Quote Originally Posted by csadn View Post
As to the _CW_ Reboot: Reed's already established it's going to be 2" scale -- which means zero backward compatibility with any previous edition, and no connection except the name to the game which ended up winning all those awards back-when. Reed has made exactly one decision so far, and has botched it. At this point, all which remains to be seen is how many more idiotic decisions they will make (if I see one more reference to "dice pools", "exploding dice", or any of the rest of the pseudo-video-game abominations infesting gaming these days...).

It says something that one can take an _OGRE_ player from 1977, time-warp him forward to 2014, put him in front of a gaming table with _OGRE Designer's Edition_ on it, and he will be playing within two minutes. Same applies to a _BattleTech_ player (the SL Tech may befuddle him a bit, but the basic rules remain the same). A _Car Wars_ player, tho'....

(I may not be able to call him on his idiocy on the SJG forum, but theirs is not the only forum.... >:) )
That's just it - it's a re-boot, not a re-print. This is neither a good thing or a bad thing, it just reflects the market reality. The tiny number of players who want old school Car Wars to be reprinted as-is is the main reason they are re-vamping the entire game.

SJG is hoping to expand the universe of Car Wars players way beyond those of us who remember the game fondly from the 80's. I don't mind that the scale has been increased (I wasn't aware that 2" had been settled on - just that it would be larger than 1" and less than 3", and 1.5" is the micro-machine scale that many old CW players had adapted the game to use) and to be fair, the decision was the result of fan voting in the CW Forum. It's also the case that all the new gamers they hope will play the game will have no loyalty to the old system.

And let's be clear, the tedium of actual gameplay in CW meant that a 30 second battle often took 3-4 hours to play. That's the part they want to streamline, and I whole-heartedly support that endeavor. If you like the current CW - great! There is so much classic (not to be confused with "Classic") CW material in the aftermarket to keep players happy for years and years. But I think the majority of CW fans agree that streamlining the game is an excellent idea - even if its impossible to get two CW fans to agree on exactly how the new CW should look.

The theme (car combat) is one that I am extremely surprised is not more popular in the game world. It's iconic and enduring (demolition derbies, Mad Max and Death Race movies, Car Wars and Interstate 76 computer games, etc.), and I don't understand why another company hasn't come along to fill the void that CW left when SJG stopped publishing it. SJG must be thinking the same thing if they plan to invest so heavily in re-launching CW. They wouldn't do it unless they felt it would be profitable to do so. They already had their "vanity" project (OGRE Designer's Edition), and now it's time for them to launch a new game line to complement Munchkin (SJG gets over half their revenue - maybe 75%? - from Munchkin alone) as a money-making game system.

As for the desirability of re-vamping the rules while capitalizing on the "name," the best comparison I can think of is the various iterations of D&D. Third Edition had little or nothing substantive in common with old school AD&D, but it was a wild critical and commercial success, even though there were countless screams and howls of protest that, whatever it was, it was NOT D&D.

In contrast, the equally draconian (pun intended) revision to Fourth Edition was a comparative disaster. It's the main reason that Pathfinder (aka "D&D 3.75") has now become (one of) the largest RPG's on the market today, and WOTC/Hasbro is scrambling to recapture market share with yet another edition of D&D.

Obviously, SJG is hoping for a "Third Edition" type of success. But it will be impossible for them to please everyone. I just hope that it becomes a commercial success so I can keep playing a game where I get to shoot machine guns at other cars.