Campaign Toybox
Story: When the Saurians returned from their homeland they were horrified to find that their little terrarium in the western spiral arm had suffered a disaster. The atmosphere had cooled and all their pets were dead. Luckily they had developed technology to speed things up: a kind of eco-bomb which causes evolution to happen at a incredibly rapid rate, and in the direction they prefer. Soon enough, on earth, vast amounts of carbon dioxide fill the air. The surface temperature rises. The seas boil. Mammals die out at a fantastic rate. And in the space of just a few years, fish become lizards – and lizards become enormous. Before anybody is ready, the dinosaurs are back, and they’re living in our backyards – or what were our backyards, before we were eaten.
Luckily, humanity wasn’t entirely immune to the evolutionary bombs either. A few individuals with just the right DNA have experienced similar leaps up the scale, becoming super-smart and super-strong. Nor is humanity any slouch in terms of science or weapons. The armies of the world are on the job, and even a T-rex lies down when it gets a tank shell in the face. But the evolution is continuing, and the dinosaurs are adapting into things which can survive the army’s attacks. Things never seen before on earth. And they also have unseen allies above, as the Sauriuns aren’t simply going to wait until all the mammals die out…
Style and Structure: There’s a lot to do here, and a lot of dials to set. As soon as you’ve got dinosaurs, you think pulp, and Michael Crichton’s work is one of the most masterful applications of modern pulp ever seen. Turn up the comedy and you get the recent film Evolution. Turn up the silly and you get Godzilla: Final Wars. On the other hand, turning a few dials the other way creates a terrifying super-science or elite military setting, something akin to Aliens, only on Earth. Or you could focus on survivalists or normal people on the run, and make a disaster epic like The Day After Tomorrow. Whichever you choose, though, you end up with the same basic concept: a small group of people in the right place at the right time to actually do something to change the outcome of the war. Or maybe not – it could be a dark tale of humanity’s last hours. Will our heroes end up being little more than cavemen when the Saurians finally step back onto earth? Such a devolution could make for an epic, long-spanning campaign, charting the death of an entire world. Or this could be a one-shot tale of lasers and superheroes taking down kaiju on the rampage. This one is entirely up to you.
PCs and NPCs: This depends entirely on the structure, but scientific problems of this magnitude tend to attract several typical archetypes. Not only will there be presidents, generals and military geniuses (absolutely everyone from the “Situation Room”) down to the lowliest soldier, there will also be an enormous amount of emergency personnel and crisis management staff. Police, doctors, firemen, the local militia and community aid, plus random heroes like taxi drivers and construction workers can all get involved. Scientists will be needed out the wazoo, be they experts in DNA viruses, evolution, or especially dinosaurs. Speaking of science, don’t forget big game hunters and animal experts. In Australia, when you find a croc in your kitchen you call the croc guy, not the cops, and the Steve Irwins of the world will find their skills immensely transferable to these slightly bigger crocs. Finally, rapid human evolution allows for a dollop of super heroes which can change the whole nature of the campaign and allow for almost any kind of character concept. If you want Batman roping a T-Rex, go for it.
Plots and Villains: Grand apocalypse scenarios can be overwhelming at first; like any large event it can be difficult to break it down into little adventures. Go too small and you end up with just another post-apocalyptic shopping trip which could be in any setting. Go too large and the problem gets solved in half an hour. One trick can be to sit down and come up with a specific timetable for the advancing threat. Of course, PC actions can mess with the timetable, but it will provide a useful framework for a campaign to start with. It also allows you to build up the threat. One dinosaur is scary. Discovering that every lizard in the world is about to turn into a dinosaur is a perfect mid-campaign “oh no” moment. A good friend of mine recommends changing the threat level every three adventures, as three is a good tempo – one adventure for discovery and exploration, one adventure to get established and in control of things, and one to start taking the threat back to the enemy. Then you change it up on them, and/or raise the stakes.
As for villains, the Saurians are a natural enemy for the last act. Leading up to that, though, there’s plenty of people who will disagree on best strategies or be ready to use the chaos for their own ends. Some military types may already be working for the saurians, if you like the conspiracy feel; others may just be warhawks or sticklers who won’t let up from their own agendas. Making the powers that be outright enemies also stops PCs from solving problems by just letting the army handle it – they have to fight or fix the army first, or simply go off on their own. (The other problem with letting the army wade in, of course, is residual casualties, a potentially powerful moral dilemma for PCs to deal with.) It is absolutely essential that you have human villains, though: man versus nature really does get dull after a while, and every story benefits from some smug bastard you can punch in the face.
Sources: I’ve mentioned a few that led me to this idea already, but there are so many. Every version of King Kong shows the damage a big creature can do in an urban area – as does the end of Jurassic Park 2, an awful film full of enormously cool ideas (check out Peter Postlethwaite’s big game hunter for the perfect PC or NPC for this campaign – as is Bob Peck’s big game hunter in Jurassic Park 1). The world is also full of dinosaur information which is fantastic inspiration, and for great visuals try and track down the BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs. Don’t forget to look further afield though: once the dinosaurs start evolving you can end up with any manner of exciting results, and there are heaps of movies along these lines, from the archetypal Aliens to things like Pitch Black, Screamers and Species, plus take military-versus-supernatural-stuff inspiration from horror flicks like Dog Soldiers, the Resident Evil trilogy, 28 Days Later (and its sequel, 28 Weeks Later). Aliens inspired Warhammer 40K, too, and the Tyranids provide plenty of inspiration for how dinos might adapt to deal with military foes. The same goes for the Zerg in Starcraft, who were heavily copied from the ‘nids. And watch general disaster films and political films and TV shoes too. Every third episode of The West Wing or so, for example, provides an excellent example of the US dealing with a disaster, and there was a British series called Invasion which provided a grim look at England’s military totally failing to stop completely unassailable forces from conquering the world.
RPGs: For world-spanning military sources, Conspiracy X is a good start, as are the GURPS Black Ops books or D20 Modern. Eden’s Pulp Zombies provides dinosaur stats for use with Con X, and if you’re going pulp, you can consider Spirit of the Century or Hollow Earth Expedition, both excellent pulp games. Green Ronin’s Mutants and Masterminds has dinosaur stats too, and does low-super spy stuff very well indeed – and it can be easily combined with the wonderful Spycraft if you want more. If your game’s more like Godzilla: Final Wars, consider something over the top like Wushu or Feng Shui. Probably the best dinosaur guide I’ve ever seen in gaming though is in the now out-of-print supplement for Palladium’s TMNT, Transdimensional Turtles. It has more dinos than anything else and Palladium’s Ninjas and Superspies would be the perfect companion (and Heroes Unlimited can provide some supers if you need them). Despite Palladium’s clunky core system, their add-on rules and supplements were fantastic, and as we GM’s know, there are no useless sourcebooks, if you know what to look for.
