What do I do with this setting?!

[Desdichado]

I am increasingly upset and personally offended by this great idea I had. No matter what I do with it, it seems to actively resist being used in any meaningful way, but it's too good an idea for me to let go, so maybe if I toss it out here to the braintrust you can help me figure out where to take it. I'll cross post this a few other places and see what I get, probably, too.

It all started a few years ago while I was watching The Lost World. Y'know, the second Jurassic park movie. There's the scene where Peter Postlethwaite and his team arrive in a bunch of Hummers, trucks, motorcycles and whatnot and chase down herds of dinosaurs, looping them with ropes and cables and shooting them with tranqs and generally trying to round up and capture as many as possible, of course. While watching this, I was immediately struck by it's similarity to Hatari! so much so that I pulled out the first movie and replaced it with the latter. Then I watched Hatari!---which if you've never seen it, is a movie set c. 1960 around a company that lives in a compound in East Africa and catches animals for a living for zoos and circuses. John Wayne headlines an ensemble cast that includes Elsa Martinelli, Hardy Krueger, Bruce Cabot, Red Buttons and others. It's great fun, and is punctuated by action sequences where they're actually driving around on the savannah trying to catch animals. Most of them just run, of course, and have to be roped down---John Wayne's character spends most of these scenes belted into a seat rigged to the front hood of a pickup truck. Others are a big more exciting---the rhino gores one character in the leg and smashes the truck quite a bit when they try to catch him, and the buffalo are hardly less belligerent.

Then the idea hit me; how about a company of adventurers who catch dinosaurs to sell to specialty zoos and whatnot, and live somewhere where dinosaurs actually are common? I'm not a huge fan of time travel, so I hatched up this idea of travelling to other planets via something not too disimilar to stargates. The technology was discovered when a number of scaly humanoid aliens suddenly arrive on earth and start interacting with humans. These guys are actually rather savage; they didn’t invent the technology, and they only know how to do basic maintainence and travel to worlds that are already pre-programmed in. Who did the programming and why, and why complete prehistoric ecosystems exist on other planets are theorized about by many, but not really understood--I've kinda got something similar to The Ancient's of Traveller fame involved to cover that angle. Gray aliens, who seem to operate on time frames of millions of years, have been manipulating evolution here and elsewhere for aims that only they understand.

In any case, I'm not sure I care to go about answering those types of mysteries right off the bat---but I want to do something with the setting, and I seem unable to figure out exactly what. I initially concieved of it when NaNoWriMo was imminent a few years ago, so I thought maybe I'd write a book/novel or at least series of short stories utilizing the setting, but I found that I was pretty much just retelling Hatari! except with dinosaurs. More or less. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I had hoped for more. Then I thought about adopting it to a RPG campaign, but a hookable plot driving story just didn't present itself. There's only so many times you can have encounters that consist of chasing down and subduing dinosaurs, fighting off rival hunter gangs, or exploring ancient gray alien ruins on strange worlds before it starts to get repetitive, so I wasn't quite sure how to do that either.

Now, just last night I rewatched Hatari! (something I do on average twice a year or so) and this setting came back to my mind and I decided I'm tired of not knowing what to do with it. Any ideas, anyone?

 

[Doug McCrae]

If you stick with straightforward dino hunting it might be best as a oneoff.

There was an old 2000AD strip called Flesh about cowboys from the future hunting dinos to extinction for meat. For a longer game give the PCs some tough opponents like Old One-Eye, a cunning tyrannosaur pack leader and a variety of other problems like rival hunters, unfriendly natives, druids, fey, elves and other protectors of nature. Or you could switch it around with the PCs playing dinos, smart lizard type creatures or 'Meat Is Murder' dino sympathisers.

 

[Desdichado]

Err... sorry; druids, fey and elves have no business in this setting. It's maybe a d20 Modern, or other modern era genre game, but it's certainly not a D&D type setting.

 

[Mallus]

Hmmm.... Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (there's room for Cadillacs in this, right?) meets Hatari!... I like it. But use present day Earth as the setting. Stargates are getting wee bit played out --look at the ratings over at SciFi.

Go with the time-honored lost valley hidden somewhere like Tibet or a geothermic sanctuary at one of the Poles.

