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  Adventure Roleplaying for Children and Adults  
  
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  Creator Paul Elliott  
  All text © zozergames 2016 
   
  Cover    
  © Corbis Media Bakery 
   
  Interior Art 
  Samantha Joshi 
  Paul Elliott 
  Wikipedia Commons 
  iStock Photo 
   
  Cepheus Engine Character Sheet 
  Ian Stead 
   
  All rights reserved. Reproduction of this work by any means is expressly 
  forbidden. This book is fully compatible with the Cepheus Engine 
  roleplaying game, a Classic-Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming 
  System. Cepheus Engine and Samardan Press are the trademarks of 
  Jason "Flynn" Kemp,” and Zozer Games is in no way affiliated with either 
  Jason "Flynn" Kemp or Samardan Press™. 
   
  Visit Zozer Games at www.paulelliottbooks.com 
  Find me on Facebook as Zozer Games 
   
   
  
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  INTRODUCTION …………………………….. 5 
   
  1.  HOW TO TRAVEL IN TIME ……………. 7 
   
  2.  CHARACTERS ……………………………. 22 
   
  3.  TASK RESOLUTION ……………………. 49 
   
  4.  ROLEPLAYING WITH CHILDREN …… 54 
   
  5.  THE FIELD TRIP …………………………. 68 
   
  6.  DINOSAURS …………………………….. 80 
   
  7.  GAME RESOURCES ……………………. 115 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
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  Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research 
  415 California Hall  
  Berkeley, CA 94720-1900  
   
  hardybrooke@berkeley.edu            (510) 642-7666 
   
   
   
   
  Dear Student, 
   
  Congratulations! Your enrolment on the University of Berkeley's Camp Cretaceous Project 
  has been completed. You are now officially one of the team!   
   
  As you know the project uses amazing time travel technology, developed at the university, 
  to send small groups of researchers and scientists back in time to the Cretaceous period.  
  There they study dinosaurs up close, making Camp Cretaceous the ultimate wildlife 
  expedition. Each season we accept high school students from across the world who help 
  us with the fieldwork and gain valuable first-hand experience.   
   
  Please take time to study the kit list (enclosed) and ensure that you have a parent or 
  guardian sign the permission and insurance waiver form.  In addition, your doctor will need 
  to sign off the medical form we have included. The date of your field trip will be sent out to 
  you shortly. Watch the mail! 
   
  Yours sincerely, 
   
   
   
   
   
  Angela Hardybrooke 
  Assistant Site Director and Youth Mentor 
   
  Camp Cretaceous Project 
   
  enclosed:  kit list, permission form, insurance waiver, medical registration   
  
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  INTRODUCTION 
   
   
  Camp Cretaceous is a game designed specifically to be played with 
  children. It takes characters back into the Cretaceous period where they 
  carry out perilous missions in their attempts to study dinosaurs in their 
  natural environment. Players not only have to overcome natural 
  obstacles, hungry dinosaurs, puzzles and problems, but must do so in an 
  environment without the comforting presence of weaponry. The aim is to 
  challenge the players and give them problems to solve that do not rely on 
  violence. To use this book you will also need the rulebook called the 
  Cepheus Engine (see Chapter 7 - Game Resources) 
   
  Whilst working in a primary school I have run Camp Cretaceous many 
  times for small groups of children aged between 9 and 13. But I’ve also 
  run games for adults. Challenges like collecting a pteranodon egg, 
  weighing a triceratops, or filming a T-Rex attack at night, provide 
  fantastic entertainment for children and adults alike. Let's face it, 
  dinosaurs and children are a perfect mix, and from a roleplaying 
  perspective they provide all of the action, energy and tension you require 
  in a game without having to wave gun-toting bad guys around. In 
  addition the scenarios are active - player characters must achieve a goal 
  and by setting them within the prehistoric era, the resources and 
  assistance that they can call on is next to nothing. Isolated and alone, 
  with a task to perform, with dangerous animals all around and an 
  environment that is very unfriendly, the players are placed into a perfect 
  roleplaying situation.  
   
  For those referees who have never roleplayed with children I offer advice 
  based on over ten years of experience. There have been plenty of great 
  games played over the years, but also several disasters! Each set-back 
  taught me a great deal about the differences between adult and child 
  players. Camp Cretaceous can be played with a single child, groups of 3, 
  4 or 5 or even much large roleplaying groups- if you feel brave enough. 
  
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  With some modification of the traditional table-top format I have run RPG 
  sessions with 16 children simultaneously – and the games worked out 
  surprisingly well!  
   
  Children love props and so a number of resources, and plenty of 
  suggestions, are included with this game in order to maximise the 
  players’ immersion. You can start by using the letter you’ve just read as 
  the official invitation to your game session …  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
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  1 
  HOW TO TRAVEL IN TIME 
   
  Ten years ago, Anton Kubary and his team of physicists at Berkeley, 
  University of California, built a time machine, known in academic circles 
  as the Kubary Graviton Trap. In essence they had constructed a stabilised 
  wormhole that could be attenuated; while not transferring people and 
  materiel the wormhole is reduced in diameter to barely a few microns. At 
  levels of maximum energy output, however, the wormhole can be 
  widened to a diameter of up to 2500cm for periods of up to an hour.  
   
  Kubary's discovery was sensational and has rocked the world of science. 
  Periods of testing and evaluation indicated that the other end of the 
  Kubary wormhole seemed to thrash around distant prehistory, ranging 
  from 200 to 35 million years ago. Within a year the team had managed to 
  stabilise the wormhole, anchoring it with ground-breaking graviton wave 
  oscillation techniques. They settled on a date of 1 January 98,648,340 
  BCE, slap bang in the middle of the Cretaceous period, when Earth was 
  populated by dinosaurs and human beings were still millions of years 
  down the evolutionary line.  
   
  Immediately there were global concerns about the possible catastrophic 
  repercussions that might ensue should humans travel through to the 
  Cretaceous period. A study into the Cretaceous period at the end of the 
  Kubary wormhole could not determine whether indeed it was 'our' 
  Cretaceous age, or the Cretaceous period from some alternate timeline. 
  Following the findings of the international Keiller Committee, it was 
  decided to allow only limited human exploration of the Cretaceous 
  timeline. There would be no permanent construction, no refuse or 
  dumping of materials, no tourism and no extraction of raw materials that 
  were not sustainable.  
   
  
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  THE FACILITY 
  The Kubary wormhole machinery is installed within the Einstein-Rosen 
  building on Centennial Drive up in the hills above Berkeley. It is in good 
  company - a host of advanced science projects are also based in the 
  area. The Einstein-Rosen facility, known to everyone connected with 
  Camp Cretaceous as simply 'The Facility', has expanded in size five-fold in 
  the past ten years. Beginning life as a modest physics laboratory, the 
  Facility now includes suite of offices, a dormitory, a garage, a warehouse, 
  medical centre, workshop, data processing centre, assembly areas and 
  additional labs. Scientists invited to participate in field work and the 
  associated research bring with them funding from abroad, but 
  nevertheless the incredible cost of maintaining the Camp Cretaceous 
  facility is met mostly by the US government.  
   
  A note on terminology used by Berkeley staff might be helpful at this 
  point. The wormhole itself is known as either just 'the wormhole' or the 
  Kubary Graviton Trap. The machine that generates the wormhole is 
  referred to as the MGB, or Modulated Graviton Beam-generator. The MGB 
  is held inside the Facility, also called the Einstein-Rosen building. Camp 
  Cretaceous is the actual base of operations that has been established in 
  the Cretaceous period, although the entire operation, covering everything 
  from recruitment to logistics, research to training, is also known as the 
  Camp Cretaceous Project.  
    
  Surrounded by its ancillary warehouses, rooms and other facilities, the 
  actual MGB is housed in a bomb-proof and earthquake proof vault, 
  complete with two pairs of metre-thick doors that operate on an airlock 
  system. Prospective time travellers are always underwhelmed by the 
  appearance of the MGB, most expecting some glorious light-show straight 
  out of 2001 - A Space Odyssey. In fact, once the inner vault door is 
  opened the travellers are faced with a 20m long concrete corridor, 
  surrounded on all sides by pipework and complex bundles of wiring, the 
  corridor ends abruptly at another set of airlock doors. Once everyone and 
  everything is inside the vault, the countdown commences and the whine 
  of electro-magnetic field generators can be heard. Within only a few 
  
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  minutes the sudden pressure differences cause vapour clouds to form 
  within the corridor, sometimes referred to as the 'mists of time', although 
  this is a known atmospheric phenomenon. The fog thickens until the 
  travellers can see almost nothing beyond their own hands. Ionisation can 
  be felt, and most travellers observe dancing lights on their retinas. A 
  number also report suffering from mild tunnel vision. As the deafening 
  whine of the generators fades the travellers will hear new sounds, of wind 
  or rainfall, and the distant cry of some animal. The mist then clears 
  rapidly and the burning Cretaceous sun will be felt on uncovered skin.  
   
  THE TRENCH 
  Time travel has been achieved. Where are the travellers now? There is no 
  duplicate Modulated Graviton Beam-generator on the prehistoric side of 
  the time stream, instead they will find themselves in a concrete trench 
  built to the exact dimensions of the one inside the Berkeley facility. This 
  acts as a placeholder ('stand here') and space marked out in concrete 
  that indicates the precise location of this end of the wormhole once it is 
  widened and powered up to its fullest extent. There are concrete ramps 
  at either end, allowing vehicles to drive either out or in. Close to one side 
  of the Trench are a set of floodlights as well as a battery of scientific 
  instruments that record all aspects of a wormhole for study at this end. In 
  addition, alarms sound and lights flash at predetermined times before a 
  wormhole is brought into existence. Although nearly all of the wormholes 
  are scheduled, the use of an alarm system alerts staff at Camp 
  Cretaceous to an unscheduled wormhole activation.  
   
  To return to the present day, vehicles, personnel and equipment must 
  wait inside an assembly area, a simple concrete park at one end of the 
  trench. Once the alarms have sounded and the wormhole activates 
  (precisely one hour later) a fine mist fills the Trench before fading away 
  to reveal newcomers along with any vehicles and fresh supplies. Once 
  they have driven forwards, out the other end of the Trench, the 
  
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  departees drive down into the Trench. Now it is their turn. The second 
  wormhole always appears one hour after the first, allowing plenty of time 
  for people to get their kit together in the Trench. The mist returns and 
  the wormhole (almost silent now, without the raucous sounds of the 
  Facility's mega-watt generators) returns the staff and their vehicles back 
  to the Vault within the MGB in the present day.  
   
  This co-ordinated shuffle, allowing arrivals out of the Trench first before 
  departees can enter, is crucial. Early experiments illustrated the horrific 
  results that ensue when living things and even inanimate objects are in 
  the way of a materialising wormhole. There is and can never be any 
  communication between Camp Cretaceous and the Facility. If there has 
  been some terrible catastrophe, or a serious illness that needs immediate 
  hospitalisation, those in need of rescue must wait for a scheduled 
  wormhole to be generated, something that occurs once each week, on a 
  Monday afternoon (Cretaceous time). Data can be embedded into the 
  timing and oscillation of the wormhole with no undue effects, this data is 
  automatically picked up and recorded by the instrument packages 
  installed at the side of the Trench. This data includes reports, messages, 
  briefings, personnel files for all new arrivals, an amended timetable for 
  
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  wormhole generation and new research data fed back to Camp 
  Cretaceous after analysis by scientists back in the present day. Other 
  equipment installed within a rain shelter at the side of the Trench 
  includes a diesel generator for the floodlights, fire extinguishers, a 
  medical kit, landline telephone to Camp Cretaceous and emergency 
  survival supplies.  
   
   
   
  CAMP CRETACEOUS 
  For the safety of those using the wormhole, the area around the Trench 
  is surrounded by a perimeter fence. Camp Cretaceous is likewise fully 
  fenced off and a road about a kilometre long, connects the two 
  compounds. Again displaying plenty of caution, this connecting road is 
  also fenced off from the Cretaceous wilderness that lies beyond. After 
  arrival from the modern day, and driving out of the Trench, a visitor 
  passes through a heavy security gate to reach the road. Once he has 
  made the 1000 metre journey to the Camp, he must negotiate a second 
  heavy security gate before he can pull up and unload his vehicle.  
   
  What kind of amenities does Camp Cretaceous offer? At the heart of the 
  camp is the operations hut, a prefab building containing a couple of 
  offices, two briefing rooms and a control room filled with radios and a 
  couple of computers. The director and his assistant work from here with a 
  permanent staff of three. Around the operations hut are scattered various 
  ancillary buildings, (all prefabricated) they include a set of offices for 
  scientists, dormitories (one for staff, one for students), a powerplant, a 
  refectory, a workshop and vehicle shelter, toilet and shower block, water 
  recycling plant, a common room and  an equipment shed. In addition 
  there are two or three storage units and a number of tents, some pitched 
  by individuals or groups not wanting to sleep in the dorms, others that 
  are simply open-sided rain shelters, where staff can meet and chat, or 
  where outdoor activities can be carried out - whatever the weather.  
   
  
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  Fencing around the roadway, the Trench and Camp Cretaceous itself is 
  quite substantial. The fence is made up of steel bars, not chain-link, and 
  the bars are heavily welded. Not only that, but the fence is double 
  layered, separated by 30cm, with the inner fence bars aligned along a 
  different axis to the outer. Steel buttresses have been sunk against the 
  inner fence every 5m. Both fences are 15m high, and topped with a 
  series of steel blades mounted on a free-moving roller which aims to 
  deter dinosaurs from attempting to climb over or gain some kind of grip 
  on the top of the fence. Twenty metre sections of the outer fence can be 
  electrified from a control box mounted at waist height next to that 
  section. Not enough power is available to allow the continuous 
  electrification of the perimeter fence.  
   
  So far the defences have proved most effective, with the carnivores 
  coming now and then to scout out the camp at night, but otherwise 
  leaving the humans alone. With their machines, lights, generators and 
  strange colours and smells, dinosaurs simply don't recognise humans as 
  food. This all changes when they step out of the compound, and 
  especially when they step out of their vehicles! The author has been on 
  safari in Tanzania and Kenya, and noted with interest the total 
  indifference of large predators to a jeep full of tourists ... or even half a 
  dozen jeeps. Lions walk right in front of them, as if the vehicles did not 
  even exist. When the author's driver struck out across country, away from 
  the dirt track, he got the jeep stuck in a shallow ditch. A couple of hyenas 
  were ahead, lazily sleeping under an acacia tree. When the driver got out 
  of the jeep to let a little air out of the rear tyres, the hyenas knew 
  instantly and both sat up and stared in the jeep's direction. One then 
  began to trot slowly towards us ... it was as if food (the driver) suddenly 
  emerged onto the African plain out of nowhere! It was a most thrilling 
  and disturbing thing to watch, made all the more chilling as, at sunset 
  that day, the author caught sight of a single lioness stalking and then 
  bringing down a lone wildebeest.  
   
   
   
  
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  THE GATE 
  To get out into the wide, wondrous world of the Cretaceous, all visitors 
  have to pass through the Gate - the weakest spot in the perimeter fence. 
  A standard swing gate, no matter how thick or tall, is a liability since a 
  large and aggressive dinosaur could force it off its hinges or buckle its 
  frame. Instead a steel box was built, a cage constructed with steel bars 
  driven deep into the ground that provides access through the fence. On 
  its outer face, the box is just wide enough to accept the largest of the 
  vehicles used at Camp Cretaceous. A heavy steel gate doubles as a 
  drawbridge, which drops forward to allow access across a concrete ditch 
  filled with hundreds of sharpened steel spikes.  
   
  If the gate was raised, a dinosaur would have to step into the spike pit, 
  risking serious injury, and would then have to ram the raised drawbridge 
  which has behind it the full strength and resilience of the entire gateway 
  box, anchored as it is into the ground by a score of steel posts. Since the 
  box pierces the fence, the full height of the perimeter defences soars 
  above it. The gateway is operated from a small control booth that is 
  always manned by an armed guard. As an extra measure, the gateway 
  area is always floodlit at night. A second set of gates, this time swinging 
  outwards, are mounted on the inner face of the box which goes to create 
  an 'airlock' system. A jeep drives into the box, the inner gates are closed 
  and then the outer gate is opened. In this way the vulnerable interior of 
  the camp is never exposed directly to the deadly ferocity of the 
  Cretaceous.  
   
  PERSONNEL 
  Berkeley staff the camp with a number of administrators, service 
  personnel and technicians. The aim is provide a safe environment where 
  the needs of the academics are met. This is not a hotel, though, it is a 
  research camp and so everyone pulls together and many jobs are done 
  
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  by the scientists and graduate students themselves. The permanent, paid 
  staff positions number 36: 
   
   Director 
   Assistant Director 
   2 Logistics handlers 
   2 Comms operators 
   Security chief 
   Six security guards 
   Microlight Pilot 
   Cook 
   3 Assistant cooks 
   Chief Technician 
   5 Motor Mechanics  
   5 Engineers 
   3 IT Technicians 
   2 Doctors 
   2 Nurses 
   
  In addition, there is accommodation for 20 science personnel, usually a 
  mix of tenured academics on research expeditions and graduate students 
  assisting with that research. The camp has enough capacity (in food and 
  services, for example) to support an additional ten people living in tents 
  pitched within the compound (typically young students). Note that there 
  are no drivers, cleaners or waiters etc. many of these jobs are carried out 
  by the researchers themselves. A rota in the refectory is used to track 
  which research team is responsible for cleaning up the dining hall and 
  helping to serve up meals. Everyone pitches in. Likewise, another rota on 
  the wall of the common room tells teams when it is their turn to clean up, 
  and manage the operation of the tiny bar. Few complain about these 
  shared jobs, everyone understands that attending  Camp Cretaceous, 
  whether academic or student, is a privilege that no one wants to lose.  
   
  Academic staff at Camp Cretaceous are of varying levels of expertise and 
  seniority, based not just on their level of education, but on their role 
  within a research team.  The least qualified are the high school students, 
  
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  between 14 and 18 years of age.  These are invited by Camp Cretaceous 
  to participate in the project, a much sought after honour and an exciting 
  opportunity.    
   
  University undergraduates are studying for university degrees and are 
  typically aged between 18 and 22. University students aim to achieve a 
  bachelor's degree in a field of study known as a major. (Some can also 
  enrol in double majors or ‘minor’ in another field of study.) Most 
  undergraduates at Camp Cretaceous are in the midst of studying for a 
  four year Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) degree and have been invited to the 
  project by a professor or lecturer from their own university who is 
  conducting research at the camp. 
   
  Students wishing to pursue their degree subject further, sometimes after 
  several years of professional work, go on to study for an M.Sc. (Master’s 
  degree), which usually takes a year or two.  Little of this is class based, 
  the student will independently research his subject. Further advanced 
  study involves work on a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) course lasting 
  anything from three to ten years. Again, this is independent study with a 
  final thesis, or summary of the student’s findings, this forms the body of 
  work that will qualify him or her for their doctorate. Many PhD students 
  also lecture during their time at a university. Several Camp Cretaceous 
  projects are run by PhD students, who are actively working on a 
  particular thesis or line of investigation. Some of the work is ground-
  breaking and may involve new theories, or scientific discoveries. The 
  teaching faculty of a university can be broadly divided into lecturers (and 
  senior lecturers) and professors. In most Commonwealth countries, 
  professors are the most senior members of staff and the heads of 
  departments. In the USA, senior lecturers are also known as professors.    
   
   
  
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  VEHICLES 
  Camp Cretaceous is seriously restricted in the size of vehicles it operates 
  by the maximum diameter of the wormhole. Objects no wider than 2.5m 
  and no longer than 15m, can be safely brought through to the 
  Cretaceous.  
   
