Advanced ThunderRoad

Per Skeletor's suggestions we can chip in for some collaborative design.
Here Are Skelies inital thoughts:

The basic movement and combat mechanics stay the same, here is what you add:

Car customisation. You get a WOW:TBG sheet for each of your cars and chopper, which you use to slot weapon cards and the like onto different areas of your vehicle. So I can arm my speedster with flamethrowers or rocket launchers and shit. The weapons / armour of course should have restrictions (only the big car can get the heavier weapons) and heavy armour and weapons put penalty on your speed (minus movement points).

More board sections for greater variety (the track is still only 2 sections long at a time. Maybe have some shit like explosive barrels of abandoned gas stations where you can stop and get some gear (with the risk of falling behind).

Car boarding rules, so vehicle passengers can jump on other player’s cars and try and take them over.

A hand of ‘Tactic cards’ that you can play to do unusual actions. For example if someone attempts to board your card reveal and play a “Shotgun” card to blow that bastard off your windshield (car boarding attempt automatically fails.

Motorbikes!

First expansion has a big convoy truck for a convoy take over scenario.

So the goal is to provide some chrome and detail but preserve the simplicity and speed of play.

I could see this implemented like this:
(new stuff)
A deck of 60 cards with weapons and tactics, and extra resources (like gang members or cycles).
two motorcycles per player
3 play mat cards, one for each vehicle with spaces for upgrades driver and passengers
6 gang members per player represented by chits. (plus up to four extra)
3 new map sections with a turn, a chasm (or ruined overpass) and an enclave

Setup:
At the beginning of the game each player draws 6 cards to outfit their vehicles. Equipment cards are placed face down on the vehicle playsheet. Resource cards are cashed in and remaining tactic cards or unused equipment are kept. Players then distribute their gang members across all their vehicles. ( a maximum of four gangers to a car or two to a motorcycle)

Game play is normal except that motorcycles always move the same as your highest die. If shot at, motorcycles blow up on a 3-6 and are one size class lower that the dune buggy for purposes of ramming. They may not attempt to ram but may be rammed.

Vehicular attacks are resolved normally but if a car is equipped with more than one weapon then it may make another attack if there is a passenger present (or a special card like a targeting computer)

Gangers may also make personal attacks which include jumping from one car to another or trying to disable passengers or drivers. If a ganger attempts this he may not drive or make a vehicular attack. A driver who chooses to attack may still assign a die to his car but the car may only go straight and may not use the road die.

Personal attacks succeed on a 4-6
Boarding attempts succeed on a 4-6 (but the die is modified by the size class of the car -2 motorcycles, -1 dune buggy, 0 sedan, +1 huge car, +2 truck or tanker)
A vehicle is always in the possession of the former owner until all defending gang members are removed. At that time the car play mat is transferred to the new player.
Game play begins in the normal setup with motorcycles entering the rear of the 1st board after the 1st turn.

Road Sections
Whenever a new section of board is pulled roll a die. 1-3 straight, 4 curve, 5 enclave, 6 ravine

Curves - The inside lanes are shorter but with some wreckage, It could be rotated for left or right turns

Enclave- No fighting in the enclave. Players must spend a turn here (end here the previous turn and discard a die for each vehicle.) For each car that ends their turn here draw two new cards and swap out any cards on their vehicle.

Ravine- Has a choke point where cars may either go to two lanes or may attempt the jump. The jump is angled so that its trajectory can overlap with emerging cars from the chokepoint. To make the jump you must roll a d6 lower than the speed assigned to that car. Cars landing on other cars get a +2 to the ramming roll.


Thats all I have so far.

Steve"RoadWarior"Avery

I think we need to pull it right back and start from the start, adding layers of complexity until we go overboard.
So here is my 'core game' ideas

Now everyone has 4 pieces, which names I do not know so I'm just going to call them the following (I know they are incorrect):

Buggy
Car
Truck
Chopper.

The chopper is there to knock out run away front leaders, and it does it's job very well. So for now I'm going to leave it alone.

