Cowboys and Dinosaurs

While playing the microlite Tumbleweed game a while ago, we found a lot of cowboy and dinosaur pictures. And we joked about running a cowboys and dinosaurs game.

I started looking for an existing RPG game, and GDW actually had one based on the comic. It was not highly rated and the mechanics made the fun more complicated than it should be. There is at least one game on Drivethru but that is Cowboys vs Dinosaurs. And there have been some attempts at crafting such a game, though more of a skirmish game than an RPG. 

So I will try and roll my own. I'll tag these posts with Cowboys and Dinosaurs so I can track them down, but eventually I will have a microlite PDF of the game, and we'll start playtesting sometime...

I've a few ideas for the central premise, though not yet how dinos still exist. I am thinking of making the dinosaurs needing to impress on a cowboy or cowgirl. Perhaps a bit sentient, but I want the bond to exist between the two so it is not just a vehicle or killing machine, but a companion. How smart is a good question and there will be some discussion I am sure over that. But I want the player to feel the loss should the dinosaur get killed or hurt. Essentially the players will have a joint player character of the cowboy and the dinosaur, effectively getting to play 2 characters at once. If not so smart, there may be a roll to see if the dino listens to what the player wants or not. Sort of like the old Lone Ranger when a whistle would bring Silver galloping along (though the original horse was Dusty. Amazing what you can find in web searches!)

The basis will be the microlite game of Tumbleweed. It is included in one of the collections here. The dinos will be scaled up from the horses I think, though I will be looking to review some of the dinosaur games to see how they do that. I have at least printed out the Tumbleweed rules, and will start making notes sometime in the near future.

Suggestions are welcome - I'll be checking with my gaming group to see what sort of game they want to play, and factor that in. Perhaps the bonding it too much, and they just want big, dumb fighting machines. But I see advantages to playing as a duo and disadvantages when not.