The first supplement for Wushu, Car-Fu: The Ancient Art of the Car Chase is a guide to fighting in, with, and against cars, hovercraft, and other assorted vehicles. While it certainly isn’t a necessary product and isn’t as evenly constructed as the MRB, it is full of detailed examples of car combat and chases which may make it worth its price for those who had trouble visualizing Wushu in play.

The Book

Car-Fu is a 14 page .pdf that has the same design and layout as Wushu – which is to say it’s a very simple document with minimal formatting and no art (save a cover clip). It’s short, it’s sweet, it’s electronic, and it’s easy to print. No, it won’t look pretty, but it will get the job done.

The Breakdown

At 14 pages Car-Fu doesn’t have any space to waste. It starts with a one page introduction which includes a nice (if short) list of movies and videogames that inspired the creation and feel of the work (Grand Theft Auto being my favorite, as it is the most evil videogame ever). It then sums up all the game mechanics needed to adapt Wushu to car chases in a single page. The next 2 pages are dedicated to a basic list of maneuvers and stunts you can do in a car, with some emphasis on real world stunt driving and how to use it or ignore it when doing a triple back-flip in your semi cab. A page-and-a-half section on using cars as weapons follows, giving us such memorable maneuvers as the drop-n-squish and box slide oblivion. The rules sections are then finished off with a page-and-a-half of guidelines for running dogfights with flying cars. The rest of the book is given over to examples of play in which whole scenes are detailed, showing how the mechanics look when put into action.

The Good

Odd as it may sound, my favorite part of the book wasn’t the crunchy bits or stunt driving descriptions – it was the examples of play. In my review of Wushu I said that one of the games biggest problems was that it was not always clear how the permutations of the games rules should play out. Car-Fu takes a large step towards alleviating this problem with its many full scene examples of combat and chases. I still would have liked some ‘designer’s notes’ type of discussion about the disjunction between how Mook and Nemesis combat works, but I’ll settle for the examples.

The Bad

For some reason (probably because the author seems to have real experience with stunt driving) there is an unusual degree of emphasis on how physics apply to chases and dogfights. While this does make for a nice psudeo-introduction to the subject, it doesn’t always jive well with the Wushu aesthetic. After all, we are talking about a game in which you can jump off a 50 story building and cushion your fall by landing on the mook you’re grappling with, so I don’t know why we need to be concerned that climbing in a dogfight is probably going to reduce your speed. While all the information is fun and probably can be used in game (“he tries to climb to get away from me, but the loss of speed lets me fly right up his tailpipe!”) it feels a little niggling and unnecessary for a Wushu game.

The Ugly

I can’t help but think that Wushu products would be better served if there was some art illustrating the kick-ass action the game describes. It would have gone especially well with this book, giving illustration of the sometimes complicated maneuvers the author describes. While I can certainly visualize the maneuvers described, there are some tricky bits where the author talks about what happens to the wheels as opposed to the body of the car, and a diagram or two would have been nice.

The End

Car-Fu isn’t as strong as the original Wushu rules, having some issues where cinematic actions and real world explanations of stunt-driving clash, and lacking something of the verve of the original book. However, it does a good job of helping players and GMs who might not feel confident about running games based around car combat, and provides many ideas for the care and destruction of road-ruffians. Also, I feel that book is worth its two dollar and fifty cent cover price just for the examples of play. However, if you don’t need examples and feel confident in your ability to describe car stunts already, you won’t get anything shiny and new in this book.

For having lots of good examples and basic introductions to stunt driving, Car-Fu gets a 3 for substance. For lacking the verve of the original and not having art to make up for the lack, it gests a 2 for style.