I had mentioned Hexxenhammer way, way, WAY back in a 2009 post (how time flies!) for his great cowboys riding dinosaur conversion. He pointed me to his Flickr set of “Weird West” images, and I thought since they are getting on 2-3 years old I would mirror them here in case the gallery dies. So from his Weird West set here are some great conversions that make me jealous:
Late Laser
Well I never said I’d have much in the way of breaking news related to dinosaurs or cowboys, but heck in this case I’m only behind three years! The exciting news is a group called Northrop Grumman created a 100kW laser (related Wired article).
The basic idea is to combine smaller 15kW modules that look like this:
…into a big apparatus that looks like this (pictured is the 100kW laser):
The importance of this laser is that 100kW is generally considered the lowest “military grade” energy level for directed energy weapons. So it might not be small enough for a revolver yet, but hey that’s what 273 years of development is for (aka until 2285, the start of the playable Dinosaur Cowboys timeline). They are already hard at work with the Firestrike ruggedizing system, so all they need are some high density batteries to use as bullets and we’re set.
The man who started it all was of course Theodore Maiman, since he created the first operational laser back in the 1960s. I think people were still capitalizing LASER and common folk knew what the acronym stood for, before all the “death ray” stuff in sci-fi popularized the idea.
Just a note on the image at the top, which is the official sign for lasers. I’d love to make a little 28mm version for the tabletop, or paint it onto the barrel of a big gun on a figure or something.
Late Weapon
Now if you want a more weaponized look to your sci-fi weapons there is the Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response Rifle, which is a terrible backronym for PHASR. The news around this is even further back as we’re looking at 2005 (a dark time when everyone made “set PHASR to stun” jokes). The PHASR looks like something out of Halo and could maybe be passed off as a High Burst Rifle on the exterior shape alone:
Late Music
And now for a bit of a musical interlude, and also a look into the past (only back to 2006 in this case) here is Knights of Cydonia by Muse, which happens to feature a rocking beat, 1980s style mock movie, robots, and cowboys with laser pistols.
I wanted to share some great 28mm wild west terrain from a hobby blog I found. The terrain was created using foamboard and some balsa wood planking, and is especially notable because the roof is removable which allows gamin’ inside the buildings too. Nice details like the goods in the store and the wall scratchings in the prison cells. Overally really great work that I am, of course, jealous of!
General Store:
Prison:
Two neat images today, one from a comic and one from a museum in the real world.
First is of Shaolin Cowboy, a short lived comic that had fairly detailed artwork:
And the next one is the cowboy riding a Triceratops, made from spare parts (which makes it look kind of steampunk-ish). Really cool (even if the scale is off, but who am I to complain about scale), and created by a fella named John Lopez:
Long time no chat, I guess that happens as summer starts and I can comfortably get outside more.
The batch of Lithko tokens I ordered arrived a couple of weeks ago. They look great! I might try to get some scans/pictures of those up soon, and I also want to try them out in a game. They are nice and clear and will help make my photos and battle reports look a bit more professional than my current makeshift wooden tokens.
Anyways onto the meat of this post, which is two pieces of media around real world cowboys (and cowgirls). The first is a video from 1894 (amazing!) of trick-shooter Annie Oakley shooting two lever-action rifles at some static targets and some thrown targets. Really neat since it’s like a time capsule to see such old footage:
And the second set of media are terrific old images of cowboys. I wish I had found this archive when I was putting images into the rulebook, especially since it’s categorized so well. Really neat to think the pictures come from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Too bad I’m not a pro at image editing since modifying the horses to be dinosaurs would be perfect!
Link: http://www.cartermuseum.org/collections/smith/collection.php
And some samples:
So besides wanting to get another game or two in with my new counters, and still vaguely having a goal of painting some actual cowboy figures, there isn’t much to do around the game (hooray for having a completed rule set!). I might adjust the IP/ND reward to be split for taking a character (human) out of action compared to a dinosaur. Probably using the existing 3 IP / $30 for a character but 5 IP / $50 for a dinosaur. It’d be easy enough to track and maintain since kills during the game are just put to one side of the table, so adding up afterwards would be simple.
