Review: Dino Attack RPG

[PeabodySam]

Welcome to the review topic for Dino Attack RPG: Director's Cut.  This might very well be my BZPower swan song... bringing it all back for one last hurrah and tribute to all the great memories and friends from my time on this website, before I depart into the great unknown.

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Announcements:

July 1, 2023
Version 1.3 of the Director's Cut is now available for download.

July 9, 2022
Chapters 60-79 have been updated to version 1.2.

July 8, 2022
Chapters 52-59 have been updated to version 1.2.

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Table of Contents:

Act 0: Prologue
0. Welcome to Dino Attack

Act 1: The Kotua Crisis
1. Looking for Trouble
2. Black Operations
3. High Voltage
4. The Great Escape
5. Search and Rescue
6. Ground Zero
7. The Monsters Within
8. Blacktron Legacy
9. Unleashing Chaos
10. Love and War
11. Entropy

Act 2: Opposing Forces
12. Dark Horizons
13. Cane's Labyrinth
14. Eye of the Hurricane
15. Clone Wars
16. Mech Assault
17. Staging a Fight
18. Skyfall
19. Shadow Strike
20. Our Inner Demons

Act 3: The Dino Island Laboratory
21. The Reunion
22. Forgotten Memories
23. The Scientist King
24. Mad Science
25. Hazardous Environments
26. Homecoming

Act 4: The Goo Caverns
27. Typhoon Turbulence
28. Island Intrusion
29. Conundrums of Philosophy
30. Rubble Trouble
31. Inferno

Act 5: LEGO Island and Antarctica
32. Divided We Fall
33. United We Stand

Act 6: Adventurers' Island
34. Call to Adventure
35. Dust Before the Wind
36. Team Fortress
37. Ghosts of the Past
38. Countdown to the End
39. Bearings
40. Among Us
41. Deadline
42. Launch
43. The Ringleader
44. Forbidden Ruins
45. Ashes to Ashes
46. Redemption
47. Trading Bishops
48. Trigger Warning
49. Architect of Darkness
50. Waking Nightmare
51. Imagination

Act 7: Mole Hunt
52. Loose Ends
53. Many Happy Returns
54. Stirred Hive
55. Right Behind You
56. Until Proven Guilty
57. Imposter Syndrome
58. Out of the Frying Pan
59. Into the Fire

Act 8: The Final Battle
60. Calm Before the Storm
61. Beginning of the End
62. The First Wave
63. Enemy Advances
64. Shock and Awe
65. Till Death Do Us Part
66. Rising Stakes
67. Most Worthless of Causes
68. Worsening Odds
69. Desperate Times
70. Fight or Flight
71. Working in Unison
72. At War's End

Act 9: Epilogue
73. Dawn of a Newsday
74. One Last Battle
75. Denouement
76. Sorrow and Joy
77. Let the Celebration Commence
78. As Time Goes On
79. Sunrise

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FAQ:

Q: What is Dino Attack RPG?

A: Dino Attack RPG (concluded as Dino Attack: At War's End in 2012) is a "play-by-post" text-based roleplay game on BZPower that ran from July 1, 2005 through December 21, 2012.  For those who aren't familiar with this type of forum RPG, different BZPower members take turns writing an ongoing story that was largely overseen by me, the RPG host.  It was primarily inspired by the LEGO Dino Attack line in 2005, but also incorporated many other popular LEGO themes and games at the time including Alpha Team, Adventurers, LEGO Island, Agents, Power Miners, and LEGO Universe.

 

Q: Why does the story jump around so much? I can't keep track of everything that's going on!

A: This is a side effect of the RPG's "play-by-post" nature.  When players directly interact with one another, you can have long stretches of posts telling a single story.  But, when players are acting independently, then each post tells a different story.  Furthermore, "double posting" generally isn't allowed on BZPower, so one player would often have to wait for another player to post before they could continue their own story.  In the early days of the RPG, posts were only a few sentences long on average, meaning you might only get a short paragraph of one story before it changes to a different story, admittedly giving the RPG a chaotic, messy feel as you're constantly quickly jumping between different characters and stories.  This issue becomes less prevalent later on as the players started writing longer posts.  The Director's Cut does attempt to mitigate this by reordering posts so that the story does not jump around as frequently as in the original play-by-post forum topic, although this is still unavoidable to a degree.

