parkour.

 

Additionally, the original vehicle rules from Champions II (the first-gen supplement) are more like what you're describing than anything since 4th edition.  The rules in Autoduel Champions, Danger International, and Justice Inc. are based on the ones there as well.  Besides segmented movement, vehicles there have acceleration, deceleration, max range stats among others, but no SPD score; they include rules for determining when a character can use their SPD.  Mass and size are effectively "figured" based on the vehicle's Size, DEF, and BODY.  Champions II is also available in the Hero Games store, and I recommend checking it out (not least because I prefer that era's vehicle rules to the current).  

 

Danger International also included dogfighting and vehicle chase rules (not included in Champions II, but they should have been).  DI and Justice Inc. both include subsets of the vehicle movement rules optimized for cars, but none of the design rules from either Champions II or Autoduel Champions; vehicles there are considered equipment, in the same way that weapons are.  

 

The vehicle construction rules in Autoduel Champions are adapted from Car Wars; Aaron Allston wrote Autoduel Champions and was a pretty regular Car Wars developer for a while as well, so this is not surprising.  You can see the Car Wars influence on the movement and vehicle control rules if you squint, very much filtered through a first-gen Champions and Hero lens.  Even though Autoduel Champions includes the Car Wars helicopters rules, it doesn't convert them to Champions; if you wanted to build aerial vehicles, it wouldn't be that hard to convert, between the rules in Champions II and the ones here.  

 

(As part of my dream "Champions Pi" compilation of first-gen rules into one volume, I wanted to expand the vehicles section to include all of the movement, dogfighting, and chase rules from the standalone games.)

[Duke Bushido]

"Champions Pi." 

 

I rather like that!   

 

I've been leaning toward "Champions Jet" for my own compilation project.  Of course, now that western HERO and Horror HERO are done, and there are already PDFs of all the 4e and back stuff (except Champions 1e: that could be much, much better, and have the actual 1e character sheets instead of the 2e sheets), I may have time to play with it again. 

 

I've also decided to use the colored-on images from my first couple of books (my players--and especially their kid siblings - and later their children-- found colored pencils and HERO Games books to be a smashing combination.  And truth be told (there will likely be a lot of hate for this),  I didn't mind it: whatever increases the satisfaction of the player experience, I figure. 

 

Anyway, I think I'm going to scan those and clean them up and include those colorized Mark Williams pictures in my Jet edition.  . What can I say?  They are quite sentimental to me. 

[Chris Goodwin]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

I've also decided to use the colored-on images from my first couple of books (my players--and especially their kid siblings - and later their children-- found colored pencils and HERO Games books to be a smashing combination.  And truth be told (there will likely be a lot of hate for this),  I didn't mind it: whatever increases the satisfaction of the player experience, I figure. 

 

Hey, I resemble this remark!  (I had colored pencils too...  )

[Chris Goodwin]

I looked through The Ultimate Speedster again, and I'd like to second my recommendation of it above.  It goes into some detail about toolkitting movement, including running movement per segment rather than per Phase; it also goes into general detail about characters moving at more or less vehicular high speeds.  

 

It occurs to me that a vehicle's ground movement acts more like Gliding, only on a surface, plus some small amounts of ground movement for acceleration and maintaining speed.  6th edition makes Gliding into Flight with a Limitation; it would seem to me that you could apply that Limitation to the vehicle's ground movement easily enough.  

 

Star Hero suggests that 120m of Flight per Turn in 0G and a vacuum yields 1G of acceleration, and suggests buying it Cumulative.  

 

1G of acceleration is a 0-60 time of 2.73 seconds, which if it were me I'd round to 3 seconds.  In freedom units that equates to about 20mph per second.  5 mph comes to 2.2352 meters per second, which Aaron Allston rounded to 1" per segment in Autoduel Champions.  I'd probably round it to 2m/segment and call it good.  Car Wars tells us that some vehicles accelerate as slowly as 2.5mph/second (1.1 meters/segment, round to 1), and that some will accelerate as fast as 15mph/second (~6.7 meters per segment, which looks like it can round to 7).  (If you want better rounding: 5mph would round to 2m, 10mph would round to 5m, 15mph would round to 7m.)  This gives us a range of acceleration values of 1-7 meters per segment squared, with as high as 10 for supercars, 15-20 for faster vehicles (usually rocket powered).  

 

5 meters per segment, cumulative, would be 60 meters per Turn.  Divide that by the vehicle's SPD; for, let's say, a SPD 3 passenger car, that would come to 20 meters/Phase (note that's 40 Noncombat).  With its base of 12m, we spend 8 points to go to 20 meters/Phase.  We spend an additional 5 points to buy that total 20m with Cumulative (or in Hero Designer, buy 8m of Ground Movement, add the Cumulative Advantage, and click the "apply to base Characteristic" checkbox), and this becomes 60m per Turn, Cumulative.  We can constantly increase our velocity by 5 meters/Segment, up to whatever our total max ends up being...  Note that this will only account for a total of 20 meters/Phase, so whatever else we need will end up being on top of that.  

 

Our cruising speed (combat move) should be, let's say, 62ish mph, or: 336 meters/Turn, 112 meters/Phase, 28 meters/Segment.  We've already got 20 meters/Phase, so 112-20 = 92.  That's Gliding, though, or effectively Running built with the -1 Gliding Limitation.  46 points.  +8 meters per Phase, Cumulative (8 points, plus 5 more to make 20 cumulative, for 13 Real Points), plus 92 meters per Phase of Gliding (46 points), means we've spent 59 points on ground movement so far.  Our total max is 112 meters per Phase, 336 per Turn, 28 per Segment.  We don't even need to buy up a Noncombat multiple; so our max is 125.268 mph (56 meters/Segment) going noncombat.  

 

(If you insist, we buy the Running usable as an additional Movement mode: Flight, for a +1/4 Advantage, then we buy it as Gliding (-1) and Only Along A Surface (-1/4).  I'm willing to let a +1/4 and a -1/4 cancel out for less math if you are...)

 

[Duke Bushido]

As an option (though it likely won't ring well for users of newer editions) :

 

We wanted vehicles well before there were actual vehicle rules.  (we clued in pretty early that you could do more than just supers with the game system, and we were ready to explore new planets  ) 

 

We used the character building rules to make vehicles.  We still do.   Buy Growth until you get the size you want, buy relevant movement powers, INT for a computer, Ego for an AI, etc. 

 

Not only does it work perfectly well, it eliminates the need for a whole new subset of rules. 

[Christougher]

Found and read some of the resources referenced.  A lot of it runs right in line with what I was thinking, but I'm still percolating on others.

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

On 9/23/2019 at 3:44 PM, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Hey, I resemble this remark!  (I had colored pencils too...  )

I did mine with markers.  Still have it.