Note: This is a review of the PDF published 7/16/04. Shortly after receiving my copy, I saw a note from the author mentioning that an update was in the works. So some bits of this review may not apply to what is currently for sale by the time you read this.
Overview
MotoCaust is a 52 page PDF from Ronin Arts, available at RPGNow. It depicts a post-apocalyptic future in which semi-sentient zombies roam the wastelands of America and survival depends on the reliability and firepower of your vehicle. The game uses a proprietary system which requires a standard set of polyhedral dice as well as a deck of standard playing cards.
The Art: The book was illustrated entirely by Christopher Shy. This is my first encounter with his work but I understand he has somewhat of a following from his other RPG work. The art alternates between highly detailed, full color pictures and rough, simple pencil sketches. On their own, the sketches might seem like the editor forgot to replace the placeholder art with the real thing, but when contrasted with the detailed color pictures, the dichotomy works really well. Much of the color art looks like it started out as an actual photo and then was heavily doctored with Photoshop or some similar software, but the end result looks pretty slick.
Fiction: There are snippets of game fiction scattered throughout the book, most only a few paragraphs in length. They do a great job of helping convey the setting, but be warned that there’s a fair amount of profanity to be found in these stories. It seems entirely appropriate to the setting, though.
Chapter Breakdown
The book opens with a one-page introduction followed by some introductory game fiction, and then is divided into the following sections.
The World of MotoCaust: This section describes the setting. In the very near future, a meteor struck the state of Missouri, throwing the world and especially the United States of America into chaos and anarchy. The other governments of the world eventually returned to a state of relative normalcy, but they refused to give aid to America. The USA has recovered somewhat, but as a number of separate regions and governments. These regions aren’t actually defined in the game, however – it is just noted that they exist. The game concentrates on the region known as Texas, but even that is only loosely defined (less than one page of detail), leaving much of the world development up to the GM. A few months after the meteor strike, it was discovered that it had brought with it an alien virus that had strange effects on decaying tissue. Thus was born the Necros, zombie-like creatures that come in many different varieties and levels of sentience. These range from the Corpsebound, hideous beasts formed from the merging of two or more human corpses, to the Hell’s Servants, who scour the wastelands on motorcycles or in armored cars looking for living flesh to consume, to the Necroworms, enormous rotting worms that live in the earth. Several other variants of necro are presented, including the Shadow which is essentially a sentient ninja zombie, but all have one thing in common: a taste for living flesh.
In addition to the necros, there are other dangers in the wastes. For instance, there are the Soccer Moms, a ruthless all-female gang who raid settlements in weapon-laden minivans. There are also the Zone Postals, clans dedicated to restoring mail service across North America. They often battle over delivery rights to an area. Several other groups are described as well.
Player Characters: PCs are the brave souls who leave the relative safety of the fortified outposts and cities to travel the wastes as couriers, guards, or treasure seekers. The center of the PC group is the vehicle, which PCs share and which players build as a collaborative effort. Much more on vehicles later – they are at the core of MotoCaust.
Characters have three ability scores: Strength, Intelligence, and Agility. To generate scores for these, you roll 1d6 3 times, and then assign each number to one of the three abilities. Finally, you get 3 extra points to add to any or all of these numbers. All characters begin with 20 hit points.
Everything of importance in MotoCaust boils down to 12 skills, and they are: Acrobatics, Driving, First Aid, Modern Weapons, Primitive Weapons, Repair, Social, Stealth, Survival, Theft, Unarmed Combat, and Vehicular Weapons. Players get 20 points to distribute among these skills.
Next, players purchase starting equipment. The game explains that barter is the most common way of obtaining goods, but a money system is slowly returning with the use of the trade piece. Beginning players roll dice to determine their starting number of trade pieces, which are then used to buy personal gear.
The section ends with character sheets for the suggested character archetypes: Bodyguard, Cycle Courier, Grease Monkey, Gun Bunny, Runner, and Tuner.
Creating Cars, Cycles, and Trucks: Vehicular combat is really the heart of MotoCaust, and here is where it begins. 3000 trade pieces are allotted for each PC in the group, and then as a team the players build the vehicle that will see them through the opening campaign. In a way, this really reminds me of tramp freighter campaigns in the old WEG Star Wars RPG, where the group’s common interest is in the capabilities and maintenance of their starship.
The first step is to choose the vehicle type, from cycle through pickup. Each type is defined by several factors: Space and weight allowance for customization; top speed; maneuverability; body hit points; flash; and cost. The interesting one here is flash. This literally defines how flashy or cool looking your vehicle is. Cycles and sports cars automatically come with a flash bonus, and there are several customizations available to increase the flash value of any vehicle. Flash has some in-game effects, such as impressing employers and thus getting higher-paying jobs, and also to increase your reputation which can translate into a bonus to your Social skill.
Next you choose an engine size. Bigger engines take up more customization and weight slots in your vehicle, but they can increase your top speed and the largest models can further increase your car’s flash. Next you can upgrade your fuel tank, then you can choose from several different options for armor plating, and then you decide what kind of tires you want on the vehicle. Next comes vehicle-mounted weapons.
Finally come the extras, and there are many of them for each category mentioned above. For example, for engine extras you might choose cold air intakes to increase your horsepower, or you might install a nitrous oxide system. As a defensive extra, you might add a roll cage. For a flash extra, you might spring for chrome wheels or window tinting.
At the end of this section, two complete vehicle examples are provided in case you just want to choose one and get into play quickly.
Playing the Game: Basic task resolution consists of rolling 2d10 and trying to roll equal to or less than Ability + Skill. For example, if you need to make a repair to the vehicle, you would add your Repair skill and your Intelligence ability and then try to meet or roll under that.
