Gaslands Warden's Surprise Plates

I’m running Gaslands as part of an RPG campaign and so I have ‘tweaked’ some of the regular events to add a little bit of mischief to things for the players. This House Rule is a modified version of a mission from Axles & Alloys 2 – Dork Future.

The Warden’s Surprise – Swords, Shields, and Skulls!

Influenced by a recent film, which itself was probably influenced by a few violent racing videogames, Warden Cadeila has taken it upon herself to install some “unofficial upgrades” into her home arena. Also, the weapons on all the vehicles have temporarily been linked to kill-switches controlled by the Warden.

Set-up and deployment is done as a standard Death Race with the following exceptions/amendments.

Add a few 1” diameter counters to the table, each marked with a Sword, a Shield or a Skull – one of each for every player vehicle (or team, if playing a regular/non-RPG event).

A vehicle cannot fire it’s Shooting/Explosive Weapons until it has run over a Sword, and a vehicle cannot fire it’s Dropped Weapons until it has run over a Shield. However, the Warden is not above a bit of underhand interference – anytime a non-Warden vehicle attempts to activate a Sword or Shield marker, roll 1d6 and on a ‘6’ the marker fails to activate that time. Note that handguns and Grenades/Molotovs work at all times, as do non-exploding rams.

Skulls represent sunken steel posts with spikes that start the game below the surface of the arena. When sunken, the Skulls Posts can be driven over and ignored. They can be raised by the Gas Master at any point, usually to make life awkward for a driver who is staying out of the fight or is getting just too lucky or too cocky. Skull Posts are immobile Heavyweight Objects and therefore damaging to any vehicle that collides with one. Once activated, a Skull Post will remain in the arena until the event ends.

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