  The current motor pool at the camp contains the following: 
   
   2 x Quad ATV with roll cage and trailer 
   2 x Pickup Trucks 
   1 x Microlight Aircraft 
   7 x Four Wheel Drive Utility Vehicles 
   6 x Four Wheel Drive Safari Conversions 
   2 x Dirt-bikes 
   6 x Cargo Trailers for the Four Wheel Drives 
   1 x Four Wheel Loader and Excavator 
   1 x Four Wheel Recovery Truck 
   
  CLIMATE 
  It’s a mistake to think that the Age of the Dinosaurs was simply Earth at 
  some point in the distant past but with lots of jungle inhabited by some 
  very large predators. In many ways, a trip back in time to this era 
  resembles an expedition to an alien world. Perhaps nothing typifies this 
  more than the make-up of the atmosphere. In past decades scientists 
  have discovered ancient air bubbles trapped inside ice that provided a 
  sample of air from tens of thousands of years ago. More recently, though, 
  microscopic bubbles of air have been discovered within fossilised tree 
  resin (amber) that has survived from the Cretaceous period. These 
  perfectly preserved bubbles indicate that there was a growing 
  concentration of oxygen in the Cretaceous atmosphere, which rapidly 
  declined to modern levels following the great asteroid impact known as 
  
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  the K-T Event. The atmosphere of the Earth around 100 million years ago 
  was discovered to have 50% more oxygen than modern air. Cretaceous 
  air was supercharged with oxygen. 
   
  This, in part, explains the tremendous size of some dinosaur species - in 
  particular the ungainly flying dinosaurs like pteranodon. The metabolisms 
  of creatures that had evolved to live in such an atmosphere were 
  probably radically different from ours. It also explains the remains of 
  ancient charcoal that are often found associated with fossil remains – 
  forest and grassland fires must have been a common occurrence, any fire 
  started by lightning will have spread rapidly and burned more vigorously 
  than in the 21st century.  
   
  A referee wanting to add verisimilitude to his time travel game will want 
  to take this high oxygen content into account. With incendiary levels of 
  oxygen present, any fire burns fiercely and is extremely difficult to 
  extinguish. Even a rogue spark from equipment or vehicles can initiate an 
  uncontrolled conflagration. Flames used for cooking require only a trickle 
  of fuel and must be well protected and with such high levels of oxygen, 
  almost anything can catch fire, including clothing and tents. Most clothing 
  and equipment sent through the wormhole is made fire-resistant as much 
  as possible and motors (not only those powering vehicles, but also 
  generators) burn diesel which does not require a spark to initiate 
  combustion. Smoking is prohibited, and both matches and lighters are 
  carefully controlled items. Likewise, lightbulbs must be of the LED type 
  rather than those using electric filaments and only ‘flameless’ cook boxes 
  are allowed to be used while out in the wilderness. Read about these in 
  the Kit List provided in the Characters chapter.  
   
  GEOGRAPHY 
  North America during the Cretaceous period is not a single continent, a 
  sea (called the Western Interior Seaway) cuts the west coast and the 
  Rocky Mountains off from the east. This wide sea connects the Gulf of 
  Mexico in the south with the Arctic Ocean in the north. The easternmost 
  region is known as Appalachia, while the rugged and mountainous 
  
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  continent of the west is called Laramidia. It is on the west coast of 
  Laramidia that Camp Cretaceous is located.  
   
  All of the adventures in this game will take place within 100 km of the 
  camp because all humans are tied to this tiny patch of the 21st century by 
  their over-riding need for food, clean water, power, medicine, safety and 
  security. Transport is limited to four wheel drive vehicles, although the 
  camp does maintain a microlight aircraft for search and rescue as well as 
  animal tracking duties. Larger aircraft, such as helicopters, are too 
  complex to operate in the harsh Cretaceous environment and would 
  require a huge logistical and maintenance chain that the Kubary 
  wormhole just cannot support.  
   
   
   
  
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  The Expedition Map contains many important geographical features, all of 
  which can serve as viable settings for a Camp Cretaceous adventure.    
   
   Camp Cretaceous - The Camp sits on raised ground around 5 km 
  from the south bank of the Red River.  
   Carnegie Inlet – A wide shallow, tropical inlet of the Western 
  Seaway, much like the Gulf of Mexico or Caribbean today. 
  Plesiosaurs, icthysosaurs and mosasurs have all been seen here.   
   Chapman Meadows – A fertile plain or grasses and moss, dotted 
  with thick coniferous groves of monkey puzzles, cypresses and 
  cycads. Small streams and rivers rush down from the Sierra 
  Mountains into the Inlet. The Meadows teem with herbivores of all 
  kinds, they migrate here through Raptor Valley from the north each 
  year.  
   Escarpment – A steep-sided escarpment, a 30 km-long cliff that in 
  some places reaches 600m in height. It proves an impassable barrier 
  for many herds, forcing them south through Raptor Valley.  
   Eyrie – A mountainous island in the Inlet, clad in tree ferns and 
  gingkoes, home to pteranodons. No-one has every explored Eyrie.   
   North Plain – A wide plain of mosses and grasses, filled with patches 
  of coniferous forest and stands of magnolia, beech and sassafras. 
  Herbivores like iguanadon, styracosaurus and alamosaurus all graze 
  here, moving south in the winter for the fertile lands of Chapman 
  Meadows.  
   Raptor Valley – A treacherous and rocky valley filled with pools, 
  vegetation and crumbling crags that represent of one of the few 
  ways in which herbivores can reach their migration lands in 
  Chapman Meadows.  As the name suggests, raptors and other 
  predators routinely inhabit the valley and prey on the herds moving 
  through their territory.  
   River, Muddy – A slow-moving river, winding its way from the 
  mountains to the sea.  
   River, Nevermind – A river filled with rapids and waterfalls that runs 
  from the Rubble Pile to the sea.  
   River, Red – An important river that separates the North Plains from 
  the South Plains, it is wide and difficult to cross, forcing herds into a 
  
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  small number of ‘choke points’ where crossings are made en masse. 
  In this it resembles the Mara River in Kenya, used by herds of 
  wildebeest and zebra to cross from the Masai Mara onto the plains 
  of the Serengeti. Crocodiles wait at these crossing points, as do 
  vultures, hyenas and jackals, all waiting for the herd to cross. At the 
  Red River, crocodiles also swim lazily, waiting for dinosaurs to mass 
  at the river banks. Other predators include raptor, tyrannosaur, and 
  albertosaurus. 
   Rubble Pile – A broken and smashed mountain chain, filled with 
  rubble-strewn valleys, dangerous scree slopes and winding 
  precipitous canyons.  
   Scar Canyon – Scar Canyon is a steep-sided river valley where the 
  stream tumbles over rock outcrops and churns around deep pools. 
  Much of the valley is filled with tree ferns and banks of horsetails 
  that often cut out the sun, filling the valley with shade.    
   Sierra Mountains – The heart of the Rocky Mountains, these peaks 
  form a long chain running north and south.   
   Skull Island – A remote and unexplored island covered with 
  magnolia, cycads and ferns. It sits at the centre of the Thousand 
  Fathom Swamp.  
   Southern Forest – A mangrove forest of swamp cypresses, where 
  tangled tree roots block any movement forwards, and the sea moves 
  in and out with the tides. Lagoons and channels filled with fish often 
  remain, even when the tide drops. Mud-banks are everywhere.  
   South Plain – The southern part of the North Plain, filled with 
  herbivores that are moving south or north on their migration route.  
   Thousand Fathom Swamp – A large depression in the landscape to 
  the west of the Sierras is the location of a wide swamp, filled with 
  pools and reed beds, and dotted with islands of willow, cycads and 
  elm tree. Streams from the mountains drain into these muddy 
  wetlands, and to the west, the Muddy River flows from the swamps 
  out to the coast. Few expeditions have been made in to this 
  treacherous landscape.   
   
  
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  2 
  CHARACTERS 
   
  There are two ways of running Camp Cretaceous, each one with its own 
  method of creating characters. The first is the default, with children or 
  young adults playing the game and taking the part of teenaged 
  characters (aged between 13 and 17). The second allows players that are 
  adults (a typical roleplaying premise) to play scientists, technicians and 
  camp leaders, etc. If you are playing as a family, then it is easy to mix 
  both character types together! 
   
  1 - CREATING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS 
  When roleplaying with children, character creation is usually something to 
  be avoided. You may initially have sold the game on its exciting premise, 
  its freedom of action and its perilous situations. But when the first 
  precious session is filled with nothing more than form-filling, dice rolling 
  and the arbitrary selection of points and labels with very little context, 
  you have killed the game completely. On a couple of occasions I lost a 
  player this way who never showed up for the game the following week.  
   
  This game gets character creation over with quickly and it differs from the 
  normal Cepheus Engines procedure.  
   
  Characteristics: Set all the characteristics at 5, then allow each player 
  to increase one of them by +2 and increase two other scores by +1. 
   
  Skills: Two skills are chosen from the list below. These will all be at level 
  0, but that terminology will certainly confuse the children and so is best 
  left off.  
   
   
   
  
  23 | P a g e  
   
   
  CHARACTER SKILL LIST 
  Athletics 
  Performing difficult physical tasks. 
  Climbing 
  Skill in climbing rock faces, trees, etc.  
  Comms 
  Using radios and other types of electronic devices. 
  Computer 
  Using computers in the wilderness.  
  Dart Gun 
  Shooting a tranquilizer gun. 
  Leadership 
  Provides a bonus of +1 for team efforts.  
  Mechanics 
  This is a general repair skill.  
  Medicine 
  Ability to give first aid.  
  Navigation 
  Knowledge of maps, compasses and direction finding.  
  Survival 
  Wilderness crafts: making fires, tools, camps, etc. 
  Recon 
  Scouting out dangers and spotting threats. 
  Wheeled Vehicle 
  Driving jeeps. 
   
  Kit List: Next hand the players a kit list (see later in this chapter) from 
  which they can select four objects.  
   
  Other Details: There is then some consideration of a name and what 
  the character is wearing. Play can now begin.  
   
  The process ends up being fast and simple. However, depending on the 
  age or the temperament of the children in your game, you may wish 
  instead to use pregenerated characters. 
   
  Pregenerated Characters 
  Like any good action movie you should hit the ground running, without 
  preamble, long briefing sessions or character creation. One excellent way 
  around this is to use pregenerated characters. Some adult players may 
  hold their nose up at the use of pregen characters, but children, as my 
  experience shows, do not do an awful lot of roleplaying (i.e. playing a 
  'role'). Invariably they play themselves, only with a cool skill or certain 
  affectation, in part because they will find it difficult, but also due to 
  restrictions of time. See the later chapter on Roleplaying With Children for 
  more on this.  
   
  
  24 | P a g e  
   
   
  A more important reason for using pregenerated characters is the view of 
  children that another player's character is 'better'. Fairness and equality 
  at the start of the game is paramount, should one player make a few 
  inspired dice rolls during character generation, then another player might 
  deem it as unfair. I have had players sulk through a game, constantly 
  decrying their own character as useless and refusing to participate in any 
  meaningful way. This ruins the experience for you, the other players and 
  of course the child who feels hard done by. If every child thinks their 
  character is as skilled, effective and useful as everyone else, then you 
  start the game with every player on-board. Of course the trick here is to 
  make sure that every character really is as skilled, effective and useful as 
  all the rest!  
   
  You will find a blank version of the character sheet in this chapter. The 
  referee can fill in the skills and the equipment he wants, adding names, 
  back-stories or anything else that will personalize the characters. Empty 
  sections on the sheet allow the referee to choose a name and add some 
  item of clothing or a belonging that individualises that character. You 
  really don't need to go into any more depth than that. Camp Cretaceous 
  is not really about building in-depth characters, with complex 
  personalities and layers of backstory. The character is simply an avatar, a 
  set of eyes and ears, hands and feet through which the children can 
  experience life within the prehistoric past - try and remember to treat it in 
  that vein.  
   
  Allocating Characters 
  Simply handing out characters randomly to children will not do; a choice 
  should be offered to the players, however limited. Again, this will quash 
  any feelings of unfairness. Describe each character to the players, and 
  then go around the table asking each player which they would like to 
  play, often they may trade, or suggest that one player might like a 
  particular character. This process is usually fairly quick and rarely a 
  problem, particularly since you will have already explained to everyone 
  around the table that all are equal and all are useful and that each one 
  has a crucial role to play in the upcoming adventure. 
   
  
  25 | P a g e  
   
   
  If you know your players, then you can actually assign the character 
  sheets personally. You might even want to tell the child, as you do so, 
  why you think he or she is suited to that character. This personalisation 
  of the role, explaining to the player how the character is tailored to them, 
  creates a strong bond between character and player. But you need to 
  know a little about the children in your group for this to work.  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
  26 | P a g e  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  Character Name:  
   
   
   
  Player: 
  Hometown:   
   
   
   
   
  Age (13 -17):   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  STR 
  DEX 
  END 
  INT 
  EDU 
  SOC 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  SKILLS 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  Appearance: 
   
  GEAR 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
  27 | P a g e  
   
   
  The Character Sheet 
  Draw the children’s attention to the different sections of the character 
  sheet: 
   
  Character Name:  Write in the name of your student, it might be the 
  child’s middle name or the name of a singer or actor. Don’t let players 
  stall the game while deciding. The game can still be played with an un-
  named character, everyone will simply refer to he or she by the player’s 
  name! 
   
  Player: Ask the children to write their own name here. 
   
  Hometown: Pick a town in the US or whatever country they are playing 
  in, those struggling to think of something can put in the capital city, or 
  their own town. Keep the session moving at all times, don’t let player 
  indecision stop the start of the game.  
   
  Age: The children can choose their player’s age, any number between 13 
  and 17. If they really can’t decide, let them roll 1D and add 11. 
   
  Description: There follows a brief description of the character, read this 
  out to the players while they choose the character they want to play.  
   
  Characteristics: The standard six 2D6 characteristics are found in the 
  centre of the sheet, complete with child-friendly logos. Since the children 
  will have quite moderate characteristic values, treat all characteristic 
  modifiers as 0.   
   
  Skills: Each student starts the game with two background skills. In 
  Traveller terms these skills are all rated at level 0, although this 
  terminology will definitely confuse the children! The rating is left off for 
  this reason.  
   
  Appearance: Ask the children to think of one item of clothing, or some 
  accessory their teenager wears. Disallow anything that wouldn’t be 
  suitable, or that was chosen to get laughs or have a shock effect. 
  
  28 | P a g e  
   
   
  Baseball caps, converse sneakers, a bullet belt, camo trousers, a band T-
  shirt, sunshades, there are lots of options and the idea is to give each 
  character some ‘shtick’ that differentiates him or her from all the others, 
  and allows all of the players to paint that character in their mind’s eye.  
   
  Gear: The spaces allocated for gear on the character sheet serve a 
  purpose, they represent the total amount of equipment or number of 
  items that the character can carry at any one time. Each item is 
  considered to be a typical man-portable object, anything from a sleeping 
  bag, torch, binoculars, camera or tarpaulin. Some items may be larger 
  than others, but stick rigidly to the 10 items per character rule if you can. 
  Any more than 5 items will require a rucksack.  
   
  When the mission briefing begins, you can hand the player’s a KIT LIST 
  from which every player can select four objects. At this point they will 
  know where they are going and be able to talk with one another about 
  what equipment thy will need to carry out their mission. There should be 
  some active discussion at this time.   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
  29 | P a g e  
   
   
  2 - CREATING SCIENTISTS 
  Camp Cretaceous has been designed to be played with children. 
  However, the game is still suitable for adults! They can create grown-up 
  academics that tear around the landscape of Camp Cretaceous in search 
  of new data and that crucial bit of evidence that will prove their pet 
  theory and increase their reputation. These university professors and PhD 
  graduates will be the stars of the game. The Core rules even have a 
  Scientist career which is perfectly suited to the university professors and 
  PhD graduates who are the stars of the game. Create characters in the 
  normal way. Background skills are allocated as per the Core Book, 
  although Homeworld does not apply, instead allow Background skills to 
  be selected only from the Primary Education List.  
   
  University 
  A university education is a must for any character contemplating a career 
  in the sciences. A degree course requires one full term, and should be 
  attended before the character enters the Scientist career.  
   
  Entry Task: Edu 8+ 
   
  DM+1 if Soc 9+ 
  DM+1 if Int 10+ 
   
  Graduation Task: Int 8+. If 10+ is rolled then the student has graduated 
  with honours. 
   
  Graduation Benefits: + 2 Education, in addition select two skills from the 
  list below, one at level 1 and the other at level 2.  
   
  Admin, Advocate, Animals (farming or veterinary), Broker, Comms, 
  Computers, Engineer (any), Language (any), Life Sciences, Navigation, 
  Physical Sciences, Social Sciences. 
   
  
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  Note that Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Physical Sciences have their 
  own specialisations in Camp Cretaceous than in the Core Book. See 
  below.  
   
  Characters failing to graduate still increase their Edu by +1, and are 
  allowed to gain two skills from the list at level 0. 
   
  Becoming a Scientist 
  All characters should be Scientists. There are a couple of alternative 
  occupations, but they are outnumbered by the scientists, these include 
  Physician, Hunter and Technician. 
   
  Characters who have just graduated from university gain a +1 for 
  Enlistment, those graduating with honours gain a +2 bonus.  
   
  Characters do not Muster Out, roll 1d for the maximum number of Terms 
  served.  
   
  Revising the Science skills for Scientists 
  Use the following Science skill cascade tree when a science skill is gained 
  by the character: 
   
  Physical Sciences 
  • 
  Astronomy - Study of stars, planets and celestial objects. 
  • 
  Chemistry - Study of matter at the molecular, macromolecular and 
  atomic level.  
  • 
  Geography* - Study of the Earth's surface, its form, arrangement 
  and the processes that shape it.  
  • 
  Geology* -Study of the physical structure, substance and processes 
  of planet Earth. 
  • 
  Palaeclimatology* - Study of climatic conditions in the geologic 
  past, using evidence found in glacial deposits, fossils, and 
  sediments. 
  • 
  Palaeoecology* - Study of fossils, rocks and minerals to 
  reconstruct the ecosystems of the past. 
  
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  • 
  Palaeontology* - Study of life from prehistoric times, as 
  represented by the survival of fossil plants, animals, and other 
  organisms. Trained paleontologists are valued experts at Camp 
  Cretaceous, since they are intimately familiar with the structure and 
  types of plant and animal species, although only from their fossil 
  remains.  
  • 
  Physics - Study of the fundamental scientific forces.  
   
  Life Sciences 
  • 
  Biology – Study of broad biological processes, including physiology, 
  molecular biology, biochemistry and microbiology* 
  • 
  Botany* - Study of modern plant life. The skill is of use in the 
  Cretaceous since it helps to fill in the blanks left by the fossil record. 
  It can shed light on prehistoric plants by comparing modern plant 
  life with prehistoric equivalents.  
  • 
  Genetics - Genetics is the study of characteristic transfer from 
  generation to generation, and the variations within plant and animal 
  species of the world. Traits are tracked through species.  
  • 
  Zoology* - Study of modern animal life. The skill is of use in the 
  Cretaceous since it helps to fill in the blanks left by the fossil record. 
  It can shed light on dinosaurs by comparing modern animals with 
  prehistoric equivalents.  
   
  Social Sciences 
  • 
  Archaeology – Study of ancient human cultures from their physical 
  remains, buildings and tools.  
  • 
  Economics 
  – 
  Study 
  of 
  the 
  production, 
  distribution, 
  and 
  consumption of commodities and the human behaviour associated 
  with these.  
  • 
  History – Study of the human past through written records, 
  photographs and film.  
  • 
  Linguistics – Study of how human languages are constructed and 
  used, both today and in the past.  
  • 
  Philosophy – Study of the fundamental basis for knowledge, 
  reality, and existence. Chaos theory is philosophy, and much of the 
  
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  theory for time travel, including the concept of temporal paradox, is 
  also covered by the study of philosophy.  
  • 
  Psychology – Study of mental processes and behaviour of humans, 
  including both individuals and groups. An important field of 
  psychology called animal cognition has great implications for studies 
  in the Cretaceous.   
   
  (*) Those skills marked with an asterisk are eminently suited to Camp 
  Cretaceous scientists, characters with these skills will get a chance to use 
  them in the field.   
   