 

Q: Why are certain original characters, particularly those inspired by the LEGO Alpha Team theme, introduced as though the reader is expected to already be familiar with them? Is there some backstory that I'm missing?

A: Dino Attack RPG was created as a direct successor to BZPower's most popular LEGO RPG at the time, Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG. Much of the playerbase from Alpha Team RPG carried over to Dino Attack RPG. As a result, many players were indeed already familiar with characters such as Chompy, Little Bot, PBB, Guardian, Frozeen, Phantom, Chaos, and General Evil, as well as other story elements such as Robo-Blades and G.E. Bodies, and so they required no introduction at the time. When necessary, the Director's Cut provides the essentials needed to know who these characters are.

 

Q: Why are some sections of the story glossed over as brief summaries, while other parts of the story seem to be omitted altogether?

A: In February 2013 (less than two months after the RPG's conclusion), BZPower was maliciously hacked.  The entire pre-2011 BZPower Forum Archive was deleted as a result, including the original Dino Attack RPG.  About one-third of the RPG was successfully recovered through the Wayback Machine's Internet Archive thanks to an incomplete 2007 backup, but even this archive was still missing a number of pages, and coverage of anything from 2009-2011 is scarce at best.  With about two-thirds of the RPG lost forever, the missing content had to be reconstructed using summaries from the Dino Attack RPG Wiki or else extrapolated from the recovered content.  In some cases, it's just no longer possible to know what is missing, leading to unavoidable gaps in the story.  This led to the creation of a downloadable archive for Dino Attack RPG, preserving as much of the original RPG as we can.

 

Q: What is the Director's Cut?

A: The original RPG was written by dozens of people, each with their own writing style.  Plot holes frequently arise, and other portions of the early story are later deemed non-canonical as the canon became stricter around 2008.  And, if I'm perfectly honest, I really do hate my old writing.  The goal of the Director's Cut is to address all of this in order to create a more cohesive reading experience.  I playfully call it the "Director's Cut" since I, as the RPG's creator and game master (i.e. its "director"), am providing my own personal re-edit of this story as an alternative version for our audience to experience.

There are three general "tiers" of edits made to RPG posts:

1. The majority of posts are kept largely intact, with only minor editing for consistent formatting or correcting spelling/grammatical errors.  Posts that are written in first-person or in script style are rewritten as third-person prose but otherwise kept intact.  If it makes sense to do so, then the order of posts may also be shifted around. Since the canon was firmly established by the time At War's End began in March 2012, the overwhelming majority of edited posts from At War's End only fall into the first tier.

2. Posts with non-canonical content are rewritten in a way that reinterprets the material so that it would fit the current canon.  For example, posts that use the BIONICLE settings Mata Nui and Metru Nui are rewritten to instead feature Enchanted Island (from LEGO Pirates) and Astor City (from LEGO Ultra Agents).  I considered it important to retain the general gist of the original post and keep as much of it intact as possible, but I allowed myself to take some major liberties as needed.

3. When it comes to my own posts, I go full George Lucas!  Quite a few of my posts from 2005-2007 are extensively rewritten, sometimes from scratch, in order to better match my own personal standards for writing.  I still made sure to retain the gist of the original posts and many of my early posts still have not been radically altered, but otherwise I felt free to rewrite as much as I wanted to.

There are a few other special cases that do not fall into the above tiers.  In some instances (e.g. Rev and Sereve's final confrontation with Landro, or Rex's battle with Sharptooth), I've completely rewritten the RPG's missing content from scratch because merely summarizing it did not feel satisfactory.  There are some other brand-new scenes added here or there, which should entice those who have already read the RPG.  Additionally, I've taken some of Dino Attack RPG's "Expanded Universe", a series of short stories written after the RPG ended, and directly integrated them into the RPG so that they now read as part of the ongoing narrative.

 

Q: Is the Director's Cut the definitive canonical version?

