In 2019, I attended Big Bad Con in California for the first time in order to promote my newest game, Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game. In between demos I ran into my friend, the game designer Morgan Ellis, and as is traditional between two game designers, I asked what he was working on. He told me there at the con that he was testing a hack of Clark Valentine’s Tachyon Squadron RPG, but instead of the dogfighting spaceships in the original game, Morgan was running a game of car combat, inspired by movies like Mad Max.
What I couldn’t tell Morgan then — though I’m sure I hinted at it in an NDA-skirting way — was that I was working on a car combat game myself, a board game that would eventually be called Thunder Road: Vendetta.
Understandably, I was excited for Morgan’s pitch, but because I was spending most of my time running demos, I didn’t get a chance to sit in on his game. I figured I would have a chance at the next con I ran into Morgan at.
Then… the pandemic happened. No cons for a while. And during the midst of it all, Morgan passed away suddenly. I would never get to play his game. But that pitch from him stayed with me, all the while we were working on developing Thunder Road: Vendetta.
Years later, TR:V came out, and I floated the idea of a Thunder Road: Vendetta RPG to a few folks. And in a happy confluence, some of those people were from 9th Level Games, who had done the Return to Dark Tower RPG with Restoration Games, and followed that up with getting the RPG rights to Thunder Road: Vendetta.
Brett and I were thrilled to be approached to design the RPG. Over the years of designing the board game, we had done a lot of research. And by research I mean we watched lots of movies, primarily the Mad Max series. We used those and more for building out all the expansions for TRV: the upgrades, the hazards, the terrain, and the crew leaders.
There were questions we floated as we developed more: what are these crews like who run these races? What does it mean to cross the finish line? What are the stakes of this road war? And what is up with these chopper pilots who will bomb their own allies?
An RPG is the perfect place to put all that to good use while making more stories about your crew’s life on the wasteland. And the polymorph system is a great game to use with the kind of high octane action that a Thunder Road: Vendetta RPG would need.
There was one piece missing though. That idea of bringing the action and maneuvering of a Thunder Road: Vendetta game into an RPG by looking at it like it was a dogfight. And so I recruited the mastermind behind Tachyon Squadron, Clark Valentine, to help us make this the most bombastic car combat RPG we can.
That is the crew we’ve assembled to kick on to build the engine of the Thunder Road: Vendetta RPG. We’re still hammering at the chassis but I’m confident this is a game you’ll want to take for a ride.
I’ll be back with my next update after the full design is complete in Fall 2024.
—Dave Chalker
Game Designer of Thunder Road: Vendetta, Get Bit, Thieves Market, Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG, and more