Jurassic Terrain

Its been awhile since the last post on Dinosaur Hunting and Jussaic Adventues. This one is about representing tar pits and other prehistoric terrain on your table.


At the Lost World Safari yahoogroup, there have been some excellent suggestions about modelling tar pits and other pre-historic style terrain including land slides, hot springs, choking gasses and other nasties. I guess hunting 30 foot carnivorous beasts just wasnt dangerous enough!

Alan made the following suggestions:

"In our Lost World type game (see http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/Lost%20World/Lost_Wld_gal_01.htm and http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/Claymore05/balloonatic_intro.htm ) we had a number of "natural" occurrences on cards.

Naturally large tar pits and so on can be placed about the place in a more open way. Given the danger of entrapment the first turn is the important one. If the person/creature does not panic then an escape is likely. However, the more the victim panics the more likely they are to be trapped. The bigger they are the easier it is for them to get out on Move 1 but the more likely they are to get covered (sheer weight) if they thrash about.

I saw a reconstruction of a similar event on one of the Dino programmes on TV and this suggested that the majority of the animals that became trapped were old/sick/weak and the predators closed in - some of them becoming victims themselves. Once the victim(s) were dead or nearly dead the scavangers came in.

Tar pits:
That flat ground is a thin crust that gives way underfoot. Select a party member at random. Gets stuck in it and it takes a score of 8+ on a d10 to free them. Add 1for each additional person helping. Add more if they are using ropes, overhead in a balloon etc. These assistants may not shoot or fight this turn. A roll of 1 means that the victim is slowly immersed in tar and choking and baking dies a horrible death.

Strange Mist
A mist envelops the party. It blocks sight and reduces movement by half. Roll d6:
1,2 it lasts 3 turns
3,4 it lasts 2 turns
5,6 it lasts 1 turn
Roll d10 for each figure. If a 1 is rolled on any turn that figure is lost. When the mist clears roll a d6 for each turn the figure was lost and move away from their party in a random direction that number of inches.

Choking gas
A sudden jet of hot gas blasts from the ground. One random figure is knocked over and loses his/her weapon on a d10 roll of 1-3. The weapon may be recovered next go if they roll 7+

Hot spring
That flat ground is a thin crust that gives way underfoot. Select a party member at random. Falls in and it takes a full turn to free them.

Geyser
A sudden geyser of hot water blasts from the ground. One random figure is knocked over and so is the one following him. They lose their weapons on a d10 roll of 1-3. The weapon may be recovered next go if they roll 7+

Landslip
The cliff nearby gives way. D6 boulders bounce towards the party. Roll a d10 for each member within 9” needing 2+ to hit less one on the die per inch the boulder travels.

You will need to modify these for your own rules and situations particularly if the dinos are to be victims as well."

You can visit Alan's great Fantasy, VSF and wargaming site here:
http://www.morvalearth.co.uk/

There was also a good TMP thread over a year ago about modelling such things

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=70973