The Culture: My First Clubhouse Campaign

The first time I encountered the concept of "the clubhouse campaign" was back in the 1980s. But it wasn't Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition; the Boomers had already failed to pass on that vital information by then, to disastrous consequences.

No, it was a silly tabletop wargame with a weak RPG element, and it's still got a solid audience to this day.

Yes, I am aware of the new edition.

No, I don't like it. This is a game that needs to be cheap, not expensive, and readily available; counters, paper maps, and standard six-sided dice do this while miniatures, high prices, and non-standard dice do not. (It's what keeps me from Gaslands, which is a better version of what Sixth Edition is after.)

What made it ideal was its core gameplay: arena combat with armored cars.

You had war-as-sport in the autodueling arenas of a collapsed North America, you had bandit-v-convoy scenarios on the dangerous roads beetween the walled and armed cities, and you had plenty of room for small-scaled conflicts to nontheless influence bigger conflicts between bigger powers.

And you had the ability for celebrity to bridge the two tiers of play. A really skilled road fighter could move into (and out of) arena fighting, taking the street cred he earns taking out bandit gangs and using it to get himself famous in the dueling arenas, which gets him sponsorship deals (and makes him a target in turn) and similar opportunities.

And it didn't take itself deathly serious. The Boy Scout Commando Corps was a thing, the "bad guy" counterpart to the American Autodueling Association was Big League Unlimited Dueling (BLUD) so you had a Babyface-Heel dynamic going on, and you could see the spirit of Smokey & The Bandit, Convoy, Cannonball Run, the classic Mad Max films if you were familiar with the zeitgeist behind the game.

I was in a Car Wars club back in the day. Never won the club championship, but only once did I get wrecked something fierce. Because of the collapse, there was always danger and opportunity to be had outside the city walls, but there was also no viable alternative to over-the-road travel either hence arena combat juxtaposed to road combats was an easy thing to do.

Add in trucks, big rigs, choppers, bikes, and later on boats and hovercrafts for people to ride around on (when not on foot) and you had plenty of fun times- all of which could be done in a small area and mapped to a calendar like you do with AD&D1e, Gamma World, Boot Hill, etc.

You may not be able to get the classic edition from Steve Jackson Games for much longer, but you will find copies being sold used. Get on this; it's fun.