Gaslands Refuelled: How would ST Forge run it?

Rob Wieland is back with vehicular violence on his mind. He looks at Gaslands Refuelled, a car combat game that’s easy to learn, hard to master and makes walking down the toy aisle at the store a challenge to anybody’s willpower.

WITNESS ME

All you need are some cars, some dice and this book to ride to Valhalla - Image by Osprey Publishing

I spent the past month watching the Mad Max movies in anticipation of Furiosa’s release. (It’s good, by the way, check it out). This put me in the mood to revisit one of my favorite gaming genres. I’ve loved car combat for many years from the funky 70’s groove of Interstate 76 to the wild character cars of Twisted Metal. On the tabletop we also have to tip the helmet to Car Wars. My favorite tabletop car combat game, however, is one you might not have heard about yet. It’s called Gaslands and you already have a bunch of the stuff you need to play.

Gaslands is a car combat game that’s scaled to use Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars and six sided dice. The book includes templates for movement and weapons that can be photocopied or printed out to use. Every vehicle moves and attacks based on how fast they are going. The faster they go the more actions they get.This basic idea gives the game a satisfying risk/reward element because speed can literally kill a piece. Players aren’t allowed to touch a movement template until they’ve committed to it, which means at higher speeds there are a lot of moments where you squint at the battlefield going “I…think..I can squeeze past” and then hilariously finding out no, no you can not squeeze past and smashing into something hard.

Skid dice can also muck with your dreams of Fury Road glory. These dice can cancel hazard tokens which build up as your car races around and eventually cause a piece to wipe out if you gain too many. Skid dice let players shift more than once per turn giving greater control of speed. They also cause cars to slide or spin at the end of their movement which can be dangerous but also allow for slick positioning that would make James Bond green with envy.

And I Even Love The Color

Cars are easy to come by. There are, of course, plenty of people who customize their vehicles to look properly smashed up and bolted on with heavy ordinance. I don’t really have the time or skill for miniatures work, but I love being able to wander over to the toy aisle and see if there are any interesting pieces I can pick up for a couple of bucks. I also still have a few cars from my toy collection as a kid that have been sufficiently beaten up, buried in sandboxes and tumbled down stairs to work as wrecks I can scatter around as terrain.

If you want to go a level deeper, the creator of the game, Mike Hutchinson, has encouraged third party sellers to make accessories. You can find all sorts of accessories, terrain and other play aids on Etsy. I got some plastic movement templates and a gameplay dashboard that looks like a car dashboard. They weren;t very expensive and help support some small businesses to boot.

The most recent edition of the rules, Gaslands Refuelled, adds a bunch of extra rules for things like racing teams, more detailed building rules and war rigs. It also expands the backstory for the game by explaining that Gaslands is a popular bloodsport show in the future where anyone that can afford to has escaped to Mars. The winner of this season gains a one way ticket to the Red Paradise, though there are plenty of people who think the whole thing is a lie.

Bringing Role Playing To The Wasteland

This setting is a solid one for people who want to explore a game that focuses on a world of vehicular combat outside of getting behind the wheel. I’d use something fairly light or generic to run it, like Cypher System or Savage Worlds. I’d integrate players taking a driving skill by offering rerolls in the Gaslands rules based on the levels of driving the character has. It also has a hint of sport drama in it which makes it a little unusual for a role playing game.  Mix in some theatrics from professional wrestling, let players cut promos on rivals and there’s a big action storyline just waiting to be explored.

This game could also easily slot in as a vehicle rules set for an RPG that you’re already running. Chase systems and vehicular combat can be hard to pull off with a system built to focus in person to person combat. Gaslands plays quickly and easily enough that it could slot in games like Twilight: 2000 or Shadowrun. The trick is to figure out how to convert any player talents or feats about driving to the miniatures game. Luckily, the team perks offer some great examples on how to make similar rules for players that built driving characters.

Lastly, the flexibility of this game is a great way to reach out to miniature gamers and board gamers. These are both fertile recruiting pools for potential new RPG players. A short, simple game like this can help them get into a character a little bit. It might also work in the opposite direction if they also bring a game they love to the same game night. Playing fun games with your friends is, after all, what all of this is about. Even if there’s blood on the highway afterwards.

What’s your favorite car combat game? Have you ever used miniatures in an unusual way in a TTRPG? Tell us your favorite car centric media in the comments!

Rob Wieland is an author, game designer and professional nerd. You can find him on X and Bluesky @robowieland and on YouTube as the host of Theatre Of The Mind Players, the Actual Play show that plays everything besides Dungeons & Dragons!