Cretaceous Park: When the Wards Fail

Silas Cusk built a menagerie of magically reconstructed saurians on a tropical island and sold tickets to it. The party arrives as VIP guests on preview day — the same morning Cusk's former partner steals the diamond that powers every containment ward on the island. The wards go dark, the cages open, and the island has two hours before its magical foundations give out and it slides into the sea.

A complete, ready-to-run one-shot for a small table: 2–3 players, levels 2–3, one 2–3 hour session, zero prep. Eighteen named scenes across four acts, with a branching second act (a subterranean stealth route or an exposed aerial one) that reconverges so nothing is gated behind the choice. A visible 0–10 tension meter — the Containment Instability Index — climbs as the island fails and sets the severity of the finale.

The apex predator is not a villain: it is a construct whose control collar overloaded when the diamond was stolen, and it is in agony, not hunger. The three-phase boss has a discoverable weak point and ends in a single-round choice between three fully written endings — destroy the island's heart, restore containment, or free the beast — none of them clean.

Includes 8 SRD 5.1 creature stat blocks, 4 NPCs, 4 ready-made characters (any two form a viable party), 6 battle maps, 6 opening hooks, 6 contingencies, and 5 campaign seeds. Every encounter is tuned and stress-tested for the worst-case small table.