The Prehistoric Campaign

In the current thread on cursed objects, I brought up the prehistoric campaign I ran a few years back, and was requested to elaborate. So I did.

I never came up with a better name for the setting than "The Prehistoric Campaign", but the world was strongly hinted to be a Mesozoic version of Toril. And then Serpent Kingdoms came out and kind of screwed that up. So my current view of it is of yet another alternate prime world.

Geographically, Gaea is loosely based on Mid-Jurassic Earth (the lower of the two maps), with two main continents, Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south, a large island to the south-east, and a shallow sea between them. My additions were the Cold Wastes, a northern continent above Laurasia, and Nublar, another island similar in size to India.

Northern Gondwana was tropical, with the Wyvernspine Mountains running through it. South of the mountains were large deserts and savannas. The majority of Laurasia was ruined landscape, vast tainted marshes and forests of unhealthy trees. The island directly corresponding to India was Surtsey, a volcanic landscape inhabited by firenewts. Nublar was mainly tropical cloud forests. Dinosaurs were the dominant life-form, with giant vermin common and mammals being seen as mostly a curiosity.

In terms of major players, the setting's theme was of Cold War between law and chaos, good and evil. Gondwana was the domain of the Kobold Empire, which ruled with an iron fist. They loathed the Troglodyte Hegemony to the north in Laurasia, and the trogs hated them back. Few races were neutral in this conflict - sivs, asabi and insectile ogres (the "big-bigs") sided with the kobolds, and the trogs were renowned demon-binders and had cloakers and armies of the walking dead on their side. The archipelago between the two continents was inhabited by sivs and bullywugs recreating larger conflicts in a small scale, and lizardfolk mystics and shamans trying to stay out of the way.

What neither empire knew was that another war was being fought under their noses. On one side were the metallic dragons of the Cold Waste, who had been pushed back in the Wyrm Wars some 2000 years before the campaign began, and the denizens of Nublar, such as monoclons - triceratops men - and ratlings, the only sentient race of mammals in the world. Their opposition were the cruel and nihilistic ophidians, who had officially been destroyed by the only alliance the trogs and kobolds ever had. These ophidians weren't the ones from the Fiend Folio (those I redubbed squams), but were a homebrew based on yuan-ti and Call of Cthulhu's serpent men. They were fleshwarpers and were primarily responsible for the pathetic state of Laurasia's ecology.

The game itself had a loose metaplot of the party being secret agents sent to stop the war between the two empires. Being kobolds to start with, the party thought it was an assassination attempt, although the true goal was peace (their boss was the secretive Six, the son of Kurtulmak and a trickster quasi-deity, although they didn't know that). After a disaster with the Deck of Many Things where pretty much the entire party got alignment shifted to Chaotic Good, however, the goal became escaping to the Cold Wastes and joining the fight against the ophidians.

It was easily my most ambitious homebrew (the rest of which tended towards Greyhawk with the serial numbers filed off), and I'd definately run it again. I did recently, actually, in a high-level sequel one-shot that didn't go quite as well as I hoped.

So... has anyone else done something similar? As in, an Age of Dinosaurs or Lost World game?

Demiurge out.

Well in my homebrew of Siluria I basically dedicated one of its continents to that kind of campaign. The continent of Eicude is a twisted combination of the Lost World and Skull Island based on a roughly smashing together the old Arthur Conan Doyle works and King Kong. It's wildlife is a prehistoric nightmare of "nature red in tooth and claw" carried to an extreme.

The native intelligent races are the Naghai, who are snake-people somewhat like yaun-ti but that can grow to great size as they age. A flying species called the Tscheva that most resemble fuzzy humanoid wyverns and live high in the mountains. And a barbaric race called the Vykarins who are sort of like a cross between a wolf and a kangaroo with armadillo armor and hooved feet with an oversized slashing dewclaw like a dienonychus. There are also lizardfolk who form the commoner class of the Naghai society, bullywug primitives in the swampy lowlands. The Giant empire from another continent had an outpost on one end of the continent a long time ago and left one of their failed uplift experiments (They made a lot of the current major races on two other continents) to go free. These are savanites who are mechanically identical to Rakasta except they all share the same pelt pattern and cannot speak since they have an animal voicebox (Failed experiment). Savanites form a great part of the slave class of the Naghai culture and are universally considered a "lesser" race useful only as slaves.

Since none of my campaigns have gone in the direction of this continent since 2e I'm only now converting or rebuilding most of it for the new edition. I'm starting with the Kong Island and Dinosaurs A-Z threads here for wildlife and working on the rest independently.

