"Dinosaurs as writ: deadly or dudly?" Topic

Fellow Gaslightians, what's been your experience with using the beasties rules?

I'm designing a 'Primeval:1888' gig which will feature rival bands marauding across a time wracked England culminating inevitably with someone using a Nordenfelt gun on an Anklyosaur. To what results?

I fear the dinos in the rules might be a little easy to knock off. Who has first hand experience in the gentlemanly art of dinosaur shooting? Mods applied? Tales of woe and/or comedy?

Much obliged,

-TV

I used a T-rex in my recent Venus games. For stats I gave it Scuffle 13(x3) and a Save of 15 and an SRM of 0 and it could take 3 hits before it was killed.
It proved to be quite formitable; damaging or destroying a French walker in a couple runnnings of the game, and devouring almost an entire unit of Legionnaires in another game.

Yep, run it as a vehicle.

We do not know for sure how many chambers they had in their heart, so they may well have been 'burst movers' – like crocodiles (3 chambers, less efficient than 4), capable of bouts of great speed and energy, but then running out of power (sustain roll) suddenly.

Or they may have had 4 chambers, like birds and be capable of sustained effort like migratory birds (low start and sustain), or quick bursts often repeated like Quail (low start and higher sustain).

Maybe feathered dino's had 4 chamber hearts & leathery/scaley dinos had 3 like a croc? Let the players find out the hard way……..

My FFL guys get eaten by dinosaurs all the time. I figured it was because they werent really French, jusy pretending to be.

I've found that giving creatures multiple hits before they are killed and giving them multiple attacks makes them quite formidable. If they attack from ambush, they are unlikely to take fire from formed units before closing into hand-to-claw combat.

Buck

Thank you all. I think I'll run a few solitaire set ups before unleashing the entire Triassic period on Kent.

@brslee, your suggestion intrigues me. This might be a fun way to deal with oversized sauropods, randomly thrashing through the hedges and a couple local cottages. How did you append the random and fairly catastrophic damage table to reflect the uhhhh… organic nature of the target?

-TV