Race for El DoradoTag Line: The Race Is On!
Makers: R. Talsorian Games for the Dream Park RPG
What is it?
An Indiana Jones-style adventure set in 1930s Peru, with a hidden valley, dinosaurs and naked Incan girls.
Neat Stuff
-There are two things I want to see in a Dream Park scenario: Nazis and/or dinosaurs. This time, it's dinos.
-It's an easily adaptable scenario that could be plugged into other pulp campaigns with little or no fuss, and it includes a lot of background information on the Valley of the Yana environment so that characters could linger there longer than one adventure.
-Maps for everything, a couple of them in color, as well as NPC character cards, which I found to be useful visual aids.
-Well-organized, with clearly marked overviews of each chapter, and plenty of suggestions for dead players to return (in Dream Park, you play a role-player in the future, so when he or her character dies in a game, they may come back to play an NPC or villain).
Bad Stuff
-May be a little slow to start. All the stuff occuring on a Peruvian plantation tended to make me impatient for the Valley when ancient Incas and dinosaurs roamed. Dream Park's appeal is a lot about crossing genres, in my opinion, so that's where I wanted to be. Thank God that dimetrodon shows up early.
Quote
"If the characters leave the girl to her fate: The dinosaur will eat her. If the characters have been detected, it will come after them next."
How I've used it
This was the holy grail of Dream Park for me - the one DP product I couldn't get my hands on, and for a number of years, I thought it had never really come out, that it was just an ad published in a magazine before the game line collapsed. eBay to the rescue, but I still got it from Italy of all places. When applied to our Dream Park game, it offered up some of the most memorable moments of the year:
-One character refusing to answer even the simplest questions from guerillas who threatened to shoot them. So is this really how you wanted it to end, Teej?
-Having introduced an actress (all NPCs are played by actors, after all) in the previous scenario, I enjoyed bringing her back as the Yana princess, especially since she was now going out with one of the players. Said player threw himself in front of an allosaurus to save her (and died, poor Mitrael), and another player wound up marrying her in the game (poor Teej).
-And this won Best Moment of the Year at our annual Nivens awards (no kidding, there's a gala and everything): Rather than see the Yana way of life destroyed by modern society, the characters decided to blow the volcano with dynamite and seal the valley with themselves inside. Hey, warm summer nights with topless Incan babes, looked good on paper. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Mitrael was all geared to come back to life as the main baddie on the Peruvian side and well, never got the chance. Totally shafted, but it was such a nice way to end the adventure, nobody complained. Except him, and only because his girlfriend was dancing toplessly with another dude.
In conclusion
Of the three Dream Park scenarios published, I'd say this was the least outlandish and could fit into any pulp-type game. Least outlandish, but most solid as far as the plot goes. It's got nice opportunities for continuous play, if that's your thing, but also a nice number of options for the ending, if you just want to play it and move on.
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