  Belongings 
  Scientists can begin the game with savings amounting to 1D6 x $3000. Of 
  course all of this is useless in the Cretaceous but it may come into play 
  should the referee extend the scenarios into the modern day environment 
  as well. 
   
  When the mission briefing begins, you can hand the players a kit list from 
  which each can select four objects. At this point they will know where 
  they are going and be able to talk with one another about what 
  equipment they will need to carry out their mission. There should be 
  some active discussion at this time. The players might decide to pool their 
  options and then select all objects as a group, handing them out to those 
  who need them, and placing those that are left into the back of the 
  team’s four-wheel drive.  
   
  All scientist characters start the game with:  
   Rucksack 
   Torch 
   Pocket Knife 
   1 litre Water Canteen 
   Rain Jacket 
   Smart Phone1 
   First Aid Kit2 
   
  
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  1. Smart phones are used as cameras, diaries, calendars, hand-held 
  libraries, improvised torches, calculators and many other digital 
  tools. Blue tooth capability allows most smart phones to 
  communicate with one another within several metres, or even 
  control or connect with some computer controlled devices. Without 
  any microwave infrastructure, however, they are useless as 
  telephones, for either voice or text communication. 
  2. The first aid kit contains essential items: a pressure dressing, a 
  bandage, a shot of morphine, a shot of antihistamine, a pack of 
  bandaids and a strip of water purification tablets. Travelers to the 
  Cretaceous are always trained to use a victim’s first aid kit on 
  themselves, rather than dip into their own supply of medicines.  
   
   
   
   
   
  
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  KIT LIST 
   
  PERSONAL ITEMS 
  Bluetooth Speaker: A cylindrical speaker, mounted in shock proof case. It 
  can be used in camp to provide some after-hours entertainment, although 
  scientists and students may find other uses for it. The Bluetooth speaker 
  receives wireless transmissions directly from a smartphone or tablet from 
  a maximum range of 10 metres. $50. 0.5kg.  
   
  Bottles of (Your Favourite) Soda: A shrink-wrapped pack of 4 plastic 
  bottles with screw-top caps, containing your favourite flavour of soda. 
  They are refreshing to drink and make versatile containers when empty. 
  Some enterprising students may find other uses for soda bottles.  
   
  Deodorant: Keeping you cool in the Cretaceous. $5. 0.2kg. 
   
  Earphones: These in-ear phones plug into smartphones, tablets, hand 
  radios and even radio trackers. Ideal when absolute silence in the 
  presence of a 9-ton carnivore means the difference between life and 
  death. $20. Negligible weight. 
   
  Sun cream: The danger of sunburn and sunstroke is high, Factor 50 
  suncream is recommended in all Camp safety briefings. $20. 0.2kg. 
   
  CAMPING EQUIPMENT 
  Cooking Kit: This cooking kit includes mess tins, cups and cutlery for six 
  people. $150. 3 kg. 
   
  Cooking Stove, Flameless: This revolutionary stove comes in the form of a 
  plastic tub with its own metal liner, into which precooked food (ideally a 
  meal from a ration pack) can be placed. A heat block is put underneath 
  the metal tray and water poured on, which activates it. The lid is sealed 
  and the block heats up to thoroughly warm the food – it will be piping hot 
  within 20 minutes. There is no flame and the heat does not penetrate the 
  
  37 | P a g e  
   
   
  plastic box. Ration packs at Camp Cretaceous always include a couple of 
  heat blocks with which to heat the food. $40. 1kg. 
   
  Electric Fence: This portable electric fence is 1m high and 30m long, it is 
  mounted on 15 plastic stakes and can be rolled up and slid into a 1m long 
  carry bag. It comes with a rechargeable power cell that has a duration of 
  4 days. The charge given off acts as a mild irritant, similar to the stock 
  fences used in agriculture, it will deter small to mid-sized dinosaurs, but 
  larger herbivores and carnivores probably won’t even notice it. $600. 
  10kg.  
   
  First Aid Kit: A small medical kit carried 
  on a pouch that fits onto a rucksack or 
  belt. It contains basic items, bandages, 
  antibiotics, 
  painkillers, 
  eye-wash, 
  antihistamines and sticking plasters. It 
  contains 
  enough 
  supplies 
  for 
  two 
  treatments. $50. 0.5kg 
   
  Floodlight:  A portable LED floodlight 
  mounted on a telescopic pole. The pole 
  ends in four legs than can be pegged into 
  the ground. At the base of each light is a 
  rechargeable power cell. The floodlight 
  has power for 8 hours of continuous 
  operation. $400. 8kg.  
   
  Folding Tables and Chairs: A folding camp table and six chairs. Use the 
  table for dining, or as an equipment desk. $100. 18kg.  
   
  Food & Water: A 24-hour ration pack provides a range of meals and 
  snacks for one person for a single day, and includes 1 litre of additional 
  water for cooking and making hot drinks. $30. 3kg.  
   
   
  
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  Hammock with Insect Net: Hammocks are the preferred method of 
  sleeping in tropical environments where giant poisonous centipedes roam 
  freely over the damp forest floor. Includes bungee cord and insect net 
  which is suspended over the hammock. $42. 1kg. 
   
  Lantern: Folding lantern for illumination of a camp site. It comes with a 7 
  hour power cell and has a wire handle for carrying or hanging from a 
  branch or tent pole. $30. 1.5kg. 
   
  LED Flashlight: Powerful LED flashlight, providing illumination out to 50m. 
  It is provided with rechargeable batteries (4 hours of continuous 
  operation) and an impact resistant case. $100. 1kg.  
   
  LED Headlamp: This LED headlamp provides 
  hands-free illumination out to 10m and its 
  rechargeable battery has a life of 4 hours. 
  $20. 0.5kg. 
   
  Portable Generator: A portable power unit 
  can be invaluable in a timeline without 
  electricity. This 7000 watt generator can fit in 
  the back of a four-wheel drive, it provides 
  continuous electricity for 7 hours and includes 
  a charging adaptor for most types of power cell. It runs on diesel, 
  requiring 20 litres for a full tank and has an electric starter. Be warned 
  that the generator is a diesel engine and makes a lot of noise. $4500. 
  170kg (with full tank).  
   
  Sleeping Bag: A warm and compact sleeping bag. $35.1.5kg. 
   
  Tarpaulin and Guy Ropes: A 3m² plastic sheet that can be strung up 
  between tree trunks in order to form a shelter. $50. 1kg.  
   
  Tent, 2-man: A dome tent, with integral insect net and steel pegs. Tents 
  are hot, sweaty and stuffy places, and not too popular amongst Camp 
  
  39 | P a g e  
   
   
  Cretaceous staff, who seem to prefer hammocks, strung up in the open. 
  $150. 2kg.  
   
  WILDERNESS EQUIPMENT 
  Binoculars: These 16x50 wide-angle binoculars are popularly used by 
  hunters and wildlife experts. They include an impact resistant outer 
  coating (mild shocks only). $50. 1kg. 
   
  Camouflage Netting: This camouflage netting has a tropical leaf pattern, 
  useful for hiding four-wheel drives, tents, equipment … or traps. It is 4m 
  x 4m in size. $50. 2kg. 
   
  Climbing Kit: This kit includes two 50m ropes used for climbing or 
  rappelling; it also comes with harnesses, helmets and sets of gloves for 
  four people. The kit fits into a waterproof rucksack (included). $450. 7kg.  
   
  Fishing and Snare Kit: Contains 
  various fishing lines, hooks, floats 
  and weights as well as several wire 
  snares, all packed into a small 
  pouch. $10. 0.2kg.  
   
  Folding Spade: A folding military 
  shovel, that packs down to the size 
  of a baseball glove and fits into a 
  snug protective case. One edge of 
  the blade is serrated, allowing it to 
  be used as a crude saw. This is an 
  extremely useful piece of equipment. 
  $30. 1.5kg.  
   
  Hand-Radio:  Four hand radios, complete with a charging unit. Each radio 
  comes with a belt clip and has range of up to 8km (although this varies 
  with terrain; roll for signal range on 1d6 + 2 km, when two people try to 
  radio one another). Includes a vibrate feature when the sound of an 
  
  40 | P a g e  
   
   
  incoming message might cause alarm. The radios can be used on and off 
  for 24 hours before requiring a recharge. $200. 4 x 0.5kg.  
   
  Light-Intensifying Goggles: Permits the user to see normally in the 
  darkest situations by magnifying ambient light. $500. 1kg. 
   
  Machete: A blade used to chop wood out in the wilderness, it resembles a 
  short, slightly curved sword with a singled sharp edge. The machete is 
  carried in a scabbard. $30. 1kg.  
   
  Rope Ladder: A 5m rope ladder fitted with wooden rungs and two metal 
  hooks at the top. $20. 2kg.  
   
  Signaling Mirror: A small survival mirror that can be used to attract the 
  attention of distant rescuers. $10. Negligible weight.  
   
  Smoke Canisters: Scientists wanted a smoke grenade that would scare 
  away predators or provide cover while they made their escape. US Army 
  M18 smoke grenades were not suitable since they often caused fires 
  when thrown into dry vegetation. Instead a low-heat smoke canister was 
  created specifically for Camp Cretaceous. It can be thrown 30 metres and 
  typically produces an expanding cloud of white smoke that is initially 5m 
  wide, growing and spreading downwind 5m each round. After six rounds 
  the canister stops producing smoke. $20. 0.5kg. 
   
  Solar Charger: A charging station with fold-out solar panel petals that is 
  able to charge a variety of electrical items simultaneously. $160. 2.5kg.  
   
  Tear Gas Canister: Functioning much like a smoke canister (above), the 
  tear gas canister releases a cloud of chlorobenzylidene malononitrile (CS) 
  which is normally used in riot control. The gas causes an overwhelming 
  burning sensation in eyes, nose and throat, with coughing, difficulty in 
  breathing and disorientation. Humans instinctively escape a cloud of tear 
  gas; scientists have discovered that some species of dinosaurs react in a 
  similar fashion, with varying degrees of intensity. Characters will have to 
  
  41 | P a g e  
   
   
  experiment with the canisters to determine their usefulness. Tear gas is 
  treated as a poison, see TMB p.74. 
   
  Poison 
  DM 
  Damage 
  CS ‘Tear’ Gas 
  0 
  Forced to flee the area 
  for 1d6 rounds 
   
  Canisters come in bandoliers of four, and are supplied with a single gas 
  mask. $150. 2kg (+ 1kg gas mask).  
   
  Trauma Kit: A comprehensive medical bag, used by a paramedic or 
  doctor to deal with serious injuries. The immediate responder trauma and 
  first aid backpack is a complete system. The kit was originally designed 
  for company safety personnel, first aid departments, disaster preparation 
  and emergency response teams that would need to get to injured people 
  and provide care on the scene. The high-vis, red backpack is organized 
  into separate sections covering everything from burns to fractures, 
  anaphylaxis to choking injuries and many others. Contains enough 
  supplies for six treatments. $350. 6kg. 
   
  SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT 
  Bait Box: A basic battery-powered chiller box used to keep bait that might 
  be used to reward or entice dinosaurs. Such bait often takes the form of 
  fresh eggs, small lizards and mammals, and chunks of dinosaur flesh. 
  $30. 3kg (includes 6 ‘servings’). 
   
  Capture Net, Small: A tough net, 4 sq. metres in size, used to catch small 
  animals. It has other uses, too. $50. 2kg. 
   
  Capture Net, Large: A tough net, 8 sq. metres in size, used to catch small 
  animals. It has other uses, too. $120. 4kg. 
   
  Dart Gun: The dart gun resembles a modern sports rifle, but instead of 
  firing bullets, the dart gun propels dart syringes out to a range of 80m 
  with some accuracy. Each dart is loaded into the rear of the weapon (the 
  
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  breech) prior to firing and discharges with a barely audible ‘click’. The 
  dart gun comes with a zippered rifle case and is fitted with a telescopic 
  sight as standard. A companion shoulder bag is filled with a three spare 
  CO2 cartridges, a dozen syringes, a dozen needles and a set of tools for 
  filling and assembling the darts. Various animal anesthetics are packed 
  into a separate compartment within the bag.  
   
  Weapon 
  Range Dmg 
  Auto 
  Recoil Mass 
  Magazine Cost 
  Ammo 
  Bag 
  Cost 
  Dart Gun 
  Ranged 
  (Rifle) 
  Special No 
  0 
  3.5kg 
  1 
  $1900 $200 
   
  Assume that the user shoots at an unarmoured location on the target 
  dinosaur and that if he or she hits, the dart will penetrate. The CO2 
  canister typically has enough pressure to power 6 shots, but in tense 
  situations things don’t always go as planned. After a new canister has 
  been fitted the first shot always works, but on subsequent shots the 
  referee should roll 1d6 and note that on a ‘1’ the canister has suddenely  
  lost all of its pressure. Dart guns in Real Life are more reliable than this … 
  but in Camp Cretaceous running out of ‘ammo’ is just another opportunity 
  for terror and tension. $2000. 3.5kg. (+ 1kg bag). 
   
  Dinosaur Weight Pad: Originally developed in Germany to determine the 
  pressure produced by an elephant’s foot, these re-engineered weighing 
  pads have been used successfully at Camp Cretaceous (though you need 
  a little luck to get a dinosaur to stand on one of the things!). $200. 4kg 
   
  
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  Drone:  Sophisticated VTOL drone with swivel-mounted HD digital 
  camera. Requires at least 30 minutes of training to be able to be used 
  effectively. The hand-held controller is included in the price. Maximum 
  duration of a flight is 20 minutes, maximum distance from the controller 
  is 600m. The drone requires 5 hours to be fully recharged. $6000. 4.2kg.    
   
  Dye Pellets: When a specific dinosaur within a herd needs to be 
  monitored, it is helpful to ‘tag’ it with a dye that everyone can see and 
  identify. Dye pellets come in a variety of colours and are shot from the 
  Dart Gun, a piece of equipment found elsewhere in this Kit List. The 
  colours are faintly fluorescent at night, allowing scientists to keep track of 
  the animal in the dark. Dye pellets come in boxes of 20. $10. 0.5kg. 
   
  Inertial Navigation System:  The Cretaceous has no 
  satellite technology and no GPS. INS stands in, however. 
  The Inertial Navigation System is a hand-held unit which 
  uses in-built accelerometers to accurately track its own 
  movement. When laid over an onboard map of the area, 
  the user can plot his own location. It is not as reliable as 
  GPS. Maps are input from Camp Cretaceous, several have 
  been drawn up of the surrounding area. $1000. 1.5kg.  
   
  Motion Sensor Kit: This kit is composed of four motion 
  sensors mounted on 1m telescopic poles. Should 
  anything move in front of one of the sensors (out to a range of 5m) it 
  sends a signal to a belt-mounted alarm. Each sensor produces a different 
  tone, alerting a scientist to the direction of movement. Motion sensors are 
  ideal for providing security around a wilderness camp site. $40. 3kg. 
   
  Net Gun: This bulky gun is designed to launch small capture nets out to a 
  range of 10m and is used to capture small, moving creatures. The net 
  takes around 5 minutes to repack into its launch canister. It comes with 4 
  pre-packed net canisters. When firing the gun using the combat rules in 
  the Core Book, however ignore the (-1) penalty for a target that is 
  dodging. $900. 6kg. (loaded)  
   
  
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  Weapon 
  Range Dmg 
  ROF 
  Recoil Mass 
  Magazine Cost 
  Ammo  
  Cost 
  Net Gun 
  Ranged 
  (Pistol) 
  Special 1 
  Yes 
  6kg 
  1 
  $900 
  $50 
   
  Tablet Computer: A touchscreen mobile computer, with inbuilt camera 
  and a host of digital information features. Wifi data connection is only 
  available at the Camp Cretaceous site. The tablet has an 8 hour charge 
  and is protected by a rugged, shock-proof case. $650. 0.5kg. 
   
  Trap Cage (Small):  A small metal cage for trapping and transporting very 
  small dinosaurs. This cage is a cube, 1 metre across, that collapses down 
  for ease of transport. When assembled it will slide easily into the back of 
  a four-wheel drive. $50. 4kg. 
   
  Trap Cage (Medium): A large 
  metal cage for trapping and 
  transporting small dinosaurs. 
  This cage is a cuboid, 1.5m 
  wide, 2m tall and 2m long that 
  collapses down for ease of 
  transport. When assembled it 
  will slide easily onto the back 
  of a pick-up truck, although 
  metal ramps and the truck’s 
  own winch will be needed to 
  get the caged dinosaur onto 
  the back of the vehicle. $300. 
  40kg (+15kg ramps).  
   
  VHF Subdermal Transmitter: A tiny radio beacon no bigger than a 
  thumbnail that can be inserted under the skin of a passive or subdued 
  dinosaur, it enables a scientist to track the movements of the animal 
  using a VHF receiver. Comes with a single-use hyposyringe for 
  administering the implant. Range is up to 10km and the battery will last 
  for around 100 days. $120. Negligible weight.  
  
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  VHF Collar: A radio collar that can be fastened around the neck of some 
  smaller dinosaurs, enabling a scientist to track the movements of the 
  animal using a VHF receiver. Range is up to 40km and the battery will last 
  for around 3 years. Tracking the movements of dinosaurs is done 
  manually, by searching for signals on specific radio transmitter 
  frequencies using a receiver and a Yagi antenna. See also the VHF 
  Subdermal Transmitter. $450. 0.5kg 
   
  VHF Receiver: A belt mounted unit that processes the VHF signals from 
  subdermal transmitters or radio collars. Users can switch between 
  different frequencies in order to track a specific animal. It records all 
  signals digitally, for later analysis of range and distance, and is able to 
  detect whether the host dinosaur is dead, and how long ago it died. A 
  hand-held Yagi antenna must be plugged into the unit, although this 
  antenna can be clipped onto the roof of any vehicle if the scientist is 
  travelling in a four-wheel drive. The antenna is fitted with a pistol drip for 
  comfort and folds up into a waterproof case when not needed. $900. 2kg 
  (+2kg antenna). 
   
  Video Camera: A professional high definition video camera with a 50x 
  zoom lens. It is capable of night-vision work and includes an in-built 
  motion sensor that triggers the camera when a creature moves within 
  10m of the lens. The integral power cell lasts for 5 hours before requiring 
  a recharge.  A folding tripod is included. $2000. 2.5kg (+ 1kg tripod). 
   
  TRANQUILIZER DARTS – THE STRAIGHT DOPE 
  What the heck is in a tranquilizer dart, or put another way, how do you 
  knock out a T-Rex? Today drugs called opioids are often used to bring 
  down large mammals in Africa, in particular, an agent called etorphine (or 
  M99), which is 10,000 times as powerful as morphine. Fentanyl, 
  carfentanyl, and thiafentanyl are also sometimes used, but etorphine can 
  be reversed with an antidote (usually naltrexone). Of course opioids are 
  seriously lethal to humans in even the tiniest dose. The drug chosen as 
  the tranquilizing agent is often mixed with other drugs to create some 
  additional effect; hyaluronidase, for example breaks down collagen in the 
  thick skins of rhinos and elephants, allowing the knock-out drug to enter 
  
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  the bloodstream more effectively. For carnivores, it is common to use 
  ketamine along with a sedative like midazolam or diazepam. These 
  cannot be reversed, though, so carnivore sedation can often last a long 
  time, leading to long, dull periods in the field waiting for that lion or 
  hyena to wake up and get on its way. 
   
  What do you use to tranquilize an elephant, the largest land animal on 
  Earth at the moment? Adult African elephants have been rendered 
  unconscious in the wild using azaperone and etorphine in combination, 
  administered from a dart gun. The drug takes between 5 and 30 minutes 
  to take effect and renders the elephant unconscious for up to an hour 
  (varying with dosage and size of animal etc.). Some elephants have died 
  during sedation, a few have suffered fractures or nerve damage and a 
  number have exhibited ‘pink foam syndrome’, caused by capillary 
  bleeding which causes pink froth to come from the trunk. Similar 
  problems may be experienced during the sedation of dinosaurs.  
   
