"Dinosaur Cowboys - my custom skirmish game" Topic

Know what would make the wild west even cooler? If it was the year 2285 and cowboys rode dinosaurs and fired laser six shooters.

I've been working on a set of skirmish rules off and on for the past couple of years, and I'm really getting close to a finished product now. My playtests have started to drop the "test" and just been me playing and having fun with the game.

In general you and an opponent control a Posse that consists of 1 Leader, 2-4 Members, and up to 1 Dinosaur. You customize each character by modifying their abilities, giving them unique traits, and buying them equipment (from 70+ weapons). Then you battle it out over the usual terrain, normally in 28mm scale (mainly since I had a bunch of figures at that scale to test with).

For example here are two Posses from my playtest yesterday. First is Coleman's Raiders: picture and his recent opponent The Duskhelm Posse: picture and here is an in-game photo from a recent battle report I did: picture

The game aims to be fast playing and uses D12s for dice, plus all the usual tabletop trappings like measuring tapes.

Anyways if it sounds interesting to you please check out dinosaurcowboys.wordpress.com (or grab the latest rulebook PDF directly: PDF link )

I'm really looking for some feedback, criticism, or ideas from the gaming community, so anything helps!

Sounds like big fun to me. I'll look through the rules later this weekend.

Rod

How could I NOT download rules of dinosaurs and cowboys?!

Thanks.

I'll read it and give it a try.

There is a company that makes a Dinosaur riding cowgirl.

What makes these guys "cowboys"? They just look like regular sci-fi figs. Nothing against the concept or the rules--I just want my cowboys to look like cowboys. So I guess that is my immediate feedback.

I'm excited to get some ideas from you crafty TMP guys!

@79thPA: That is totally a limitation of my figure collection. :) I've been so busy with the rules that I just use figures on hand instead of painting up something custom. I do have some more traditional Cowboy figures that I'm slowly making progress on, but until then it'll look a little less "wild west" and more "some stuff with guns from my figure case."
In an ideal world I would eventually end up with something like these: link

@Terrement: That's actually an oversized Velociraptor figure from the company called Papo: dinosaurfarm.com/vep.html

Now that's more like it.

Cowboys riding dinosaurs, that was in 2000ad (the comic) in the late 70's.

Totally! I think that would be "Flesh": link

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (Xenozoic Tales) was also a popular one.

I looked into The Valley of Gwangi, Dino-Riders, etc. Really anything I could find that was remotely related. I'm actually surprised it isn't a more popular genre when you consider how popular spaghetti westerns were back in the day.

In "the Year the Cloud Fell" by Giambastiani, it's the Indians that ride the dinosaurs.

link

RPG version of similar meme from a few years back, Broncosaurus Rex:

link

@Chris Palmer: Yeah I've been meaning to check those out, I find the idea of the natives getting Dinosaurs to balance the advanced technology of the settlers interesting.
The only other books I could find were by Brett Davis,
Bone Wars: link
Two Tiny Claws: link

@Battle Works Studios: I'd love to take some of their black-and-white art and put it into my rulebook, because they really capture the atmosphere well. I'm not a huge fan of their laser swords or the intelligent dinosaurs, but still nice to see something in the genre.

In the second photo, The Duskhelm Posse, the guy on the far left. What figure is that?
I have one sitting on my desk, and I have no idea where it came from!

Interesting idea. I think it will really come alive when you get the regular cowboy figures out fitted.

reaper has a Space Marshall that might fit in really well here in their Chronoscope line.

@DS6151: I wish I knew, that was one of my first figures from a painting class in the 90s. I always assumed it was from some old out of business company. The stand is solid metal instead of plastic though, and I remember that being a trend with the line (since I have another figure that I think comes from the same company).

I'll have to check out the Chronoscape Space Marshall, I had bought their Big Game Hunter for his fun safari look and I've liked the line so far.

To those interested I just finished writing, formatting, and uploading images for my "The Bounty at Caldwell Lake" battle report. I made a post in the battle report forum here TMP link or you can just hop to the report directly here link

Hope to hear any feedback from those who showed interest in the rules :)

Thanks for sharing!

I just finished writing up another of my playtests as a battle report. I had the most fun with this game so far, mainly I think because both Posses had Dinosaurs and it was set in a town instead of in the forest I normally use.

Anyways as before I posted it in the battle report forum here TMP link and the full report on my blog at link

So it sounded like some people (Rodrick, Bayushiseni) were intending to download the rules, so did you guys get a chance to look through them? Any feedback or advice?

Huzzah new battle report posted! This would be the Modoc Forest Dinoegg Heist, which I have here TMP link and the full AAR on my blog at link.

I actually just released v0.9 of the rules too, which include a bunch more improvements, tweaks, and fixes from my playtests. As before you can grab the latest rules at link or the PDF of v0.9 directly from PDF link.