The continent on which my homebrew takes place was mostly prehistoric dominated until the people from an alternate reality 'slid'/gated there. Not knowing that intelligent life actually existed there, the 'invaders' cut down vast tracks of wilderness to make way for civilization. 1/3 of the continent is dominated by prehistoric creatures, mostly dinosaurs and their evolved kin.

The dinofolk (as they are collectively known; in all actuality the group is a diverse mix of intelligent reptilian peoples) are highly secrtive toward and distrusting of non-scaled folk. The dinofolk are natural psions, there is nothing latent about it. Only a select group of non-dinofolk know of this and collect members of the species to experiment on them, trying to find the 'spark' of psionics.

The civilized world has past its renaissance era and is currently experiencing the equivalent of our worlds gothic era, but is on the verge of a technological/magical uprising that will usher in a pre TL8 society.

I love prehistoric settings, especially if they're more "1 million years BC" and less grim struggle for survival "scavenging for what the scavengers left". I worry they can be hard to run in 3e because of the fear of upsetting that finely tuned class balance, but maybe it can be done ok by eg giving Fighters extra feats instead of armour proficiencies, and restricting what spells are available likewise. I'd tend to think an alternate system like Grim Tales or C&C might be easier, though.
I think in most prehistoric settings, PCs will spend a lot of time running from giant monsters, so the CR/EL system may need tweaking; the concept of EL-balanced encounters doesn't fit well when the challenge for the level 1 PCs is to escape the rampaging Tyrannosaur.

My conception of a prehistoric world went past setting to system - I wanted to represent the origens of a magical world, with primitive magic and broad races which represented how the phb races would eventually develop.

Someday I'll get back to that project...

Kahuna Burger said:

My conception of a prehistoric world went past setting to system - I wanted to represent the origens of a magical world, with primitive magic and broad races which represented how the phb races would eventually develop.

Someday I'll get back to that project...

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If you don't already have it, you should check out Nyambe. It is based on African cultures, but tweeks the system to reflect the flavor.

Frukathka said:

If you don't already have it, you should check out Nyambe. It is based on African cultures, but tweeks the system to reflect the flavor.

Click to expand...

A good suggestion.

demiurge1138 said:

In terms of major players, the setting's theme was of Cold War between law and chaos, good and evil. Gondwana was the domain of the Kobold Empire, which ruled with an iron fist. They loathed the Troglodyte Hegemony to the north in Laurasia, and the trogs hated them back. Few races were neutral in this conflict - sivs, asabi and insectile ogres (the "big-bigs") sided with the kobolds, and the trogs were renowned demon-binders and had cloakers and armies of the walking dead on their side. The archipelago between the two continents was inhabited by sivs and bullywugs recreating larger conflicts in a small scale, and lizardfolk mystics and shamans trying to stay out of the way.

What neither empire knew was that another war was being fought under their noses. On one side were the metallic dragons of the Cold Waste, who had been pushed back in the Wyrm Wars some 2000 years before the campaign began, and the denizens of Nublar, such as monoclons - triceratops men - and ratlings, the only sentient race of mammals in the world. Their opposition were the cruel and nihilistic ophidians, who had officially been destroyed by the only alliance the trogs and kobolds ever had. These ophidians weren't the ones from the Fiend Folio (those I redubbed squams), but were a homebrew based on yuan-ti and Call of Cthulhu's serpent men. They were fleshwarpers and were primarily responsible for the pathetic state of Laurasia's ecology.

The game itself had a loose metaplot of the party being secret agents sent to stop the war between the two empires. Being kobolds to start with, the party thought it was an assassination attempt, although the true goal was peace (their boss was the secretive Six, the son of Kurtulmak and a trickster quasi-deity, although they didn't know that). After a disaster with the Deck of Many Things where pretty much the entire party got alignment shifted to Chaotic Good, however, the goal became escaping to the Cold Wastes and joining the fight against the ophidians.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the description. That sounds really cool!

What was the technology level like? What sorts of weapons and armor were used, etc.?

My wife and a friend of hers co-ran a long module that involved time travel to six different eras in time at the same location - three of which pre-dated humanoid civilizatiion there. They did a great job of researching the different prehistoric ages, making the flora, fauna and weather appropriate. They even went so far as to factor in the terrain differences over time for the region. It was great fun.

Korgoth said:

Thanks for the description. That sounds really cool!

What was the technology level like? What sorts of weapons and armor were used, etc.?

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Tech levels were D&D standard, with a bit of a drift towards fantastic science. No guns, but grafts were common (the work of ophidian transmuters), the party eventually got an airship (powered by a permanent portal to the Plane of Elemental Air, which was a problem when it got sawed through...) and a plot McGuffin was the Seventh Eye, an orbital crystal ball. Weapons and armor were also D&D standard. Which is probably why I settled on it being an Alt-Prime rather than truly Prehistoric.

Demiurge out.