  While drugs like etorphine, azaperone and ketamine may work on the 
  small and medium-sized dinosaurs (a triceratops, after all, is around the 
  size of an African elephant), the large carnivorous therapods and the 
  even larger sauropods, like alamosaurus, are many times larger. Michael 
  Crichton, in his novel The Lost World, suggested the use of venom from 
  the modern sea-going cone snail. This venom, containing conotoxin, is a 
  potent natural anesthetic that is deadly to humans, causing muscle 
  paralysis and asphyxiation. Conotoxin may be used by scientists at Camp 
  Cretaceous in order to subdue these huge dinosaurs. Perhaps the toxin 
  could be mixed with hyaluronidase to break through the tough collagen 
  that is known to make up dinosaur skin. The sheer mass of the animal 
  would suggest that the conotoxin, however efficient, would require time 
  to act. The rules provided for tranquilizers (below) assume that conotoxin 
  is the main anesthetic, that it is many times stronger than azaperone or 
  etorphine, but that the dosage will still have to be carefully calculated, 
  and mixed with other agents from time to time.  
   
   
   
  
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  Effectiveness of Darts 
  Anaesthetics present in the knock out darts are poisons and follow the 
  rules in the Core Book. A target, once hit by a dart, must make an 
  Endurance roll.  
   
   If unsuccessful, then it is rendered unconscious 8 minutes later 
  (minus the amount the task roll was missed by). Referees might 
  want to extend this time by adding on the dinosaur’s armour point 
  protection. An Exceptional Failure (missing the task roll by 6 or more 
  points) results in an Exceptional Effect.  
   
   If successful, then the dinosaur is still awake, although still affected 
  by the large amount of anesthetic in its system. Lower the creature’s 
  Endurance by the amount listed, which may lower its immunity to 
  further doses and lowers its overall stamina.  
   
  Poison 
  DM 
  End 
  Roll 
  Failed 
  End Roll 
  Succeeded 
  Exceptional  
  Effect 
  M20 
  Ketamine 
  -3 
  Knock Out 
  -1 End 
  3D6 damage 
  M99 
  Etomorphine 
  -1D6 
  Knock Out 
  -1 End 
  4D6 damage 
  M128 
  Conotoxin 
  -2D6 
  Knock Out 
  -1d6 End 
  Death 
   
  Example: Lucas fires a dart filled with conotoxin into a T-Rex, which has 
  Armour 4, Str 28, Dex 5 and End 28 (providing a characteristic modifier of 
  +7). The T-Rex must make an Endurance roll, adding his +7 bonus, but 
  subtracting the 2D6 penalty (we roll a ‘7’) provided by the conotoxin. 
  That makes it a straight 8+ roll for the T-Rex and the referee rolls a 6: a 
  roll failed by 2 points. The referee might let the toxin work immediately 
  as the needs of the plot dictate, but following the additional rules above 
  he would add the armour value (4) to the default knock out time of 8 
  minutes, then subtract the amount the T-Rex missed the roll by (2). 
  Using this method the dinosaur drops to the ground 10 minutes later 
  
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  after a great deal of staggering around and attempts to find a place of 
  safe retreat. 
   
               
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  Problems to consider:  Will the dinosaur feel the dart hit? What will 
  the characters do if it runs away before the drug takes effect. What 
  happens if a scavenger turns up to eat the sleeping dinosaur? 
  
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  3 
  TASK RESOLUTION 
   
  Roleplaying is essentially a conversation and turning that into an easily 
  understood sequence of events in the Camp Cretaceous world requires 
  the use of action ‘rounds’. A round is basically one pass around the 
  players, with each participant explaining their action for the next ten 
  seconds or so. As a rule of thumb, each action round will equate to ten 
  seconds in the game. Use these action rounds when needed, as events 
  and incidents come fast and furious, and where people are and what they 
  are doing, is crucial to the outcome of a situation.  
   
  CHARACTERISTIC ROLLS 
  In Cepheus Engine and other 2D6-based SF games, a roll that focusses 
  on Strength, Intelligence or some other characteristic is conducted using 
  the task resolution system, rolling 8+ and adding a modifier based on the 
  characteristic. However, running a session with children is probably best 
  without these modifiers (which are an extra ‘tier’ of numbers). Instead 
  characteristic rolls can be conducted simply by rolling 2D6. Success is 
  
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  achieved if the result is equal or less than the player character’s 
  characteristic score. Examples: 
   
   To lift a fallen branch: Strength 
   To balance on the edge of a cliff: Dexterity 
   To ignore pain from a wound: Endurance 
   To roughly calculate the weight of a styracosaur: Intelligence 
   To remember a fact about a dinosaur species: Education 
   To convince a professor of your idea: Social Standing 
   
  WOUNDS AND INJURIES 
  In the Cepheus Engine implementation of the Traveller rules, damage to 
  characters is treated in the following manner:  
   
  Each weapon lists the damage it inflicts as a number of D6. Add the 
  Effect of the attack roll to this damage. The first time a character takes 
  damage, it is applied to the target's Endurance. If a target is reduced to 
  Endurance 0, then further damage is subtracted from the target's 
  Strength or Dexterity (of the character’s choice). If either Strength or 
  Dexterity is reduced to 0, the character is unconscious and any further 
  damage is subtracted from the remaining physical characteristic. If all 
  three physical characteristics are reduced to 0, the character is killed. 
  Once a character has taken damage, any damage from subsequent 
  attacks is allocated to any of the three physical characteristics as the 
  character so chooses. 
   
  Characteristic Damage 
  Result 
  At least 1 characteristic is damaged Character is wounded 
  All 3 characteristics are damaged 
  Character is seriously wounded 
  2 characteristics are at Zero 
  Character is unconscious 
  3 characteristics are at Zero 
  Character is dead 
   
  New Rule - Stun and Shock: When a characteristic is reduced to zero, 
  the character will be knocked down and stunned for 1D6 rounds.  
   
  
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  RUNNING AND CHASING 
  Characters might chase a small dinosaur, or might themselves be chased 
  by a creature! For a short chase, using a burst of speed used to evade a 
  pursuer or to dodge into cover, the character must make a Dexterity roll 
  (roll Dexterity or less on 2D6). Add a DM to Dexterity based on the Move 
  rating of the dinosaur involved: Slow (+4), Medium (+2) or Fast (0).  
   
  Long chases, where the character is not simply evading or dodging, 
  involve a ‘best of three’ series of rolls.  
   
   
  Example: Lucas climbs out of a four wheel drive that a styracosaur (Move 
  = Medium+2) has just charged and tipped over. Now it turns on Lucas, 
  he spots a gingko tree 30m away and sprints for it hoping to climb out of 
  the dinosaur’s reach (and sight). He must roll his Dexterity (which is 7) 
  three times to beat 7 (+2) = 9 and win two of those rolls. He rolls 4+2 = 
  6 (win!), 5+5 = 10 (lose!) and 6+4 = 10 (lose!) and wins only one of the 
  rolls. He has failed to outrun the styracosaur. The referee does not have 
  the dinosaur pound Lucas into the ground, instead he rules that the boy 
  trips, falls, crawls under a bush then is forced to race back to the 
  upturned vehicle, clambering up on top out of the dinosaur’s reach. 
   
   
  HANDLING FIGHTS AND ANIMAL ATTACKS 
  All combat takes place in 6 second ‘rounds’ and if playing with children, 
  should be considered practically simultaneous. Hand-to-hand combat 
  goes first, followed by gunfire, and lastly, movement. Characters can walk 
  10m or run 30m per round (half that if also trying to perform some kind 
  of action). If two characters shoot at each other and hit, they are both 
  wounded and fall over. This improves the speed of combat or action 
  sequences where the potential for children to get bored is very real.  
   
   
   
   
  
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  Animal Attacks 
  Inevitably dinosaurs will occasionally want to eat or harm the player 
  characters, though this should not be a major part of the game. There 
  should always be a rationale behind the attack. Is the dinosaur hungry 
  and after food? Is it scared and trying to drive away the characters? Or is 
  it protecting its young, perhaps, or a nest site?  
   
  Dinosaurs are rated with a Move score, either Slow (+4), Medium (+2) or 
  Fast (+0) and these ratings are used to determine not just how easily it is 
  to run away from one of these animals, but also how easy it is to evade 
  one of their attacks.  
   
  Here are four sample dinosaurs: 
   
   Bambiraptor: Fast (0), Damage 1D6-1 
   Tyrannosaurus Rex: Fast (0), Damage 4D6+2 
   Pachycephalosaurus: Fast (0) Damage 2D6+2 
   Ankylosaur: Slow (+4), Damage 3D6+2 
   
  There is no skill for ‘evade a dinosaur attack’.  
   
  The character must roll 8+ to avoid being hit by the dinosaur’s main 
  weapon, whether it is its tail club, claws or teeth. Add in the Move bonus 
  provided by the animal itself to the dice result. If successful, the 
  character evaded the jaws/claws/tail of the dinosaur and must try to flee 
  (or complete whatever task her or she was trying to accomplish!). If 
  unsuccessful, the character is badly injured and suffers damage inflicted 
  by the dinosaur.  
   
  Example: Nico and his friends have cornered an ankylosaur at the base of 
  a cliff, but their last tranquiliser dart failed to hit the beast and it is lodged 
  in a nearby bush. Nico bravely volunteers to retrieve it in order to give 
  the team another chance at knocking out the ankylosaur so that it can be 
  tagged. Nico runs forward to grab the dart, but the ankylosaur is spooked 
  and makes a fake charge, at the last minute bringing around its 
  formidable tail club. Nico is in trouble. He must roll 8+, but the 
  
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  ankylosaur is slow and Nico gains a +4 bonus on his dice. He needs 4+ to 
  win this round. Nico makes his roll, but the dice are against him, he rolls 
  1+2 = 3 and suffers 6 points of damage from the creature’s tail strike. 
  His Endurance goes from 6 to 0 and he is wounded. The ankylosaur 
  backs off and waits, groaning and whooshing like a cathedral pipe organ, 
  while the other characters debate the merits of sending someone in after 
  Nico who is now out of action for two full rounds.  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
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  4 
  ROLEPLAYING WITH 
  CHILDREN 
   
  Running a roleplaying game for children can be a fantastic and immensely 
  rewarding experience. In an age of non-stop online activity, glass screens 
  and 24 hour TV, where thinking is not particularly required but the ability 
  to ‘consume’ media is – the roleplaying game format is a refreshing and 
  instantly appealing format. What amazes me every time I run a game for 
  children is how absorbed they are. I always expect a hard sell, but pretty 
  much as soon as the game begins, almost without exception, they are 
  keen, excited and involved.  
   
  WHO AM I? 
  I am an author, writing history books for adults in the United Kingdom, 
  but for the past 17 years I have also worked as a classroom assistant in 
  local primary schools. My work there varies, for several years I was 
  working one-to-one with a couple of boys with autism, at other times I 
  was there to help a boy manage his anger, more recently I have been 
  assigned to a class, and a couple of times each month I take the class of 
  30 children for the day. The school uses me in other ways; since I have a 
  vast collection of fantasy ‘stuff’ and masses of re-enactment gear, I am 
  asked to ‘be a pirate’ for year 1, ‘give an eyewitness account of the Great 
  Fire of London’ for year 4, ‘set up a Roman military camp on the playing 
  field and give talks on life in the army’ for year 5, and so on. I am the 
  unofficial history guy, and get to visit all the classrooms, re-enacting, 
  telling stories (without a book or course, it has to be from memory if it 
  has to have an impact!) and even running archaeology afternoons.  
   
  
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  Soon after starting the job, I began running an after school club called 
  ‘Problem Solving’. It was a roleplaying club aimed at year 5 and 6’s (these 
  are, in the UK, our 10 and 11 year olds). I decided that the term 
  ‘roleplaying’ was not understood enough, likewise, although I could have 
  called it a ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ club, I wasn’t intending to run much 
  fantasy.  And ‘problem solving’ was at the heart of what I wanted my RPG 
  sessions to be about, this is a primary school, so slaying hoards or 
  goblins, rescuing hostages in a special ops raid or other such violent 
  situations was not on the cards. And parents were much more likely to 
  sign the waiver for a Problem Solving Club than a D&D Club, after all… 
   
  Before I discuss the ways in which I set up and ran these games, what 
  the positive experiences were, and the negatives, I need to briefly explain 
  that in 2000 my wife and I adopted a 5 year old boy and a few years later 
  we adopted a second. As soon as was feasible, I began roleplaying with 
  these too. It began with ‘interactive’ bedtime stories, where they chose 
  the outcomes but soon extended to simple wargames using toy soldiers, 
  until eventually (when they were teenagers) we were playing cyberpunk 
  roleplaying games, Basic Dungeons & Dragons, Classic Traveller (lots of 
  Traveller) and even Call of Cthulhu. Interestingly, one of those early 
  games (circa 2001) was ‘Dinosaur Safari’ a couple of paragraphs of rules 
  using a D6 that was used in conjunction with my son’s plastic dinosaur 
  collection, a few toy jeeps and some 1/72 scale plastic soldiers – a 
  precursor to Camp Cretaceous! 
   
  I mention all of this to help set the stage, I am not theorizing or 
  suggesting how best to roleplay with children. I have done a lot of it over 
  the past 15 years, in all genres and with many age groups.  
   
   
   
  
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  RECRUITMENT 
  If you are wanting to roleplay with your own children, then you already 
  have a group! For anyone else, caution is required. I know my limits; I 
  wanted to run a group of six players – MAX. I knew that the school clubs 
  only ran for one hour a week, which was super-short compared to the 3-4 
  hour games I ran with my friends back home, so I needed small groups 
  with a tight focus and no extraneous clutter. I also needed children who 
  were going to be on task, in essence this meant that behaviour had to be 
  a non-issue. Tantrums, arguments, silly behaviour and time wasting 
  would wreck a session and put everyone else off. To counter this, I used 
  a couple of strategies. First I talked to the year 6 teachers, explaining my 
  idea and asking for suggested names. I explained that the children I was 
  looking for would be able to share a conversation, would be interested in 
  challenges and problems, and were able to use their imaginations. Of 
  course I need to know that the children were ‘reliable’, i.e. that they 
  would generally behave and would also turn up if they said they would. I 
  couldn’t throw the game open to all, however unfair this may seem. I had 
  only six vacancies, and I might get up to 60 replies! I met with six 
  children from year 6 and tried to ‘sell’ the game to them, before handing 
  out copies of the school’s form letters for joining after-school clubs. If I 
  didn’t receive six replies, then I went into year 5 and repeated the 
  process. My aim was to get six solid candidates for the club, with 
  signatures from parents.   
   
  One teacher did ask what night the club was going to be on, and when I 
  told her, she asked me to change it. ‘You will clash with the orchestra 
  practice’ she said, ‘and most of the children you want will also be taking 
  part in that. Generally, only a certain group of children attend these 
  clubs, so you are competing with the drama, music, singing, craft and 
  football clubs!’ I took her advice and chose a day that did not clash.   
   
  I have in the past run sessions for children without unblemished records 
  of good behaviour. In fact I ran them with the express purposes of 
  addressing this behaviour, but the group consisted of three children at its 
  
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  maximum, and the game was of a specialised nature that has little 
  bearing on the discussion here.  
   
  As a final point, I do try and recruit the ‘quiet ones’, the boys and girls 
  who are imaginative and who love creative writing, but aren’t particularly 
  outgoing, you know, the shy ones – like I was when I was at primary 
  school. The roleplaying game is perfect for these kids, a safe place for 
  them to unleash their imagination and intelligence, where conversation is 
  structured enough so that everyone is listed to and every idea is a good 
  one.  
  
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  CHOOSING YOUR RULES 
  So we have six children and an hour. What next? Well, with those two 
  basic criteria you can cross off nearly every published roleplaying game 
  out there: Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller, Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars, 
  Pathfinder, D6, Savage Worlds, GURPS etc. Character generation rules 
  alone would require two full one-hour sessions to explain and work 
  through, and the rules for damage, movement, actions, magic and 
  combat would slow the game down enough that an adventure would 
  never be completed within the one-hour time slot.  
   
  It is possible to simplify these games to suit our purposes but you have 
  to know what you are doing, and it takes quite a bit of work. Some 
  games, like GURPS, do produce ‘Lite’ versions of their rules which helps a 
  lot, and by using pregenerated characters, the referee can effectively 
  ‘skip’ the character creation step and move straight into the story. Still, 
  using an established RPG with all of that baggage, rules and 
  documentation is a struggle when you are dealing with ten year-olds for 
  such short sessions.  Personally, I would recommend holding off on these 
  published games until the players are teenagers. I did run Call of Cthulhu 
  sessions with my sons and wife a few years later, the skill rolls and action 
  rules are very slick in that game, and I presented each player with a 
  pregenerated character tailor-made to their personality and preferences. 
  Later we embraced the character creation rules of Basic D&D and Classic 
  Traveller – but not before years of sessions using pregenerated 
  characters. Camp Cretaceous utilises the Classic SF 2D6 rules of Traveller, 
  but as you may already have read, it adapts some of those rules for 
  children (abandoning modifiers and simplifying character creation, etc).  
   
  My preference is for tailor-made RPGs - simple systems driven by one or 
  two six-sided dice. I have designed scores of these games over the years 
  and feel quite comfortable in doing so, but for those who aren’t so 
  confident, there are hundreds of free games on the web. In essence, 
  Camp Cretaceous was one of these fast-play ‘Lite’ roleplaying games, 
  suitable for improvised games and roleplaying with children. I recommend 
  
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  readers check out Chris Garrison’s helpful ‘Compendium of Free Role 
  Playing Games’ at https://sillyhatbooks.com/about/games/ 
   
  Even these great games may be more than you need, however. I’ve 
  found that children only need something that is both ‘fair’ and ‘fast’ and 
  that is it. Combined with the fact that you are essentially not running a 
  roleplaying game in a world that has to attend to every eventuality, but to 
  a single short scenario set within a tight focus and setting, then you need 
  only a few rules at your disposal. I always create rules in combination 
  with the setting. The rules always use one or two D6 and only ever 
  involve addition or subtraction involving digits up to 9. I am teaching 
  problem solving, not mathematics! Because you are the adult, and they 
  are children, what you say carries a lot of weight, you could, actually, 
  adjudicate much of the game simply by saying what the outcome of 
  actions and decisions will be, without recourse to dice, and the children 
  will rarely question your decisions. Yet. Dice add that unpredictability (for 
  you as well as them) and show the children that you are impartial. ‘The 
  Dice Decide’. Lengthy calculations and sophisticated rules modelling of 
  realistic situations are unnecessary and unwanted. Dice are for drama 
  only.   
   
  MIXING RULES WITH SETTING 
  So where will the game be set? Who will the characters be? What will 
  they do? Even more than the type of children you recruit, or which set of 
  rules you use, the setting for the game is by far the most crucial aspect of 
  any RPG involving children. A good choice will pave the way for a brilliant 
  series of sessions, a bad choice can end in tears (I know, I had tears in 
  one of my games).  
   
  Here some of the premises I’ve used in the past:  
   
  • 
  Children stranded on Mars 
  • 
  Fantasy heroes 
  • 
  Teenage secret agents in London 
  • 
  Ice Age hunters on a quest 
  
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  • 
  Heroes in an ancient desert 
  • 
  Pirates search for gold 
  • 
  Children studying dinosaurs in the Cretaceous 
  • 
  Ancient Greek heroes fighting King Minos 
  • 
  Knights of Camelot 
  • 
  Lost Roman soldiers in a forest 
  • 
  Archaeologists in Egypt 
   
  The two key lessons I learned in selecting a setting and a premise was: 
  1) not to allow weapons and 2) not to allow total freedom. Let me 
  explain. 
   