Hope to hear some feedback soon!

Well this is something new for me, a fan of the game actually mocked up a new logo for the game. That's pretty wicked to me and I'm definitely excited to see what else they come up with.

The logo looks like this (or view full size):

And I briefly talk about it here.

Funny how much of a difference there is in quality between someone fumbling around in Photoshop (me) and someone who actually has talent for it (them!).

Thought I went away or got bored of the project didn't ya? In fact it's quite the opposite as I've been busy finalizing playtesting for a v1.0 release.

I just uploaded a new battle report titled The Great T-Rex Hunt and it's a bit of a different style than posse vs posse, since instead it's a group of hunters against one single powerful t-rex. Super fun and cinematic.

And remember you can always download the free rulebook if you're interested in getting into the game!

The title sounds like an old song…

Dinosaur Cowboy, hornback monsta'
There was a Dinosaur Cowboy in the heart of America
Stolen from Pellucidar, brought to America
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival

I mean it when I analyze the stench
To me it makes a lot of sense
How the hornback monsta' was wit da Dinosaur Cowboy
And he was taken from Pellucidar, brought to America
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival…

*****

Great T-rex

Looks like a huge amount of fun.

One thought though…for your demo pics and games I would try to flock the bases the same or close to your flocked terrain…they stand out.

Great t-rex.

Hey 28mmMan I definitely agree some matching flock would look great, unfortunately these are just a mishmash of figures from my sci-fi collection (for example I use the girl with the red hair for Traveller) so they don't have consistent stands. I'm hoping to eventually paint some more cowboy-ish figures and I'll ensure those are consistent.

Also the T-Rex is from Papo who do great high detail toys.

I figured. Just a thought.

:)

Papo stuff looks great.

The Allosaurus is ridiculous!

Looks like a realistic young Godzilla!

Yeah it's a pretty slick toy that almost borders on being called a "figure".

Full size

Full size

Crazy detail for sure!

I just need to buy their Ankylosaurus and I'll have the whole set, which will likely call for a dinosaur battle royale to celebrate.

I'm happy to announce Dinosaur Cowboys has reached v1.0 status and the core rules are now finalized! It's been a long 2 year haul with many revisions and playtests along the way. But now the core rules are finalized and done, hooray! Just in time for Halloween too :)

http://dinosaurcowboys.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/dinosaur-cowboys-v1-0-released

Well done!

It is always a welcome accomplishment when a vision goes from idea seed to gaming fruit!

Good stuff.

PS
My first thought was Thundarr…yes yes I know, cowboys not sun sword barbarians but the fun and zany elements could easily cross over IMO.

Now bring on the Sleestak!

In fact Land of The Lost is a great setting for this sort of game…with a time/dimensional sink there could be anything…with the recent movie (guilty pleasure, I have watched it in full at least 20 times and in part another 20 times) we see a flying saucer…cavemen…dinosaurs, some with a measure of intelligence…and more

*****

Saw this T-rex while pic hunting, thought to share…I like the red face…I heard red ones run faster!

Haha Land of the Lost would be a guilty pleasure. I feel the same way about Journey to the Center of the Earth (yeah the Brendan Fraser version, he's just so likable since The Mummy).
Rad Napoleon riding a dinosaur picture though, I'm going to have to post that one over at the blog. I love those extreme alternate history photoshops.

Hmmm Dinosaur Cheesecake anyone?

Studio McVey miniatures

Hey guys, it's been a busy month of programming for me as I've been working away on an online posse designer for Dinosaur Cowboys, and now it's at a stable point that I wanted to release to the public.

The designer is called The Saloon, and you can access it here: http://saloon.us.to
It's built using Java and JSF and is running on my home server (so don't expect the connection to be insanely fast, unfortunately). You can go through the entire process of building a posse from recruiting a leader, members, and a dinosaur, to choosing traits, equipment, and statistics for them. My favorite part is you can export your posse to a PDF! For example here is how the good guys from Tombstone look as a PDF.
If you run into any bugs or have any suggestions let me know here please!

Also the designer supports remote URL loading, which means you can save your creations to a link that can easily be shared on forums and the like. For example here are some posses I created in the app:
Drylands United Cattle Company
Tribe of the Blood Pact
Hope's Wardens

Hooray, another painstakingly formatted battle report available. I really need to streamline this process so I'm more motivated to write battle reports!

Anyways this one is called Fight for the Cannon and focused on a central objective of (you guessed it) a Cannon. Whoever controlled the Cannon could fire it (which resulted in a nice big explosion) so there was plenty of chaos around that.

Anyways if it sounds interesting to you check out the full report: http://dinosaurcowboys.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/battle-report-fight-for-the-cannon