The other 3 pieces are what you actually win the game with, so the stuff with wheels I'm going to collectivly call 'VEHICLES'
All vehicles have 2 stats: ARMOUR and SPEED

ARMOUR is already in the game, this is the number players need to roll to kill it.
SPEED is a new stat and is a modification to the die roll you use to move. So if your speed is +1 and you use a '4' die roll to move you move 5 squares.

The default stats for each vehicle is as follows:
VEHICLE ARMOUR SPEED
Buggy 4+ +1
Car 5+ 0
Truck 6+ -1

Each VEHICLE by default has MACHINE GUNS which can shoot (1d) at 1 car in any of the 3 spaces infront of it (1 range).

What do you think of that as a base steve?
I think the next step is to come up with 'vehicle modification' cards, which are weapons and other permanent things you hook up to your car. For now we should forget the player mat/slot idea and just brainstorm cards and what they can do.

Short answer: sounds good.

Long Answer: I had tried that as a house rule a while back and while it didn't hurt the game terribly, the game play was better without it.

One of the problems with altering speed is the setup placement. With buggies far in front they easily outpace all the other cars. By giving them a conisderable lead, I think the designer meant to simulate their speed. My house rule for them is that they have a slightly better chance of navigating wrecks (4-6)

That said. I'm not adamant about keeping the speed ratings the same.
So Lets try it out. With the addition of equipment any disparity will probably be negliable.

Steve"Road Warrior"Avery

That's interesting. It seems like these cars are all worth 5 "points", with the values spread over armour and speed. This gives a solid base for further modifications.

If we're still thinking about motorbikes eventually they could look something like:
Bike: 2 armour +3 speed

or to spice things up:
Bike: 2 armour +D6 speed (meaning you roll both red dice for the bike)

You could also add attack improvements to these stats, but it gets a little messy:
Jet Buggy: 4 armour +2 speed -1 attack


Weapon cards could have a weight cost, which allows heavier cars to use better weapons.
Since the Truck has an armour value of 6, it can be equipped with rockets worth 5 and a targeting computer worth 1, an oil slick worth 3 and a nitro-boost worth 3, or just an anti-aircraft missile worth 6.

If the speed modifiers cause problems we could try reversing the starting field positions

Maybe the speed modifiers (buggy +1, truck -1) could just work off-road? That way, all the vehicles would drive at about the same speed on the road, but off-road, buggies have an advantage and trucks get slowed down a lot.

I'm anxious to hear Skellies thoughts. In the meantime I'll be jotting down card ideas tonight. Do you guys like the idea of chits on a car playsheets to represent Gangers or does any one have some other ideas on that?

Steve"putting noe to grindstone"Avery

Doesn't the choppers mitigate the extra speed? If someone just hurls a buggy ahead I would have thought the other 3 players just blow it away with their copters?

Have a piece of paper with me at work, im going to start jotting down ideas for cards and post them up tonight.

Regarding the gang members, the most pimped out method would be team-coloured magnetized minis clinging to metal cars. Unfortunately we're at Micro-Machine scale and to get metal Matchbox cars would make the board sections huge!

It looks like we're talking about having play mats for each car anyway, so chits may work well.

Let's not kill the awesome. I'd hate for turns to degenerate into an analysis of the optimum move based on the strength of the gang vs the speed of the car, blah blah blah... I can just picture the local Eurogamers now: *leaning over* "And how many guys are in your car? Hm, you're two spaces behind him, but you're on the road, so..."

Since players are gang members now and not cars, should the vehicles be on a deck of cards and dealt out at the start of the game? That would give us card-sized play mats with a secondary function.

And how about a secret mission deck?

Ease up Kinko!

Here are my card ideas, untried and unbalanced.

At first I was going to go with a point based system where you buy shit for your cars, but now I think I like Steves 'draw cards from the deck' approach. Keep it simple.

Here are the possible 2 ways I'm thinking of going with it:
1)Draw 8 cards at the start of the game, then you assign 2 to each vehicle, tossing the leftover ones. Gives you a bit of customisation.

OR

2) Draw 6 cards at the start of the game, then you assign 2 to each vehicle. The catch with this one is that some of the cards are negative, like 'busted tire' or 'leaking oil' and shit. So you are forced to deal with crippled vehicles. More luck based but maybe more fun.

