Participating in a *Conspiracy* Called 'Traffic'

Today I'm back in the world of the American Steve Jackson's Car Wars Adventure Gamebooks. The second book, Fuel's Gold, which was written by Mr. Jackson along with Creede and Sharleen Lambard, is the only one in the series I've bought more than once: I got a copy not long after I started collecting the series, and then some time later I came across an eBay lot containing all the Car Wars books I still lacked, plus Fuel's Gold, and bid what I was prepared to pay for the books I wanted. Nobody outbid me, so I completed my collection and wound up with a spare Gold.

Unlike Battle Road, the first book in the series, Gold throws me straight into the action, starting at the climax of a bout of vehicular combat. This is a professional sporting contest rather than a fight with an enemy, so defeat shouldn't mean game over, but I imagine that some or all of the damage I incur in the course of my showdown with Al Blaine's mine-slinging Morningstar is liable to have consequences when the adventure proper gets under way, or the prize money if I win will enable me to better equip my car for the mission ahead.

Character generation is as it was in the first book. The build I used last time worked well until a flukey roll caused me to crash and burn, so I'll try it again here. Thus, I have:
Driving skill 3
Gunnery skill 3
Mechanic skill 2
Prestige 1
Wealth 1
I never got into a proper fight in the first book, so this unavoidable combat may give me a better idea of how well-optimised I am.

Terminology with no in-book definition adds a complication to the battle. It may well be that 'your Driving skill roll' is exactly what the name suggests, but the rules do mention a 'Control Roll', which uses Driving skill with a modifier. If they're two distinct things, it would help to have both mentioned on the list to make it clear that one is not just a different name for the other. I'm going to assume that they just neglected to spell out that this is an unmodified roll, because while the 50% chance of hitting a mine each round that that gives me seems a bit high, the impossibility of my taking mine damage if it's a Control Roll goes too far the other way. No, wait, reading on, I see that a Control Roll would give me a 1 in 36 change of being damaged by a mine. Still unconvincingly low.

So, based on our Gunnery skills and our cars' Defense Classes, it appears that Blaine and I both need to score above 9 on two dice to inflict damage. I have the added complication of being at risk from mines (not sure why they can't damage Blaine's car once they're just lying around where anybody could drive over them, but that appears to be the case), but Blaine is low on ammunition for his machine-gun, and will have to concede defeat if my car is still functional 9 rounds from now.

Well, that was underwhelming. I took damage from a mine, Blaine's gunfire hit me once, and then I scored a hit on him, doing negligible damage but also getting to roll on the Special Damage chart, as a result of which I obliterated his gun. Given that I would have won if he'd run out of ammo, causing him to run out of guns should likewise constitute a victory for me, right?

My win increases my Prestige by 1, and in addition to the prize money, I get my car completely repaired and all weapons reloaded free of charge. I also qualify for entry in a similar contest in New York the following weekend. The one I've just won took place in Albany, which is in the region of 150 miles away - possibly a longer drive, depending on the post-apocalyptic infrastructure.

I might not make it, though, as a Colonel I know is waiting in my dressing room. The precise nature of our history with each other is left unclear, but give the talk of 'activating' me to take a courier package to Massachusetts, it's possible that I am a member of the Federal Express Division of the United States Armed Reserves about which I speculated recently. It's ostensibly a volunteer mission, but while the book offers the option of declining, that's just a bit of section number padding, as persistent refusal just leads to a no-choice between volunteering and effectively being drafted. Once I have submitted to the inevitable, the Colonel briefs me on where to get the package and gives me a pass to facilitate entry, then leaves.

Now I must decide what to drive, as I have a car for everyday use in addition to the one in which I was just fighting. As regards my 'professional' vehicle, there hasn't been time for the repairs I was promised, only for reloading the weapons, so its armour will still be in a pretty sorry state, while the other car is in better condition but not so well-armed. On this occasion I'll go with the undamaged one, though that's largely because I didn't keep a record of exactly how much armour the other one lost before I disarmed Blaine (the claim that it would be fully repaired gave me no reason to think I'd need to continue tracking the damage), and thus no longer have accurate stats for that vehicle.

