Tooth & Claw: Extinct?

[Jared A. Sorensen]

The Chronicle is an even better source for InSpectres.

As for Age of Reptiles, yep. I have both books (they're fantastic). T&C (which has permanently shelved) was going to be more traditional, Disney-esque fare (talking dinosaurs...basically "humans" in dinosaur skins).

Frankly, I'd love to do it but I just don't have the ability to do it right. Pity, as I wish a dinosaur game was out there (and that Broncosaurus thing is terrible...).

[Tim Denee]

Oh ok. I misunderstood. I thought it was going to be almost simulationist (gasp). Like Walking With Dinosaurs or Walking With Beasts. You'd create a group of young dinosaurs and each "show" would follow the trials and tribulations on their way to adulthood. Some stories would cross, other's wouldn't (one player might be playing a growing T-Rex, and attack another player's herbivore at some point. Other players might play young from the same, um, litter). The GM would be like the narrator dude on those shows.
I figured that, due to the nature of role-playing, most games would end up somewhere in between Walking With Dinosaurs and Age of Reptiles (half-documentary, half-narrative).

Man, that was rambling. And about a defunct topic. Ah well.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Originally I was going to do some painfully accurate dino stuff. But hey, you know me and simulations don't mix...so I opted for "adventure roleplaying." 30-odd pages into it I decided that it wasn't working. Bit of design advice #1: know what you're trying to do. I didn't.

- J

[Valamir]

In that case, I'm glad you shelved it.  I was drooling over the idea of a dinosaur sim RPG.  But Disney dinos...I probably would have sent the file back and demanded a refund ;-)

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Looks like several people are still very interested in T&C (some have expressed interest in teaming up to write it).

Either I do it dino-sim style OR I go with what I had (an iSystem game w/ anthro'd (tho' not in a humanoid sense) dinosaurs, more or less -- like Land Before Time).

I have a kajillion books on dinosaurs.
I've read Raptor Red.
I've seen all the "Walking with..." specials.

Sim SEEMS to be the obvious way to go.

The problem is this: what's the point? This is the problem I have with simulationist games. The idea  of a no-talking, realistic dinosaur RPG is immensely appealing to me but it all boils down to "It's not a game."

What do the players do? What's the goal? It's maddening, I tells ya.

- J

[xiombarg]

What do the players do? What's the goal? It's maddening, I tells ya.

You have all this source material on dinosaurs and you don't know what they do? What about eat and reproduce? This doesn't have to be boring at all -- we know how elaborate mating can get in the animal kingdom. Why not focus on that?

Ever play the SJGames boardgame Tribes? It's very much a game, as you seem to define it. The object is to have the most surviving children at the end of the game, and there's a lot of scope for roleplay in there, in terms of feeding the kids, interaction with potential mates, the survival of the tribe as whole, et cetera. Why can't you do something similar with dinosaurs? Did any particular species of dinosaurs "raise" their kids at all? Travel in groups? And since there's a lot we don't know about dinos, there's room to make stuff up in this vein.

Personally, I think it would be fine as a Simulationist game, since I actually think Sim is a game. But I should think the "goals" of dinos in the wild should be obvious, and the same as any other animals... Perpetuation of the species. There's even a metaplot... the eventual extinction of the dinosaurs. In fact, that could make an interesting setting: Getting a mate and feeding yourself becomes an even more interesting challenge if you're part of the last generation, and both food and mates are scarce. How do you face your eventual death and the futility of life without a mate... violently or with dignity? I mean, you don't have to be a "human in a dino suit" to have a personality, as anyone who's ever had a pet knows.

For an even wierder game, there's the option of Aria-style generational play, where you roleplay important incidents in your dino's "family line" down the generations... until the extinction.

[Zak Arntson]

Play the thing 3rd person, similarly in the most superficial way to Pantheon. You have rules like, "As soon as you require a response from another PC, you hand that PC's Player narration," (or some mechanic to determine narrative control/outcome/etc), a GM who operates normally (3rd person).

