Primeval RPG Promo

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R O L E P L A Y I N G

G A M E

B Y

GARETH RYDER-HANRAHAN

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Primeval Credits WRiting Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan Creative Director Dominic McDowell-Thomas Additional WRiting John M. Kahane Editing Jenni Hill Graphic Design Lee Binding

Proof-Reading John M. Kahane Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan Dominic McDowall-Thomas Line Manager Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan Special Thanks Impossible Pictures Angus Abranson Craig Oxbrow John M. Kahane Andrew Peregrine Kit Kindred Nathaniel Torson

Additional Design Edel Ryder-Hanrahan Layout Simon Lucas Edel Ryder-Hanrahan

Game System based on Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, Designed and Writen by David F. Chapman.

Playtesters John M. Kahane Kathy Bauer Steve Bauer Joanne Clarke Angela Marsh David Matchuk Douglas McMillan Tammy Powers Nick Roberts Tom Robinson Steven Ross

Primeval is published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd. (UK reg. no. 6036414). Find out more about us and our games at www.cubicle7.co.uk © Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd. 2012 Primeval (word marks, logos and devices) are trade marks of Impossible Pictures and are used under license.

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INTRODUCTION

Contents Introduction................... 1

Groups & Bases........................ 44

The Basics......................... 4

Bad Group Traits..................... 47

Characters................................ 4 Rules ........................................ 6

The ARC........................... 49

Setting....................................... 7

The Anomaly Research Centre.. 50

Creating A Group.................... 11

ARC Characters........................ 51 Operational Resources............ 61

Genesis........................... 11

Villains................................... 63

Creating Your Character ....... 14

Playing In The ARC Framework. 65

Attributes............................... 15 Skills....................................... 17

Dinosaur Hunters.......... 66

Skills List................................ 19

The Cryptid Hunter.................. 67

Traits...................................... 24

Dinosaur Hunter Characters... 68

Traits List................................ 25

Operational Resources............ 72

Bad Traits............................... 34

Villains................................... 74

Story Points............................ 40

Playing in the Dinosaur Hunters Framework............................. 75

Our final character sheet looks like this:.................................. 42 Finishing Touches.................... 43

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Good Group Traits.................. 44

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Playing the Game.......... 76

Cover-Ups..................... 132

Advanced Techniques............... 79

Exposure .............................. 135

Action............................ 83

Investigators........................ 139

The Basic Rule.......................... 84

Anomalies.................... 146

How A Roll Works................... 87

A Field Guide To Anomalies.... 147

Complications......................... 90

Time Travel & Anomalies....... 148

Combat & Extended Conflicts... 92

Anomaly Theories.................. 152

Chases..................................... 98

Temporal Damage .................. 154

Losing A Fight: Getting Hurt...101 Mental Or Social Conflicts.... 103 Losing A Mental Or Social Conflict...................... 106 Healing.................................. 107 Story Points.......................... 108 Gaining Story Points..............110 Max Story Points................... 111 Learning & Improvement........ 111 Leaving The Game....................112

Equipment.....................113 Weapons.................................115 Future Technology................ 129

Deep Time...................... 160 Precambrian..........................161 Cambrian...............................161 Ordovician.............................161 Silurian................................. 162 Devonian............................... 162 Carboniferous....................... 163 Permian................................ 163 Triassic.................................. 163 Jurassic................................. 164 Cretaceous............................ 165 Paleocene.............................. 165 Eocene................................... 165

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Oligocene.............................. 166

Two (and Three) Part Stories.230

Miocene................................. 166

Series Plots........................... 231

INTRODUCTION

Pliocene................................. 166 Pleistocene.............................167