A: Yes... and no. As explained above, one of the main goals of the Director's Cut is to rewrite non-canonical posts so that they would fit the current canon. However, what I've offered with this Director's Cut is one possible interpretation of the canon that applies some creative license to make it all work. You can take it or leave it. It's possible that some material that I've left in the Director's Cut (such as Coldwire, or Magma's mutant arm) might no longer be considered canonical by their original writers, while other parts I've altered (such as Kotua learning Cane's name during their first meeting) are actually non-canonical but included here to improve the reading experience.

It is also important to note that the Director's Cut will not be replacing the original Dino Attack RPG; I shall continue to support the original downloadable archive and make it available for posterity's sake.

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List of Authors:

While edits and changes made in the Director's Cut are largely my own, the original RPG was a collaborative writing effort by dozens of BZPower members. Not all of their writings made it into the archive, but it would not have been possible without their passion and support, so I must credit each and every one of my fellow RPG players along with their main character(s). Due to being a long list, it is placed in the spoiler box below. I am still trying to locate all BZPower members' current usernames so I can link their profiles.

Spoiler

Included:
PeabodySam (Rex)
Kotua in Space (Kotua)
Vaakrohk (Venom)
Sand Hawk 1 (Sereve)
KanohiTakua (Kai)
Mobius (Hyrode)
The Driver (Isaac Craft)
Kardas Dragon (Rev Raptor)
AoiJunni (Mathias)
Chronicler of Ko-Koro (Databoard)
Ace Of Spades? (Snake of Spades)
Gojira (Gojira)
Clone Hat (Glide)
spiralmenace (Col. Jack O'Neill)
Turient K { Alix } (Turahk-Kal)
Lewa Freakazoid (Dromus)
BZP Noob #30000 (Zero)
Bones96 (Keys)
Nura (Voltage)
Spinner Master (Vex)
Disciple (Ammo)
BileChunk (James Beatles)
Toa Takiah, Toa of Space (Louis "Dryptosaurus")
MetroidDude360 (Cobra)
Zephyria (Agent X)
TakunuvaC01 (Magma, Reptile)
Jacks (Hotwire)
Metty The Black Wizard (Blade/Slash)
Machine758 (Machine758)
Ussal (Zonic)
##### Bassai (Nui)
Among Us (Nick Lightning)
vakhimetru (VM)
Ehlek (Chupacabra)
Elemental (Silver)
Joey245: Toa of Gravity (Blazer)
Thin Jimmy (Agent 393)
Ultima Lucky Bionicle Prime King (Hunter Ultima)
Pomer{Point Man} (Jack Khonns)
Biorune865 (Lion)
jr pickles (Pickles)
Mikestro (Jordan)
barakki~mantax (Alpha Mantax)
Nick Toa Of The Guitar (Hammer)
MistyMountainMatoran (Spark)
Dudester (Zap)
Letagi (Pilot)
Thok8 (Shane)
Atton Rand (Zenna, Trigger, Rotor)
Tahuninja (Apollo)
Toa Tanak (Alpha)
Delta Titan Sparta (Sauro-Hunter/Fullmetal)
Catfish (Zyra)
imperial officer (David Norman)
Benton Kabrinsky (B)
John Blueheart (Epsilon)
Andrewnuva199 (Andrew Anderson)
Sloopofwar (Marco)
that guy from that show (Dust, Hertz)
Brikman McStudz (Zachary Virchaus)
Skarloth (Thomas Craft)
B0ss Manducus (Kuru)
avmatoran (Dr. Cyborg)
Parazan (Peter Walter)

Not included:
Algernon (Algernon)
huki beast (Dark Wolf)
Orange Tentacle (Evan Gildow)
lego2000 (Hunter 2000)
Ethereal (Farrar)
Mountain of Hysteria (Eskay)
ZevAsron (GoldEagle)
=*Nero X*= (Alex Tage)
Crimson Jester (Jacob Coruhn)
Canama (Canama)
Cookieo (Cookieo)
PIRAKA OF DOOM (Doom Blade)
Enrys-Red Lantern (Gargan)
Author (Jax)
Vamprah9588- Omega of Fire (Slasher)
[unknown] (Kartyl)
You just lost the game (Carver)
glaciustheiceglatorian (Fox)
Tacku (Crashdown)

