Review: Action 6 - Tricked Out Rides

Cover page

 I don't recollect if I reviewed Action 5 even while I was taking a break from blogging, but I thought it might make more sense to tackle this one because it isn't exactly out yet, so maybe the decision making content will be more helpful for a consumer. I dunno when it might be out, and it's not very long, but I think it's a fantastic resource for being so short. Let's take a closer look.

Overview

Table of Contents

Action 6 - Tricked Out Rides is a guide for customizing motor vehicles in a way that adventurers will probably care about.It starts with several very generic cars, and gives a bunch of modifiers for upgrading the stats for them. Action being a series about getting to the table and playing and less about logistical minutiae, this is not a replacement for the Vehicle Design System, but it is a "good enough" tool for most groups that makes customization, and the math behind it into simple arithmetic. Also, the book works fine with only the basic set if you want to add a bigger selection of cars and options to any contemporary style game.

The PDF is 11 pages long. Subtracting three pages for Title, table of contents, introduction, and a ad for Warehouse 23 (The online store to buy GURPS books,) there are 8 pages of content. Let's dive into that.

The Body Shop

This chapter covers the macro elements, descriptions of the 11 different generic types of cars (various coupes, sedans, SUVs, pickups, and vans) followed by several dials to increase (and sometimes, decrease) particular attributes of a car. The chapter continues with around 2 and a half pages of extra features you can add to a car (Most realistic, and even mundane; some less so.) Then ends with heavy vehicle mounted guns. Overall, fun chapter to look over just to amuse oneself with all the flexibility. I feel like it's a pain that the table showing what gun weights are allowed on each vehicle is different than the table for either the vehicles or the actual guns, but the rest of the chapter is straightforward and makes total sense.

Examples

This chapter gives a handful (five) pre-customized vehicles generated from following the rules in the book. Some feel like obvious nods to popular in-genre fixtures, but the chapter is very helpful for giving a bunch of immediately useful vehicles that are, on the face of things, immediately useful for most games (with the caveat that after all those enhancements are tallied up, the majority of these vehicles cost more than my first house did?) There's a little bit of guidance on how to get around that problem, but starting with any of these vehicles seems pretty daunting... maybe it's something to work towards?

Conclusion

I'd recommend this book if you are running a game that will use cars and you are not satisfied with the options in Basic Set. Even outside of basic set, finding good car options is pretty difficult. The book is decidedly not based in reality, so if that is a concern, maybe you won't like it, but for me, it was one of the books in the kickstarter bundle for which I was most excited.