As I choose which car to take, my character reflects on the possibility of using a loophole to justify ignoring the mission and heading straight to New York. Seriously? Was Joseph Campbell constantly pestering the authors about the 'refusal of the call' element of his inordinately venerated monomyth? In this setting it's possible that contract disputes are resolved not by legal wrangling but by a discreet bullet to the back of the head, so I'm getting on with the job while my skull still has only the standard number of holes in it.

Driving to Fort Caswell, I hand in my pass, and receive my payment, two other passes (colour-coded), the package I am to deliver, and more detailed instructions. I'm also presented with a form to sign, and given the option of not taking the time to read it first. Much of my real-life job involves dealing with bureaucracy, and I'm not exactly delighted to be confronted with more of the stuff in gamebooks (with some exceptions for parody and humour, but this looks more like an opportunity to unnecessarily make things more difficult for myself). Hoping that the gamebook will at least summarise the content of the form rather than make me wade through the same mounds of legalese with which my character is confronted, I check what I'm actually committing myself to before formally agreeing to it.

No hidden surprises (and, it appears, no consequences for spending time reading it, so this would appear to be just more section number padding), but I do now know the punishment I can expect if I fail to complete the job. Though, given the nature of gamebooks, if I do fail, I'll probably be too dead to care about the fine and/or prison sentence.

I leave the fort and, after making a big deal about noting down which pass is to be used in which situation, the book just automatically has me show the correct one on my way out. All right, so a 'use the wrong pass and get penalised for your idiocy' option would have been tiresome, but stressing the importance of these details and then having them not matter isn't much of an improvement.

Proceeding to my hotel, I stash my valuables in the safe and turn in for the night. Before I can drop off, someone knocks on my door, claiming to be room service. Just in case this is a simple error (or a pleasant surprise arranged by friends - yeah, right), I try calling reception to ask about this, and am told that they know nothing about it. Whoever is outside knocks again and asks if I'm in there, addressing me rather more informally than I'd expect a hotel employee to speak to a guest.

I decide to risk taking a look through the spy hole in the door, but it has been blocked. Again my unsolicited visitor tries to ascertain if I'm present and I get redirected back to the list of possible responses. So do I let them know I'm here (seems unwise), open the door (even more inadvisable) or just wait? It would help to know if that's a 'prepare to confront an attacker'-style wait or more of a 'gormlessly sit around and let the stranger have the initiative' wait, but that does seem the least poor of the remaining options.

Oh, I get to determine the nature of my waiting, and it's all reasonably proactive stuff. Not sure how I can choose to 'have a brilliant idea', but I'm intrigued enough to see what that entails. A 50-50 die roll, as it turns out, and the number I roll leads to a blanket-based ambush that enables me to subdue the two thugs who burst into the room with ease. I search them, finding that each carries a single playing card - the eight of spades - and a pamphlet implying revolutionary tendencies.

Pocketing the cards, I call hotel security, and encounter more section number padding in the form of a superfluous Prestige roll (I checked both outcomes because the positive consequences of failing made me wonder if the book was actually penalising success, but it turns out that more or less the same thing happens either way. Disregard the underlined words in the following sentence if you want to know what difference a successful roll would have made.) After I fail to convince the hotel detective that the two men tried to attack me, he calls the police to have them figure out what really happened, but then my would-be assailants trip him up and attempt to flee, so I intercept them, the thugs are taken into custody, and I get another boost to my Prestige for my handling of the incident.

The rest of my night's rest is undisturbed, and in the morning I put my armour on, breakfast on scrambled algae, retrieve the package and my money from the safe, and drive off. Now the text sees fit to tell me that the place to which I'm delivering the package is owned by a friend, and I'm looking forward to seeing him again. At least it doesn't delay as long in letting me know that a car is shadowing me. Given that the 'wait' option in the hotel room showed that the writers are crediting my character with a degree of competence, I decide not to take any action just yet: best not to provoke anything before I have a better understanding of what's afoot.