Today I wanted to point out a neat battle report that doesn’t exactly involved cowboys, but certainly maintains the genre mixing involvement of dinosaurs and WW2 Germans. The pictures above come from a game of Adventures in the Lost Lands from the popular Two Hour Wargames (I heard about them originally for their terrific All Things Zombie game). Anyways the actual battle report is here and is a pretty interesting read, and they have a great looking volcanic table that I’d love to play a game of Dinosaur Cowboys on to simulate the area around the Yellowstone eruption.
Some Other Links
I have a few other miscellaneous links that don’t really warrant their own post, but are still interesting.
First of all a really cool, scary, and trippy looking dinosaur: the Helicoprion. Modern day people may dislike or fear aquatic beasts like sharks, but could you imagine if something like a Helicoprion was floating around in the ocean? Especially when they are estimated to have grown to 10-15ft long!
And then a couple of unrelated games. First of all the blog of Andy Hoare who is ex-Games Workshop and is currently working on a little side project of a skirmish game. Although he doesn’t have many posts I find them interesting to see the general thought process of another person working on a skirmish game, plus the odd tidbit he drops about Games Workshop.
The final link is a pure western skirmish game that I thought I’d share called Get Three Coffins Ready. The name comes from one of the classic batch of Clint Eastwood westerns called A Fistful of Dollars, which is one of my favorite western movies. Anyways it looks like a fun system and I always like reading other amateur rulesets.
So far the posses you’ve seen are built in a fairly standard, natural way. They have a reasonable story behind them, a good variety of weapons and roles and mix of dinosaurs.
But what about if we threw all that to the wind and tried to built super extreme posses that stretch every rule and are so drastically different from the norm?
Well…we’d probably get something like this:
Longneck (or Titan) in a $1,000 ND / 100 IP Posse
The Longneck (MV 5, PMV D6, AR 2, MMC 5, DIS 10, HP 37, 10A-1D) is considered the king of the herbivores. Heck anything that can grab vegetation nine meters off the ground is deserving of that title in my opinion. But in Dinosaur Cowboys it’s normally considered a later game purchase, considering it costs $1,000 and a standard posse begins with exactly that much money.
But with the Leader and first member being free to recruit, a posse could technically have two humans with no weapons and a Longneck. Crazy? Maybe. But it’s exactly what The Herd Mothers do. With plenty of IP to go around each member could be improved to a fairly solid point, with 12 HP a piece, 1 AR, and MV 6. They’ll be focusing on Brawl attacks (Punch, Kick, Shove, Trip), which won’t do a ton of damage but could disrupt enemy forces. For example each member could Trip an enemy to apply Stopped, so then the slightly slower Longneck could get into combat and stomp them into the dirt. Or perform a Shove and use the 2″ Knockback to send enemies into combat.
Another feature to remember is that every human gets a Rope Lasso for free, so someone could mount the Longneck and use the 1-6″ range to apply Stopped to a nearby enemy just in time for the Longneck to barrel into combat. The Leader could be the rider and use his “Get Up!” trait to heal the Longneck when the going gets rough.
Anyways the alternative build is to have a Titan in a $1,000 ND / 100 IP posse. Pretty much the same idea but slightly different traits, and of course, the best carnivore instead of the best herbivore. I call them The Pack Fathers.
Two Super Soldiers
The next posse takes the idea of extremely well trained and well armed members to the extreme. Instead of settling for a few good guns and statistics, this posse dumps all the IP and ND into two members, with the third (mandatory to meet Posse composition minimums) basically being dead weight.
I made the two “super soldiers” as Neotechnoists, as I could see them being from a dark sect inside The Wall that experiment heavily with human improvement, drug stimulants, etc. Perhaps they have even skewed their views into worshiping dinosaurs, and tried to alter their appearance to match with drastic implants and body modifications. Their third member, a Savage weakling, could represent a sacrifice they keep for the dinosaurs.
