seventeenth issue - RPG Review

"Make it work again," said Xaotetl imperiously, and smiled even more broadly as a vulture taller than any of the
guards landed beside the sacred pool.
* * *
Individual dinosaurs can liven up a game, whether encountered in a hidden valley or stolen from a biotech lab, but in
my opinion, you get much better value if you buy in bulk ­ raptors attacking in co­ordinated packs, entire herds of
ceratopsians, or best of all, a complete ecosystem, from top predators on down. The lost realm of Xijale endures
because of a pool that bestows immortality and gets around the normal ecological problem of Lost Realms ­
maintaining and feeding breeding populations of very large predators. A warm­blooded T rex would need to eat the
equivalent of a hadrosaur a week; feeding fifty or more for 65 million years would take... well, you figure it out.
Because very little of Earth remains unexplored, or at least unsurveyed by satellite, lost realms are better suited for
times when terra incognita was more plentiful, or parallel worlds, or perhaps a GURPS Space campaign where the
Precursors have seeded worlds with species long since extinct on Earth. Of course, dinosaurs in a lost realm have had
millions of years in which to evolve...
* * *
The air was rich with oxygen, pollens, and the smell of dinosaurs; Reid breathed deeply of it, glad to be off the ship.
Tau Draconis III was more 'Earthlike' than Earth had been for a millenium, and it was pleasant to be able to walk
around without an air mask, heat suit, or dose of gravanol. He stared at the troodon as it appeared out of a clump of
swamp cypress, a length of bamboo in its hands. "Okay, so I owe you a bottle of sake," he admitted to his science
officer. "It's a tool­using dinosaur. What is that, a spear?"
"I don't know," she said softly, as the troodon turned and trotted in their direction. "Those shoulders aren't built for an
overarm throw, but a spear would give it extra reach, maybe enough to attack an ankylosaur without getting too close
to the tail..."
"Uh­huh. How long do you think it'll be before they ask us for military advisors?"
The troodon, now only a few metres away from the ATV, looked at him curiously, then raised the blowgun to his mouth.
The dart hit Reid in the throat, and a dozen armed troodons suddenly dashed out from the trees.
* * *
I would like to thank the Dinosaur Society for their assistance with this project, and their sponsorship of dinosaur
research and education. I also have to thank the paleontologists, the museum staff, the writers, and the film­makers
(some of them, anyway) for fueling a life­long fascination with the 'terrible lizards' and other prehistoric creatures, and
Steve Jackson and Loyd Blankeship for suggesting the book.
And if you really want to slaughter dinosaurs wholesale, after all the effort that's been put into bringing them back to
life, I suggest you go to Ghost Ranch in Texas and travel back to the late Triassic. More Coelophysis than you could
point a minigun at, and after all, 220 million years later, who's going to know?
14 RPG REVIEW ISSUE SEVENTEEN September 2012