Cadillacs and Dinosaurs HERO

[Guest Admiral C]

I'm think of pitching a post-apoc gam at my players but when we talked about post-apoc in the past they felt the genre was knee deep in cliches. At least when it came to how the world ends.

 

Then I remembered I have a copy of Cadillacs & Dinosaurs from GDW and I wanted to know what kind of resources would be helpful, like conversion stuff from GDW (I think they did Dark Conspiracy and Twilight 2000). I've got all the fifth Ed books even remotely relevant to this. My only real problem is that I never read that many issues of C&D, or Xenezoic Tales either.

 

And input would be most welcome.

 

BTW, does anybody know if the C&D cartoon had been put on DVD yet?

[Prometheus]

Re: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs HERO

 

I don't know that Cadillacs and Dinosaurs really needs alot of conversion into HERO- if you've got Pulp HERO, HERO System Bestiary, and HERO System Vehicle Sourcebook, you have all you really need.

 

Getting your hands on The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay might be helpful, even if it is targeted at a relatively young audience. So much of C&D involves nature and technology, understanding what you might need to keep a car running (like say... oh, a Cadillac perhaps?), or how to keep electricity running in the City in the Sea might come in handy.

[AlHazred]

Re: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs HERO

 

I've never read the series. Is it good, generally-Gamable material?

[L. Marcus]

Re: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs HERO

 

Caddilacs? And Dinosaurs? In the same setting? Gamable?!

 

Sounds like it.

 

Are the comics still in print?

[Prometheus]

Re: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs HERO

 

Dark Horse collected the series in to two trade paperbacks, Xenozoic Tales Volume 1: After The End and Xenozoic Tales Volume 2: The New World. Creator Mark Schultz is still working on self publishing the rest of the series, so the story is as yet unfinished.

 

The press release sums up the setting pretty well:

 

Schultz’s vision of the future includes ruined cities, guano-powered Cadillacs, warring factions of humanity, reborn dinosaurs, and their intelligent, humanoid descendants. The tough-as-nails shaman, Jack Tenrec, and the beautiful scientist, Hannah Dundee, yearn to uncover the origins and secrets of their violent world while dealing with their own rocky relationship.

 

Sound gamable?

[BigJackBrass]

Re: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs HERO

 

The Dark Horse collections are the cheapest way of getting the important parts of the story so far, although they miss the short tales which were in the original comics and the first collected editions. If you can find the deluxe hardback editions of those earlier collections they have some additional sketches and info, and are rather nicely put together (but being signed and limited edition they can be hard to locate, especially the first volume).

 

The only reason to seek out other GDW games to supplement Cadillacs & Dinosaurs is if you are going to use the original rules instead of converting. Twilight: 2000 supplements are useful for this (and now cheaply available on DrivethruRPG.com) but offer little that is not currently found in the Hero range. As Prometheus pointed out, Hero already has all of the technical odds and ends you need, so what you really require is the background and characterisation. Since the comics are some of the best ever produced, in any genre, getting up to speed on that side of things will be a pleasure for you.

 

One thought on the post-apocalypse aspect: The characters in Cadillacs don't think of theirs as a post-apocalypse world. It only becomes known during the storyline that the ancients (us) lived in a world without dinosaurs, and finding out what changed is part of the story involving Hannah and Jack.

 

The cartoon seems only to be available on secondhand VHS, but you can still find odd copies of the PC game floating around eBay.

[AlHazred]

Re: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs HERO

 

Yeah, I have a bunch of GDW products from the "standardization age" of the company: Twilight 2000 version 2.2, Dark Conspiracy, Traveller: The New Era. I've worked a converting the careers into Hero System Package Deals (a la Dark Champions); I'll have to keep an eye out for the RPG in the remainder bin...

[Guest Admiral C]

Re: Cadillacs and Dinosaurs HERO

 

Thanks for the suggestions. Alas the game fell through, my players felt the same about a C&D game that they did about the other post-apoc games I suggested. They seem the like the idea of Phantasy Star HERO though.

 

I'll certainly look into the Xenoxoic Tales trade paperbacks though. I've been wanting a collection for a while.