"Anyone Game Pirates AND Dinosaurs???" Topic

As in pirates shipwrecked on a lost world island?

How would muskets and cutlasses do against such creatures? Would the pirates have no chance at all?

Thanks.

CC

I think muskets would work pretty well, dinosaurs would be hard to miss. I suppose it would depend on the number of each.

I don't think it would be any fun unless you worked zombies in there too.

Allen

How would muskets and cutlasses do against such creatures?

Little bitty ones? OK, I guess.
Big ones, not so well.
Is that enough to quantify them in a chart?

The best way to do it is to not tell the Pirates what is coming…

Our Thrilling Expeditions: Valley of the Thunder Lizard title answers that question. :-) We have a set of scenarios that pits pirates against creatures from a Lost World.

Most of the scenarios with the bigger dinosaurs involve just getting out of the creatures way before it decides you make a good snack. With a fair bit of luck and some team work, you can bring them down.

Rich

Leave it to you CC to make me say, 'What the hell?'.

I gotta game with you sometime!

I like the idea, I wonder what kinda stats you could use… I am gaming LotHS, so there should be some WHFB that we should be able to bridge across…

well, scupper me wi' a marlinspike!

Could ye not have made this post on International Talk Like A Pirate Day, ye blaggardly Caribe?

Aarr well, tis a yar idea and such, I must confess, split me else.

This kind of reminds me of Spongebob Squarepants' "Robot Pirate Island" game.

AAaaaarrrr

RRRooooorrr

AAAAAAAAaaaaarrrrrrrrr I say!

RRRRRRooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Aye… you wins…. that's a mighty fine set of choppers you have there, mate… we'll just be backin up a bit here… HEY! That's me shootin hand! Give it back now!

(why to you think so many pirates have peg legs and hooks?)

Just lure the beasty out to the beach, then fire a broadside into it.

Tastes just like really gamey chicken.

Two days till Talk Like A Pirate Day.(Sept 19) I think muzzle loaders and swords would do okay against the bigger beasties, but you might need spears and bayonetts for the raptors as they ar supposed to be really fast. C.C. Darn you! Leading me down another what if rabbit hole.8<)

Arrrrr! Plenty o Raptors on them tropical islands, chupacabras too! Matey!

Arrrr ya daft? If yer goin ta make thet ther carnosaur feller walk the plank, yer gonna capsize us fur sure!

Methinks someone has read "Captain Nemo" by K. J. Anderson as this very scene is in the novel.

Yep, right after grafting weird space guys with dinos, I put on a game of "Lost Treasure Island World". The comment of "lure them to the beach" was quite appropriate. I gave the pirates wall and swivel guns on the launches, and larger guns to bear on the ship anchored in the lagoon. I adapted the statistics from several Dinosaur rules systems. The pirate weapons worked on up to medium or medium large creatures. Yes, they needed to run very fast from the big nasty ones, and the larger packs of Dromeosaurs were very challenging. When running from a carnivorous Dinosaur, it is not as important to run faster than the critter, as it is to run faster than a least one of your crew mates.

But they wouldn't be "Dinosaurs" they would be "Dragons".

And something I've always wondered. Why would a Dinosaur recognize a human as food? And why would a carnosaur the size of T-rex even bother with you. You don't even make a good appetizer. Unless you taste good with catsup.

Black powder weapons of the period of the Golden Age of Piracy are very loud and can give off considerable muzzle flashes. You wouldn't necessarily have to kill or even wound an average dinosaur to perhaps frighten it away. Also, there were boarding weapons that fired arrows and harpoons, and pirates could probably adapt muskets, blunderbusses, and certainly swivel guns for that purpose. For that matter, pirates could always make up batches of grenades. Blackbeard's men used "grenadoes" when he stormed aboard Maynard's ship in his famous last fight.

Mulligan

Of course the rank odor of your average hygienically challenged buccaneer would probably drive even the hungriest carnivore lurching away in search of more appetizing prey. Maybe you could add an upwind versus downwind morale (loss of appetite) roll for the dinosaur to see if it actually closes into combat.

"Just lure the beasty out to the beach, then fire a broadside into it."

Love the idea, though that's not what I meant when I said pirates were shipwrecked on the island.

If they were able to salvage a few swivel guns from some of the debris/flotsam on the beach, ok. Think of all cannon being out of reach underwater and you'll understand what I mean.

Camping at the beach wouldn't be a good idea either. Too close to the tree line, right?

Thanks.