Anyways I call this posse the Supersoldier Legion, and here’s a quick glance at their basic statistics: MV 5, AR 4, RMC 6, MMC 8, BRV 7, HP 15. The best part of that statline (besides the ridiculously high HP) is the 4 AR, thanks to expensive $300 Mesh Armor. That should hopefully give each super soldier terrific survivability, as we’ve seen with the Armored dinosaur in the past. They are wielding a Light Repeater and Heavy Pistol, which are both good weapons in their own right.
Oh and of course The Sacrifice (the low stat Savage who weakened himself to free up IP for the super soldiers) has this for a laughable statline: MV 1, AR 0, RMC 9, MMC 8, BRV 2, HP 1. Haha.
Veteran 400 IP Posse
I had put a reasonable cap on IP at 400, which corresponds to $4,000 ND and 13 Traits. But I decided to actually build a Posse with those stats and see what kind of awesome weapons and equipment I could come up with. The result is The Deadly Half Dozen who had a Titan dinosaur, the full 5 members rife with Grenade Launchers, 1MW Scoped Rifles, etc. I think this Posse might expose a slight problem where Hitpoints become too low and damage outdistances what each target can absorb. I mean someone with RMC 4 and 1A-10D 27″ range rifle is going to hurt, a lot.
I think in the future I’ll give two 400 IP Posses a shot and see what kind of chaos ensues.
Conclusion
Anyways those were just a few of the extreme and different Posses I could build within the limitations of the rules. Interesting to try to take each concept to the max and see if it breaks the build process.
So as you’ve seen from my battle report pictures I currently use a set of wooden discs, hearts, and stars to mark the figures with various status effects, like Moved, Fleeing, Panic, etc. Yesterday’s report had some good examples of these. Well I was thinking of improving the existing tokens a bit, like painting the Fleeing/Panic hearts red, the Reload stars yellow, and writing “Moved” and “Moved & Acted” on the round circles after painting them some color (probably blue).
And then I remembered Litko (after feebly searching for “Lithko” for far too long). They have a huge selection of plastic tokens. I had looked at them in the past for torpedoes for Silent Death, but never ended up buying anything.
Anyway they have the terrific option of ordering custom tokens. You can choose the plastic color and type (opaque, transparent, etc.) and shape (star, round, etc.) and then have custom text written on them (up to 12 characters long). The price is great too, as you can get 10 custom text tokens for $6.99 + shipping (which looked pretty cheap up to the frozen Canadian north).
So I thought I’d link and show some of the tokens and markers I’d be interested in getting. First of all the premade tokens:
So for Acted I think I would use “Circle” in Fluorescent Blue with the text “Acted” on it. Then for Moved & Acted I’d still use Fluorescent Blue but with the “Circle Arrow” shape, since the embedded arrow would help visually clue players into the fact that movement was involved. I think to be on the safe side I’d get 20 of each.
Conclusion
So these look like a terrific option to really class up the look of my games. I’ll be placing an order sometime this week I think, and I’ll be sure to post some pictures of the tokens in use once they arrive.
Here are the entries for my little Dino Storm Closed Beta Key Contest, in order received. As I mentioned in the original contest the idea was to send in the best Dinosaur Cowboys related tabletop pictures or artwork. Unfortunately I thought there would be more overlap between computer folks and tabletop people, since all the entries were just found on the internet. All it would have taken for someone to really sweep the contest is an original picture of some figures and a dinosaur, but alas!
Paul
The first entry was from Paul, who came up with some art from what looks like Dino Riders:
Yawar
Then Yawar who took some Dino Storm screenshots and concept art (in fact I had posted similar concept art in the original contest):
Ferran
And finally Ferran, who grabbed what looks like forum signature avatars.
The Winner Is…
After some consideration and deliberation the winner is Yawar! I’ve emailed him the closed beta key and hope he will enjoy Dino Storm.
Anyways back to your regularly scheduled tabletop programming after this. I’m playing a 4-person game of Dinosaur Cowboys tomorrow so that will be thrilling.
