Office life is confusing. On top of the usual and expected work rules, there are also numerous social rules you have to follow, and these rules are usually vague, contradictory, and deeply confusing, as there are often several sets of them running concurrently depending on who you’re interacting with. Now imagine how much harder it would be to navigate if you were the only human in an office populated with dinosaurs. Not only would you have to worry about social etiquette, but you also have to dodge Tracy from accounting’s thagomizer. Thankfully, you no longer have to dream, as this is the plot of Dinosaur Office, a TTRPG about being the only human working in a dinosaur office.
Dinosaur Office is a solo journaling game where you play as an office worker with a gigantic problem: while everyone else at your office is a dinosaur, you are just a normal human. Thus, you have to try to get all your work done without anyone noticing that you’re not a Jurassic beast, a task that is much easier said than done.
A Day Of Hard Work
The game uses a standard deck of playing cards and a six-sided die. Before the game starts, you have to remove the face cards from the deck of cards, and then split the red and black cards into two separate decks. The game is split into 5 days, and each day consists of eight rounds, each of which represents one hurdle you have to overcome while working at your dinosaur-filled office.
Each round, you’ll draw one card from each deck to make a prompt, with the black cards representing the situation in the office you need to handle. The red card covers a dinosaur-related situation you have to deal with without giving away your troublesome identity.
Once you’ve made the prompt and thought about it, you roll the D6. The result of this roll will tell you if you succeed or fail at what you’re attempting to do, and how extreme those passes and failures are. This result also gives you points or takes points away from you, and at the end of the week, you compare your score with the game’s final table to see where you fall within the office hierarchy. If you do really well, you might be able to surpass Iri the irriator and become the boss’s right-hand dinosaur, but if you fail a lot of tasks, you might end up under Gargoyle the Gargoyleosaurus, the office weirdo.
Jurassic Fun For Everyone
Dinosaur Office is a super fun rules-lite solo TTRPG perfect for people looking for a light office comedy experience you can complete in a single evening.
The core concept is so good that it’s hard to not get sucked into the idea, meaning that you’re likely to end up writing really long journal entries as you come up with fun ways for the game’s various situations to resolve.
One element of Dinosaur Office I love is the split deck. Making each round’s prompts up of two smaller prompts is a great way to fit a lot of prompts into a small space. It also guarantees that each game will feel different (as drawing the same combo two games in a row is less likely than pulling the same prompt several times in a game where each card is its own bespoke prompt).
Plus, having one set of prompts be office-themed and the other dinosaur-themed leads to plenty of memorably chaotic and comical situations while also making sure the game’s central conceit (that you’re a human trying to remain incognito in a dinosaur-packed office) remains the focus, meaning that every game of Dinosaur Office feels distinct and unlike any other solo journaling game.
One thing I would like to see in a future update is a way to use the points you acquire from completing tasks. While they are used to find your final rank within the office, I think it would be cool to have a way to gamble them during the game (maybe spending them to reroll a die once per day or something like that) to add a little risk vs. reward to the game and to make sure the goal of rising up the office hierarchy is always at the forefront of the player’s mind.
Dinosaur Office is the perfect solo TTRPG for people who love their solo games to be rules-lite, quick to play, and delightfully wacky. What makes the game stand out is how hard it leans into its central concept; you won’t be able to get through a single in-game task without considering your dinosaur co-workers and how different they are from you, and the ways you’ll need to alter your behaviour to blend in and avoid becoming lunch. Because of this, Dinosaur Office is worth checking out for both solo TTRPG lovers and dino fans.
