Dinosaur Cowboys – Tabletop Skirmish Game

Another Milestone
Celebrate for version 0.8 of Dinosaur Cowboys is here! It’s really starting to look professional, if I do say so myself. I’ve integrated the main rules, items, and roster into a single document, and really made it shine with a logo, some snazzy flavorful fonts, new table of contents and footers, a few new descriptive sections, and most importantly tons of fixes and updates as a result of playtesting (new Initiative system, new Standalone / Campaign Game section, new weapons and also some price changes, etc.).

Anyways get the goods here: Dinosaur Cowboys Rulebook v0.8 (PDF).

Changelog
I use Subversion for tracking my document revisions, and I figured I’d share the check-in log with you, since it’s as close to a changelog as I’m going to get. The points are ordered newest to oldest, from June 14th to July 6th (I didn’t even stop for a break after v0.7 you understand).

• Put newly fonted Posse Roster into the main rulebook
• Modified Posse Roster with stylized fonts, instead of basic Deja Vu Sans Mono. Now West Test is used sparingly, and Universalis Std is used for all the main headers. Definitely adds some nice variety
• Made Level Up give $300, and member recruiment cost $200 inititally and $250 (down from $300) later
• Made the Thickskull Small size instead of Medium, to match what Jurassic Park 2 had
• Increased level up dollars to $200
• Changed Lasso / Wrangle to just Lasso, to avoid confusion
• Removed some needless headers from the table of contents. Re-organized some of the document sections, mainly to name ‘Time and Travel’ as ‘Campaign Game’ instead, which mirrors ‘Standalone Game’ section that was previously the new ‘Setting Up a Game’ section.
• First draft of ‘Setting up a game’ section
• Further reduction of melee weapon prices
• Clarified how to write IP on the Posse Roster
• A bunch of minor formatting, grammar, typo, and consistency changes
• First draft of new Initiative system that relies on per-Activation rolls and ratio checks
• Clarified Selling to only allow items $40 or over
• Clarified the Elevation damage bonus to be 2 inches or higher above the target
• Added a Lasso attack. 1-6 inches range, 1A-0D with Stopped. Can only be used while Mounted.
• Alphabetical order for weapon special abilities
• Added ‘Trip’ Brawl attack, 1A-0D with Stopped. Also formatted the index headers to match the West Test font
• Made ‘Grenade’ plural, made ‘Web’ special into generic ‘Stopped’ (still no Movement effect)
• Changed the column ordering for the weapons in Items.odt. Previously it went Ranges, A-D. Now it goes A-D, Ranges. This is to match the ordering in the Posse Roster, so that is easier to fill out
• Decreased Reload values, such as 80KW from 3×1 to 1×1, just to get some more reloading going (only had 1 reload in 3 games, and it was 2×1 on a 6A gun). Clarified that Leadership can only be used on ANOTHER entity, not on self.
• Noted that Surprise Hits don’t apply to targets in melee. New subsection talking about making a Bravery Test when the entity is already fleeing.
• Tried re-saving as ODT specifically
• Added a Pickaxe, prospector style
• Tried the fun ‘West Test’ font for main headers
• Testing a different title font and style
• Added Table of Contents and Table of Figures. This meant marking headers as Header 1, 2, 3 styled, and also giving titles to the OLE objects in the doc.
• Added page numbering to everything except the title page, charts, and roster
• Added a logo, hooray. Basically a dinosaur skull with two crossed pistols underneath
• Fixed up naming so ‘posse sheet’ isn’t used anymore
• Minor formatting. Also added Posse Roster to the main Rulebook
• Some document shuffling and renaming
• Added Light Repeater and Heavy Repeater as alternatives to Low/High Burst Rifle. Also put the Items and Posse
• Roster into the Rules, so that everything is in a single doc

Alternative Formats
I’m trying to move away from some of the harder-to-support file formats, but if you want you can still get the rules as ODT or DOC. Also you can download individual Posse Rosters as PDF or ODT, in case you don’t want to print directly from the rulebook (I personally like the single sheet approach).

Looking Forward
What will v0.9 look like? Well, it’ll have pretty pictures scattered throughout the rulebook, because deep down that’s all anyone cares about. I still want to test Armor as Damage Reducing instead of modifying the to-hit, but otherwise I don’t have any big changes or tests planned. Probably just get some more games in. I had looked into doing a Quick Reference sheet (as per my previous TODO), but honestly aside from the Modifiers table there isn’t anything that needs a summary or needs to easily be on hand.
Also once I reach v1.0 (my heart flutters just to write that) I want to add the game to Board Game Geek (or their spin off RPGGeek). Maybe even RPG Drive Thru as a free PDF (I should check what the requirements are for that). The more I can get the rules out the better, I figure.
Also as I mentioned there should be another battle report coming soon, and I hope to get one more after that with the full v0.8 rules (less of a playtest and more of a, well, flat out “play”).