Yesterday I saddled up with the Dino Storm closed beta. Remember that you can still get my single extra key by emailing me (dinosaur.cowboys@gmail.com) a cool picture of your Dinosaur Cowboys tabletop game or related artwork. Anyways enough shilling.
Everything in my mini-review below is slightly colored by the fact that I am on crappy slow internet and a crappy slow laptop at the moment. I’m on a business trip so I’m basically stuck with 40mbps wireless hotel internet. Because of that I’ll hold off making any judgements on laggyness until I can get home.
Anyways Dino Storm is written in Java, so my browser plugin took a bit to download all the necessary files, then I was good to go. I was first presented with the simple character creation screen, wherein I could choose my name, various colored shirts and hats and so on. No stat choices to be made at the moment, so everyone plays pretty much the same at this point.
After getting into the game I could up the graphics to my native resolution which helped improve the look of the game. I scaled down all the screenshots here though, but originally they were at 1680×1050.
Anyways the music was starting to repeat at this point, so I was looking forward to hitting the open plains. The desert/plains look very immersive with cacti and struggling shrubbery everywhere. Plenty of old buildings too. Following your current quest is simple since you can highlight the path in blue dino footprints.
As for controls, they were actually my favorite part of the game. In a sense they were “sluggish”, but that was intentional to give you a feel of actually steering a mount. Your dinosaur doesn’t turn on a dime, and hitting the left arrow key will have a slight delay before the dinosaur responds. Think of it like driving a big boat or slow city bus. I found making minor adjustments to my heading were easier if I rotated the camera since that seemed to shift where my rider was going.
Anyways I wandered after the blue footprints, which was pretty obvious since the map was tunneling my forward (at least at this point). Eventually they lead to Sue Hunt, riding a Ducky and eager for me to kill 10 Entelodons. In other words, prehistoric boars. There they were, majestically grazing in the field in a giant pack.
Before I go further keep in mind I haven’t played many 3D browser games. My MMO experience is limited to heavy Guild Wars for a few years (still some of the best party based fantasy PVP). And also keep in mind that I want to like Dino Storm. But seriously, BOARS? The joke of “Kill 10 Boars” has been an MMO staple since even before the Southpark World of Warcraft episode. And this is the devs best chance to grab the players and show them how cool and innovative the game can be. And yet there I was in 2012 killing 10 Entelodon’s in a field.
As for combat, well, you can see I have a little quickbar at the bottom of the screen. The first two abilities drain my blue bar (stamina?) a tiny bit and seem to do a tiny bit of extra damage. Combat is initiated by left clicking on the target, the clicking on “Attack” from the single option menu. Yep. Your cowboy will start shooting his gun, which unfortunately sounds and looks like some kind of gunpowder based weapon instead of the promised lasers. Maybe that’s an upgrade later. Anyways I’m not sure what the underlying mechanics or math are like, or whether moving helps make you harder to hit, or anything like that. But it basically seemed like the enemies health bar went down and eventually they died.
At first I tried strafing and sprinting in circles, until I realized I was still taking the same amount of damage but my dinosaur wasn’t able to attack since he was on the move. So after the first boar my strategy became “left click and wait for the boar to die”. I’d stay in place and once an enemy was close enough the dino would automatically bite attack, which helped add damage.
Certainly not the most compelling approach, but honestly mounted anything is super hard to do well. A similar problem happened in the game Auto Assault, which had cars with guns. Either you have turrets that auto aim, in which case moving can help a bit, or you make the player manually move. Dino Storm went for auto aim, so your cowboy swivels in his saddle to keep shooting, and you basically don’t have to do anything. Maybe they’ll add some abilities later so that I can at least mash 1-2-3 on my keyboard.
After decimating some boars I eventually got a level up. Hooray me! You have to painstakingly click to pick up the experience, which shows as floating sheriff badges. I’m not sure what the idea was with making experience a physical item, or taking 2-3 seconds to pick it up (there is a progress bar), but it gets annoying quickly.