Summarized:
Nanosuit User (Duke, Joe Harry)
Clone Commander Cody (Charlie)
Gentleman of Science (Clark Deadworth)
The CryoMancer (Tesh Carrey)

In addition, while she was not a direct contributor to the RPG itself, I would like to give special thanks to Hahli Husky, the friendly and helpful LEGO General Discussion moderator back in mid-2005. All these people I met, all these writings we shared, all the happy memories of Dino Attack RPG... it was all made possible thanks to one fateful PM where she granted approval for the RPG to be started. For this, I will always be grateful.

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Additional Links:

• Download the Dino Attack RPG Downloadable Archive in DOCX format (v3.0): https://www.mediafire.com/file/q4i0zlxe2rzkprn/Dino_Attack_RPG_Archive_v3.0_%28DOCX%29.zip/file
• Download the Dino Attack RPG Downloadable Archive in PDF format (v3.0): https://www.mediafire.com/file/35i4csbxjc9p08x/Dino_Attack_RPG_Archive_v3.0_%28PDF%29.zip/file
• Download the Dino Attack RPG Director's Cut in DOCX format (v1.3): https://www.mediafire.com/file/zpbdup7cjkfljz3/Director%27s_Cut_v1.3_%28DOCX%29.zip/file
• Download the Dino Attack RPG Director's Cut in PDF format (v1.3): https://www.mediafire.com/file/s41xgyk1j71tdnf/Director%27s_Cut_v1.3_%28PDF%29.zip/file
• Read the Dino Attack RPG Wiki (beware of spoilers!): https://dinoattackrpg01.fandom.com/wiki/Dino_Attack_RPG_Wiki
• Listen to the Dino Attack RPG Complete Soundtrack for an enhanced reading experience: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUSNpflzdMIljXevcppmGVcqMNK-q-55Q

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Play well!

Edited November 30, 2023 by PeabodySam
Added links to the BZPower profiles of Gojira, Ethereal, ZevAsron, Ussal, Elemental, and glaciustheiceglatorian.

[BULiK]

As someone who's working on my own project for archiving and organizing some of BZPower's RPGs, I just want to say congratulations on completing your efforts - especially given the amount of pre-2011 content that's often lost to time. While I never played or read the Dino Attack RPG myself, I know it had a passionate community and a long history. I look forward to reading through this and getting a taste of what it was like in the heyday of the Lego RPG forum.

[PeabodySam]

For anyone who's been diligently following and reading Dino Attack RPG: Director's Cut each weekend, I thank you for joining me on this journey through BZPower history. After 80 chapters (including the prologue), the story is finally concluded. There's plenty more to tell, of course; there are various Expanded Universe stories covering additional events before the Dino Attack, after the Dino Attack, and even in other universes or timelines! But for now, at least, I'll be keeping those as "extras" in the downloadable version.

Speaking of which... now that the entire Director's Cut is online, version 1.1 is now available for download. This includes all the tweaks, nitpicks, and other edits I've been making while proofreading each chapter just before uploading them onto BZPower. However, this downloadable version also has a large number of edits that aren't yet in the online BZPower mirror, with nearly 70 chapters seeing at least one change. Many of these are minor (i.e. more corrections of typos and grammar), but there are a few substantial additions, with some of the more notable ones including:

• Thanks to Among Us, all posts from the first three chapters of "Act 1: The Kotua Crisis" have been fully recovered! As a result, Chapters 2 and 3 are significantly expanded; major events such as Rex, Kai, and Hyrode being captured by ShadowTech are able to be told as a full story rather than merely reconstructed from wiki summaries.
• The codenames of the Second Headquarters Squad have been changed (with the exception of Medic, in order to keep his backstory). Similarly, Michelle Glados's name has been slightly altered to Michelle Gladys. Both changes were made with the intended goal of distancing these characters from their Valve inspiration and making them feel less like blatant copies.
• The ending of Chapter 33 has been expanded with a new introduction to Trigger... which is actually a significantly reworked version of a non-canonical post from the final battle.
• Brikman McStudz wrote an Expanded Universe story titled Corruption, which was retroactively integrated into chapters 36 and 37 after they were posted on BZPower. Unlike the above changes, this one is actually already online, but I probably forgot to mention this earlier. Therefore, if you read these chapters before July 2021 and missed out on it, you can check it out now.