CC

Why not? It's a great plot line. It's not that far off from the steamer crew scenes in "King Kong." Including "chase" routines into the game would be a lot of fun.

I haven't played this yet, but I'm getting ready for something like it.

I would only suggest two things:

#1 rather than keep track of hit points or something like that, just have a table that specifies the dino reaction to various numbers of musket hits. After all, you don't want a dino that just charges until it runs out of hit points, that's boring. 0-2 musket hits, no effect, 3-5 it pauses to scream, 6-9 it retreats for a turn, whatever. Now you can't kill it, but you can drive it off for a moment so you can get to the treasure.

#2 pirates don't have to be just musket and cutlass. They have cannon. Very hard to move, slow to load, and I don't think trying to aim one of those naval carriages at a moving dino would be very easy. Maybe the musket and cutlass guys just hold it off or coral it while the guys with the cannon line up the shot.

Pirates have gunpowder in barrels. Bury four or five, put a pile of meat on top, some kind of mechanism for knocking a candle when the dino steps near, its a seventeenth century anti-tank mine!

If you have gunpowder, you can make rockets. Homemade rockets plus dinosaurs equals fun for the whole family.

Or they could go Ewok and build a log-and-rock dropping trap.

Andrew

Methinks someone has read "Captain Nemo" by K. J. Anderson as this very scene is in the novel

Which scene?

. . . now you guys understand where I was going when, a while back, I suggested gaming Caprona/Caspak in 1721!!!

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CC

In the novel "Captain Nemo," Part III Mysterious Island, Nemo is alone on an island in the South Chine Sea having survived a pirate attack on the ship he had been a seaman on, falling overboard in a melee, and floating for a few days until washed up on this empty island. His main problem is loneliness, but he uses his inventiveness to make a home for himself (complete with a hang glider he designs and builds out of available material). Eventually he spots a ship while out gliding one day, builds a signal fire, and then discovers to his horror that it is the very pirate ship he had encountered once before. The pirates land on the island, Nemo uses all his ingenuity to sneak around planting traps and springing small ambushes, and then just when the pirates have him cornered, a massive earthquake hits and the cliff in front of him slides away and deus ex tyrannosaurus rex steps out from the until now hidden and completely unexpected underground kingdom. The pirate's muskets and pistols don't do much but enrage the "dragon" (yes, the pirates do call it that – hey, I'm not just making this up – it's all in the novel and you can read it for yourself) and it enjoys some nice pirate snacks. The clever and ruthless pirate captain stands off in the pirate ship and leaves the landing parties to their doom (munch, munch). Next day the pitiable remnants gather on the beach pleading with their captain to take them off when the remnants become breakfast and the tyrannosaurus rex decides to go after that big sea creature that looks so yummy. The diabolical pirate captain has a full broadside fired into the dinosaur (which does do it in) and Nemo uses this "distraction" to swim out, climb aboard, and… but that's another episode.

The novel is actually halfway decent (it helps to have read all of Jules Verne's novels as each has its part in this novel) and it is especially poignant when the author compares Verne's life experiences to his buddy Nemo's in a series of vignettes throughout the novel, but this episode is undoubtedly the cheesiest and most outrageously hard to take part. But I have to admit this episode would make one heck of a game.

Until I get some dinosaurs painted, a handfull of pirates should have a blast trying to adjust to these fellas:

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CC

Question:

Could a decent game be played with 12-15 shipwrecked pirates on a lost world island?

Or do I need to buy and paint a boatload of them (pardon the pun)?

Thanks.

CC

See the 'Big Pirate Adventure' thread on this board (16 August).
One dragon versus 100 pirates with 2 swivel guns.
They got the dragon in the end but it made a bit of a mess in the process.
We treated the dragon as a war elephant under our usual rules, not that the pirates knew that.
In any event,my pirates certainly won`t be taking on any Moghul armies!

I point out that your average sea dog is going to be very adept at scaling rigging and masts, so a mad dash up into the trees would be perfectly valid as a tactic, especially against raptors. Less so against TRex or stampeding herbivores, but still possible.

A flintlock rifle would work well against raptors (stat them as tigers, perhaps a touch faster?), and would likely (on a good roll) injure a TRex enough to convince it to get dinner elsewhere. Killing one would be very tricky with personal firearms, unless you feel like shooting it in the stomach a few times then waiting a week for infection to kill it.

Hmm… what about whaling harpoons? Those would work admirably well if properly employed. Were there flintlock harpoon guns, or were they still the hand-thrown ones in those days? Explosive-head harpoons would be downright fatal, but sadly a bit advanced for the period.