  I had to put a stop to three different games over the years, all due to the 
  use of unacceptable (in my mind) violence. The first was during a game 
  set in some ancient desert, and the players were two troubled 10 year-
  olds, playing the part of wandering warriors. I threw a random encounter 
  at them, an old man riding a camel, hoping they would ask him about 
  their quest for a mysterious desert ruin. ‘I try and kill him’ said one boy. I 
  asked why. ‘He might be dangerous. I go up and chop his head off’ Well, 
  I quickly had the old man turn and ride off, but his friend simply declared, 
  ‘I’ve got a bow, haven’t I? I shoot him with an arrow’. I asked the boys 
  about their decisions after I had (abruptly) brought the game to an end 
  and they both seemed to shrug it off, ‘we wanted to use our weapons’ 
  they said. I should have learned my lesson in later years, but the allure of 
  classic RPG tropes blinded me to that simple, honest, comment.  
   
  I had one group take the part of pirates on a Caribbean island trying to 
  locate a map in the harbour town, before setting off to an island full on 
  monsters, dinosaurs and treasure (in truth it was the D&D Expert module 
  X1, The Isle of Dread). Quite quickly they were trying to kill people in the 
  town left right and centre who they did not like or got on their nerves. I 
  abandoned the game after that day’s session and came up with the 
  concept of Camp Cretaceous for the week after.  
   
  The third game I had to cut short was by far the worst. The players were 
  Arthurian knights, and we spent half of the first session coming up with 
  
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  names and drawing heraldic emblems on our shields (an idea I had 
  borrowed from Chaosium’s Pendragon). The rest of the session involved 
  the knights visiting a lord in his castle, but it was abandoned. They found 
  the lord sleeping in his chamber alone, and one of the boys declared he 
  was going to use his sword to kill him. The other boy started ransacking 
  the room. I immediately stopped the game, and realised that either I had 
  chosen the wrong players, or more likely the wrong genre. One of the 
  other players, a 10 year-old girl burst into tears over the premature end 
  of the game.  
   
  After that I rigidly enforced the no-weapons-to-be-used-against-humans 
  rule. Weaponry still turned up in my games, such as the stun guns used 
  to immobilise cyborgs in modern-day London, or the swords and axes in 
  the fantasy game used to fight an evil wizard and his army of walking 
  trees and skeletons, or even the shortswords carried by Roman soldiers 
  lost in a haunted forest. Like George Lucas in the Star Wars prequels, if I 
  had to have weaponry kicking around, I made sure that the bad guys (or 
  even the incidentals) weren’t human, but instead robots, skeletons and so 
  forth.  
   
  But generally, I left guns and sharp blades out of my games from then 
  on. Now I began to think of situations and settings that did not rely on 
  armed characters to solve the problems and kick down the doors. Let the 
  children play children, or at most teenagers that were a few years older 
  than themselves.  
   
  The most successful setting, unsurprisingly, was Camp Cretaceous, where 
  children study dinosaurs in prehistory. It had everything: peril, danger, 
  problem solving, cool dinosaurs, isolation, independence, and a ‘no-
  harming the monsters’ policy. There were two other settings that ended 
  up becoming the basis for a series of long-running and successful games. 
  The first was an Ice Age hunter game. I incorporated craft activities into 
  this game: we created cave paintings of bison and horses, we painted 
  around our hands – Cave Art style – we made rattles using forked twigs, 
  seashells and bird’s feathers. It became immersive and the players were 
  amazingly mature and imaginative, really running with the story and 
  
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  getting involved … getting into character. This was by far the most 
  successful children’s RPG I have ever run, and the work I did on the 
  game (even creating a rules system that used two different coloured sets 
  of beach-stones drawn out of a bag) led me to reconstruct more Ice Age 
  artefacts at home, leading me eventually into full-blown Iron Age and 
  Roman re-enactment.  
   
  The other memorable setting involved stranding children on Mars. The 
  concept ran as follows: their parents had been part of a colony expedition 
  and had sent for their children once the colony was up and running. 
  Unfortunately, the supply ship malfunctioned and the children were 
  jettisoned in a survival pod, coming down on some barren part of Mars, 
  far from help. The only chance they had to survive, before a huge storm 
  arrived, was to get to an old research station (now abandoned) where 
  water and radio communications would be available. Off the bat I threw 
  them into some serious danger, the life-pod was balanced on the edge of 
  a cliff. They had gotten out successfully, but they needed valuable 
  supplies from the pod. Their characters could go back to retrieve water, 
  rope, torches, etc. but each time this destabilised the pod and anyone 
  who tried risked sending the pod (and potentially the character) over the 
  edge. This situation became the ‘Growing Jeopardy Effect’ rule in Chapter 
  5. Later the player characters encountered alien robots that had woken 
  up after millions of years of hibernation, and they had to find a way to 
  shut them down. But it was the physical challenges that really shone in 
  that game. Air running out, a steep cliff descent, deep sand drifts to climb 
  out of, the dust storm and its effects when it hit, dealing with an injured 
  character whilst they wore a space suit, etc. It made the players work 
  hard and THINK. It was certainly a lot of fun for everyone involved.  
  Using detailed maps of Mars for the trek across the landscape brought 
  the setting to life.  
   
  As I learnt quickly, children need an instant goal. The sandbox approach 
  to gaming does not sit well with inexperienced 10 year-olds. Once given a 
  goal they can get on and tell you how they are going to overcome all of 
  your obstacles to achieve it. Never let them decide what they are going to 
  
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  do themselves, this is a recipe for certain disaster; it is goal-orientated 
  roleplaying, with carefully chosen situation-appropriate characters.  
   
  CHARACTERS 
  After playing with 10 year-olds in one hour sessions, I learnt that they do 
  not ‘play a role’ – they play themselves. That helped me understand the 
  best way to approach character creation. I kept things quick and simple, 
  usually just three or four simple characteristics, or a handful of skills 
  instead. None of the skills or characteristics focussed on intelligence, 
  social skills or those aspects of a character that came under the umbrella 
  of personality or problem solving. I wanted the players to do the thinking, 
  and not pass that off with a simple roll of the dice.    
   
  Typically I set up situations so that the characters were either children or 
  young adults, figuring that the 10 year-old players did not have the 
  wherewithal and life-knowledge to effectively play an adult secret agent 
  or starship captain. This kept everything at their own level.  
   
  Although I have used pregenerated characters many times in the past, I 
  found that allowing the characters to have some input in the creation of 
  their characters really hooked them in to the game and its setting. Often 
  this was little more than selecting a name and choosing four or five skills 
  from a list of ten, or allocating 12 points between a range of skills or 
  characteristics. Simple things which could be dealt with quickly but still 
  give the children a sense that this was truly their character. The 
  personalization of the character did not have to be purely mechanical, 
  either. In the Ice Age hunter game, I handed out facial templates onto 
  which each player coloured in their tribe’s face paint markings. I did 
  something similar in a Celtic game. Even the ‘lost on Mars’ game had a 
  version of this personalization: players were given a circle to decorate 
  with two colours and the geometric pattern of their choice. This was to 
  represent the back of the helmet on their spacesuit, which, in the late 
  
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  21st century, were individually decorated so that astronauts and colonists 
  could easily identify one another. I have already mentioned the 
  preparation of heraldic shield blazons for our ill-fated Arthurian game.  
  TASKS, REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS 
  Once the game starts, normal roleplaying, familiar to every referee, 
  begins. There is a danger that the quieter players may clam up, 
  particularly if there is a much louder player, or if they do not necessarily 
  fully understand the situation and the roleplaying ‘protocols’. Make an 
  attempt to check on everyone once you present them with a situation, 
  what does each player think, or want to do? At times the referee might 
  want to tell the players how to organise themselves: ‘why don’t you come 
  up with a plan for carrying the wounded boy over the rocks? Suggestions 
  anyone?’ Adult players generally don’t need this kind of guidance, but 
  children certainly do.  
   
  
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  The aim is not to fox them, to mess up their plans or to frustrate them. 
  The aim is to make the game enjoyable by enabling them to overcome 
  challenges through ingenuity, courage and teamwork. That last factor is 
  important. I typically ensure that every character has a unique skill that is 
  crucial to the game - that player’s time will come and no player is allowed 
  to tell another player what to do with their skills, attributes or equipment. 
  Choice is what separates RPGs from most other entertainment media and 
  so every player must be able, and feel they are able, to make decisions. 
  They must choose from different options, even if it is the referee who 
  explicitly presents those options to a player who is unsure or nervous 
  about voicing their opinions.  
   
  It almost goes without saying that dice rolls should generally be made 
  quickly, without too much calculation and fuss. With such short sessions 
  there is no time for prevarication or rules lawyering. One hour games 
  seemed far too short to me at the start, but after one or two sessions I 
  realised that it was perhaps the perfect length for a 10 year-old’s 
  attention span. In critical moments, or when decisions have to be made, 
  make a point of going around the players asking for their input. But keep 
  the game moving, keep the action snappy and avoid the ‘deadwood’ 
  scenes such as shopping trips or evenings around the campfire after a 
  day’s adventuring.  
   
  The game Feng Shui pioneered for me the perfect way to structure short, 
  action-packed RPG sessions. It suggested building a scenario from three 
  great fight scenes, each with its own cool fight location, the plot can then 
  be built around those scenes, linking them together for the enjoyment of 
  the players. Obviously we aren’t going to have three big fight scenes, but 
  we can and should have key action scenes or situations. In my Martian 
  survival game, retrieving kit from the lifepod marked my first scene, the 
  second was the cliff descent with its attendant dangers, and the third 
  marked by the attack of the ancient Martian robots. There is a problem to 
  be tackled at each of these junctures and as a referee I have already 
  thought about some possible solutions as well as a few nasty surprises I 
  can add to increase the tension and the challenge. In my mind I had the 
  impending dust storm that I could introduce at any time, as well as the 
  
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  air running out prematurely for one of the characters. These ‘cards up my 
  sleeve’ are great tools that a referee can throw at the characters if they 
  breeze through a situation to easily or quickly, or if you find you have too 
  much time left till the end of the session (I had to finish at 4:20 pm, 
  dead-on, ready to get the kids to the school door by half-past, and I 
  couldn’t finish any earlier …). 
   
  Children can often respond to in-game rewards in a way that adults may 
  not. This can prove a blessing to the referee. In my Greek hero game, 
  each character had a patron god and could earn a ‘hero point’ carrying 
  out an action that the god would approve of. These points could be 
  traded in for extra die rolls. Scientists could earn ’investigation points’ for 
  finding clues, while secret agents might gain a point every time they 
  identify an enemy cyborg. To prevent feelings of jealousy or unfairness 
  (some kids aren’t going to be quick enough to get these points) they 
  could be thrown into a pool to be used by the group as a whole.  
   
  Perhaps the biggest danger to any game is the loud player who 
  dominates the rest of the group. If this happens more than once then you 
  will lose players and the club will fold. Identifying that child and keeping 
  them in check is a skill that must be acquired quickly, but it must be done 
  with consideration. I’ve found that these players are just so excited that 
  they cannot stop, cannot wait to let everyone else take a turn. They may 
  also think their ideas are better than everyone else’s. The referee must be 
  firm with that player and tell them flat out that everyone gets to have a 
  say and that everyone wants to make decisions. Do this in front of 
  everyone else so that the quieter children know that you are going to 
  back them up. A trick I learned was to let that gung-ho character split off 
  from the rest to do his own thing. Normally this is frowned upon, you 
  haven’t got time to run two different groups doing two different things, 
  and the game play is essentially doubled in time. Allowing a loud, pushy 
  player to split off for a time lets you then give the rest of players the time 
  they need without too much interruption. You then switch back to him or 
  her for a few minutes, then back to the main party, taking care to give 
  most of your time to the larger and quieter group. The pushy player will 
  have much less to say about their decisions because his character is not 
  
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  involved. This isn’t a long term solution to a pushy player, the best thing 
  to do is to have a chat with him or her away from the game, before the 
  next session.  
   
  Finally we should address injury and death. Players are usually OK with 
  their characters getting injured, especially if it’s their own fault. But they 
  are never happy if this is due to the actions of another character, 
  particularly if done deliberately. Never allow one player character to harm 
  or interfere with the actions of another character, ever. Should you 
  refrain from killing a character? No. Some believe that children are 
  emotionally scarred by having their own character killed, particularly in 
  light of the observation we made earlier that children often just ‘play 
  themselves’. However, I have not seen this in play.  
   
  Obviously death should be rare, very rare and typically linked with the 
  character’s own stupid actions, don’t let a stray gunshot or rock fall kill a 
  character instantly, give them the opportunity to make a decision, to 
  make a saving roll or two… but should death arrive on swift wings, then 
  let it be. I have some gold-star stickers I use in class, and usually stick 
  one on to the dead character’s sheet. I tell the child that the character 
  has made it into my roleplaying ‘Hall of Fame’ ‘congratulations!’ and I 
  send the sheet home with the child so they can treasure it. Never screw 
  up the sheet and throw it away, or worse, allow another player to throw 
  it away. If they don’t want to take it home then keep it yourself. 
  Remember that the character sheet embodies all of the child’s actions 
  and decisions that they took in your game. We know it’s just a piece of 
  paper, but treat it as something more. A dead character could be 
  replaced with an NPC, or if that proves impossible (such as on Mars or 
  out in the wilds of the Cretaceous), let that player team up with another 
  to make decisions for a single character - if that is OK with the rest of the 
  group. Or give the player the character creation rules so that they can 
  have another character ready by the end of the session. Or give them a 
  blank piece of paper and ask them to draw a picture showing what 
  happened to their character at the end! Or let them make all your dice 
  rolls for you as an assistant referee. Just don’t let them sit there being 
  bored. They might just switch to violin club next week! 
  
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  5 
  THE FIELD TRIP 
   
  THE MISSION BRIEFING 
  Although there are two or three indoor briefing rooms at Camp 
  Cretaceous, these are mainly used by operations staff or science teams 
  planning important field work. Typically, the player characters will 
  assemble at one of the open air meeting points straight after breakfast. 
  Tarps rigged up provide shelter from 
  rain or sun, and a scatter of folding 
  chairs and a folding table make up 
  the 
  only 
  furniture. 
  Maintenance 
  crews, 
  scientists 
  and 
  students 
  usually get together to discuss the 
  day’s work beneath these temporary 
  briefing shelters.  
   
  The 
  player 
  characters 
  will 
  be 
  introduced to Professor Henderson 
  who will be assigning the students 
  their tasks. Usually they will working 
  in camp, analysing data, studying 
  biological samples brought back 
  from the field, uploading data from 
  cameras and such. Every few days, 
  however, they get to do their own 
  field work. The professor will always 
  outline the goal of the expedition, 
  provide the team with one or more 
  locations to head for and give them 
  the tools they require to ensure the 
  mission is successful.  
  
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  Once they have their mission, the team must plan out their course of 
  action, who will do what, and just as importantly, which team-member 
  will be responsible for which piece of kit. The larger items can be placed 
  into the four wheel drive, but players may want individual characters to 
  carry smaller items on their person. If so, they must be logged on the 
  character sheet. Anything thrown into the back of the vehicle should be 
  carefully noted by the referee. When the four wheel drive goes off a cliff, 
  catches fire or tips into a fast-flowing river, he will then know exactly 
  which pieces of kit the team have just lost!  
   
  Missions should not be too complex or have too many elements to them, 
  especially at first. Keep the goal simple and easy to understand and 
  remember. Ensure that the obstacles confronting the team are not too 
  perilous or seemingly so. Each mission goal should hopefully present itself 
  with one or two challenges, and the referee should add another obstacle 
  en route. Always remember that the aim is not to kill characters or force 
  them to return to Camp Cretaceous tired and beaten, it is to encourage 
  young players to come together to find ways of overcoming practical 
  challenges. By practical I mean that the characters will be tested 
  physically, there will rarely if ever be any mental puzzles to solve.  
  Choose a mission from the list below, or use it as inspiration for your 
  own:  
   
  Eggs for Breakfast – Bring back at least one egg from a pteranodon 
  nest that is located on a cliff over-looking the ocean. Getting down to the 
  nest will be the main challenge here, and the kit required will include a 
  couple of climbing harnesses, hard-hats and rope. A secondary challenge 
  will be bringing the egg up undamaged, what do they intend to carry it 
  in? Will they think of this in the briefing? My own players failed to take it 
  into account and one bright spark suggested on the cliff edge that the 
  second hard-hat, with its integral padding, could be used to carry the 
  egg; they strapped it to the climber’s belt. Of course the pterandons may 
  not take kindly to eggs being stolen and at least one of them will make 
  diving attacks every few turns. Can the other characters distract the 
  angry flyers?  
   
  
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  Weighing a Record-Breaker – How much does an alamosaurus 
  actually weigh? The students are tasked with attempting to weigh one of 
  these magnificent beasts, and the professor will probably ask for 
  suggestions as to how this might be accomplished. Let the theories flow, 
  hopefully one of the players will come up with the idea of plopping a 
  weighing scale in front of the creature – he will give that student a merit 
  and show them the ‘crush plate’ that he has built which will measure the 
  pressure exerted by a creature’s tread. He can give the team three of 
  these and the current location of a pod of alamosaurus, around twenty 
  kilometres away. Challenges include getting ahead of the creatures, yet 
  close enough to lay the three crush plates. Of course the chance of an 
  alamosaurus stepping on one of the plates is slim and the team may have 
  to regroup and redeploy the plates. Will they scare away the 
  alamosaurus? And what if a couple of predators like albertosaurus turn up 
  to hunt a vulnerable member of the pod? These albertosaurs will most 
  likely ignore the characters, but will certainly spoil their plans …  
   
  Tag a Triceratops – Professor Henderson wants the students to fit a 
  radio tag to a triceratops to assist him with his study into triceratops 
  migration routes. The kit for this mission will include a single dart gun 
  and six darts filled with powerful Etomorphine, an anesthetic that should 
  be strong enough to knock out a single triceratops. The location of a 
  triceratops herd is known and the map co-ordinates are given to the 
  player characters. An adult triceratops must be drugged, the radio collar 
  fitted, tested to ensure that it 
  works, and the triceratops kept 
  under observation until it wakes. 
  Five back-up darts are provided 
  in case the first does not deliver 
  an adequate dose, or if the 
  shots miss and the darts cannot 
  be 
  retrieved 
  from 
  the 
  undergrowth. There are some 
  interesting challenges with this 
  mission, not the least of which is 
  getting a dart into a triceratops. 
  
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  The creatures are skittish herd animals that will probably flee at speed 
  from a moving vehicle or from humans that walk towards them. The 
  characters may have to lay in wait ahead of a moving herd, perhaps in 
  some kind of improvised camouflage shelter. Fitting the collar should not 
  prove a problem … then again, perhaps it might be fun to have it 
  inoperative. Quick-witted electrical work might be needed to get it 
  working. As an additional challenge, perhaps the team spot a hungry pack 
  of deinonychus circling the groggy triceratops. It only needs ten minutes 
  or so, long enough to get on its feet and join its herd a few hundred 
  metres away, can the team distract the deinonychus? Perhaps they can 
  knock a couple out with the remaining darts (but don’t tell the players 
  that!).  
   
  Net the Microraptor – The microraptor is a tiny bird-like flying reptile 
  with four feathered wings. Professor Henderson would like two to study 
  at close range. The characters are given the task of camping in woods 
  that are known to be inhabited by the creatures and they will need to set 
  up camp there in order to catch the microraptors (since they hunt only at 
  dawn and dusk). Kit supplied for this mission includes a couple of tents, 
  cooking gear and a flameless camping stove, an electric fence and 
  sleeping bags for every character. To catch the microraptors the 
  professor provides a capture net, a net gun (with four net canisters), and 
  a trap cage in which to hold any captured microraptors. Challenges will 
  consist mainly of finding some way to trap the agile creatures in low light 
  conditions. Can the characters set up the net on poles? Can they use 
  some kind of bait in order to entice the microraptors down? Challenges 
  could include the attraction of a small dinosaur, perhaps a troodon, or 
  even a couple of alphadons that have emerged from a burrow beneath 
  the camp site. 
   
