Dinosaur Cowboys – Tabletop Skirmish Game

Holy kacholey, Dinosaur Cowboys v0.0000001 is fun. Basically I whipped up a character sheet yesterday at work and printed 4 off. Then I got home, set up a bit of terrain and a few mounted figures I had (druid riding a lizard vs. goblin riding a winged lion ftw!) and played 3 small “battles” using only my brainstorm rules. The first two battles were between a Duster and Neotechnoist (Duster won both because of some overpowered weapons), and then both of them against a generic enemy dinosaur (using a plastic toy thing I got from a museum).

But yeah, lots of fun. I honestly feel that the game is a return to my teenage roots of Horizon (a fantasy game I made instead of playing D&D). The combat is fast and simple with minimal rolling before you can apply damage. The character sheets are clean with few stats and plenty of opportunity for (relatively) fast playing larger battles.

I still need to start on the ACTUAL rules, instead of just going off a well defined brainstorm document, but yeah, I bet I could be done a first version of this mofo in a single night. Then I get the exciting job of working up background information and maps and cool stuff like that. Weapon lists and enemy lists will likely be the biggest stumbling block, but since I’m working with new material (dinosaurs!) I think I might be more motivated. Plus the idea of having a giant book of foes is enticing.

Heck I remember my Horizon enemy book, it was about an inch thick and stacked with pages and pages of enemies in a crude, simple format. I don’t even think it was organized alphabetically, and I made all the stats up off the cuff, but somehow everything was still balanced and workable. I got to know that book so well that I could just turn directly to common foes like Black Bears and Goblins and stuff. Man what a blast.

But anyways, here are the notes from my playtest, some of which is painfully obvious but you don’t realize it until you actually sit down and start rolling dice.

+ Notes from December 01 Playtest

- Damage Track is written in pencil, and marked off in pencil, so erasing is an issue
 - Use sliding counters instead?
- Write Current AR and Current Movement formula below field?
- Need a hint for Armor Name location by Armor Rating
- Need a space for Current Melee Attacks under Dinomount
 - Might want to keep all temporary fields in one place, or formatted the same
- Need rules for transferring extra damage from downed Dinomount to rider, before they dismount
 - All extra damage goes to rider? ie: 5 damage, 2 track boxes left, 3 goes to rider?
- Clarify reload rules...
 - Basically you spend your whole firing phase reloading a single gun
  - OR you can fire another gun, but the unreloaded weapon remains unreloaded
 - Recommend just marking an 'R' beside the weapon column on character sheet
- Need a second divider line on all Current boxes, to store the starting value
 - ie: HP: |__|______
- Call firing phase 'Action Phase' and include item use (such as healing kits)
- Switch Current HP back to left side so it's easier to write around damage track counter
- Consider having Henchmen / Followers on the same "mini sheet" as generic enemies
 - Makes sheet shuffling less of a hassle
 - Could even fit 3 Followers (the maximum?) on a landscape spreadsheet full of mini sheets, maybe
- Added bolded letters for the 'M' in Movement, for example, to help understand Damage Track markings

Huzzah, I completed Nanowrimo with 52,839 words. I could retell the enthralling tale of an unexpected word war with a friend which resulted in me writing 8,000 words and finishing two days early, but this blog is about Dinosaur Cowboys not Nanowrimo!

So far I have some general ideas, but want to flesh it all out a bit (plus the background) to see what kind of game I want to go. Right now I am grappling between making it a dedicated skirmish game or just making it a light RPG that can handle big fights well (a weakness a previous post-apocalyptic ruleset Drylands suffered from).

So far I’m thinking, for combat, you get X number of Attacks, with each attack being a D12. Then you have a To-Hit value that is either character based, weapon based, or target armor based (haven’t decided yet). For every Attack dice >= to the To-Hit roll, you get one hit. Basically you count the number of successful attacks (count +2 for “criticals” which are any rolls of 12), then add that to the (static) base damage of the weapon. The result is the damage that is applied to the target (although maybe you subtract some for their armor). If the target is mounted they will have a damage track that represents their mount, with boxes like “-1 Movement” and stuff, and also hits that go through to the rider. If you are on foot your character takes the damage directly, which can be lethal faster. Then dinosaurs themselves just add +Attacks in close combat, and +Armor to the rider’s armor. The other nice part of this approach to combat is I can apply it directly to close combat, which is always AWESOME if you can have the ranged and hand to hand rules work the same. But yeah, I should be able to get some variety of weapons with high attacks low base damage, or low attacks high base damage, or medium of both. I figure lasers will be the most common, but plasma will be around too. And each gun would have a reload value that means you have to take a turn (or phase or whatever) reloading your gun instead of shooting. So you might see “2×1” as a reload value, which means if you get 2 or more 1s on your Attacks, you need to reload. Simple and effective.

I figure carry weights can be done by sizes (for weapons), and everything else is trucked around on the dinosaurs, so no weight needs to be tracked. Remove food and water requirements since that just slows down the game. Simple kill based experience. One problem is how to make it feel like your character is advancing. I guess your dinosaur could get more powerful, and you could get more HP and weapons (heck maybe I’ll even bring back the “Laser Pistol +2” approach). Or each character / member of your gang could have special descriptive traits, like “Speedy” guys have +1 Movement or whatever. I want to have some customization but not get into a TON of special rules per person. Ideally just flat modifiers that apply to the character sheet so you don’t have to remember anything in detail.

As for the background, well a volcano (supervolcano even?) rises in the middle of America. A lush jungle springs up form the morphed ecology (temperatures rise, water tables change, etc.). The volcano also exposes metal veins for mining and so on. The rich interior builds a big fence (called The Border from inside, and The Fence from outside) and starts to live a rich, industrialized / civilized lifestyle. Sort of like Brave New World vs. the savage reserves, or modern society vs. camping, or central vs. rim planets in Firefly.

Anyways outside The Border the temperatures are drier as a result, and it’s pretty much your standard wild west / post apocalyptic scenario. Everyone outside calls themselves Dusters (or Primitives or Savages is the inside term) and everyone inside are called Veggies or Volkies (or Neotechnoists from the inside). Outside people are omnivores, inside people have the luxury of being vegetarians. Outside is lawless, inside is ordered and controlled.

So yeah, super psyched for the whole idea, and also for making some figures and designing character sheets and actually PLAYING the game, haha.

This year I’m taking part in Nanowrimo during the month of November. My novel is basically a mix of The Mummy, Vanishing Point, Red Dawn and The Machinist. Set in a small town in Nevada, the main character wages a private war against a cult of vicious followers of Anubis.

END OF MONTH UPDATE: If the brief summary above sounded interesting, feel free to download and read the whole book.

Which seemed like a great idea, until I thought of cowboys riding freaking DINOSAURS! Now I’m mildly distracted by that idea. And by mildly I mean I am seconds away from wiping out 22,000 words to start over with “Dinosaur Cowboys”.

I’m so jazzed about the idea that I created this blog in preparation for the end of November. I imagine I’ll be out of steam for writing by then, which means I’ll have to realize the idea of Dinosaur Cowboys via another channel and form of media. And that, my friends, is tabletop roleplaying skirmish games.

So yeah, check back as I start to brainstorm and develop the history, maps, enemies & friends, weapons, and rules for battling across a futuristic (I think) wild west frontier atop hungry dinosaurs.