Dinosaur Cowboys – Tabletop Skirmish Game

I’ve rewritten the Turn and Combat section to be even slimmer and more elegant. The main change was adding a “Ranged Miss Chance” (RMC) and “Melee Miss Chance” (MMC) that are used as a base to-hit number. There are a couple of modifiers to this number, mostly around range, cover, and armor. But basically you need to roll greater than or equal to the final modified RMC/MMC to hit the target, then damage is calculated as before.
I’ll need to rework the armor list, since AR is a plus bonus instead of a flat value. For example a Vectran Vest would be +2 AR, which means a firer with a base RMC of 5 would need a 7+ to hit (5+2 = 7). I like having the Miss Chance where you still need to roll above some number, and also having a lower score makes sense, instead of something like a flat “Ranged Skill” where you need to calculate the to-hit value by doing subtraction (such as Max Ranged Skill – Current Ranged Skill = target number to hit).

I also made the Fear Test rules. Now a Fear Test is taken when an entity suffers damage greater than or equal to half their starting Hitpoint value. So if they had 10 HP, any attack that does >= 5 would trigger a Fear Test. Failing means they Flee away from the closest enemy at the start of their turn.

And I’ve done a preliminary mockup of the Posse Roster sheet, which you can download or view below. Basically 6 shrunken stat blocks combined on a single page. I REALLY like how the grayed out images in the background of each stat turned out, since I think it adds a little variety and spice to an otherwise boring line of stats.

Posse Sheet: ODT | PDF | View Online

Anyways I do have one concern with all these changes. I’m starting to feel like I’m just re-inventing a Games Workshop based game, but with D12s instead of D6s. I guess because of the whole to-hit mechanism being based on some stat (RMC could be Ballistic Skill, and MMC could be Weapon Skill)…but then again that’s a preeeetty common idea in games.

I’m going to try to get a playtest of two Posses this week, so we’ll see how that works. For now I’m going to work with alternating activation rules, so you move a single figure, then the enemy does, and so on. We’ll see if this approach makes it into the final rules.