Steve Dell
England
London
Enfield
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Convoy is a pre-programmed adventure for the game of Car Wars. Steve Jackson, the man behind Car Wars, had also been involved in the Fighting Fantasy books where programmed adventures really hit the mainstream.
The book is presented as a series of numbered paragraphs. At the end of each paragraph, a number of options are available. After deciding which option to take, you turn to the paragraph number given and continue from there.
Tha aim of the story was to get a tanker full of food algae to a town on the brink of starvation. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bandits and madmen on the roads, as well as some shady types who don't want you to succeed. And of course, time is against you as well.
As play progresses, various combats may occur, which would be played out using the rules, maps and counters provided in Car Wars. Usually these would slow you down as eventually you would be delayed by making repairs. Sometimes, it could be to your advantage as you could strip the defeated vehicle and save money on refits by trading the stuff in.
Replayability was a bit of a problem, as you wouldn't fall for the same trick twice. Obviously, this was avoided to a certain extent by offering various routes to the beleagured city, but even so after two or three plays you'd done pretty much everything there was to do.
The main problem with the book was that the Car Wars world was continually evolving, with various expansions coming out, offering new weapons and defences. This meant that a lot of the encounters in the book were using 'dated' weaponry which wouldn't necessarily hold it's own against more modern vehicles.
As a refereeing aid for anyone GMing a Car Wars roleplaying game, it was a good resource, as it was full of encounter ideas and suchlike to help fill out any rpg campaign.
One idea that they introduced was the 'dead' paragraph. I guess this was from Mr Jackson's involvement with the FF books. The paragraphs in question could not be reached in any way by following the story correctly. They were put in to try to dissuade people from peeking ahead to get an idea of what may be facing them further down the road. I always thought they were unnecessary. Once I'd bought it, it was my book, I could read it however I liked.
Overall, the book was good at the time of it's release, but was dated within about a year of its release due to new gadgets and suchlike that had been introduced to the game.
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castiglione
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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Re: Kepp on Truckin'
A small correction: There are TWO Steve Jacksons, both of them involved in the game industry. One is American (and is the daddy of Ogre, Melee/Wizard, Car Wars, etc.). The other is British (and is the daddy of the fighting fantasy game books).
The American Steve Jackson also wrote programmed adventures of his own for Melee/Wizard and Car Wars.
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Steve Dell
England
London
Enfield
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Re: Kepp on Truckin'
You know, now you mention it, I remember that. Sorry for the misleading info in the review.
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Re: Kepp on Truckin'
Just to muddy the waters, the Steve Jackson from the States did write one of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, Scorpion Swamp.
This concludes our useless trivia of the day.
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Posted Wed Nov 22, 2006 2:20 pm