  TRAVELLING 
  Hiking: Hiking around the Cretaceous wilderness is not advised for any 
  extended length of time, but should the characters be forced in to this 
  action (perhaps their vehicle has broken down) then they can usually 
  move at the speeds given below. Note that there are two ways to read 
  
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  the speeds, the first is the standard kilometres-per-hour, the second 
  measures speed in the time it takes to cover 5 km and can be used in 
  conjunction with the map supplied with this game. Referees or players 
  can look at the distance they want to travel (in multiples of 5 km) then 
  work out how long it will take to make that journey. This latter method of 
  determining travel time is preferred.  
   
  KPH  
  Time per 5km 
   Flat, open ground 
   
   
   
  5 kph 
  6o mins 
   Rough, hilly ground, or forest  
  3 kph 
  1 hour 30 mins 
   Mountains, thick jungle, swamp 
  1 kph 
  5 hours 
   
   
  Driving: The team are given an off-road vehicle with four wheel drive to 
  carry themselves and their equipment. The speeds achieved by a loaded 
  four wheel drive over trackless countryside vary tremendously according 
  to the terrain.  
  KPH  
  Time per 5km 
   Flat, open ground 
   
   
   
  20 kph 
  15 mins 
   Rough, hilly ground, or forest  
  10 kph 
  30 mins 
   Mountains, thick jungle, swamp 
  2 kph 
  2 hours 30 mins 
   
  Nothing Goes as Planned! 
  It is a simple procedure to read off the distance and calculate a travel 
  time, but moving through the prehistoric wilderness can be an adventure 
  in itself! As in the modern world, travel through tough wilderness terrain 
  can be frustrating, slow and dangerous. The referee can complicate such 
  a journey if he decides to do so, using either his own imagination, or the 
  table below. Roll first for the chance of an event every couple of hours. 
  Next determine the exact nature of the event.  
   
      Terrain 
   
   
   
   
   
  2D Roll 
   Flat, open ground 
   
   
   
  11+ 
   Rough, hilly ground, or forest  
  10+ 
   Mountains, thick jungle   
          or water-logged swamp  
   
  9+ 
   
  
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  HIKING EVENT TABLE 
   
  1 
  Twisted ankle; roll randomly for victim, they must move at half 
  speed with assistance for next 3 hours. 
  2 
  Impassable terrain. Go back 5km.  
  3 
  Lose a piece of equipment (roll for the character and item randomly; 
  or just select an item)  
   
  4 
  Slow progress due to terrain. Double travel time for this 5 km 
  stretch.  
  5 
  Slow progress due to terrain. Double travel time for this 5 km 
  stretch. 
  6 
  Fatigue/illness overcomes a character. Requires rest for two hours. 
   
   
   
  DRIVING EVENT TABLE 
   
  1 
  Flat tyre or suspension problem. Requires a repair taking 1D x 
  quarter of an hour. 
  2 
  Impassable terrain. Go back 5km.  
  3 
  With the rough terrain, the vehicle is thrown about and a piece of 
  equipment breaks or malfunctions. The referee should roll randomly 
  or simple choose an item, and keep the fact secret until the time 
  comes for the players to use that piece of equipment!   
  4 
  Slow progress due to terrain. Double travel time for this 5 km 
  stretch.  
  5 
  Slow progress due to terrain. Double travel time for this 5 km 
  stretch. 
  6 
  Vehicle engine breaks down. Requires a repair taking 1D x half hour.  
   
   
  Encounters with dinosaurs do not feature on these tables, since they 
  should instead be established and decided upon by the referee 
  him/herself.  
   
    
  
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  CAMPING 
  Camping for the night involves pitching the tent, crawling in and sleeping 
  until morning, right? Not in the Cretaceous. Some dinosaurs could 
  stumble upon your campsite and crush your tent and its occupants 
  without even knowing about it. Your food for the evening meal might 
  attract scavengers who never give up. Camping in the Cretaceous 
  requires some thought, but let the players find out about the problems 
  and dangers of making camp for themselves!  
   
  Bad places to make camp include exposed and windy ridges, low, wet 
  ground that is water-logged, beneath unstable and loose rocky slopes or 
  on river banks that might flood or be too close to crossing points and 
  watering points used by herds of dinosaurs.  
   
  If the referee is using the ‘high oxygen’ fact in the game then a camp fire 
  will not be an option, otherwise a fire is a good idea, and will provide 
  welcoming warmth and light, allowing food to be cooked and guarding 
  against wild animals. A look-out should be posted throughout the night 
  (and must be relieved after a few hours) to watch for dinosaur activity. In 
  addition, security can be enhanced with a portable electric fence. Spot 
  lights are also included on the Kit List - these illuminate a wide area that 
  can further deter predators and provide characters with valuable visibility 
  around the camp area at night. 
   
  PHYSICAL CHALLENGES 
  A good deal of the adventure will involve the player characters’ struggle 
  with the environment. There are rivers to cross, swamps to negotiate, 
  cliffs and crevasses, boulder fields and forests.  
   
  Rough Ground 
  As the travel rules show, there are several hazards associated with hiking 
  or driving across rough country - it can be dangerous, as well as slow, 
  work. Potential hazards include mudslides, rock-falls and ridges or cliffs 
  that must be climbed or descended. Agility rolls or climb rolls can be 
  made for some of these challenges, perhaps with a generous bonus 
  
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  modifier. The aim here is to add a little danger and uncertainty, and to 
  provide the players with a little thrill of tension. Failure might result in the 
  loss of a Hit Point, or a trip or fall that breaks a piece of equipment.  
   
  The ‘Growing Jeopardy’ Effect 
  A useful rule for use with children is the ‘growing jeopardy’ effect that 
  results when a situation worsens as more characters attempt it. A slope 
  of loose rocks, for example, might give way ‘at any time’. For this type of 
  situation, I would dispense with skill rolls altogether, instead asking each 
  player to roll a single six-sided die. The referee exhorts the first player to 
  roll the die, ‘but just don’t roll a 1!’. If he or she rolls a 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 then 
  all is well and the character passes across easily. If they should roll that 
  dreaded 1 then they loosen the rocks and change the odds. Not only do 
  they have to re-roll, but the numbers to avoid now include 1 and 2. The 
  next character also has to avoid the numbers 1 and 2. If they fail the roll, 
  then more rocks tumble under-foot and the numbers to avoid increase to 
  1, 2 and 3. This unlucky character has to also re-roll.  
   
  Any character failing a second roll triggers the entire landslide and suffers 
  the damage associated with that particular danger. For a rockslide like 
  this I would call for 1D^ damage points to be inflicted and place the 
  victim several tens of metres below the other characters on some 
  precipitous ledge, forcing the characters to come up with a plan to rescue 
  them.  
  
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  River Crossing 
  Beloved of summer camps, outdoor adventure weekends and team-
  building courses around the world, the river crossing is a true test of 
  team-work, ingenuity and skill. The referee must present the characters 
  with a suitable (or perhaps the best of the ‘least suitable’) crossing points. 
  It is never simply a river separated by two easily climbable banks, but 
  instead holds the prospect of an easy crossing, but with an added 
  element of risk and danger. Consider adding: 
   
   A broken tree trunk that makes a useful bridge. Or does it?  
   
   Various smashed trees and branches that have been washed down 
  the river, now all jammed together to make a tangled bridge of 
  slippery logs and branches.   
   
   Rapids, with boulders jutting out from the water at strange angles. 
  Characters might be able to leap from one to another to cross.  
   
   A sandbank sticking out into the river at a lazy bend, could 
  characters wade the last 5 or 6 metres to the other side?  
   
   A very shallow, slow-moving stretch of the river that could easily be 
  waded, but the opposite bank is a 4 metre-high cliff covered in 
  hanging trees and creepers.  
   
   Banks of shingle cover the river bed here and the river itself splits 
  into many smaller courses as it passes through the gravel. It looks 
  easy enough to cross here. But is it? Could the shingle banks trap 
  characters or collapse? 
   
   An actual bridge, built in sections by a team from Camp Cretaceous, 
  but strangely not appearing on any map. Is it safe?  
   
  A great way to ramp up tension during a crossing is to suddenly reveal 
  the presence of crocodiles in the water, or a hostile predator on the bank 
  they are leaving. Attacks by inquisitive pteradons might also give 
  
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  characters something to think about whilst they negotiate the river 
  crossing! A serious threat can be forest debris, branches etc., washing 
  down and striking a character, perhaps knocking them off their feet. The 
  ‘Growing Jeopardy’ Effect is a perfect tool for use in these river situations, 
  particularly when the bridge being used is unstable or unreliable.  
   
  Swampland 
  Swamps vary with terrain, climate and the movie you are watching! Some 
  swamps are vast flooded areas of lakes and water channels, divided and 
  bordered by beds of reeds and grasses. Think here of the Everglades in 
  Florida. Others, like the mangrove swamps of West Africa, are forests 
  that grow out of the salt water 
  channels and lakes. There are many 
  areas around the world, also, that 
  are classed as ‘marshland’ or ‘boggy 
  ground’ that should be considered 
  here too.  
   
  The 
  problems 
  associated 
  with 
  swamps and marshes centre on the 
  difficulty of travel. In some areas of 
  swamp, 
  boats 
  can 
  navigate 
  channels or pools, but many places 
  are impassible to boats and instead 
  the travelers will have to slog 
  through reed beds growing out of 
  thick, cloying mud. Even where 
  open water exists, it is shallow and 
  thick with soft mud and underwater 
  vegetation. 
  Propellers 
  can 
  get 
  caught up, hence the use of fan-
  powered air boats throughout the 
  Everglades, or 
  the 
  US Army’s 
  hovercraft in the Mekong Delta 
  during the early 1970s.  
   
  
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  In short, swamps are hard to negotiate, slowing down travel and they 
  soak the hikers and threaten to trap them in mud banks or stands of 
  impenetrable reeds. Travel times in swamps are slow and variable, on 
  occasion no progress at all might be made, with the characters being 
  forced to back-track when the going becomes impossible and no safe way 
  through can be found. Use the figures in the Travelling section as rough 
  approximations. 
   
  In the Water 
  Allow generous Athletics rolls for swimming in calm water (+3), with less 
  generous DM’s (or none at all) for diving down to find some sunken 
  object (+1), for swimming across a fast flowing river (+0) or for 
  attempting to get to dry land when tossed into some river rapids (+1).  
   
  In Camp Cretaceous, everyone can swim (it’s part of the condition for 
  entry!). Failure to make a swim roll shouldn’t result in death by drowning 
  automatically, failure indicates that the task failed, so the object on the 
  river bed wasn’t found, the swimmer had to return to the river bank, or 
  he could not grab on to a rock as he was washed through the rapids. The 
  idea is to add more challenge and tension to the situation, not kill off the 
  character. Now, an Exceptional Failure certainly merits the chance of 
  drowning. The character has gone under, is disorientated and exhausted, 
  and cannot easily reach the surface… Ask the player to make three 
  Athletics rolls, with survival depending on the ‘best of three’ rule. Each 
  dice roll takes up one round and provides up to three rounds for the other 
  characters to try and rescue the drowning individual. If two of the rolls 
  are failed, then the character is either drowned or ‘swept away never to 
  be seen again’, as the referee decides.  
   
   
  Climbing and Jumping 
  Characters can be expected to jump 1m in height and 2m in length.  If 
  circumstances become difficult or dangerous, the referee should require 
  an Athletics roll.  
   
   
  
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  Should a character fall from a height they will suffer damage: 
   
  1-2m  
  3-6’  
  1 point 
  3-5m  
  6-15’  
  1D+2 
  6-8m 
  15’-24’ 
  2D+2 
  9m+ 
  25’+  
  3D+6 
   
  Falling down a rocky slope will probably inflict 1 or 2 points of damage, 
  although the referee might want to ask for a Climb or Athletics roll to give 
  the character a chance to avoid any injury.  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
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  6 
  DINOSAURS 
   
   Dinosaurs weren’t simply gigantic lizards, although they were descended 
  from crocodile-like reptiles that once dominated life on the early Earth. 
  Those early reptiles had splayed legs, like lizards today, but the early 
  dinosaurs evolved new methods of locomotion. Dinosaurs stood up 
  straight, either on four legs or two, and they tucked their legs beneath 
  their bodies. Just like the reptiles, though, dinosaurs laid eggs in shells 
  and had scaly skins. Of course dinosaurs came in many shapes and sizes, 
  from creatures the size of chickens to vast sauropods the length of 
  airliners. And they occupied most parts of the ecosystem … most, but not 
  all.  
   
  
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  A few species of small mammals had developed, but in a world 
  dominated by types of lizard, these would remain an oddity of evolution 
  for several more millions of years. The reptilian cousins of dinosaurs 
  included crocodiles, lizards, frogs and other amphibians, whilst snakes 
  evolved during the Cretaceous. There were insects, too, like dragonflies, 
  cockroaches, ticks, beetles and many others. In the sea lived ancient 
  species of fish (including shark) and shellfish (like ammonite, crab and 
  sea snail) along with a whole variety of 
  ancient marine reptiles that dominated 
  the ocean. These were not dinosaurs, 
  but like the dinosaurs they were a 
  family of reptiles that had evolved from 
  more primitive types and found an 
  environment in which to flourish. Most 
  striking of these ocean reptiles were 
  the dolphin-like ichthyosaurs, the long-
  necked plesiosaurs and the whale-sized 
  mosasaurs.  
   
  In the air, it was a similar story. Early 
  reptiles had evolved flying forms that 
  became, 
  in 
  the 
  Jurassic 
  and 
  Cretaceous, 
  the 
  exotic 
  pterosaurs. 
  These pterosaurs, like their earth-
  bound cousins, filled a variety of 
  ecological niches; some pterosaurs 
  hunted, others were scavengers or 
  insect eaters but many seem to have 
  been fish-eaters, much like modern 
  gannets and pelicans. Birds existed, but 
  they were still in the early stages of 
  their evolution. Only a few species had 
  so far taken to the air and these were 
  in fact true dinosaurs - a type of small 
  dromeosaur 
  (raptor). 
  During 
  the 
  Cretaceous the pheasant-like rahonavis 
  
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  could be seen snapping at insects and its descendants would survive the 
  mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous to develop into the birds we 
  see around us today.  
   
  Eighty years of dinosaur movies, from King Kong in 1933 to Jurassic 
  World in 2015, have conditioned us to think of dinosaurs as fearsome 
  killers, savage monsters from a lost world. In Camp Cretaceous we need 
  to take a more dispassionate view and remember that dinosaurs are 
  animals, not monsters. Many times, when I have helped children to kit 
  out their characters ready for an expedition, the subject of weapons 
  comes up. Some of the boys want assault rifles, machine-guns, even 
  grenades. My response is to compare their field trip to the work of a lion 
  conservationist in Africa, or a BBC wildlife camera crew filming sharks in 
  the China Sea. The teams don’t kill the animals they are there to study, 
  and if they do have armed guards, it is to protect them from pirates or 
  poachers, not from hungry carnivores. There are exceptions, of course, 
  killer whales, crocodiles and polar bears will all show an unhealthy 
  interest in human beings.  This game is about non-violent problem 
  solving, however, and so it is the animal-like behaviours and physical 
  aspects of dinosaurs that interest us most. There is danger, not just from 
  the big carnivores that may mistake stringy human children for their 
  preferred prey, but also from herbivores that are defending their territory 
  or reacting to some perceived threat. Thousands of people are killed each 
  year, for example, by such non-meat eating animals as cattle, horses and 
  hippopotami. 
   
  TYPES OF DINOSAUR 
  Dinosaurs are divided into related groups, the main types of which are: 
   
  Theropods: Two-legged carnivores of all sizes. Although many 
  carnivores were powerful, fast hunters called carnosaurs that were able 
  to hunt and kill dinosaurs much larger than themselves, there also existed 
  much smaller predators. These smaller theropods, like the famous 
  oviraptors, ate insects, small reptiles, eggs and mammals. All theropods 
  stood upright on two legs, they had low powerful tails, short undeveloped 
  
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  arms and the strong back legs of a runner. Most killed with their powerful 
  jaws, packed with dagger-like teeth, the dromaeosaurs also developed 
  retractable claws on each foot. Like predators today, theropods had keen 
  eyesight and larger brains (for their body weight) than most of the 
  herbivores they preyed upon.  
   
  Pachycephalosaurs: A two-legged species of omnivore with tough, 
  domed skull. Pachycephalosaurs are in a class of their own; they were 
  probably omnivores and their roofs of their skulls were domed and 
  incredibly thick. Most likely, these animals engaged in head-butting 
  contests with others of its species, just as mountain goats and bison do 
  today. 
   
  Ornithopods: Two-legged herbivores, particularly the duckbilled 
  hadrosaurs. This family of dinosaurs had broad, duck-like beaks that 
  allowed them to eat many types of plants, much like the wide mouth of 
  the modern rhino. Because of their versatility they were numerous and 
  could survive in a wide variety of habitats. They are often referred to as 
  the ‘Cretaceous Cow’. Ornithopod’s grinding teeth were at the back of its 
  jaw. Although they were two-legged, their arms were well developed and 
  they could walk on all-fours. Most of these dinosaur species had hollow 
  crests that allowed them to hoot, bellow and trumpet. The largest of the 
  ornithopods, Magnapaulia, was huge, weighing as much as two or three 
  bull elephants and boasting a length of 16 metres. Most were a little 
  smaller than this, however.  
   
  Thyreophora: The name means ‘shield-bearer’ and these four-legged 
  plant-eaters were heavily armoured. Species included different types of 
  ankylosaur, as well as sauropelta and edmontonia. Stegasaurs belong to 
  this group, but were extinct by the mid-Cretaceous. These animals 
  walked on four legs, but the front legs were usually much shorter than 
  those at the rear. Armadillos and pangolins today have armoured bodies, 
  but the thyreophora developed armoured plates to protect their back, 
  often reinforced with bony studs and spikes. Some species even 
  armoured their tails and heads and euplocephalus (a type of ankylosaur) 
  went further, its eyelids were protected by bony shutters! Although some 
  
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  of these dinosaurs (like polacanthus) grew rows of fearsome spikes in 
  order to protect themselves, others added a bony club on the end of the 
  tail with which they could strike at their attackers.  
   
  Ceratopsians: 
  Four-legged 
  beaked 
  and 
  horned 
  dinosaurs 
  like 
  triceratops. These are large quadrupeds with distinctive and often quite 
  elaborate and developed facial horns and frills extending over the neck. 
  These bony frills were used for protection as well as display, but may also 
  have helped to cool the creatures. Individual ceratopsian species vary in 
  length from one to 8 metres. Ceratopsians had beaks which allowed them 
  to choose their food carefully, much like the modern-day gazelle which 
  has narrow mouths for plucking leaves and fruit from trees and bushes.  
   
  Titanosaurs: The super heavy-weights of the dinosaur world were the 
  titanosaurs, massive long-necked dinosaurs with long, whip-like, tails. 
  Titanosaurs were actually part of a group called sauropods which had 
  included brachiosaurs, apatosaurs and diplodocus. These had not 
  
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  survived into the Cretaceous, perhaps due to the predation of large 
  theropods like allosaurus. Titanosaurs evolved from those earlier species 
  and were bigger and harder to kill, many had tough, bony plates covering 
  their backs: they were armoured, though not to the extent of an 
  ankylosaur or ceratopsian. Venenosaurus and saltasaurus, at only 10m 
  long, were some of the smaller Titanosaur species and may have been 
  hunted by packs of albertosaurus. Perhaps the most ‘titanic’ of all the 
  titanosaurs was argentinosaurus, which may have grown to an incredible 
  length of 26m and an estimated weight of perhaps 80 tons! Titanosaurs, 
  like all sauropods, grazed on the tree-tops, taking advantage of the fact 
  that other species of herbivore could not reach them.  
   