If you use Tibet you can set the dino-wrangling against a backdrop of an armed conflict between the Chinese and Tibetan nationalists. That opens up a slew of possibilities; Dalai Lamas, both real and fake and perhaps ghostly, their mysterious connection to the dinosaurs, oily/noble CIA agents maintaining US interests by getting in the protagonists way, general spook-shpw operatives --say like an Alex Kriechek-- , wily British big-game hunters backed by Barnun and Bailey's corporate money, hell, even some ninja-acrobats out to steal a dinosaur for Cirque de Soliel...

Or you could go the Polar route, that way lies frozen cavemen and Amazons showing a lot of skin. Better if you a higher fantasy quotient; the Hollow Earth, ancient crystal-based technologies, that whole spiel...

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, that's certainly one way of doing it--I'm a huge fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, although I always thought Pellucidar and the Land that Time Forgot settings were among his weaker ones.

Actually, in my original draft, they travelled from world to world in ancient space barges that travelled via some kind of quantum jump across the space-time continuum--a vague kinda hyperspace equivalent. These space barges were literally millions of years old, and their discovery was purely accidental. Nobody knows if that's what they really were intended for, but it's a use that by trial and error they were able to discover and utilize.

I liked the idea that I could bin this as some kind of science fiction rather than purely fantastic escapism. I also really liked the idea of the pilots of these barges only barely understanding the merest fraction of what they were capable of and going through the motions almost ritualistically because they didn't know enough to deviate from them and go exploring beyond the preset settings.

I do like your idea of having competing organizations trying to stake claims and corner potential resource markets here, though--corporate armies and pirates (privateers?) as a potential recurring antagonist is nice. Especially if there's a strong possibility of incredibly ancient alien ruins to discover and plunder. That gives me the opportunity to create an almost pyrrhic Weyland-Yutani type slimey agenda.

 

[Stormborn]

Sounds like you actually have two good seeds for campaigns:
1. modern or near future dino hunters
2. primative race that uses advanced technology starships they barely understand

You might consider divorcing the two completly.

Set the dino hunters in a near future setting where man has found one (1) habitable planet that can be accessed with the star drives available. Unfortunatelly its in a full blown Jurrasic (or there abouts) mode and human habitation is precarious. Also unfortunately the tech level makes travel and communication back and forth with earth difficult. The first wave of colonist barely have been able to make permanent settlements on small islands off the coast of the main land. Seeing the need the second wave of colonists was smaller, but better armed. This wave was a mix of experts. On the one hand scientists who can study the flora and faune and on the other big game hunters, ex-soldiers, and mercenaries who can kill the flora and fauna. Set up three competing groups - a Chinese run colony, a European-Middle Eastern Corporartion, and the last hurrah of American space travel. The PCs can work for one of these or be "freelancers" who work for who ever is paying. Not only are the dinos wanted for study but in the near future efforts will have to be made to colonize and exploit the mainland if the colonies are to be at all successful.

The second idea lends itself to a number of things. You could use it in conjunction with the first but at a later point in the campaign, to take thigns to a new level once the thrill of dinohunting is beginng to play out. A space barge appears in orbit with a group of nasty saurians who see humans as poachers on their private reserve. Or you could have a whole campaing of such a think appearing above modern earth and the effects there of.

 

[Desdichado]

Hmm... I like those ideas too.

I especially like the idea of competing big interests that could pull the PCs in lots of different ways. That kind of stuff is what lends itself to adventures writing themselves.

 

[Kristian Serrano]

Talenta halflings do this on a daily basis in Eberron.

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

Some possibilities:

1. Straight up dino-hunters. Selling dinos to zoos or highest bidders.

2. Exotic creature hunters, see post 1, but allow for more than just dinos.

3. Gladiatorial adversaries...hunt dangeries creatures and bring them in to face off against other creatures or gladiators...

4. Perhaps the party is not only the hunters, but also the gladiators. When hunting the creatures, they have the benefits of superior equipment and technology. When battling them in the arena, they are much less equipped.

5. The party has to prepare areas to be populated, which includes the removal of dangerous creatures. Of course, you aren't allowed to kill them, but must instead capture and relocate them.

6. Remember the monster-hunting organization that was used to narrate the Ecology of... articles in Dragon magazine? The group hunts and captures dangerous creatures to catalog and study them.

Well, those are some ideas. I hope they help.

 

[Desdichado]

Talenta halflings do this on a daily basis in Eberron.

Yeah. I know. Thanks for that, though.