Palaeo Diet: Eat or be Eaten, Fireside Tales, and Pulp

Palaeo Diet: Eat or be Eaten (published 2017) is a table top hunting game set in a pre-historic world where our hunter-gatherer ancestors (and their hominid cousins) had to hunt and eat, or be hunted and eaten. The game seeks to model a time when humans are not yet in control of the world around them - a time when the landscape could just as easily give succour to a struggling tribe, as it could cripple a thriving people.

The game is designed to be used for solo games or for (mostly) co-operative play with up to four players. Models are divided broadly into three categories:

1) Hunters, armed hominids activated and controlled directly by players. Hunters may attempt up to three actions per turn, although if they attempt to do too much at once, they can get a bit stressed out and mess up. There are different equipment types and a range of optional traits that can be diced for to give each of your tribe members a back-story and personality.

2) Hounds, domesticated wolves or dogs under the limited control of players. A hound has to activate after its master and is often quite obedient. However, when it does fail activation rolls, a hound's instincts take over and it automatically conducts actions out of the player's control.

3) Beasts, non-player models that react to the actions of hunters (and hounds). Ranging from giant grazers and apex predators, down to fluffy little critters, beasts are never directly controlled. They react to various triggers and their actions are randomly determined against their stimulus.

Hunting parties normally consist of between two and eight hunters in total, divided equally between the players. Any number of beasts may be placed on the table but, as a rule of thumb, the total bulk of the beasts (a determination of both their number of wounds and their food value as a carcass) should be equal to, or more than, the number of hunters. The introductory scenario, for example, sets four hunters against a single mammoth (bulk 4).

A digital copy of the rules are now available from Ganesha Games, Gumroad, or Wargame Vault. A hard copy, full colour, paperback can be found at Amazon (UK, USA, Germany etc), or from Lulu.

Palaeo Diet: Fireside Tales (published 2018) is a narrative campaign for Palaeo Diet: Eat or Be Eaten. Join Herc, the last of his people, as he regales a new tribe with tales of his heroic exploits, making excuses for his torn clothing, and remaining rather vague about exactly what happened to his old companions. PDFT includes: five new scenarios with primary and secondary objectives; four new beast profiles and reaction tables; new optional rules for unwashed hunters and guidelines for hunting juvenile beasts.A digital copy of Fireside Tales is currently available from Ganesha Games, Gumroad, or Wargame Vault. A hard copy, full colour, paperback can be found at Lulu or Amazon.

Palaeo Diet: Pulp (published 2020) is the dino-hunting, mummy-wrangling, Nazi-punching expansion for Palaeo Diet: Eat or be Eaten, the solo and co-operative game of survival in a savage prehistoric world. PDP includes: new rules for modern pulp adventurers with all new weapons and traits; new landscape types including buildings, quicksand and carnivorous plants; four new beast reactions; eight new beast profiles including witch doctors, mummies and raptors; three new scenarios to showcase the new rules. A digital copy of Pulp is available from Ganesha Games' Gumroad store, or Wargame Vault. A hard copy, full colour, paperback can be found on Lulu.

All previous Palaeo Diet posts on this blog can be found here. Sample pages of both books are provided below.

Palaeo Diet: Eat or Be Eaten