Anyways most of the text wasn’t internationalized yet so I just got placeholders like “$profile.district”, which made learning anything about my character or dinosaur a bit hard.
They also have some achievements, but again the text was missing so I couldn’t figure out most of them, besides the one that wanted me to kill 999 Entelodons.
Anyways after leveling up I noticed the “Gold Coins” approach Dino Storm is going to do to make money. Keep in mind all these games need to support the devs and servers somehow, and in this case it looks like real world money can be translated into Gold Coins, which can then be translated into really awesome in game stuff. My test character started with 120 Gold Coins, which seemed like quite a few. Of course they still have non-real world related money in the game (called Dino Dollars) that is used for purchasing some items.
But Gold Coins can get you terrifically overpowered features like a whole new level up (which I did to get from level 2 to 3). You can also speed up research (more on that in a second) and buy some more elite items. I imagine the fancier dinosaurs will cost Gold Coins. I also imagine a person could just grind for all this stuff and never actually buy Gold Coins, but maybe I’m mistaken.
Another option to get Gold Coins is to complete surveys, which I would imagine give the devs some kind of kickback. For example completing a “US Auto Insurance survey” (pictured in the screenshot) would net you 397 Gold.
Anyways this whole approach left a sour taste in my mouth, so I wandered off to find another task in the game to keep me interested. Karl Nelson wanted to talk to me, so I asked him what was up. Deliver 5 fish. I think I took six quests during my first day of playing and every single one had a 0/X item count, be it killing things or delivering things. So yeah, Point A to Point B “Fedex” style quests, something I mistakenly thought the world had left behind with Baldur’s Gate 1.
After a while I got a chance to do a few upgrades. The approach to this is interesting and reminds me of Eve Online. You basically “start” the upgrade and it takes a preset amount of time (which can be sped up using Gold Coins). For example to upgrade my Kinetic Enhancer (which helped boost my damage a bit) it took around 5 minutes.
Another upgrade was “evolving” my dinosaur. This made him slightly bigger and gave him spikes along his head, and I assume better stats in the game. I think the idea is to have four or five of these evolution stages to each dinosaur, and goodness knows how many ridable dinosaurs in the final game.
Now so far it might seem like I’m being a bit negative of the game. Unfortunately I think I just had too high of expectations and was out of touch with what are (probably?) pretty standard features/limitations of browser based games. Dino Storm does have a neat feel to it, and the cowboys riding dinosaurs really do look cool. But it doesn’t excite a person or make them want to come back for more. Normally a look at the world map will spark my interest, but even that seemed kind of…lacking? Back to Auto Assault, I remember opening THAT world map and being excited to explore and drive around. And unfortunately Dino Storm just didn’t grab me.
I did have a few fun moments. When I fought some of the larger beasts and was forcing my mount to sprint away it did a good job of capturing what I think this type of genre would feel like. Exciting chase scenes! Daring shoot outs! And so on.
Of course this is just a closed beta, and as you can see from some of the screenshots the game is still in a very early stage (it felt late alpha to me). I’m going to keep abreast of the developments in Dino Storm, but the bar has certainly been lowered and I don’t expect to play it much even when the final game comes out. And yes it is “just” a browser game, but so is Spiral Knights and they did a terrific job of grabbing a player and throwing them into interesting combat right off the bat, plus a playable/workable money model.
Anyways I hope that gave you an idea of how the game looks and feels at the moment. I expect lots of cleanup and improvements to happen rapidly as user feedback comes in, but for the day after the closed beta servers opened it’s a pretty good idea of how Dino Storm is. Anyways, time to hit the dusty trail for now.
And if you need more of cowboys with laser guns riding dinosaurs, why not check out my tabletop game on this very website. First take a look at how it plays and then grab the free PDF rulebook. You’ll be fighting your toy dinosaurs against miniatures in no time!
Well the Dino Storm closed beta went live today. I’m in the process of loading it up.