Andrew: Your comment about Dinosaurs and Rockets is making me imagine the following: Take the movie poster for Heavy Metal. Instead of the bird, you have a startled-looking dinosaur with rockets strapped to its sides, leaving a firey trail behind it. Instead of the girl, you have a grizzled pirate captain, waving his cutlass triumphantly.

Robin,

Climbing trees to get away from raptors didn't always work:

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CC

Terrement:

Re "Basing that on personal experience," I would have to answer "Yes" and "No." "Yes," I have fired black powder weapons. "No," I have not shot any dinosaurs. I just think you have a more interesting game if the animals involved are motivated by general animal psychology and have some underlying realistic patterns of behavior based on levels of aggression and experience with perceived threats--as opposed to being simple, vicious, predatory eating or stomping machines. Most animals run away from perceived threats, not toward them, unless of course the animal is truly desparate, defending its young or its den, backed in a corner, etc. I think it also ratchets up the tension of the game if sometimes you can stare the critter down and sometimes you can't. I would, of course, definitely make the pirates make a morale roll to stand. In my Us versus THEM! 50's B movie games, I always make the humans roll to see whether, upon the first sighting of a giant mutant ant they (i) react per the player's choice, (ii) flee panic stricken in a random direction away from the ant, (iii) stand paralyzed with shock and fear, or (iv) faint. In a pirates vs. dinos game, I'd make the pirates do a similar roll.

Mulligan

QUESTIONS:

* How often did pirates exile others on deserted islands?
* Or is that just Hollywood fiction?
* If true, would they leave single individuals or entire groups stranded?

CC

Thanks for the distraction CC….an opportunity to mix scales and eras!!
As for the exile business – I don't think that would be uncommon practice. Although they were not pirates obviously remember the Bounty….I think the idea was to take out all the deadwoodand anyone opposed to the majority/ringleader and simply take them out of the equation by getting rid of them. In a way I suppose to be left on an island would be quite generous, as opposed to being killed outright or (worse still) cast adrift in an open boat with no supplies….unless they knew they were going to be torn about by savages/beasties (not deserted then, I know).

Where are those prehistoric figures in your pictures from and what scale are they? Very nice.

Jules Verne and ERB have rightly been named as inspirational, and I'd like to throw another name into the mix…Dennis Wheatley. A very clever man who wrote an awful lot more than "The Devil Rides Out". Hard to find now probably but "Uncharted Seas" (something like that) is very good…

I'm really liking the cats and other wildlife listed here:

rlbps.com/RLBPHlbs.htm

When I finally get home I am placing an order for sure.

CC

Well, if I have to give up playing PVD (Pirates vs Dinosaurs) with 28mm figures, I guess i can try this in 15mm, right?

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What do you people think?

CC

QUESTIONS:

How often did pirates land on an island with Dinosaurs?

NOT!

How do you know? Maybe no one made it back to tell the tale!

CC

Here's a picture of the Korsars of Pellucidar:

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CC

"Who do your pirates fight?"

What a silly question: TMP link

CC

Would this be an appropriate point to mention my project lost-world tribeswomen who ride dinosaurs and ask whether I should buy the new or old Lizardmen stegadon, or is there a better saurian type monster with a howdah out there?

The heck with the pirates, I want see the lead chicks riding dinosaurs.

By the way, this probably wins my weekly Resurrected Pulp Post Award.

Not on dinosaurs, but in most 'lost worlds' Pleistocene mammals coexist with dinosaurs..
Maidenhead tribals
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And on dinosaurs indeed, Shadowforge Tribal heavy cavalry:
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The Maidenhead ones I intend to use as riders, you can get the riders separately though so I am doing so and will use them on plastic Cold Ones.
The Shadowforge heavy cavalry I don't really want as the beasts look like a stretched Barney being strangled.

"The Shadowforge heavy cavalry I don't really want as the beasts look like a stretched Barney being strangled."

LOL!!!

Chironex, when you have them painted up, please make sure to post a link to the photos.

Thanks.

CC

Sorry, that's going to be an awful long time. But then we've all started things it takes us years to paint haven't we?

Oh I have got the girls onto their mounts but there is much modding for their equipment remaining and their boobs are too naked for the games table.

"too naked for the games table"

Man. You must be gaming on the wrong tables!

CC

Imagine gaming Pellucidar in 15mm:

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Or, if anyone is interested in doing 18th century Caspak in 15mm, when it was named by the Italian navigator in 1721:

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Dan
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More pics of those 15mm pirates:

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Dan