In the early afternoon I stop at a diner for lunch, and my meal is interrupted by the sounds of an explosion and my car alarm. Hoping that the diner staff will contact the police, I promptly hurry out to get a better idea of what's up, and catch sight of a trio of rogues running away from my car. They pile into the vehicle I'd noticed trailing me earlier and drive off, and for the first time I notice that they have no license plate, just an anarchy symbol on the bumper.

My car has sustained damage from the attempted forced entry, but the anarchists didn't manage to steal anything. Reflecting that my career as an automotive duellist probably means I don't get much of a no-claims bonus anyway, I resume my travels.

A while later I catch sight of a young woman hitch-hiking, holding up a sign that reads 'Home to mother'. Well, that's not remotely suspicious. However, while turning pages to get from one section to the next, I've seen more than one picture of her, which suggests that she's more plot-significant than just bait for an ambush, so I stop for a word. She says she's heading for Boston, which is a short distance past where I'm headed, so I offer to take her as far as I'm going, and she seems happy with that.

The text then has me ask where she's headed, which leads me to suspect that this is where a 'decide against picking her up but get railroaded into doing so anyway' path rejoins the route I'm taking. She introduces herself as Kathy, and we make small talk until a car approaches from behind and starts machine-gunning my car. Kathy offers to drop some grenades, and I advise her to save them for an emergency. Time to start fighting back.

John at Gamebook Odyssey has complained about the combat in these books, and I can see why. This is a gunfight between two speeding cars, and here's a round-by-round account of how it plays out:
I fire my machine-guns and miss. My opponent fires his machine-gun and misses.
I fire my machine-guns, and one of them scores a hit. My opponent fires his machine-gun and misses.
I fire my machine-guns and miss. My opponent fires his machine-gun and misses.
I fire my machine-guns, and one of them scores a hit. My opponent fires his machine-gun and hits me.
I fire my machine-guns, and both hit, one of them damaging a tyre. My opponent fires his machine-gun and misses.
I fire my machine-guns and miss. My opponent fires his machine-gun and misses.
I fire my machine-guns, and one of them scores a hit. My opponent fires his machine-gun and misses.
I fire my machine-guns and miss. My opponent fires his machine-gun and hits me.
I fire my machine-guns, and one of them scores a hit. My opponent almost loses control of his vehicle, and cannot retaliate.
I fire my machine-guns, and one of them scores a hit, slightly damaging my enemy's gun. My opponent fires his machine-gun and misses.
I fire my machine-guns, and one of them scores a hit. My opponent almost loses control of his vehicle, and cannot retaliate.
I fire my machine-guns, and miss. My opponent fires his machine-gun and misses.
I fire my machine-guns, and miss. My opponent fires his machine-gun and misses.
I fire my machine-guns, and one of them scores a hit, slightly damaging my enemy's armour. My opponent almost loses control of his vehicle, and cannot retaliate.
I fire my machine-guns, and miss. My opponent fires his machine-gun and hits me.
I fire my machine-guns, and miss. My opponent fires his machine-gun and hits me, damaging a tyre. 
I fire my machine-guns, and both hit, wrecking my opponent's vehicle.
And if you find reading that dull, I can assure you that playing through it was a lot more so.

The pursuing car skids to a halt, and by the time I've turned my car round, somebody is torching the wreck, which explodes. The debris scattered by the car's destruction includes a wooden box, which I investigate. It contains machine-gun ammo, which could come in handy if this book's inventory management system actually acknowledged how much ammunition I was carrying when I started, and a load of pro-anarchist leaflets, which I take to show to the authorities. The leaflets appear to trouble Kathy, but she doesn't say anything.

I'd been hoping to finish this book one way or another before the end of the month, but after that tedious fight I need to take a break, as my motivation to play on is in a similar state to the car I just fought. Still, this seems like a reasonable point at which to pause the narrative, so I'll post what I've written so far, and resume play when I'm less fed up with the book.