In case you missed your chance at a key I have an extra one that I’d love to give away through a simple contest. Just email me the coolest Dinosaur Cowboys picture you can make, be it from a tabletop game or art related. A huge preference will be given to new images that you personally make, as compared to just digging something up on the internet. I imagine there won’t be many entries so give it a shot.
Send all pictures to dinosaur.cowboys@gmail.com. At the end of the week the person who sends the picture I like the most will get my extra beta key.
The contest is now over. See the results!
And if you’re interested in seeing what the game is like, be sure to check out my review from my first day of playing.
While doing my usual reading of various forums I came across a western skirmish game called Blackwater Gulch. It doesn’t delve into the “weird west” (like Malifaux) but stays pretty historically accurate in terms of weapons and professions of the old wild west. The author has done a terrific job with the layout of the rulebook and has just started selling his own miniatures which I think is rather inspiring for amateur designers everywhere. Previously he used the Black Scorpion Tombstone line (which I’ve mentioned previously). The rules for Blackwater Gulch are free to download as a PDF (once you register and login) so that’s good, since it’s hard to gamble on a tabletop game without seeing what it’s like first. The author also has an interesting approach of selling hardcover copies through lulu.com, an on-demand print service.
As for the game I read over the rules and it feels similar to Mordheim or Necromunda. The designer mentions he’s played Games Workshop games for quite a few years, and you can definitely see the influence. The game is D6 based with similar gang sizes to a Dinosaur Cowboys posse. The core combat resolution is done by determining a Target Number (base 4, can be modified by range, target moving too much, etc.) and then rolling various D6s based on the attacker’s Ranged Combat statistic. Then the target gets to defend themselves by also rolling some D6s. It seems like the success based rolling would be quicker for resolving shooting compared to Warhammer 40,000.
Several neat mechanics like “Leader’s Luck” (similar to Yeehaw!) that allows additional dice to be used from a preset pool. I find the Skills (aka Traits) to be a bit lacking (mostly in the number available). The other issue I found was the scale for improving statistics is fully equal, so bumping up Ranged Combat (which is a hugely useful skill) is comparable to improving something less necessary like Strength. Which means most characters would probably end up pretty similarly improving Ranged Combat as much as they could. Anyways overall it seems like a nice light game that would play quickly and deadly, since most characters can die after a single gunshot.
I’ll be interested in seeing where the author takes the game, and eventually I might have to pick up some of the figures as I know he plans to expand the line.
Hitpoints in Big Games
So I’m trying to organize a 4 person game of Dinosaur Cowboys, which would be incredibly fun. It would also be the first match I’ve played with more than 2 people total.
I think the rules will hold up just fine. Activation was written from the start with larger games in mind, so besides having to re-roll a few ties (or use a larger dice to avoid that) it will work okay. Posse building, combat, etc. should translate well into a 4 person game.
The only concern I have is one small facet: Hitpoints. You see the base 8 HP sounds great, until you have two more players shooting at you. If you look at my past games you can see a few cowboys that met an untimely end in a single attack or shot, and that was just against one player.
Regardless of whether this game gets off the ground, I’m going to add a note (probably in the Standalone Game section) about multiplayer battles along the lines of:
For each additional player beyond two add +2 HP to every entity in your posse (for example +6 HP for a 5 player game).
In other words with 4 total players a basic member would start with 12 HP instead of 8 HP. This should make for a bit more of a tactical game since everything will live longer, and doesn’t throw off IP costs since HP is on a flat cost scale.
Speaking of multiplayer battles I was thinking a fun objective would be a series of dinosaur eggs around the map and a big, unaligned T-Rex in the middle. Whoever holds the most dinosaur eggs can vaguely control the T-Rex. As usual an objective that does something beneficial will actually motivate players to capture it, similar to what I did with the fight for the cannon.
Variant Rules – Shooting Position and Aimed Shot
Currently the combat modifiers table has 10 entries: Armor, In Melee, Short Range, Long Range, Movement, Cover, Crossfire, Elevation, and Charge. Sounds like a lot eh? Well in practice it isn’t, since you basically check range and the target’s armor and roll to attack.
