Car Warriors: Autoduel Chronicles writing guide

***Note***

(The below notes are to be used as a guide for story creation within the Car Warriors series)

(This page is a work in progress and has not been approved by SJGames)

Starting Rules of Engagement

What is Car Wars: Gamelit/Postapoc/Western shoot-em-up in a cyberpunk world

How society works overall: (I think a lot like the Mega-Cities of Judge Dredd, but not quite so over-the-top and with a sad lack of Judges)

The basic environments for dueling: (arena battles on TV, and bandit action in the Outlands, and the occasional no-go area in the vast dead areas of former cities)

Bases to touch: Amateur Night. TV megachannels with AI talking heads and armed news choppers. Uncle Al. Gold Cross. Other death sports (like combat football and Doom Derby, but Autoduelling rules them all). Algaeburgers. Anarchist Relief Front. What Went Down. The Blight, the Plagues, the Bad Times, the Breakup.

I think we want to say: “This is North America. Just do not write stories in the rest of the world, or make significant references to them, because WE don’t know and we don’t want to have to decide today.”

What people wear . . .: Daily wear has not changed much. Fashions change, especially for women and young men – shiny is in, asymmetrical is in. Fake duellist wear is in. Decorative sidearms are in, even among people who can’t shoot straight. Tats are still a thing. Body paint that looks like tats, or clothing that looks like tats, is in with some groups. Lawyers still wear suits, though some of the colors would be amazing today.

What people look like: All colors, several genders, no big deal. People may associate by skin color or preferred gender, but they don’t usually fight over it. So you can have a Hispanic gang that are mean bastards but they’re not being especially racist, they’re just mean. Enough people died during the troubles to put a serious dent in the growth curve. Average population is a bit older than it is today, because there was a while there when babies and old folks didn’t survive unless they were rich. Those days are over but not forgotten.

What people sound like: Regional accents still exist and can be played up, within reason.

What people do . . .: Mostly what they do now. There are a lot of info workers and a lot of service workers, and a lot of doctors, and a lot of people just doing stuff that holds things together. Nobody in North America is as poor as today’s poorest. Everyone always has enough algae to eat, and if you can find a job you can buy GOOD algae. The rich of the Autoduel world are very well off indeed. Of course yachts have guns. And AA weapons. And some of them have torpedo launchers. All for defense against mostly nonexistent pirates, of course. (In reality? To show off, and to discourage customs inspections.) That is not what the stories are about, though.

Alcohol is cheap: (it’s made from algae). Dope is expensive, and cocaine is almost unknown – the Grain Blight spun off some variants that you’d almost think had been tailored to kill specific plants. There are chem-lab designer drugs, but that’s not what the stories are about. (Nanotech happened, kind of, and is always five years away from takeoff.)

Space launches continue: They are now a private thing. There is an asteroid in orbit, dropping iron and nickel lifting bodies into the ocean, so metal is cheap. There are people on the Moon, and either there is a colony on Mars or there is a really great studio faking it in Hollywood; opinions differ. But that is also not what the stories are about, because the lunar rovers and Marsmobiles don’t have guns. Yet.

World Wars III and IV happened but somehow didn’t catch on: War is now a spectator sport, but the cost to play is so high that autodueling still rules.

Global warming happened and helped kill a lot of people: The coastlines have risen. Hurricanes are worse. Weird weather happens, but it doesn’t affect the algae plants, so everybody eats. However, there is constant need for a relief convoy to XYZ. Nevertheless, especially in the wilds, Nature is trying to come back. There’s almost no fertilizer being dumped in the water supply, and a lot fewer livestock antibiotics, so the environment is purifying itself, and the storms scatter seeds and bugs far and wide.

There are cameras everywhere: and AI searching of video feeds, and face recog, and EVERYBODY is doxxed at the touch of a link, so cops behave a lot better, but the cops now have vehicular weaponry, so you don’t start things with them. And some kinds of fooling around (sabotaging a food plant or a reservoir, for instance) do carry an instant death penalty, but the “everybody is doxxed” bit means that the shenanigans were surely caught on camera and the police review committee says “Thank you for killing those bastards” and buys a round of doughnuts. OTOH, a cop who shoots kids in the back out of meanness is a fired, unhirable, probably jailed loser who may wind up as a road outlaw or as security for SkumKorp, which I just made up. You can get absolutely anything on the Internet; that has been true for everyone’s lifetime.

AIs can pass any Turing test ever devised: and can finally act as competent GMs, but none has shown signs of awakening and wanting to play.

We don’t say anything substantive about politics: Future politics are plenty strange and can trigger plots that don’t reference 2020 politics. The apocalypse was recent enough that the electorate remembers what anarchy was like and doesn’t pretend to want another civil war. Except for the ones who REALLY want another civil war, like the ARFs. And remember . . . the former USA has already split into multiple polities, including religious Deseret and the well-off, especially corrupt Free Oil States. Reunification is a constant low-level issue. Probably won’t happen without an outside threat.

Land is cheaper than it used to be: because there are fewer people and very few farms. SAFE land is not necessarily cheap.

Some hand weapons are extremely powerful by today’s standards: Body armor is better than today’s, and might stop one hit from a Car Wars handgun, but not two. Arena car armor is more fragile than it needs to be, and arena car weapons are less powerful than they could be, as the algorithm searches for the ideal fight length.

Dead people can come back: if they signed up with Gold Cross. This is not cheap, but it’s affordable if you win a few Amateur Nights. Murdering the rich is completely pointless except as a political statement. Even kidnapping the rich may not work out the way you planned. (So what if the victim is released unharmed after his clone is decanted? Things get complicated.)

What this is not:

– It is not Grand Theft Auto or anything like it. No running over hookers. In fact, no hookers.

– It is not Mad Max. There is enough gasoline, and enough electric power, and enough food. People become outlaws out of greed, or because they are mean sonsofbitches, not for survival.

– It is not Paranoia. Most people drive to work in the morning without being shot at even once. And there are no hidden aliens or mutants, and the Illuminati are merely [Redacted At Your Clearance]. But Paranoia is awesome anyway.

– It is not Cyberpunk. It is small-c cyberpunk. Protagonists drive cars, or want to drive cars. Sure, there are hackers, but they are people you might hire or be hired by. You are an autoduellist; that’s what the game is about.

– It is also not Warhammer 40K or Halo or Mario Kart, even though I have no cute comparisons to make.