  LIFE IN THE CRETACEOUS 
    
  EATING & DIGESTING 
  Cretaceous herbivores feed on a wide array 
  of plant food, on coniferous trees (including 
  the monkey puzzle with its sharp anti-
  dinosaur defences) and other plants with 
  tough foliage and tall stems or trunks. 
  Flowering plants had emerged by the time 
  Camp Cretaceous was established, creating 
  a glorious carpet of succulent, low-growing 
  foliage which made grazing easier for many 
  animals. Smaller ornithopods have become 
  far 
  more 
  prevalent 
  because 
  of 
  the 
  abundance of fast-growing, ground level 
  vegetation. 
  Large 
  sauropods, 
  and 
  titanosaurs, continue to graze the upper 
  branches of the higher trees. These 
  sauropods do not have grinding teeth 
  and swallow their food whole, it is 
  ground up within the stomach with the aid of pebbles, previously 
  ingested, as well as microbes. Smaller herbivores, such as the 
  ornithopods and ceratopsians, pluck their food from stems using toothless 
                      Monkey Puzzle                       
  
  86 | P a g e  
   
   
                           Cycad                                                    Tree Fern 
  beaks, or wide duck-like beaks, then pass it to grinding teeth at the back 
  of the mouth. All of these animals regrow their teeth, handy when they 
  wear down!  
   
  With all of this food being digested, dinosaurs produce an enormous 
  amount of droppings. Large sauropods like alamosaurus probably eat 
  between 3 - 4 tonnes of plant matter each week, which will turn into 
  around one tonne of droppings! These are different shapes depending on 
  the type of dinosaur dropping them, and an expert in tracking from Camp 
  Cretaceous should be able to tell the difference. Even a novice will be 
  able to differentiate herbivore dung from carnivore dung.  Because 
  fossilized dinosaur droppings are relatively rare finds in the 21st century, 
  scientists at the camp spend many days chasing down and studying fresh 
  dino-poo! Dung beetles often ‘mine’ into dinosaur dung, searching for 
  nutrients left behind. Some beetles roll the best bits of dung into balls 
  and then push them away to a secure burrow to become nurseries for 
  young beetles. Dung may also be used by dinosaur species to mark 
  territory, just as mammals do today.   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
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  RAISING A FAMILY 
  Like zebra and antelope today, most herbivorous dinosaurs gather 
  together in herds for mutual protection. The size of a herd varies with 
  species, it seems that iguanadons may live in herds of up to half a dozen, 
  while hadrosaurs could gather in herds of several hundred, much like 
  wildebeest today. Herds have their own hierarchies, and can be led by 
  dominant individuals. With modern elephants, a matriarch (dominant 
  older female) leads the group. She is old and wise, and remembers good 
  places for food and water-holes, she remembers the best trails and knows 
  which predators will be a danger in certain locations. Herd leaders in 
  dinosaur societies have similar skills. Other animals in the herd, often 
  brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles and cousins will all have a slightly 
  different status in the ‘pecking order’. Young ones will often be protected 
  by other herd members, and when grazing may be sheltered within the 
  centre of the herd. Stronger dinosaurs will graze at the front, or on the 
  flanks. Expect stronger and older dinosaurs to form defensive rings 
  around younger or weaker members of their own herd if threatened by a 
  predator (or human group that is not taking precautions).  
   
  Male elephants often leave their herd once they are mature, and male 
  hadrosaurs, ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, for example, may do the 
  same. They live in ‘bachelor herds’ with other young males for a few 
  years, until they feel (if they are strong enough) that they can challenge a 
  male who leads his herd, perhaps forcing him to back off. The young 
  pretender may take over that herd’s females and young, or he might steal 
  away a number of females in order to start his own herd. Young male 
  dinosaurs will fight each other in mock battles within these bachelor 
  herds, practicing their skills ready for the day they might challenge a herd 
  leader. 
  There 
  is 
  some 
  evidence 
  that 
  the 
  bony 
  skulls 
  of 
  pachycephalosaurus and the horns of ceratopsians like styracosaurus 
  were used in these mock fights.  
   
  Dinosaurs are egg-layers and these eggs are surprisingly small, the 
  largest are only about twice the size of a modern ostrich egg. Forget the 
  giant eggs of Persian fantasy, laid by the elephant-snatching Roc bird! 
  Any bigger and the egg walls will be too thick to allow oxygen through, or 
  
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  allow the hatchling to break out. Whilst some dinosaurs lay fewer than 10 
  eggs at a time, others lay 40 or more. These eggs are almost always laid 
  in nest ‘scrapes’ on the ground, a metre or two across, which resemble a 
  hollow or crater that is dug out by the mother and her mate before she 
  lays her eggs within it. An oviraptor skeleton has been found that was 
  sitting, chicken-like, on its nest, and it is likely that other small dinosaurs 
  may do likewise. Picture a colony of penguins all sitting on nests, whilst 
  the nest partners go out to gather food. We can imagine many types of 
  dinosaur doing the same, acting in mating pairs, but gathering together in 
  a single breeding colony together as a herd, ready to protect the 
  communal nest sites from predators like tyrannosaur or oviraptor. Much 
  larger animals, however, must just cover them over and walk away (or 
  remain close by to guard the nests), the danger of smashing such 
  delicate eggs will make incubating the eggs any other way unfeasible. 
  Some dinosaurs will cover the earth mound over the nest with vegetation 
  and as it rots it will have generated heat – a true incubator! The eggs 
  probably take about a month to hatch.  
    
  Evidence suggests that newly hatched dinosaurs leave the nest almost 
  immediately, they are mobile and independent. Until they are larger and 
  can keep up with the herd, the rest of the animals usually remain in the 
  vicinity. However, some species remain in the nest once hatched, like the 
  duck-billed maiasaur. Just like those penguins, the hatchling maiasaurs 
  must rely on regular feeds from their parents, most probably foraging in 
  turn. Whilst predators can carry meat in their mouths back to the nest for 
  their little ones (like an eagle, a crow or a puffin), herbivores instead 
  must resort to regurgitating semi-digested food into the snapping mouths 
  of their hungry brood. Most modern birds do this today. Dinosaurs grow 
  up extremely quickly to enable them to join the herd and not slow it 
  down. Still, many hatchlings fall prey to predators, die of starvation or 
  accident or disease. Dinosaurs laid lots of eggs for this very reason.   
   
   
   
   
   
  
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  SOUND & COLOUR 
  Today, little is known of dinosaur skin colours, but studies of modern 
  wildlife suggest that they would have been covered with a wonderful 
  array of colours, camouflage patterns, scales and feathers. Like 
  elephants, the very biggest dinosaurs, the sauropods, are almost immune 
  from attack and have no need of camouflage. ‘Smaller’ dinosaurs 
  (anything from a T-Rex down!) will sport all manner of camouflage 
  designs based on their typical habitat: spots, stripes, stipples, two-tone 
  colours and even changing patterns (much like chameleons, which use 
  colour change for mood displays as well as stealth).  
   
  Feathers have been found on the fossils of some two-legged dinosaurs 
  and it is likely that many of the therapods carried feathers. Some modern 
  reconstructions of animals like T-Rex are shown covered with feathers, 
  almost like giant birds, but most display a more subtle approach, 
  illustrating therapods with feathered tails or forearms sprouting feathers. 
  The referee can take the line he or she prefers; Spielberg left feathers out 
  of Jurassic Park, for example, giving the paying audience the kind of 
  dinosaurs that it expected. It might be far more interesting in Camp 
  Cretaceous if feathers did appear on some of the therapods, solidifying 
  the link between this type of dinosaur and their close relatives, the 
  modern birds. I would never present these dinosaurs as completely  
  feather-covered bird-like creatures within the game, but feathers can be 
  used, along with colour and camouflage to bring dinosaur species to life 
  with vibrant and interesting descriptions.  
   
  Herd animals need to communicate in order to stay together, in addition, 
  they will need to be able to make alarm calls that warn of predators. 
  Many animals today also make calls in order to attract mates, to ward off 
  rivals or to let everyone know that this is their territory - stay away! Each 
  species will have had its own calls, some deep and booming, like the 
  huge sauropods, some hooting and trumpeting, like the long-crested 
  hadrosaurs, some piping and melodious, like the raptors and other small 
  theropods.  
   
   
  
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  TRACKS 
  Any naturalist tracking dinosaurs in 
  the Cretaceous will need to know 
  something about those tracks. 
  Broadly speaking, there are two 
  main types of tracks: those of the 
  long-necked sauropods, which are 
  rounded or oval, and those of 
  theropods, which are more bird-
  like. A good tracker can estimate 
  the speed that the animal was 
  doing when it made the tracks, 
  whether 
  it 
  was 
  walking 
  or 
  sprinting, 
  for 
  example. 
  The 
  ornithomimids seem to have been 
  the fastest, able to run at about 60 
  kph. Much larger dinosaurs would 
  have had trouble maintaining a 
  run, and many were capable of a 
  speed around twice as fast as a 
  human 
  (30 
  kph). 
  For 
  the 
  sauropods actual running may 
  have impossible, and these land 
  giants were probably only capable 
  of a fast walk.  
   
  Tracks of the same species, but of varying sizes, will indicate juvenile 
  members of the herd, and trackways discovered in North America have 
  shown that these juveniles could be ‘corralled’ into the centre of the herd 
  whilst the adults walk on either side to protect them. The famous 
  trackway at Paluxy River in Texas, USA, even shows a sauropod being 
  tracked by a large theropod predator. Where dinosaurs gather, such as 
  river-crossings, water holes or fresh dinosaur kills, the ground will be 
  trampled, leaving a confusing jumble of tracks that will be difficult to 
  interpret. Animals are creatures of habit and will use the same migration 
  routes or trackways over and over again. Tracks are obvious in wet 
  
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  ground, mud or damp sand. The age of a track can usually be estimated 
  by studying its sharpness and moisture content. Clearer tracks are more 
  likely to be more recent.  
   
  Tracking is often about more than just footprints, however. Some smaller 
  animals make ‘tunnels’ as their routes through dense vegetation, and the 
  height of these gives some indication as to the animal’s size. Likewise, 
  larger animals (and many types of dinosaur) will break twigs and small 
  branches in overhanging trees, again giving an estimate of the creature’s 
  height. Leaves will wilt and broken twigs will dry out – giving the tracker 
  an idea of how long ago the animal passed through the area. Droppings 
  left by the animals are also very useful in tracking them.   
   
  HUNTING  
  Dinosaurs have a reputation as being dim-witted, but their intelligence 
  will have varied by species. Scientists use something called an 
  ‘encephalization quotient’, or EQ, that is a ratio of actual brain weight to 
  expected brain weight for the animal’s size and type. Studies reveal that 
  the EQ of a human is around 7.0, whilst crocodiles have an EQ of 1.0. All 
  the herbivores studied had EQ’s less than the crocodile, with the giant 
  sauropods at the back of the line - their EQs hovered around 0.2. The 
  meat eating theropods (the carnosaurs) generally had EQs between 1.0 
  and 2.0, while the pack-hunting raptors had EQs of 5.8, similar to that of 
  a modern bottle-nose dolphin.  
   
  This certainly shows that the meat-eating dinosaurs, those that hunted 
  their prey, required a greater degree of intelligence in order to plan their 
  attacks, co-ordinate them with hunting partners and learn to adapt their 
  strategies. The most intelligent, by far, seem to have been the 
  dromaeosaurs (raptors like deinonychus) which seem to have hunted in 
  sophisticated social groups, akin to those of African lions, American 
  wolves and pods of killer whales.    
   
  Some meat-eating dinosaurs are solitary hunters, others will hunt in pairs 
  to feed their young, others may team up (like sharks) to bring down large 
  game, and others are pack hunters. These theropods are faster than their 
  
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  herbivore prey, running on two powerful back legs, with shorter forearms 
  that had little use. In many theropods the forearms can be used to help a 
  fallen dinosaur get back to its feet and continue the chase, but some, 
  noticeably tyrannosaur rex, have extremely tiny, useless forearms that 
  are of little help in such a situation. Tyrannosaurs may have been 
  scavengers, hijacking the fresh kills of other, less formidable carnosaurs.   
   
  Not all predators hunt and chase herbivores. Pterosaurs probably feed on 
  fish and live lives akin to modern pelicans. Oviraptors are suspected of 
  sniffing out and raiding the nests of other dinosaurs for their eggs. Tiny 
  theropods, like bambiraptor, will eat dragonflies and small lizards. The 
  intimidating spinosaurus, with its distinctive dorsal ‘sail’ is equal in size to 
  T-Rex, yet its long fang-filled snout suggests that it fed on large fresh-
  water fish. Just as in our modern world, meat-eating dinosaurs exploited 
  the resources around them, and many specialized in a particular role. 
  Some were ambush predators, some were long-distance chasers, others 
  were tactical pack hunters, some were scavengers, others were carrion 
  hijackers, some were even fishermen! 
   
  DINOSAUR CHARACTERISTICS 
  This section provides characteristics and data for the major animal 
  species inhabiting Laramidia during the Mid-Cretaceous period. Each Data 
  File provides the same set of information: 
   
   Name - The commonly known species name is given here.  
   Type - Which broad family of dinosaur does this creature belong to? 
   Niche - This is the ecological niche which determines the animal’s 
  habits and behaviour.  
   Strength - Physical strength, fitness and forcefulness.  
   Dexterity - Physical co-ordination and agility, reflexes. 
   Endurance – Stamina and determination, and the ability to sustain 
  damage.  
   Mass - Given in metric values. A human adult weighs approximately  
  75 kg, a cow or horse weighs around 1000 kg and an adult elephant 
  around 5 tonnes.   
  
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   Pack - How many animals typically gather together, this number 
  gives the referee an idea of how many will normally be encountered 
  at one time. Pick a number or roll the dice.  
   Move - A dinosaur can be rated as Slow (+4), Medium (+2) or Fast 
  (0). These categories describe how fast a creature can run in 
  relation to a human being. See the rules for Running and Chasing in 
  Chapter 3.  
   Armour - Subtract this value from any damage received in a single 
  attack.  
   Damage - This is the damage inflicted upon a character or another 
  dinosaur if it is successful in its attack.  
   Instinct - Instinct is the animal equivalent of Education. Animals 
  apply their Instinct DM to tasks such as sensing prey or solving 
  problems. 
   Behaviour - What will the creature do when it spots the characters? 
  There are two values, Attack and Flee. Roll first one, to see if it 
  attempts that particular action. If it fails that roll, check the second 
  value. If that also fails then the creature is unsure or uncaring about 
  the human presence. It continues to feed, walk or watch from a 
  distance. Predators check for an Attack first and a Flee second, all 
  other dinosaur types roll their Flee value first. Some situations will 
  obviously initiate an automatic reaction, and dice should not be 
  rolled. This might include firing a gun or starting a large fire. Use 
  your common sense.  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
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  ALBERTOSAURUS 
   
   
  Type: Large Theropod 
  Niche: Intimidator  
  Str:5D6 (18) 
  Dex: 2D6+2 (10) 
  End: 5D6 (18) 
  Mass: 3 tonnes 
  Pack: 2D 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: 2 
  Damage: 2D6+1 
  Instinct: 2D6+4 (11) 
  Behaviour:                Attack 7+ Flee 10+ Max. Length: 8 m 
  A small cousin of the T-Rex, albertosaurus is only half the size and is 
  a scavenger, eating prey brought down by others, perhaps (like 
  vultures and hyenas today) waiting for the predator to finish its meal, 
  or stealing what it can. Like vultures, albertosaurs congregate in 
  numbers, driving off other creatures like troodon from the kill.    
   
  
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  ALAMOSAURUS 
   
   
  Type: Sauropod 
  Niche: Grazer  
  Str: 11D6 (36) 
  Dex: 1D6 (1) 
  End: 11D6 (36) 
  Mass: 30 tonnes 
  Pack: 2D+4 
  Move: Slow (+4) 
  Armour: 4 
  Damage: 4D6 
  Instinct: 2D6+2 (9) 
  Behaviour:                Flee 8+ Attack 8+ 
  Max. Length: 21 m 
  America’s only titanosaur; unlike other titanosaurs of this period, 
  Alamosaurus has no hardened body armour. It roams the plains in 
  small herds, living in fear of almost no predator. Care should be taken 
  to avoid the long whip-like tail that the alamosaurus use for 
  communication, and its mighty kick as it rears up in defence. 
   
  
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  ALPHADON 
   
   
  Type: Ancient Mammal  
  Niche: Gatherer  
  Str: 2 
  Dex: 5 
  End: 2 
  Mass: 3 kg 
  Pack: 1D 
  Move: Medium (+2) 
  Armour: - 
  Damage: 1D6-1 
  Instinct: 7 
  Behaviour:                Attack 7+ Flee 4+ 
  Max. Length: 30 cm 
  The alphadon is a mammal living under the feet of the dinosaurs. It is 
  an omnivore that specialises in eating plants, but will also eat worms, 
  grubs and insects. It resembles the modern American opossum. 
  Alphadons dig burrows where they shelter from predatory dinosaurs 
  like troodon or ornithomimus, and rear their young. 
   
  
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  ANKYLOSAUR 
   
   
  Type:  Thyreophora 
  Niche: Grazer  
  Str: 6D6 (21) 
  Dex: 1D6 (2)  
  End: 6D6 (21)  
  Mass: 5 tonnes 
  Pack: 1D+1 
  Move: Slow (+4) 
  Armour: 8 
  Damage: 3D6+2 
  Instinct: 2D6+2 (9) 
  Behaviour:                Flee 9+ Attack 6+ 
  Max. Length: 10 m 
  These low-slung, four-legged dinosaurs are herbivores that are 
  incredibly well-armoured. They are equipped with bony plates, horns, 
  spikes and some have bony clubs (weighing over 50 kg!) at the ends 
  of their tails for use as a weapon, standing sideways on to engage an 
  attacker. One type, the euoplocephalus even has armoured eyelids… 
   
  
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  BAMBIRAPTOR 
   
   
  Type: Small Theropod 
  Niche: Hunter 
  Str: 1 
  Dex: 5 
  End: 1 
  Mass: 2 kg  
  Pack: 2D 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: - 
  Damage: 1D6-1 
  Instinct: 8 
  Behaviour: Attack 5+ if bigger, Flee 7+ 
  Max. Length: 90 cm 
  With opposable fingers and a large brain size for its weight, 
  bambirator is a cunning and clever hunter, feeding upon mammals 
  and lizards. When not hunting on the forest floor, it spends time in the 
  trees, from which it can glide from to the other.  
  
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  CROCODILE 
   
   
  Type: Reptile 
  Niche: Pouncer  
  Str: 4D6 (14) 
  Dex: 2D6 (8) 
  End: 4D6 (24) 
  Mass: 800 kg 
  Pack: 3D 
  Move: Slow (+4) 
  Armour: 2 
  Damage: 2D+2 
  Instinct: 10 
  Behaviour: Attack if it has surprise, Flee 10+ 
  Max. Length: 4 m 
  The crocodile as we know it evolved in the Cretaceous. It is an 
  ambush predator, waiting in shallow water to lunge out and seize 
  prey drinking at a water hole, or crossing a river. Once it has the prey 
  it will drag it into the water and thrash around, drowning and 
  shredding it. A very dangerous animal indeed.  
   
  
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  DEINONYCHUS ‘raptor’ 
   
   
  Type: Small Theropod 
  Niche: Chaser 
  Str: 3D6 (11) 
  Dex: 3D6+4 (15) 
  End: 3D6 (11) 
  Mass: 100 kg 
  Pack: 2D 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: 1 
  Damage: 2D6+2 
  Instinct: 11 
  Behaviour: Attack if outnumber prey, Flee 9+ 
  Max. Length: 4 m 
  Deinonychus hunt in packs, wearing down their prey, until the time 
  comes for a kill. These dinosaurs jump, biting hard and like a tiger, 
  slash at the victim with their savage rear claws. Clever, co-operative 
  and adaptable, the deinonychus featured in the movie Jurassic Park 
  as the featherless ‘velociraptor’. Beware.  
  