Conspiracies................ 235

Holocene ................................167

Making a Conspiracy ........... 236

Identifying a Time Period...... 168

Investigating the Conspiracy.240

Creature Rules...................... 169

Conspiracy Traits.................. 242

Monsters..................... 169

Conspiracy: Christine Johnson’s Organisation......................... 243

Skills..................................... 172 Threat .................................. 173 The Creature List................... 177 Creating Creatures................ 201 Creature Traits & Powers...... 203 Identifying a Creature.......... 206 Humans................................. 207

GameMastering........... 210 Bringing the Past to Life........216 Players...................................219

Conspiracy: Future Survivors... 246 Conspiracy: Celava................... 251

The Future.................... 254 The Near Future..................... 255 The Mer Era........................... 257 The Far Future....................... 258 Future Creatures................... 258 Creating Your Own Future Creatures.............................. 267

Primeval Woodlands... 269

Adventures.................. 222 Components........................... 222 Building The Adventure......... 226

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Character Sheet........... 284

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Introduction

Dinosaurs. Terrible Lizards. That’s what the word means. When their bones were found, people wondered if they were the remains of biblical giants and dragons. Today, after decades of scientific investigation and research, we know that life on this planet is billions of years old, and has taken many forms—such as the titanic, savage dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were wiped out in one of the periodic extinctions that strike our world. They’ve been gone for sixty-five million years. What if they came back?

Primeval ‘Anomalies are starting to appear, doorways in time to worlds we can barely imagine. The Anomalies are conclusive proof that the past exists in a fourth dimension as real and solid as those we already know. Our job is to predict and contain them.’ In Primeval, there are Anomalies, rips in the fabric of space and time that connect our world to the distant past. Anomalies can open anywhere, at any time, dropping velociraptors into shopping centres and Mammoths on the motorway. These Anomalies are happening more frequently—every day brings more and more sightings of prehistoric beasts invading the present. The Anomaly Research Centre (ARC) is a governmentrun team of scientists, soldiers, explorers and other

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specialists, tasked with investigating the origin of these Anomalies and containing the threat to the public. The existence of these rips in space/ time—not to mention the rampaging T-Rexes and other beasts—must be kept secret or it would cause mass panic. In their work, the ARC team has discovered three vital facts about the Anomalies.

INTRODUCTION

First, the Anomalies can go forward as well as back. There are gateways to our future as well as our past. Second, at some point in the near future, humanity is driven extinct by an unknown catastrophe, possibly a new species of super-predators. We may only have a few years, or possibly only a few months left. Third... time is mutable. History can be changed. Extinction can be averted. That’s where you come in.

What’s Primeval? Primeval is an action-filled science-fiction TV series about a team working for the Anomaly Research Centre. Under the leadership of Dr. Nick Cutter (and, after his death, ex-cop Danny Quinn), they investigate the mysterious Anomalies and contain the ferocious prehistoric monsters that have intruded into the modern world. Cutter’s estranged wife Helen is the team’s nemesis—she vanished into an Anomaly eight years ago and now has her own agenda for human evolution. The first three series of Primeval were shown on ITV from 2007 to 2009; Series Four and Five were shown in 2011. This book covers the first three series—a future supplement will fill in details from Four and Five.

What’s A Roleplaying Game? You’re probably familiar with computer roleplaying games, where you play a character in some fantasy setting. You wander around doing quests, levelling up, talking to other characters and getting new gear.

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Tabletop roleplaying games are similar, but there’s one key difference. Instead of a computer running the game, there’s a human Gamemaster—and that changes everything. Instead of being limited to what the game allows you to do, you can do anything you can imagine. Let’s say you need to get past a guarded door. A computer game might only give you the option of fighting the guard or stealing a pass. In a tabletop game, you can try anything—maybe you can persuade the guard to let you past, or bribe him, or sneak through the sewers, or forge a fake pass, or even convince the guard that he should be on your side. The Gamemaster (or GM) describes the world, the players decide what they want to do, and then the GM decides whether or not they succeed. In Primeval, you can play Nick Cutter, Connor, Abby and the other familiar characters from the Anomaly Research Centre, or you can create your own characters to work alongside Nick & co. in the ARC. You can even explore other possibilities in the Primeval universe, like dinosaur hunters or time wanderers.

