D&D General Dinosaurs in your campaigns

[MarkB]

I wonder what visuals we'll get for dinosaurs in the new MM.

 

[Stormonu]

In my homebrew, there is Lost Vale, which has Aztecs and Dinosaurs. Likewise, off the far west are island chains teeming with dinosaurs - some of which are intelligent.

D&D could really use some higher CR beasts besides dinosaurs, or better yet, let druids start turning into certain animal monstrosities like owlbears, displacer beasts, hydras and the like. I'm pretty tired of giant ape or t-rex Druid shenanigans.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Initially I ended up excluding all dinosaurs from the campaign setting I was working on (yes I mean all dinosaurs, that includes birds).

However then some animals I did include as unique fauna of the setting got moved to be inside dinosauria irl, when previously they were excluded. So the setting technically has dinosaurs again (but still no birds).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

D&D could really use some higher CR beasts besides dinosaurs, or better yet, let druids start turning into certain animal monstrosities like owlbears, displacer beasts, hydras and the like. I'm pretty tired of giant ape or t-rex Druid shenanigans.

Yeah. I made owlbears "beasts" in my world. But It is sad how low CR most beasts are. Artra is a primal world and I would like to use sabre-tooth tigers and other such prehistoric beasts, but the characters grow past them so quickly. Whilst having "dire" version of everything might seem a bit silly, it is unfortunate that they did away with "dire animals." It was useful to have more powerful version of animals readily available. All sort of giant animals are super common in fantasy.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Yeah. I made owlbears "beasts" in my world. But It is sad how low CR most beasts are. Artra is a primal world and I would like to use sabre-tooth tigers and other such prehistoric beasts, but the characters grow past them so quickly. Whilst having "dire" version of everything might seem a bit silly, it is unfortunate that they did away with "dire animals." It was useful to have more powerful version of animals readily available. All sort of giant animals are super common in fantasy.

Yeah it's always seemed weird to me how owlbears aren't classed as beasts.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

Yeah it's always seemed weird to me how owlbears aren't classed as beasts.

I think it's because the original origin story of owlbears was that they were artificially created through magic by mortals, rather than being an organism that either evolved naturally or was created by divine beings, depending on your favored creation narrative.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah. I made owlbears "beasts" in my world. But It is sad how low CR most beasts are. Artra is a primal world and I would like to use sabre-tooth tigers and other such prehistoric beasts, but the characters grow past them so quickly. Whilst having "dire" version of everything might seem a bit silly, it is unfortunate that they did away with "dire animals." It was useful to have more powerful version of animals readily available. All sort of giant animals are super common in fantasy.

I opened up Owlbears and a few other monstrosities on a case by case basis that aren't overtly supernatural to my druid players. Even though giant apes and T-Rexes exist in my campaign world, it doesn't mean the PCs know what they are.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think it's because the original origin story of owlbears was that they were artificially created through magic by mortals, rather than being an organism that either evolved naturally or was created by divine beings, depending on your favored creation narrative.

Eh. That is just some setting specific backstory that may or may no be true. (On Artra, definitely not.) Besides, even if it was true, I don't see how it would stop them from being beasts. It is like if scientists used generic engineering to crossbreed two animals that are not closely related to naturally crossbreed, it doesn't seem to me that this should affect the classification this way. Beside, if the platypi are naturally occurring, so can be the owlbears!

 

[Frozen_Heart]

Why do you feel the need to justify dinosaurs in your campaign worlds but no one bats an eye at pigeons, hawks and chickens?

Mainly because it's the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs which allowed mammals to move into other niches and grow large as they've done today. If there are dinosaurs in the setting, people wonder how modern animals evolved without any differences at all alongside them. And if the dinosaurs had survived, they would have still evolved into new and different species over time, rather than just sticking as 't-rex' and 'triceratops' completely unchanged.

Even modern birds only exist because the dominant bird groups of the Cretaceous didn't survive the 'incident' 66mya.

Easiest solution is just to handwave with 'a wizard did it'.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Mainly because it's the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs which allowed mammals to move into other niches and grow large as they've done today. If there are dinosaurs in the setting, people wonder how modern animals evolved without any differences at all alongside them. And if the dinosaurs had survived, they would have still evolved into new and different species over time, rather than just sticking as 't-rex' and 'triceratops' completely unchanged.

Even modern birds only exist because the dominant bird groups of the Cretaceous didn't survive the 'incident' 66mya.

Easiest solution is just to handwave with 'a wizard did it'.

So whilst I like to think stuff like that I don't think most people care. Most D&D world are totally just "wizard did it" and there probably is creationism instead of evolution. And even if we assume more natural processes, the D&D worlds still have all sort of monsters that would take the ecological niches of dinosaurs and would prevent or at least affect the evolution of other animals. Like if presence of dinosaurs would prevent evolution of mammals, then surely the presence of dragons would do the same?