What I struggled with when I first wrote the rules was whether to include Crouch and Prone as alternative shooting stances. In the end I decided it would add too much additional complexity, especially with tracking who is in what stance. But a recent sampling of the classic Jagged Alliance 2 game (thanks to the v1.13 mod) made me reconsider it as a Variant Rule.
Also along that line of thought is the idea of an Aimed Shot. Basically you don’t Move at all and declare you’re using an Aimed Shot, which then gives some positive effect.
The problem with both of these Variant Rules is I don’t want to just have them modify RMC. Crouch -1 RMC, Prone -2 RMC, Aimed Shot -1 RMC is simple enough, I guess. But it’s also extremely bland.
What I think I’d do instead is leverage Critical Hits, similar to how Surprise Hit is handled (when shooting at a targets back you get a Critical Hit on 10+ instead of 12). Perhaps Aimed Shot could reduce the Critical Hit chance by a further 1. So just doing an Aimed Shot would mean you Critical on 11+. Aimed Shot from behind (Surprise Hit) would be 9+ to Critical. Crouch could be a further 1 and Prone would be 2. So Prone (+2), Aimed Shot (+1), Surprise Hit (+2) would be 7+ to Critical!
Anyways I think I’ll leave Crouch and Prone out for now, but I’m going to add Aimed Shot in there.
Other News
Anyways I’ve been doing some further edits and clarifications of the rules. Not changing any core mechanics or anything, instead just editing or cleaning up certain aspects that might be confusing. I find revisiting the rules after an extensive break helps since I can look at them with fresh eyes, and then see how some sections can be confusing.
I also want to add the old images of weapons into the rules somewhere (probably before the description section).
Then the above changes around multiplayer games and Aimed Shot. Basically what I’m saying is I’ll probably have a v1.2 release sometime in the distant future.
Although these battle reports don’t specifically deal with cowboys, they have dinosaurs romping around various battlefields.
Safari On Venus
I’m just going to jump to the best one, which is the Safari on Venus. Terrific alien scenery, great Lizardmen conversions, and an appearance by the old Papo T-Rex toy (you might remember him from my own Great T-Rex Hunt).
Anyways the first link has more of the play by play while the second has slightly clearer pictures:
- http://laughingferret.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-game-hunters-safari-on-venus-battle.html
- http://rotanddrivel.com./biggamehunt.html
Saurian Safari
I had actually heard about Saurian Safari way, way back, but only recently remembered it as a comrade in arms to the great “add dinosaurs to improbable scenarios” genre. Think of it as rules to play out The Lost World by Conan Doyle. Except remember that his book was written in 1912 and the Victorian Era was only a decade old. The work must have been mindblowing at the time. Anyways Saurian Safari let’s people play out a dinosaur hunt, and that’s exactly what this battle report shows:
- http://fasatrekker.blogspot.com/2011/01/game-session-victorian-steampunk.html
(Note he degrades The Valley of Gwangi with: “the C movies crap, like the cowboys wrassling a T Rex in Valley of Gwangi”. My word, I’m getting the vapors!)
Of course once a person starts searching for “Saurian Safari” you find numerous other awesome photos and battle reports, such as this one about Pirates vs Dinosaurs on an awesome island layout (that really makes me think of Settlers of Cattan).
Final Mention
And just a quick mention (since the post doesn’t have many pictures) someone had an entry about The Lost Legion of Venus using the GASLIGHT rules:
- http://onemoregamingproject.blogspot.com/2011/10/fall-in-report-part-ii-saturday.html
In my weekly searches for dinosaur cowboy related material I came across Dino Storm, a computer game that has visuals similar to Warcraft 3, except there are cowboys on dinosaurs with laser cannons. Sound familiar? I thought it might.
Anyways they are just about to start a closed beta and then an open beta soon after that (I think). I don’t have high expectations for browser based games (mainly since my only exposure was years ago, but I think the technology might have improved). Still it’d be a worth a shot just to see “live action” mounted dinosaurs fighting each other. We’ll see as soon as the beta is available, I guess!