What do you guys recon?

Here are some card ideas (totally unbalanced)

Targeting lasers: +1 to your attack dice roll.
Roof Turret Gun: You may attack any car behind or next to you as well as in front.
Chain gun: you shoot at all 3 squares in front of you instead of just the one
Terrain Tires: +1 Speed. The vehicle may not use the road die.
Homing missile: Instead of targeting the car in front of you, it always attacks the vehicle in the lead. Receives -1 to it's die roll for every 6 squares it travels.
Full tank: If this vehicle is destroyed, Each adjacent car must roll a die. On a 3+ they low up with it.
Wheel Scythe: Add +3 to your die roll when ramming an opponent
Oil Slick:Instead of shooting, you may place an oil slick on your current square. Any vehicle which moves onto the oil slick square has its remaining movement for this turn does by the player to the left. (usable once per board)
Grappling Hook:If there is a vehicle directly in front of you, you may attach a grappling hook to it instead of shooting. The next time that car moves, you move along with it. That car can force you to smash into other cars by moving in front of them (make a ram attack with that car as normal.)
Snow plow: You may smash through wrecks on a roll of 3+. -1 movement.
Jump boosters:You may jump over any 1 space obstacle in front of you (wrecks, double wrecks, other cars etc) provided you have at least 2 movement points left. Spend those 2 movement points and move in front of that obstacle, then roll a die. On a 1-3 your vehicle smashes as it lands.
Heavy Roof Plaiting: -1 movement. You may force any choppers that attack this car to re-roll their attack. (2nd result counts)

At first I was going to go with a point based system where you buy shit for your cars, but now I think I like Steves 'draw cards from the deck' approach. Keep it simple.

Oh Yeah- Steve Avery knows simple.

2) Draw 6 cards at the start of the game, then you assign 2 to each vehicle. The catch with this one is that some of the cards are negative, like 'busted tire' or 'leaking oil' and shit. So you are forced to deal with crippled vehicles. More luck based but maybe more fun.

I like the idea of negetive cards. What if there was a stack of them that you pulled from whenever you took a critical hit in combat. (Whenever a 6 was rolled). You would place it on that cars playsheet for the remainder of the game.

I didn't get a chance to work on this last night as I had anticipated. My wife and kids had a severe case of the "need you nows."

I like the cards you've started with though.

Steve"pussywhipped"Avery

When I did my "Advanced TR", I just made the "tank" tougher, the buggy more agile, and gave the gyrocopters a speed rather than the ability to just pretty much teleport everywhere.

I gave the buggy the ability to squeeze between cars (say if you were being boxed in).

I tried a whole custom dice thing, but it got too confusing too fast, especially when the point was to play with my eight year old nephew. Luckily, he's going to be 11 in a couple of months, maybe I'll try it again.

I played my newly obtained copy of Thunder Road yesterday. The only thing I really want to change in the game is the life expectancy of the cars. Most of them wreck before anyone has made it off the second board. A couple house rules I'm considering trying:

-buggies get an off-road bonus of +1 move. the tanks get an off-road penalty of -1 move

-cars can take a hit before wrecking. Each player starts with a chit or card for each car. When their car is hit, they discard/flip/tap their corresponding card/chit to show that it's damaged. Another hit will wreck it.

-Going along with the card for each car idea, each card could also have a special ability or something on it, and they could be dealt randomly at the start of the game.

-I have some big truck/tanker Micro Machines that are the right scale for the game and take up two spaces. I'm thinking you need to roll a 6 to damage them, and they count as rank 8 for ramming. When a tanker is wrecked, roll a die to see if it explodes and damages surrounding cars, or if it was just filled with sand.
-I'm thinking either each player could have one as a fourth vehicle that comes onto the board on the road on their first turn, OR a 5th player could use two tankers instead of the normal 3 cars.

I do have a game called Road Warriors that looks a BIT like an advanced Thunder Road.

Maybe.....Reading the rules leaves me with a touch of dread. Perhaps the Aussie Frank has played it and can comment. It was produced by Mattel Australia. And it has either the worst cover ever put on a mass market game. Or the best if your taste runs toward 80's van art.