The Basics Firstly, you need a few friends to play the Primeval rpg. One of you will be the Gamemaster, and the rest of you will be the players. The game works with as few as two people (one GM, one player), but it’s best with three to five players. (By the way, if you haven’t decided who’s going to be the GM, then the owner of the book should take on that responsibility.) Secondly, you’ll need to be familiar with the contents of this book. You don’t need to memorise the whole thing, but you should understand how the basic rules (Chapter 2 − The Basics) work, and how to make characters (Chapter 3 − Genesis). Thirdly, you’ll need a few dice (the normal, six-sided ones). When an outcome is in doubt, you’ll be rolling dice to see whether or not your character succeeds. Let’s say you want to scramble over a fence to escape the slavering gorgonopsid that’s hot on your heels. You’d add your character’s Coordination and Athletics scores together, and then roll two dice. If the total of the dice plus your Coordination and Athletics is higher than a difficulty number set by the GM, you make it over the fence in time. If you roll badly... well, you’re a gorgonopsid snack, unless you spend a Story Point.

ame the role-playing g Fourth, you’ll need a way to keep track of Story Points and Threat Points. Story Points are a way for you to change a bad roll or alter the story in your favour. You’ll be getting— and spending—a lot of Story Points, so you’ll need a pile of tokens. Threat Points are for monsters, and measure how aggressive and dangerous a creature is. Pennies, glass beads, jelly beans, cardboard chits, anything like that will do. Fifth, you’ll need a few pencils, and copies of the character sheet (page 284). Alternatively, you can use the pre-generated characters on pages 51 − 60 if you want to play the characters from the TV series. Got all that? Good. Let’s get moving.

How To Use This Book The first part of this book (once you get past this introduction) is all about set-up—how to come up with a framework for your group, and how to roll up your individual characters. A framework explains why all your characters are working together, and how they deal with the temporal Anomalies. All Primeval games involve time travel and ferocious monsters, but you don’t have to be part of the Anomaly Research Centre. You could be independent researchers, or a group of hitch-hikers who got lost in the past, or a secret government team dedicated to preserving our timeline. There are some suggested group frameworks on page 12. Next, there’s the rules section. This covers everything hazardous and nasty that your characters might come across—what happens when you try to shoot a dinosaur, what happens when the dinosaur tries to eat you, sneaking around, investigating mysteries and gaining new Skills and Traits. There are also detailed rules for two of the most important aspects of Primeval—concealing the truth from the public, and dealing with Anomalies.

Where’s Matt? Series 4 & 5 The new characters and monsters from Primeval’s fourth and fifth seasons aren’t in this book. Matt, Jess, Emily Merchant, Gideon and the other new characters will be covered in a future supplement!

After that, the Dangers section describes many different prehistoric monsters and time periods. Players can also read that section—assuming their characters are expert palaeontologists or are just really interested in dinosaurs. Finally, there’s the Gamemaster’s section. This is full of advice and tips for running the game, suggestions for series outlines, rules for dealing with Anomalies, time travel and alterations of the time line, and other strangeness, along with a sample adventure to get you started. The Gamemaster’s section also covers the Future time period. Players are allowed to read everything apart from the GM’s section—if you spoil the secrets in there, the game might not be as much fun for you. Gamemasters can read the whole book.

Playing The Game Primeval’s designed to be played in a series of game sessions. Each game session takes up an evening. Think of each game session as an episode of your own TV series. Most of the events in a game session will be selfcontained—you’ll fight the monster-of-the-week and deal with the problems surrounding the current Anomaly—but there will be plot elements, mysteries and conspiracies that continue from episode to episode. Keep the metaphor of the television series in mind as you play the game—it’s a good guide for both players and Gamemasters.

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