Dino Night
Copyright 2009 Matt Helms

In Dino Night, characters are trapped in a mall by dinosaurs and other threats from Earth's distant past.  Can the characters manage to survive the night?  Dino Night is intended as a one-shot adventure, but can be used as a campaign introduction as noted at the end.

What You Need to Run Dino Night
- A good working knowledge of Fudge
- "Fudge in a Nutshell" printouts are handy for new Fudge players
- Dice, Fudge character sheets, paper, and pencils for everyone
- Something tangible and toss-able to use as Fudge Points, such as colored beads or candy
- A map of a local enclosed shopping mall because it's more fun to rampage where you know
- Some quick dinosaur stats (see "Characters" below)

Style
Dino Night is a Fudge adventure intended as an homage to the adventure movies of the 1980s, which gleefully fused action and comedy along with easy-to-recognize characters, great one-liners, and big special effects.  Fudge Points should flow freely to help keep the action moving - instead of waiting for the end of the adventure, reward good roleplaying and clever ideas immediately with a Fudge Point. Even though some of the characters may be crass at times, general decency rules the day and works out best for all involved.  Describe your action scenes as if they were from a movie.  Reward large gambles, especially in ways the characters don't expect - yes, a character may swing from a mall ad banner to escape a pack of utahraptors, but does he land near the maw of a giant slug or in the path of a hoard of rampaging giant rats?  Ignore scientific plausibility and spend your effort on fun ways to throw dinosaurs at the characters.

Characters
Character creation should be wholly subjective, with only important characteristics detailed.  Broadly define only what is above or below average for a character and let the players refine the characters during play, adding or modifying skills, gifts, and faults if they can justify it.  Work with the players and focus on quick stereotypes with a small hidden twist.  Those 1980s movies built around the jock who wants to leave football and study science, the geek who is secretly a hero, and the bad girl who truly wants to help the world despite the fact that it has burned her.  Remember to address any connections the characters may have with each other.

As for the dinosaurs and other creatures, just give 'em some scale levels, damage capacity ratings, and attack skills.  Make up any other details as called for by the players' decisions.

Setup
The characters are all teens working the night shift at the mall.  Tonight is inventory night and they are all going to be stuck at the mall late, counting stock in the basement storage units of the mall.  Get an idea from the players how their characters are getting home that night. Two mall security guards are down in the basement with the characters.  Model them with whatever personalities you choose - they're dead meat.

The basement storage units are in the mall's basement even if the mall you are using for the adventure doesn't have one.  This basement is a former fallout shelter.  Portable phones and such don't work in there - in fact the only phone is an emergency phone which goes directly to the mall security office.

Any nerdy or newshound characters should be upset that they are missing the meteor shower scheduled to take place that night - it is going to be the closest meteors have come to Earth in centuries.  Perhaps someone has a special wish to make on a falling star?

Perceptive characters may notice a tremor as a meteor strikes near the mall.

The Meteor
Yes, a meteor crashes within eyesight of the mall.  And yes, all bad things come from meteors.  This meteor emits a radiation which reverses evolution.  Bugs and plants take on a large prehistoric scale, people become savage cavemen, and birds become rampaging dinosaurs.  The effective radius of the radiation lessens as the night proceeds.  The radiation blast from the original impact covers the mall and the surrounding area.  The characters and the security guards are safe from the effects as they are in the basement.

If you want to keep the cinematic feeling going, describe the meteor strike and hint at its effects to build some tension.

First Strike
When inventory is done - all characters should finish roughly at the same time - the security guards escort the characters to the front door to meet their rides or find their own way home.  Instead of being greeted by the parking lot lights, everyone is stopped by the sight of the glowing meteor crater.  Characters may not yet notice any plants in the parking lot having been altered or that any cars are twisted and changed into slag metal.  Note that he radiation has receded to just outside of the mall doors by the time the characters get there.

The mall security guards are the first out the doors.  One guard is swooped up by a pterodactyl.  The other runs into the parking lot and is changed into a caveman in front of the players eyes.  Those events should be enough to convince the characters that they need to close the door and that something is seriously wrong.

Alternate opening - have only one security guard for the night and let characters who flee the mall spend the rest of the adventure as savage cavemen.

What Now?
Characters should be allowed to run rampant and figure out how to survive the night.  Your job is to keep the adventure moving.  Keep the characters threatened, but give them a chance to survive.  Build off of the players' ideas to keep them involved.  Throw some exciting encounters at them when things slow down or seem to be going too well for them.  Here are some ideas:
- Characters cannot hide in the fallout shelter basement as it is now overrun with giant rats, cockroaches, and spiders.
- Cell phones and other forms of communication are down, but the mall keeps power due to a generator... in the basement.
- Stock the mall with some exciting props - such as a motor bike display or a sporting goods store with a climbing wall.
- If the mall has a pet store, how are the pets faring?
- Dinosaurs are clever hunters, but can be tricked - will props from a theme restaurant help?
- Not sure how to answer a player's question about a random chance?  Do what makes for an interesting movie moment.  Failing that, make a situational roll and fudge it.
- Send a swarm of tiny biting dinosaurs after the characters.  The swarm should act as one creature, going up in skill as more join the swarm and decreasing in effectiveness as it is defeated.
- Just when the characters think they are safe, a brontosaurus walks though the mall, destroying an end and leaving exposed walls and rubble.  Use this as an opportunity to show that the meteor's radiation leak is lessening.
- End it all with a T-Rex chase.
- Most importantly, give each character a chance to shine.

The End?
Characters who survived get to stumble out into the sunlight, newly bonded.

If you wish, perhaps the whole side of the Earth was engulfed with these meteors and is now changed...