It will certainly take some time for me to update all the online chapters to reflect the v1.1 download, but I'll be trying to get it done over the course of the next couple weeks. An obsessive director's job is never done!

There is still more that I think can be done with the Director's Cut, particularly in reconstructing the lost material. I'd love to depict Zero exploring Astor City and discovering the T.O.A., or give Alpha Chaos a proper exit and Anti-Kotua a proper introduction, or rewrite Amanda Claw revealing her dark past to Rex. And there are some new stories that could be told, such as writing a finale to Kotua's final mission against the Raptors Gang, or finally showing the off-screen battle against Willa the Witch and her magical Thunder Driller. And there's always room for new Expanded Universe and additional contributions from my fellow RPG players. But for now, until the inevitable release of version 1.2... I hope you have enjoyed the definitive Dino Attack RPG experience.

[PeabodySam]

Back in January, I said I'd update the online chapters to version 1.1. Well, here we are, more than half a year later... and I've finally got around to updating the chapters, now updated to the recently-released version 1.2 instead! Better late than never, I suppose.

A whopping 74 out of 80 chapters (including the prologue) have been edited to some capacity. However, as I said in my last post, many of these edits are minor tweaks and fixes, but there are still a handful of chapters with brand new content to read, including the aforementioned content from version 1.1 that has finally been posted online. To make the biggest changes easier to identify (for anyone who's already read the Director's Cut on BZPower and just wants to catch up on the new stuff), I've listed them below:

• Chapter 2: Black Operations: All missing content has been fully recovered.
• Chapter 3: High Voltage: All missing content has been fully recovered.
• Chapter 8: Blacktron Legacy: A new scene has been written for properly introducing General Evil.
• Chapter 11: Entropy: Two new scenes have been added, including Kotua's escape from Dimension 8231 and Anti-Kotua's arrival in the primary universe.
• Chapter 12: Dark Horizons: Two new scenes have been restored, including Kotua's final battle against Alpha Chaos and his first meeting with Anti-Kotua.
• Chapter 20: Our Inner Demons: Two new scenes have been written, including a debriefing in Specs's office and a conversation in the mess hall.
• Chapter 26: Homecoming: Two new scenes have been restored, including an escape from Dr. Rex and General Evil renouncing his villainy.
• Chapter 27: Typhoon Turbulence: A new scene has been written for General offering to train Talia Kaahs.
• Chapter 33: United We Stand: Three new scenes have been added, including a restoration of Amanda Claw revealing her backstory, the food debate in the mess hall, and Trigger's reworked introduction.
• Chapter 36: Team Fortress: Three new scenes have been restored, including Rex and Reptile's infiltration of the XERRD Fortress, their encounter with Dr. Michelle Gladys, and Amanda Claw outing herself as Silencia Venomosa.
• Chapter 38: Countdown to the End: A new scene has been restored for Amanda Claw's private confession to Rex.
• Chapter 77: Let the Celebration Commence: Two new scenes have been reworked, including the Pierces complaining to the Brickolinis about their pizza and Sarah Pierce trying to get Papa Brickolini arrested.

You may notice that a few of these additions (Alpha Chaos's defeat, Anti-Kotua's introduction, Amanda's backstory) were mentioned in my last post as some of the missing posts I wanted to restore in future versions of the Director's Cut. That's three down! But there's still plenty more to do, both in restoring lost scenes and in writing brand-new scenes, so I expect there'll definitely been a version 1.3 released sometime in the future.

On top of all this, the downloadable version of the Director's Cut now includes the "Fifteeniversary" stories, which were written by some of us old Dino Attack RPG players on Discord to commemorate the RPG's fifteenth anniversary in 2020. So, if you want an additional 200 pages of story to read, be sure to download the Director's Cut and check it out!