Tooth & Claw by Jared A. Sorensen (2003)

Usually roleplaying games let you play as humans fighting dinosaurs. Tooth & Claw is the only one I know that lets people play as dinosaurs.

Tooth & Claw is nothing fancy. It's simply a set of rules for creating dinosaur characters and roleplaying them. There are no illustrations and it lacks flashy page design, having been cranked out on a word processor. The author writes that originally the game was to be published by a game company in 2001, but that never happened. The version he ultimately released was written in a single night so he could enter it into a gaming competition, where it won third place.

It's not a bad effort if you're looking for a rules-lite RPG. Tooth & Claw leaves it up to players to decide how realistic they want to make the game. If they want their dinosaurs to talk, no problem. If they want their dinosaurs to communicate only through grunts and body language, no problem. The rules themselves just give some basics for building dinosaurs with tail spikes, or horns, or enlarged toe claws, or pointy teeth. You could use the rules to build a Triceratops, or make up something completely new and not in the fossil record.

The game uses a dice-pool system in which players role a certain number of six-sided dice and try to get as many in sequence as possible, starting with 1. So, for example, say you role four dice and get 1, 2, 4, 5. You have two successes because 1 and 2 are in sequence. The 4 and 5 don't count because you must start with 1. The more successes you have, the more likely you are to accomplish a task or win a challenge. Positive traits let you role larger numbers of dice or let you start sequences with higher numbers than 1.

Most players will probably welcome the simplicity. Hard-core gamers who thrive on statistic complexity and ultra-realism will hate it. Tooth & Claw is a nice, easy game if you have a few dinosaur nuts at your house and you're looking for something other to do than play Monopoly. Plus it's only a $3 download at RPGnow, so it's hardly going to bankrupt you if you don't like it.

Trivia

• The author, on his web site, says he would like to one day revisit Tooth & Claw and get it published as a roleplaying game for kids.

Reviews

• None

Two self-published dinosaur novels now available

Novels about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures are hard to find in many bookstores these days, at least outside the children's sections, so anyone looking for some paleo-fiction may need to look in other places. Some authors have turned to self-publishing to get their dinosaur fiction out.

First up is Eleven Days in the Valley and Other Stories by William M. Svensen. It is a self-published anthology set on Gondolend, a planet where dinosaurs and humans co-exist. The author has put together a pretty neat Web site and has obviously put a lot of effort into creating the world of his stories.

Next up is The Worlds of Naughtenny Moore by David Brown. The author writes the book belongs to the dinosaur hunting subgenre of paleo-fiction, although creatures other than dinosaurs make appearances and that a fair amount of metaphysical speculation is thrown into the mix. Visit the Web site of Open Page Publishing for ordering information.

As far as myself, I'm still debating whether to review self-published fiction. That may seem unfair given I have already reviewed self-published comics and will be reviewing a couple self-published RPG games in the near future, but I admittedly hold authors who have sold their works to publishers to a higher standard. They've had the benefit of an editor to review their manuscripts and a publishing team to market them, something self-published writers rarely have.

Regardless, if you want to get the word out about a novel or other work of fiction concerning prehistoric creatures -- no matter how it's published -- feel free to drop me an e-mail at prepulp(at)hotmail(dot)com. I'm always happy to at least let readers know the work is out there.

A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864)

Note: This is a review of the e-text version of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, so I don’t have a cover blurb. The book cover is from the Wikipedia entry about the novel.

This is where paleo-fiction started.

A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne was first published in 1864. The famous story is the first major work of fiction to feature prehistoric creatures surviving to the modern day.* Ironically, there are no true dinosaurs in the novel, since the beasts hadn’t captured the public’s imagination at the time the book was written.

The novel is narrated by Axel, a young man who is apprenticing under his geologist uncle, Professor Otto Lidenbrock. The two come across a cryptic manuscript alleging that a passageway to the center of the Earth exists inside an extinct volcano in Iceland. It’s a crazy claim, but Lidenbrock is open-minded -- or gullible -- enough to mount an expedition to the volcano in hopes of making the greatest scientific discovery of his time. The two are joined by a guide, and together the trio descend into the bowels of the Earth, finding a lost world hidden for millions of years. Getting out will be a different matter, however.

That’s admittedly a short description of a novel that has had a profound influence on science fiction, but the story is so well-known that most people know it by heart. A Journey to the Center of the Earth has been adapted into comics, cartoons, video games and movies numerous times, although few have been faithful to the source material. The best-known adaptation is probably a 1959 movie starring James Mason and country gospel star Pat Boone. (Boone recently called evolution a “false religion” in an opinion column, apparently forgetting that he once starred in a dinosaur movie.)

The book itself is one of Verne’s more famous titles, but I’ve never really considered it one of his better works. It’s a bit sluggish in parts, and it lacks any particularly memorable characters such as Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The humor seems forced by modern standards, and the whiny narrator can come across as annoying rather than funny.

Nonetheless, it would be unfair of me to leave you with the impression that this is a bad book. While it may not be Verne’s best, it’s still fun. There is a terrific sense of wonder in it missing from most of today’s science fiction. Verne just throws wonder after wonder at the reader, so much so that it isn’t until you’re near the end of the novel that you realize it doesn’t have much of an actual plot. No adaptations have really captured the full extent of Verne’s imagination, so even if you have seen two or three versions of the story, you’re still likely to be surprised by what the explorers find in the underground world they discover.

Also, how many science fiction novels are there where the authors write so lovingly about geology? It’s a topic that most writers find drab compared to quantum physics or space travel, but is just as fascinating in its own right. Paleontology really isn’t the central focus of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, and it’s pretty clear from reading the novel that Verne considered it a branch of geology rather than a separate science. The prehistoric creatures here are just window dressing, although when Verne does use them, he does so for maximum effect.

The novel is available for free on many places on the Internet, including this Web site.

* Some of the above information about the novel came from Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction by Allen A. Debus.

Reviews

• voiseb

Technosaurs #2 kicking off

I noticed over the weekend that Kevin Wasden of Splintered-Mind.com is kicking off the second issue of his web comic, Technosaurs. The series is written by Wasden and Darwin Garrison, with art by Wasden. The comic is about anthropomorphized dinosaurs and a brother and sister suddenly thrown into their world. Give it a look because I think you will be pleasantly surprised by both the quality of the art and the storyline.

Wasden also reports that the first issue of Technosaurs will be released in print in late September. He currently has a sketchbook available for sale.

Also relating to online comics, I forgot to mention Commodore Dinosaur by Brad Olrich when I linked to it a while back. I haven't had time to read through the series yet, but it is about a superhero whose power is turning into a dinosaur. The comic appears very tongue-in-cheek, from what I saw.