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  HADROSAUR 
   
   
  Type: Ornithopod 
  Niche: Grazer  
  Str: 6D6 (21) 
  Dex: 1D6 (3) 
  End: 6D6 (21)  
  Mass: 4 tonnes 
  Pack: 4D+4 
  Move: Medium (+2) 
  Armour: 2 
  Damage: 3D6 
  Instinct: 10 
  Behaviour:                Flee 7+ Attack 8+ 
  Max. Length: 10 m 
  Hadrosaurs are a common duck-billed dinosaur living in the 
  Cretaceous. There are many varieties, most with elaborate head 
  crests, some of which, like those of the parasaurolophus, are long, 
  swept-back and used for making trumpeting calls. They are able to 
  walk on all fours, or stand upright to feed on their powerful rear legs..  
  
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  IBEROSORNIS 
   
   
  Type: Ancient Bird 
  Niche: Intermittent  
  Str: 1 
  Dex: 6 
  End: 1 
  Mass: 20 g  
  Pack: 1D 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: - 
  Damage: - 
  Instinct: 6 
  Behaviour:              Flee 6+, Attack 11+   Wing Span: 20 cm 
  Iberosornis represents the growing numbers of bird species that have 
  evolved in the Cretaceous. This example resembles a dinosaur-
  headed finch or sparrow and eats berries and grubs.  
   
  
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  IGUANODON 
   
   
  Type: Ornithopod 
  Niche: Grazer 
  Str: 7D6 (24) 
  Dex: 1D6 (3) 
  End: 7D6 (24) 
  Mass: 5 tonnes 
  Pack: 3D 
  Move: Medium (+2) 
  Armour: 3 
  Damage: 3D6+1 
  Instinct: 8 
  Behaviour:               Flee 7+ Attack 8+  
  Max. Length: 9 m 
  With four legs this creature can migrate long distances, but it can also 
  stand easily on its long back legs to reach leaves on trees. 
  Iguanodons are the ‘Cretaceous cow’, with large herds feeding 
  continuously. They have a remarkably dextrous little finger, as well as 
  formidable spiked thumbs used in defence. Harmless if avoided. 
  
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  MICRORAPTOR 
   
   
  Type: Small Theropod 
  Niche: Intermittent  
  Str: 1 
  Dex: 6 
  End: 1 
  Mass: 500 g  
  Pack: 1D 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: - 
  Damage: - 
  Instinct: 7 
  Behaviour:              Flee 6+, Attack 11+   Wing Span: 80 cm 
  Showing the family links between raptors and birds, the microraptor is 
  an amazing four-winged flying dinosaur the size of a crow or herring 
  gull. It is an omnivore, eating lizards, berries, grubs and insects.  
   
  
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  ORNITHOMIMUS 
   
   
  Type: Medium Theropod 
  Niche: Hunter 
  Str: 3D6 (11) 
  Dex: 3D6 (11) 
  End: 3D6 (11)  
  Mass: 170 kg 
  Pack: 1D 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: - 
  Damage: 3D6 
  Instinct: 9 
  Behaviour: Attack 6+ if bigger, Flee 8+ 
  Max. Length: 2 m 
  These omnivores have short, beaked, parrot-like skulls with bony 
  crests. They are heavily feathered and steal eggs, hunt lizards and 
  grubs. They have a single long finger on each hand used for reaching 
  these little creatures. No danger to humans, but hard to spot, or 
  catch. They are very cunning.  
  
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  OVIRAPTOR 
   
   
  Type: Small Theropod 
  Niche: Hunter 
  Str: 2D6 (7) 
  Dex: 3D6 (11) 
  End: 2D6 (7)  
  Mass: 25 kg 
  Pack: 1D 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: - 
  Damage: 1D6 
  Instinct: 10 
  Behaviour: Attack 6+ if bigger, Flee 8+ 
  Max. Length: 2 m 
  These oviraptors (in America, a subspecies known as Chirostenotes) 
  are omnivores that have short, beaked, parrot-like skulls with bony 
  crests. They are heavily feathered and steal eggs, hunt lizards and 
  grubs. They have a single long finger on each hand  for reaching 
  these little creatures. No danger to humans, but hard to spot, or 
  catch. They are very cunning.  
  
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  PACHYCEPHALOSAURUS 
   
   
  Type: Pachycephalosaur 
  Niche: Hunter 
  Str: 4D6 (14) 
  Dex: 2D6 (7) 
  End: 4D6 (14) 
  Mass: 450 kg 
  Pack: 1D 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: 1 
  Damage: 2D6+2 
  Instinct: 10 
  Behaviour: Attack 6+ if bigger, Flee 8+ 
  Max. Length: 4.6 m 
  An omnivorous dinosaurs living in small groups, the pachycephal-
  osaurus has a large skull topped with a solid dome up to 25 cm thick. 
  It uses this ‘thick skull’ to ram other males in duels and aggressive 
  displays. Angry members of this species have been known to 
  repeatedly ram vehicles – beware!  
  
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  PTERANODON 
   
   
  Type: Pterosaur 
  Niche: Pouncer  
  Str: 2D6 (7) 
  Dex: 4D6 (14) 
  End: 2D6 (7) 
  Mass: 30 kg  
  Pack: 2D 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: - 
  Damage: 1D6+1 
  Instinct: 7 
  Behaviour: Attack if it has surprise, Flee 5+ 
  Wing Span: 6 m 
  This famous pterosaur hunts fish like a modern day pelican, 
  skimming low over the water. They nest on cliff-tops in huge colonies 
  like seabirds today. On land the pteranodon will also feed on crabs, 
  insects and scavenged dead animals. They are slow and ungainly 
  walkers on land, their Move score is used when flying.  
   
  
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  QUETZALCOATLUS 
   
   
  Type: Pterosaur 
  Niche: Carrion Eater  
  Str: 3D6 (11) 
  Dex: 3D6 (11) 
  End: 3D6 (11) 
  Mass: 120 kg 
  Pack: 2D 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: - 
  Damage: 2D6 
  Instinct: 9 
  Behaviour:                Attack 7+ Flee 7+ 
  Wing Span: 12 m 
  The largest flying animal on Earth with a wingspan equal to a Cessna 
  aeroplane! This huge creature is essentially a huge vulture, using its 
  sharp beak to dig deep into carcasses, but it also targets small lizards 
  and mammals. They can walk slowly, the speed given is when flying. 
  Quetzalcoatlus prefer hills and mountains as their territories.  
   
  
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  STYRACOSAUR 
   
   
  Type: Ceratopsian 
  Niche: Grazer 
  Str: 6D6 (21) 
  Dex: 1D6 (2) 
  End: 6D6 (21)  
  Mass: 3 tonnes 
  Pack: 4D+8 
  Move: Medium (+2) 
  Armour: 5 
  Damage: 3D6 
  Instinct: 5 
  Behaviour:               Flee 9+ Attack 6+ 
  Max. Length: 6 m 
  Large herds of styracosaur roam Laramidia, their large skull frills are 
  ringed by 60 cm-long spikes, used in both defence against large 
  predators, but also for territorial battles between males. Styracosaurs 
  are aggressive and do not back down easily, confronting a predator 
  (or jeep!) with a crowd of angry and spiky adults. 
  
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  THERIZINOSAURUS 
   
   
  Type: Large Theropod 
  Niche: Intermittant 
  Str: 7D6 (24) 
  Dex: 1D6 (2) 
  End: 7D6 (24) 
  Mass: 5 tonnes 
  Pack: 1 only 
  Move: Slow (+4) 
  Armour: 2 
  Damage: 3D6+2 
  Instinct: 7 
  Behaviour:              Flee 10+, Attack 10+   Max. Length: 10 m 
  As big as a T-Rex, the therizinosaur has gigantic claws on each of its 
  2 m long forearms. It is actually a herbivore, using its claws to pull 
  down foliage that it cannot reach. Certainly the claws would also be 
  useful in defence. A very strange creature – living a solitary life and 
  not eating or foraging constantly.  
  
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  TRICERATOPS 
   
   
  Type: Ceratopsian 
  Niche: Grazer  
  Str:7D6 (24) 
  Dex: 1D6 (3) 
  End: 7D6 (24) 
  Mass: 8 tonnes 
  Pack: 4D+4 
  Move: Medium (+2) 
  Armour: 5 
  Damage: 3D6 
  Instinct: 2D6+2 (9) 
  Behaviour:                Flee 8+ Attack 7+ 
  Max. Length: 9 m 
  Triceratops are famous for their impressive skull frills and three huge 
  horns, the rear pair reaching 1 m in length. It roams America in large herds 
  and the males compete in violent contests using their horns. Be careful of 
  triceratops, they can be aggressive and make sudden charges towards 
  humans when nervous or threatened. 
  
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  TROODON 
   
   
  Type: Small Theropod 
  Niche: Hunter 
  Str: 2D6 (7) 
  Dex: 4D6 (14) 
  End: 2D6 (7) 
  Mass: 50 kg 
  Pack: 2D 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: - 
  Damage: 2D6 
  Instinct: 12 
  Behaviour: Attack 6+ if bigger, Flee 8+ 
  Max. Length: 2.4 m 
  These small theropods resemble a small deinonychus, complete with 
  swivelling killer claw on each foot. Yet they are not pack hunters, they 
  are omnivorous feeders, using their large forward-facing eyes, 
  grasping hands and intelligence to find all kinds of food-stuff after 
  dark.  Troodon are the most intelligent of dinosaurs, they hunt small 
  lizards and mammals, scavenge, and exploit what plant-life they can.  
  
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  TYRANNOSAURUS REX 
   
   
  Type: Large Theropod 
  Niche: Intimidator  
  Str: 8D6+4 (32) 
  Dex: 5 
  End: 8D6 (28) 
  Mass: 7 tonnes 
  Pack: 1 only 
  Move: Fast (0) 
  Armour: 3 
  Damage: 4D6+2 
  Instinct: 11 
  Behaviour:                Attack 6+ Flee 11+ Max. Length: 14 m 
  The largest predator on Earth, T-Rex can attack a herbivore from 
  ambush but it prefers to sniff out another predator’s kill and hijack the 
  meat by scaring other carnivores away. Its teeth are like 15 cm-long 
  serrated knives. A ferocious and intimidating killer, around which no 
  human should feel complacent – or safe.  
   
  
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  7 
  GAME RESOURCES 
   
   
  CEPHEUS ENGINE 
  Camp Cretaceous is based on a set of roleplaying rules called Cepheus 
  Engine, derived from the famous Traveller roleplaying game. Find 
  Cepheus Engine HERE.  
   
  HANDOUTS 
  Children are more susceptible to player handouts than adults and seem to 
  really enjoy the visual appeal of faux documents, photographs and so on. 
  The letter from the youth mentor at Berkeley University at the start of 
  this book is one such handout. I attached a similar letter to the parent 
  reply slips that I sent home with the children, when I was recruiting for 
  my own games. You could go further, with kit lists to fill in for example, 
  or a request to the children to bring in a photograph of their character, 
  cut from a magazine or downloaded from the internet. Likewise the 
  referee may find that the players respond well to photographs of any 
  adult characters that they have to interact with, their ‘boss’, the site 
  doctor, the technician who always has their vehicle and kit ready, etc.  
   
  TOYS 
  Camp Cretaceous is not a wargame, yet it can be extremely valuable in 
  action orientated situations to have some way to represent the locations 
  of humans, dinosaurs and elements of the scenery to the players. I 
  typically use a quick sketch map, drawn either on paper or a write-erase 
  board. The possibility is there, however, to use a bag of plastic dinosaurs, 
  a few toy army jeeps and a few 1/72nd scale plastic soldiers to ‘set up’ the 
  situation so that the players can visualise the scene. The downside to this 
  approach is that the children start playing with these props, moving them 
  
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  around the table and turning their mind’s eye away from the consensual 
  reality that they were sharing in their heads. Instead they will focus on 
  the toys. It is best used with slightly younger players.  
   
  BOOKS 
  Referees are heartily recommended to buy or borrow a book on dinosaurs 
  for use in their game. There are hundreds of titles out there, superbly 
  illustrated, comprehensive and packed full of fascinating facts that can be 
  dropped into a Camp Cretaceous game. Any one of these facts can 
  provide the seed for an adventure. Of course it is extremely useful to 
  have great full colour illustrations of all the dinosaurs at the table in order 
  to show the players just what their characters are facing!  
   
  TV AND FILM 
  A number of TV shows and films contain great ideas that can provide 
  inspiration for a game, or simply provide atmosphere:  
   
  Jurassic Park (1993) 
  It is difficult for movie-goers aged 30 or under to understand the impact 
  that this film made. Dinosaurs now lived and breathed for the first time, 
  and the stumbling stop-motion beasts of the past were consigned to the 
  cutting room floor. Once the power goes out, Isla Nublar becomes a 
  dinosaur island with the various compounds and buildings of the Park 
  becoming enclaves of modern technology. There is plenty here for 
  referees, not just parts of the setting, such as the electric fences and the 
  four-wheel drives, but the exciting non-combat action scenes that should 
  make up the bulk of Camp Cretaceous games. Nedry gets his jeep stuck 
  in the jungle, Alan Grant and the kids have to climb an electric fence, the 
  kids themselves have to survive a T-Rex attack while trapped in a car that 
  gets pushed over a cliff, Ellie treats a poorly triceratops … plenty of ideas 
  there!  
   
  Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) 
  The Lost World is essential viewing for every Camp Cretaceous referee. 
  Isla Sorna, the second island in Jurassic Park, is now a prehistoric 
  
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  wilderness and John Hammond sends a small team in to document the 
  habits of the dinosaurs. They carry cages, cameras, tranquilizer rifles and 
  a host of other items in their off road camper van. A rival team soon 
  arrives, and this one is tooled up with guns, huge cages and satellite 
  uplinks – its aim is to capture some of the dinosaurs for exhibitions and 
  zoos. Both expeditions go awry and between a mating pair of 
  tyrannosaurs, a pack of velociraptors and a baby T-Rex, the humans find 
  themselves in real trouble. There is plenty of inspiration here for a 
  roleplaying game, take away the guns and you essentially have a Camp 
  Cretaceous expedition. I particularly like the way in which the 
  velociraptors hunt the humans in the grasslands and how their behaviour 
  becomes more animal-like, more believable and less monstrous. A perfect 
  subtitle for this movie would have been ‘dinosaur safari’. 
   
  Jurassic Park III (2001) 
  My favourite film in the Jurassic Park series, the third movie is again set 
  on Isla Sorna. This time the survivors of a plane crash must get to the 
  coast in order to be rescued. There are a couple of new dinosaurs in this 
  movie, but again it is the dramatic action scenes which prove 
  inspirational.  
   
  Jurassic World (2015) 
  This is a decent movie in the Jurassic Park series, though it has 
  essentially the same premise as the 1993 original (dinosaurs escape from 
  a prehistoric theme park). Certainly worth watching in relation to Camp 
  Cretaceous, but not quite as useful for a referee as any of the earlier 
  films. 
   
  Prehistoric Park (2006) 
  A six-episode fictional documentary TV show. The program is presented 
  by TV wildlife presenter Nigel Marven. In it, Nigel goes back to various 
  geological time periods through a space-time portal and brings back live 
  specimens of extinct animals to the present day, where they are exhibited 
  in a wildlife park named Prehistoric Park. This is a really interesting set up 
  and has many elements of interest to a referee, particularly the way in 
  which they try to trap the animals, and also treat those that are sick.  
  
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  Primeval (2007 – 2011) 
  A TV action-drama that follows a team of scientists tasked with 
  investigating the appearance of time portals across the United Kingdom 
  through which prehistoric and futuristic creatures enter the present. 
  There are a number of elements that might interest referees, particularly 
  in those episodes where the team members travel in to the past and the 
  way in which they immobilize dinosaurs. However, much of the rest of the 
  series is set in the present with an overtly science-fiction/conspiracy mix 
  to it, making those parts less useful.  
   
  Terra Nova (2011) 
  A TV series running for thirteen episodes that follows a family as it moves 
  to the prehistoric past as part of a large-scale colonisation effort. 
  Scientists have discovered a time portal that permits (one-way) human 
  transmission, and so a series of ‘pilgrimages’ are put in motion in an 
  attempt to flee the dystopian overpopulated and hyper-polluted present 
  of the mid-22nd century. I missed this series, but from all accounts it was 
  packed with plenty of adventure seeds and setting ideas that could be 
  mined and reused within a Camp Cretaceous game.  
   
  Flesh (1977 onwards) 
  This story in the British comic-book 2000AD never left my imagination 
  after I read it as a 9 year-old. It is debatable whether or not there is 
  much in here for children, since it presents a Wild West pastiche writ-
  large in the Cretaceous, with gunslingers, crazy priests, and women of 
  loose virtue. But the premise is glorious: an overpopulated Earth has 
  invented time travel and uses it to send these Texan ranchers back to the 
  Cretaceous in order to herd, butcher and process dinosaur meat which is 
  then sent forward in time to feed the hungry billions. An eye opening 
  premise.  
   
   
  
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  Legal Information 
   
  The Cepheus Engine Compatibility-Statement License (CSL) 
  You must state on the first page where you mention Cepheus Engine that “Cepheus Engine and Samardan Press are 
  the trademarks of Jason "Flynn" Kemp,” and that you are not affiliated with Jason "Flynn" Kemp or Samardan Press™. 
  If you’re using the license to commit legal fraud, you forfeit the right to continue using the license: specifically, if you 
  are claiming compatibility with the rules of Cepheus Engine, the claim must not constitute legal fraud, or fraud in the 
  inducement, under the laws of the State of Texas. Note that this requirement is almost impossible to violate 
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  Selling a full version of this game with your house rules incorporated into it is perfectly permissible, but you may not 
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  OPEN GAME LICENSE Version 1.0a  
  The following text is the property of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. and is Copyright 2000 Wizards of the Coast, Inc 
  (‘Wizards’). All Rights Reserved.  
  1. Definitions: (a)’Contributors’ means the copyright and/or trademark owners who have contributed Open Game 
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  ‘Using’ means to use, Distribute, copy, edit, format, modify, translate and otherwise create Derivative Material of Open 
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  2. The License: This License applies to any Open Game Content that contains a notice indicating that the Open Game 
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  Content that you Use. No terms may be added to or subtracted from this License except as described by the License 
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  15. COPYRIGHT NOTICE  
  Open Game License v 1.0a Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.  
  High Guard System Reference Document Copyright © 2008, Mongoose Publishing. 
  Mercenary System Reference Document Copyright © 2008, Mongoose Publishing. 
  Modern System Reference Document Copyright 2002-2004, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Bill Slavicsek, Jeff 
  Grubb, Rich Redman, Charles Ryan, Eric Cagle, David Noonan, Stan!, Christopher Perkins, Rodney Thompson, and JD 
  Wiker, based on material by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Richard Baker, Peter Adkison, Bruce R. 
  Cordell, John Tynes, Andy Collins, and JD Wiker.  
  Swords & Wizardry Core Rules, Copyright 2008, Matthew J. Finch 
  System Reference Document, Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip 
  Williams, based on original material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. 
  T20 - The Traveller’s Handbook Copyright 2002, Quiklink Interactive, Inc. Traveller is a trademark of Far Future 
  Enterprises and is used under license. 
  Traveller System Reference Document Copyright © 2008, Mongoose Publishing. 
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  thereof are trademarks of Far Future Enterprises unless otherwise noted. All Rights Reserved. Mongoose Publishing 
  Ltd Authorized User. 
  Cepheus Engine System Reference Document, Copyright © 2016 Samardan Press; Author Jason "Flynn" Kemp 
  16. Camp Cretaceous contains new OGL rules mechanics for dinosaurs, creating teenaged characters and outdoor 
  travel. These can be reproduced. Product Identity constitutes the history, organisations and NPC names as well as the 
  Camp Cretaceous setting. These are not OGL, cannot be reproduced or reused and are protected by copyright as 
  identified in section 1. Copyright © 2016 Zozer Games; Author Paul Elliott. 
   
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Kid Friendly/7. RPGs/Ages 8-10 (Attention span of 2 hours +, Proficient in basic math, Starting to read or reading chapter books)/Camp Cretaceous.pdf