jeffro
Jeffro's Gaming Blog: Car Wars, Star Fleet Battles, Ogre, Battletech, and more!
Munchkins and Power-Gamers in Car Wars
-
The real beauty of Car Wars is that Munchkin types are restrained by a set of 'real' economic and physical laws. Granted, the laws of economics and physics are pretty twisted... but there is a method to the madness.
Years ago I introduced the game to a die-hard Battletech junky. He immediately set about to designing the ULTIMATE car. It had a killer set of weaponry and could go from 0 to 60 before you could blink. It ended up costing $60,000 or so-- not including the cost of his funky hero tires.
Of course, it was black.
So I tell him, "that's a lousy design." (Ouch.) Probably the meanest thing you could say to a power gamer, right?? He gave me this look like he maybe wasn't going to get a chance to come over that much anymore....
"Okay, okay," I said. "Look. I'll prove it to you. I'll take a convoy of three cheapo $20,000 cars. I'll be nice, I won't even take any dropped weapons. Let's see how many of my cars you can take out in a freeway duel."
So here he comes... barreling down the freeway. He blew up one of my cars while another one pulled into position for a T-bone. In less than twenty minutes, I had to explain to him what the confetti rule was. Carbon Aluminum frames just don't seem to do that well in collisions, after all....
He walked away from the table with some food for thought. Little did I know that I had created a monster.... But it was very satisfying at the time to see the bizarre compulsions of a power-gamer punished by the common sense forces of a fairly decent game system. Economically, his design made little sense in anyone's fleet. (Sadly... the Midville supplement got in on this wackiness with it's patently absurd super-dooper TV show police cruisers....)
The Munchkin went on to become our group's most pernicious player. Our arenas became haunted by metal armored gas guzzling ram cars that mounted flechette guns. It seemed that for all intents and purposes, he had finally 'cracked' the design system. It appeared that we either could switch to similar designs that took advantage of every single design imbalance... or just eat pavement.
The gaming group then began to drift apart at that point. We began playing games like Axis & Allies and Shogun when we did get together....
Anyway... the lesson here is that as you add equipment and gadgets to the game, you should never add something that makes other equipment useless. Laser Guidance Link, Ramplates, Spoilers, Airdams, APFSDS ammo, and Gas Engines took a lot of fun out of the game because they made so much of the other equipment irrelevant. It's good to see the 5th edition right some of these wrongs. A clean slate was necessary after all of the hubaloo in the later Uncle Albert's. (I was glad as anybody to get the Compendium, but really... no Uncle Albert's catalogue ever topped the first two.)
Every piece of equipment should enhance a variety of vehicle concepts and philosophies. If any design philosophy can dominate the game too much, then the game will be no more fun than an Ogre game where the all-G.E.V. force can win every single time....
The real beauty of Car Wars is that Munchkin types are restrained by a set of 'real' economic and physical laws. Granted, the laws of economics and physics are pretty twisted... but there is a method to the madness.
Years ago I introduced the game to a die-hard Battletech junky. He immediately set about to designing the ULTIMATE car. It had a killer set of weaponry and could go from 0 to 60 before you could blink. It ended up costing $60,000 or so-- not including the cost of his funky hero tires.
Of course, it was black.
So I tell him, "that's a lousy design." (Ouch.) Probably the meanest thing you could say to a power gamer, right?? He gave me this look like he maybe wasn't going to get a chance to come over that much anymore....
"Okay, okay," I said. "Look. I'll prove it to you. I'll take a convoy of three cheapo $20,000 cars. I'll be nice, I won't even take any dropped weapons. Let's see how many of my cars you can take out in a freeway duel."
So here he comes... barreling down the freeway. He blew up one of my cars while another one pulled into position for a T-bone. In less than twenty minutes, I had to explain to him what the confetti rule was. Carbon Aluminum frames just don't seem to do that well in collisions, after all....
He walked away from the table with some food for thought. Little did I know that I had created a monster.... But it was very satisfying at the time to see the bizarre compulsions of a power-gamer punished by the common sense forces of a fairly decent game system. Economically, his design made little sense in anyone's fleet. (Sadly... the Midville supplement got in on this wackiness with it's patently absurd super-dooper TV show police cruisers....)
The Munchkin went on to become our group's most pernicious player. Our arenas became haunted by metal armored gas guzzling ram cars that mounted flechette guns. It seemed that for all intents and purposes, he had finally 'cracked' the design system. It appeared that we either could switch to similar designs that took advantage of every single design imbalance... or just eat pavement.
The gaming group then began to drift apart at that point. We began playing games like Axis & Allies and Shogun when we did get together....
Anyway... the lesson here is that as you add equipment and gadgets to the game, you should never add something that makes other equipment useless. Laser Guidance Link, Ramplates, Spoilers, Airdams, APFSDS ammo, and Gas Engines took a lot of fun out of the game because they made so much of the other equipment irrelevant. It's good to see the 5th edition right some of these wrongs. A clean slate was necessary after all of the hubaloo in the later Uncle Albert's. (I was glad as anybody to get the Compendium, but really... no Uncle Albert's catalogue ever topped the first two.)
Every piece of equipment should enhance a variety of vehicle concepts and philosophies. If any design philosophy can dominate the game too much, then the game will be no more fun than an Ogre game where the all-G.E.V. force can win every single time....
Profile
Calendar