And you gift the dinosaurs with orangutan-level intelligence. That way they can solve problems and what-not. So play goes like:

Mike: "Wader dips her head down low to nudge the ornitholestes. It appears dead" (insert some kind of mechanic, as the ornitholestes is a PC)
Grace: "The little dinosaur is rudely woken and nips the intruder on the nose. Little-limbs scrambles up the neck to the apatosaur's head to get a view above the treetops."

I don't know ... something like that. You could have implied dialogue, too. So it goes something like:

Grace: "Little-limbs demands the deinonychus tribe leave Wader alone. He slyly mentions an fresh kill and a bloated, sleeping tyrannosaur a mile downstream."

Keeps the mystery in the dinos, but still lets them communicate intelligently.

I don't know, just some ideas.

[Valamir]

Well, if you're searching for input here's mine.  All IMO in very large letters.

1) don't go narrativist with it.  You've done that, and done it well.  Try doing a pure a Sim game...if for no other reason than to see if you can do it.  The attempt itself will likely be inspirational.

2) don't go 3rd person, but do assume dinosaurs have a modicum of intellegence (like the way Raptors are presented in JPII).  

3) Identify a list of half a dozen or so dinosaur activities:  Hunt/be hunted, mate/be mated, birth/be birthed, communicate...that sort of thing.  Come up with a clever game mechanic (almost a mini game) for each.

If I may say so, that is your great strength as a game designer, to be able to take some singular activity and create a mechanic that addresses and encompasses that activity.  Perhaps breaking the overall game down into these little mini mechanics excersizes would help the design process.

For instance, how do dinosaurs (pick a species) communicate.  What kind of rules can I have (like Og but not silly) that would allow players to communicate their intentions and goals but not involve actual human discussions.  Quick brainstorm, something involving cards that can be played one at a time with accompanying descriptions (or reinactments) of tail waggings and head bobbings, and frill wavings, etc.  just as a ferinstance.

As for "what you do".  You've seen all the walking withs.  Any of those snippets is a potential scenario.  You have the T-rex and her baby and the poison fumes.  You have the baby brontos, you have the pteredon flying across the ocean to mate, you have the migrating herd stalked by raptors.  

Change your question of "how do I make this a game", to "how to I portray a slice of life for a dinosaur" and you'll be on the right track, I think.

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Since Jared pretty famously Just Doesn't Get why anyone would want to play a Simulationist game, to the point of having several times tried to define them as somehow not being games at all, and since it's not in general a good idea to try to write a game that you wouldn't want to play, I think a Simulationist dinosaur game written by Jared would be...interesting.

It might make more sense as a Gamist game, where the players must overcome a hostile environment and struggle to maximize their chances of successful reproduction. I've never seen the "Walking Withs," but from Ralph's description, they sound like they'd translate well into a G/S game.

[Ron Edwards]

Um ... pardon my oar in ya'll's water here but ...

Ralph, it sounds like it's your heart that's set on Tooth and Claw of the sort you're describing. So why not write it?

Best,
ron

[Valamir]

good question Ron.

Unfortuneately, unlike say...Nathan or Zak ;-) I can't whip out 4 different game design in a week and my plates kind of full at the moment with Universalis, and a couple other projects I'm working on.

--not to mention Age of Wonders II just came out to be followed by Warlords IV, the Civilization III expansion pack, and Masters of Orion III so large chunks of my time are already spoken for, for the next 8-10 months or so :-)

But even if I were to try and tackle it, it certainly wouldn't be until Jared decided he was going to bury the idea for good and had no interest in pursuing it further.

[Tim Denee]

Yeah, I agree with what's been said. Gamism. Hyper-realistic gamism. Simulationism with a goal. Not always reproduction (a game where every character in every session was trying to reproduce would get... weird). And maybe with a dash of narrative structure.

Best of all, once you wrote the game, I imagine it wouldn't take much effort to use it for documentary-style days-in-the-life games about other animals (prehistoric mammals, modern beasts, modern humans(!), alien creatures, pokemon, elfs, elves, fantasy monsters... well, you get the picture).