Combat occurs in turns, with initiative calculated only once at the beginning of an encounter. During your turn, you can move, attack, move and attack, or reload. Attacking is a simple skill roll as above. If firing an automatic weapon, then for every 2 points by which you beat the target number, an additional round hits. There are many situational modifiers such as range, target speed, and target size. Armor can completely or partially reduce damage, although there is a chance that the armor’s effectiveness can be permanently reduced when it takes a hit.
Vehicular Movement and Combat: Finally we get to the core of MotoCaust—battling it out with necros and other wastelanders in fast-moving cars! Vehicular combat uses an entirely separate system from regular combat. It’s highly abstract and allows the players to help contribute to the story through some collaborative gamemastering.
At the beginning of a vehicular combat, the motomaster (GM) deals 5 playing cards to each PC and to each major NPC. The side that wins initiative then gets to play a card in order to take an action. Cards from 2-10 translate into bonuses to their action (face cards have special values; see below), whereas the suit dictates the type of action as follows:
Spades: Attack
Hearts: Change in Speed
Clubs: Breakdowns
Diamonds: Fancy Maneuvering
Thus, a 7 of spades translates into an attack with +7 to the roll.
Once the card has been played, the other side has the opportunity to play a card of the same suit to try and counter. For every card played, the action being taken needs to be described by the player. For example, the first player could lay down the 7 of spades and say, “I let you have it with my autocannon,” and then the second player could lay down the 3 of spades, saying, “Just as you pull the trigger, you hit a cluster of debris which throws your aim off.” The result would be that the attack gets a +4 bonus instead of the original +7.
Once the action card and response have been played, the affected player makes a roll to see if he succeeds, using whatever skill is most appropriate. If someone throws a club on you and says that there’s a strange knocking from the engine, then you would roll your Repair skill to see how well you’ve been maintaining the vehicle during your downtime. If there’s a breakdown, you roll on a chart to find out what happens. You could suffer a weapon jam, lose speed, or have one of your extras stop functioning. If the item on the chart isn’t applicable, then nothing happens – in other words, the more you’ve customized your ride, the greater chance that something might break down!
Each face card has a special ability – for instance, the queen of hearts gives you “+/-10 to your action and Bootleg Stunt Possible!” Unfortunately, the maneuvers in this chart such as the Bootleg Stunt are not described in the rules, so it’s up to GM discretion as to what can or can’t be done.
The section wraps up with a discussion of collisions, onboard fires, wipeouts, and other details.
Review
MotoCaust looks to be a fun “big guns and big cars” game where you could have a blast guarding convoys, searching for pre-apocalypse treasure in the ruins of great cities such as Dallas-Ft. Worth, or running vital packages past ambushing gangs of vile necros. The card system for vehicular combat is abstract enough that you can have some action-packed encounters without ever having to draw a map or plop down miniatures, but it seems like there could be a learning curve while players figure out how to use cards effectively and how to translate them into events happening during the combat. More examples would be helpful.
There are some things that don’t sit right with me in MotoCaust, and they mostly have to do with the setting. Before I go into them, I should point out that the book specifically states that a lot of the setting is “completely ridiculous and pretty much impossible.”
The main thing that I have trouble wrapping my head around is the fact that the game states that the world is mostly modern as it was in the early 21st century before the apocalypse. Fast food joints, public schools, television, satellite communication…all of that still exists. That’s all well and good and reminds me a bit of Car Wars, where the world is fine and sports have just become somewhat more violent. However, at the same time, the game is all about the wastelands, with ruined cities and marauding necros. I have trouble reconciling the two. How could McDonald’s exist in a world where the farmland needed to raise cattle would have been turned to desert or else would be haunted by hungry necros? I think in my MotoCaust game I would probably go with a bleaker, Road Warrior-esque version of the world.
The other thing I don’t understand in the game is the money. The game states that the barter system is the norm, but it seems to me that if such non-essential services such as fast food still exist, then money is probably pretty commonplace. In addition, ammunition in this game seems prohibitively expensive. For example, a Tripod Machine-Gun costs 750tp (trade pieces) and can hold a belt of 100 rounds of ammo. However, each round of ammo costs 10tp, plus you have to fit them together with links (1tp/each). If I understanding links correctly (I’m no gun expert), you need to buy 100 of them to make a belt of 100 rounds of ammo, so that essentially means that ammo for this weapon costs 11tp per round. So, one belt of ammunition for the Tripod Machine-Gun costs (11 x 100) 1,100tp. That’s significantly more than the cost of the gun itself! Maybe this sounds reasonable to those more familiar with such weaponry, or maybe the prices are intentionally high so that ammo will always be in short supply and thus coveted, but at first glance it seems strange to me. Also, as an aside, I thought the whole concept of ammo links seemed out of place in MotoCaust – it’s a fine detail in a game system that is supposed to be light and largely free of such details.
Conclusion
MotoCaust’s necros are a great twist on the post-apocalyptic genre—what is more fun than doing some vehicular jousting with a pack of motorcycle-riding zombies who want to run your car into the ditch and then feast on your flesh? The system is very light and cinematic, although the card-based vehicular combat system can take some getting used to since it places a lot of narrative power in the hands of the players. The setting is very lightly defined, giving motomasters a lot of freedom, but at the same time I think I’d prefer a bit more detail to the world. Overall, though, MotoCaust looks like a lot of fun and I can’t wait until I can be part of a vehicle crew, wandering out beyond the safety of the walls to seek fortune amongst the gun-toting, cycle-riding dead.
